How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People

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The Revd Mike Starkey is Head of Church Growth for Manchester diocese and author of the Stepping Stones for Growth course. You even forget that it’s about studying the Bible. The Bible has connected you directly with God. That’s contemplation. And that might sound scary, and big, and for super-spiritual people, but it’s actually really, really simple. And in the book, I explain how to do it. Bible Gateway interviewed Pete Greig ( @PeteGreig) about his book, How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People (Zondervan, 2022). Moments of revelation may not happen over night. Sometimes these moments are scattered out over the better part of a year. Ask God to breathe life into your prayers, the embers you have spread before his altar, and that you may perceive his answer with open eyes and ears, and a softened heart. Our job as pastors is not to quell the Spirit speaking to and through our people, it is to help them to steward that

Secondly, when I fail to listen I get guilty and exhausted because it’s utterly impossible to keep up with all the world’s problems in prayer.

Hearing from God is primarily a discipline that we learn to distil through practice and obedience. The more we say ‘yes’ to Jesus, the more familiar and precious his voice becomes – and in time we will be able to say, like Cleopas, ‘ Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked?’

How to Pray by Pete Greig – In this book, Pete offers honest encouragement and real-life methods to refresh your spirit and help you practice life-giving and life-changing prayer The most important conversation of our lives – the one we call prayer – can sometimes be a lot like that awkward exchange on the way to Paris. We feel self-conscious and tongue-tied, as if speaking a foreign language – especially when praying about big, hairy, confusing subjects like systemic injustice and global poverty. Feeling ‘overwhelmed’? Christin Thieme: I love it. Listen and follow Jesus. That’s the summary of the book. And definitely, we need to read the rest of it to hear more about how to hear God. Pete, thank you so much for sharing with us, and for giving us the gift of this book. Desiring a deeper faith, we need God to say something, anything, to turn the monologue we call prayer into a genuine conversation.Greig’s main readership is likely to be young adults in the Charismatic Evangelical wing of the Church. This book will do a solid job helping them listen for the voice of God in everyday life, by way of a broad range of spiritual traditions, while remaining alert to the loopier and more manipulative claims of some would-be channellers of the Almighty. Full-text transcript of this week’s episode– review something you heard, pass along snippets, post tweets, create presentations to share, or use in whatever way you find most helpful in developing your ministry leaders When it comes to hearing God, the Bible is the language of his heart. Nothing he says in any other way, or in any other context will ever override, undermine or contradict what he has said in the scriptures. 2. Prayer

Pete Greig: The Bible is not meant to be just “read;” it’s meant to be prayed. In many ways it’s a conversation starter for our prayer lives. One of the great ancient tools that can help us to pray the Bible is the Lectio Divina. In this approach we read small sections of the Bible slowly and we may even repeat them several times. We become attentive to any particular word or phrase that the Holy Spirit seems to be illuminating. And then we turn those words and phrases into prayerful interaction with the Lord. We harness our imaginations to bring the Word to life in our own experience. This is not coming to the Bible as a textbook for sound doctrine (important as that is), but rather coming to it as an invitation for meditation and revelation through conversation with God. Pete Greig: We live our best lives, and not our easiest lives, but our most joyous, living lives. I’m more and more convinced that the most dangerous thing you can do in life is say no to the God who knows you best, loves you most, and only wants the best for your life. And the safest place you can be in life, even though it may sometimes feel scary, is to say to the God who knows you best, wants the best for you, and loves you the most, “Yes. Whatever you want me to say, wherever you want me to go, whatever you want me to do, I will say it. I will do it. I will go there.”So you’ve got, as it were, the external, objective ways God speaks, and then the more internal subjective ways. I talk about that lovely story of Elijah on the mountain, and God is not in the fire. He’s not in the earthquake. And then God speaks in a still small voice. And so we learn to discern the whisper of God in our lives. So he’s still pointing to the authority of Scripture, even though the greatest miracle ever has just taken place in his resurrection. We also hear his voice through the discipline of prayer, which is of course a two-way communication. Greig introduces the reader to the ancient approach known as lectio divina; harnessing the power of imagination and meditation. The four main steps of lectio divina, the author made highly popular in ‘ How to Pray’, by using the simple acronym, P.R.A.Y: Pause, Read ( lectio), Reflect (meditation), Ask ( oratio) and Yield (contemplation). Yeah, that’s awesome, brother. Appreciate that. Pete, it’s been so good to have you spending time with us and helping us kind of process and think through this. If people want to connect with you pete, or your ministry, or learn more about your book, How toHear God, how can they do that?