Each one of us has been born with an extraordinary superpower: an innate ability to hear the voice of God. Discerning God’s voice is one of the most astounding yet confusing things a human being can ever learn to do. Astounding because, well, what could be more amazing? With four words – “Let there be light” – (just two in Hebrew) God created more than 100 billion galaxies (Genesis 1:3). “The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born” (Psalm 33:6, NLT). What on earth might happen if he were to speak a few words to me? 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. Pete Greig explains in a simple but deep sense what it really is to hear the living God speak today. I'm amazed by how humble and down-to-earth he is. There's really no sense of him telling us how it's done, but an invite to explore it with him. Many people struggle to hear God because they have been taught to listen for his voice in ways that are difficult for them to process. Certain personality types may also find it more challenging. Introverts understandably advocate their own preference for stillness and solitude, but it is equally possible and no less spiritual to discern the voice of God through external interaction, or through visual formats.

Some people, and I’ve been doing interviews like this, if they’re really, really into the Bible, they sometimes get really nervous that I talk about God speaking in prophecy. But the Bible says God speaks in prophecy. And then others are really into all the prophetic stuff, and they’re like a bit disappointed I’m saying, “No, the main way God speaks is through the Bible.” And both are true. Greig assumes that the reader will have heard lots of fellow-Christians say, “God told me this,” or “The Lord said that.” Well, maybe in the churches that Greig frequents. But he remains healthily sceptical about declarations of “What the Lord says” from pulpits and platforms. He notes that psychiatric wards are full of people hearing voices that they attribute to God. So too, he says, is the Christian conference circuit. When I graduated from what you guys would call seminary with a degree in theology, and another one in sociology, what I discovered was I suddenly knew a lot about the Bible, but I’d lost my ability to really hear God personally in it. Because I was just always analyzing what does this mean? What’s the Greek here, and how does it all fit together? 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.Pete Greig: Nothing God says in any other way, in any other context, will ever override, undermine, or contradict what he has said in the Scriptures. Ultimately, the Bible is the language of God’s heart because it communicates with us its very nature. In reading the Bible we receive truth and sound doctrine, but we also encounter the love and life of God himself. It is a “ living book.” And it is exactly like that in our relationship with the Lord. We learn. You know, when I said John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice,” the Greek word, there is akouo, from which we get the word acoustic. So it’s like, as we get to know the acoustics of God’s voice, the nuance, the tone of God’s voice, we’re like sheep that follow him and then obey, and we grow in our relationship with him. It’s a beautiful thing.

How do we move from studying scripture objectively and hearing its message generally to receiving God’s word personally in our own lives? The most powerful tool I have ever discovered, one that has revolutionised my own personal relationship with the Bible and has become the model for the devotional I help to write, record and release each day, is the ancient tradition of lectio divina – the slow, prayerful reading of scripture which harnesses the power of imagination and meditation (see 24-7prayer.com/resource/lectio-365). 3. Prophecy As Pete points out, for followers of Jesus, “hearing [God’s] voice is therefore the most natural thing in the world…but whenever God’s word is confused, abused, or ignored, it can become one of the most perplexing and painful things too.” For many, hearing God’s voice has become confused, abused, and at times even ignored. For this reason, far too often, we assume it is impossible for us to accomplish. This book reminds us that it is essential that we develop and commit to intentional practices and disciplines that help us to rediscover our connection to God the Father, the Creator and sustaining life-force of all of Creation. These practices and disciplines – as well as this book – are good reminders that God’s voice is often missed because it comes different than we want to expect; rather “when it comes, as it mostly does, [it is] in a voice hushed to a “gentle whisper.” Far too many followers of Jesus have never been discipled on or encouraged around how to discern the distinctive voice of God, and this book helps them commit intentionally to spiritual practices and disciplines to discern and respond to the voice of God. Sadly, as Pete points out, even those of us who these practices are not new for, can at times, too easily become “distracted psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually” to hear “the voice of God.” For us, the realignment of our spiritual lives is essential, through committing intentionally to spiritual disciplines and practices. This book is certainly an encouragement towards realignment. And as a preacher, I’ll say it’s much more to do with how we listen than how God speaks. When we’re hungry, when we’re desperate, when we’re attuned to God’s voice, we receive with faith. I think that’s what it means to have ears to hear. Jesus is saying, “Hey, don’t just listen with your physical ears, but listen with your spiritual ears.”So we have a God who communicates. So that would be a very short book. If the book was the fact that God speaks, it’s just, he does. The issue is psychology. The issue is each of us is wired differently. So how do we receive what God is saying? And sometimes our problem is either that we are expecting to hear God the way someone else does and we’re just wired differently. Or we are expecting to hear God the way he spoke to us in the past, but he’s speaking to us in a new way in our new context. How do we make sense of it? Where was God when we cried out for loved ones dying in overcrowded ICUs? And where is he now for the people of Ukraine? Is our faith relevant when things get tough? Does God have anything to say? I was unfamiliar with the intimate acoustics of God’s voice. Apart from the Bible, I only really expected him to communicate through my conscience (which seemed basically tobe God saying no to a lot of things) and through something we referred to as “having peace”. The idea here was that when you made a good decision, you would be flooded with a sense of wellbeing, but when you made a bad one, you would lose that peace altogether. Pete Greig: Oh, thanks so much. And I must just say, if they want to get the app, Christin, anyone can get it. Lectio365, that will really help you to put the book into practice. I like how he doesn't stop at hearing God physically and 'in your heart'/'the silent whisper' but he paints the whole picture with a thorough exploration of how God speaks in the bible to how He speaks through our concsience to Him speaking through other people all the way to how He speaks through the 'unholy' culture.

Pete Greig: Yeah, it’s a masterclass because most, not all, but most of the ways that God tends to speak are modeled in this story. Like Jesus turns up in disguise. That’s probably familiar for many of us. One writer says God comes to us disguised as our own lives. You know, he speaks through the Bible. Actually he’s risen from the dead and he doesn’t just go, “Duh, it’s me.” It says beginning with Moses and the prophets, he explained how the whole of the story of the Scriptures pointed to himself. Pete Greig: Nothing could possibly matter more than learning to discern the voice of God, but few things in life are more susceptible to delusion and deception. That’s why we need to be rooted in God’s Word, living each day in conversation with the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Living Word of God.The book comes in two parts: Part 1; vox eterna; Hearing God through God’s Word and Part 2: vox interna; Hearing God through God’s whisper. Part 1: God’s Word So, yeah, it’s about reading slowly. It’s about reverence for the text. It’s about using your imagination. It’s about turning the Bible from being a picture frame to a window frame. Okay? So too often we look at the Bible like a picture that you study and analyze. It’s fixed. It’s there in the picture frame. But what if instead we treat the Bible like a window frame? So through the Bible, we kind of open the window and look out on the world.

In his latest book, he offers insight and tools to help turn your ordinary, everyday prayers into a real, conversational relationship with the God who is speaking, more than you know. 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.

But you are absolutely right. It’s also blooming hard. It’s really difficult. All of us have been hurt. Probably, maybe times you’ve cried out to God and you needed him to speak and give you an answer. And he doesn’t seem to have answered. Or maybe a preacher abused God’s Word to try and manipulate a political election or force you to do something wrong. Or maybe, well, I had a woman come up to me after church one day. She looked me in the eyes and said, “God has commanded me to marry you.” And then part two, you get into God’s Whisper. What does it mean that the Creator of the universe whispers? I mean, that’s not, I think, what most of us would expect to hear from God, a whisper. Learning to recognise the voice of God is one of the most astounding yet confusing things a human being can learn to do