What is Listening Prayer?
Justin Camp
5 min read ⭑
I had done some writing in college and law school and a bit after graduation. But almost a decade before I joined my men’s group, I’d decided that writing, while fulfilling in a way that no other endeavor ever was, was simply irresponsible — a distraction from what was most important. I concluded that the only responsible path was focusing on family, career, and nothing else.
That was an intense season. All three of our children were born during those years, and I tried to be home and present for Jennifer and our brand-new gang. But everything else, every other minute of my time and ounce of my energy, was devoted to my work. My ambition. And toward the end of that decade was when I first walked into my men’s group. Burning out. Needing something to give.
I remember one particular Tuesday evening in January 2010, several months after I’d joined. We’d just returned from a family ski vacation in the mountains around Lake Tahoe. I showed up exhausted. Having skipped the group for a few weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, I was feeling disconnected — from my new brothers, from Jesus.
After the opening preliminaries, Jason invited us again into a time of listening prayer. But I wasn’t feeling it. He encouraged us to ask God about his desires for each of us for the coming year. He opened the prayer, and we closed our eyes and sat for a few minutes in silence.
I remember it feeling a lot like our kids probably feel when Jennifer and I call one of them into our bedroom for a serious talk. When I closed my eyes, my heart was in a posture like, What, God? What have I done now? And I sat there for ten seconds, twenty seconds. Then, once I stopped trying to sense anything, a thought came. It was a picture, in fact. In my imagination, I saw myself writing again. I was sitting at a laptop in a cabin in the woods by a creek. And I was happy.
My heart softened. Oh gosh. I hadn’t thought about the vocation of writing for a very long time. I doubt anyone in the room, if they’d opened their eyes, could have seen it, but I was overcome with emotion. To write. It’s one of the deep desires of my heart, but I’d pushed it so far down, I’d pretty much forgotten about it.
If only that could be true! But then reality crept in. I told God that it wasn’t possible. My job. My family. I don’t have time.
Let me make time, my son. I can do that, you know. It wasn’t an audible voice. It was really just an idea that floated through my mind.
But I knew that I knew. It was a moment of conversation. It was a good Father talking to his weary son, through Jesus and by his Spirit. I’d come into God’s presence like a petulant child, and he’d come into mine with overwhelming love.
I answered in the silence. Please, Father. It felt like such a tremendous blessing, like just what my worn-out heart needed. And there seemed to be only one appropriate response: an offering back. Father, I said, I don’t want to write about venture capital or business or anything else anymore. I want to write about you.
And I did. Within a year, I was writing again. To men. About God.
It started small. I’d sneak out of the office on Fridays during the lunch hour. I’d take my laptop to a nearby coffee shop. It felt good to be stringing words together again. Soon, it grew to two hours, then three. God fulfilled his promise. I hadn’t had extra moments in years, but large chunks of time started opening up to me.
Most of us live in what’s-right-in-front-of-us mode — a presentation at work; a spreadsheet; an email; a child’s sporting event; a meal out; a news report on a mobile device; a social media post, a status update, a shared photo. These things fill our minds and fill our days. We trust them. They’re real. Tangible. Observable.
But just because we can’t see something, or touch it, doesn’t mean it’s not there and not important. Many things are not within reach of our five natural senses. Consider gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force — or love. We can neither see nor touch any of these. But we experience their reality every day. We can trust they’re here, doing their work, holding the cosmos together — binding together atoms and galaxies and us.
Now consider God. With only a relatively few historical, Biblical exceptions, we mortal humans are not given the opportunity to see or touch him either. But we can trust that he’s here, too. And more deeply real than anything else in the universe.
The danger of spending too much time in what’s-right-in-front-of-us mode is that it inhibits our ability to savor and engage and live in that wonderful truth. It prevents us from sensing God’s presence and hearing his voice interiorly, in our minds and hearts, and it causes us to miss and misunderstand the deepest realities about our lives.
“Think of that — the voice of our mighty Maker, coming as an inmost whisper. Forcing us to bend our minds, to humble ourselves to the seeming foolishness of listening inside for a God of impossibly great power.”
God speaks in many ways. The Bible tells of him speaking sometimes in ways that are detectable by our physical senses — with an audible voice; through physical phenomena and signs; through messengers, such as angels, prophets, even a donkey. It also shows him, though, speaking beyond our physical senses: through dreams and visions; and directly to our hearts and minds by his Spirit.
This last method has come to be called hearing his “still small voice,” and it’s a seemingly preferred way of communicating. It seems to be a primary method of relationship with him, which is why it’s critical we become adept at recognizing it.
“Still small voice” — the words come from the story of Elijah when the prophet was told to go out from the cave where he was hiding because God was about to pass by:
And a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. (ESV, 1 Kings 19:11-13)
And after the fire, a “still small voice” came to Elijah. (KJV, 1 Kings 19:12) God was teaching Elijah (and us) that his voice doesn’t often come as a blast or boom or blaze but as what we might call an inner voice. He’s teaching that when he speaks, he speaks more to our thoughts and feelings than anything else.
Think of that — the voice of our mighty Maker, coming as an inmost whisper. Forcing us to bend our minds, to humble ourselves to the seeming foolishness of listening inside for a God of impossibly great power.
When God speaks with his still small voice, he originates notions in our minds. But that’s not hard. We can all do that. I can originate one in your mind right now by placing a phrase on this page — steaming cup of coffee. By doing that, I’ve originated a thought, crystallized as a set of words, or a picture perhaps. I’ve directed your thinking. I’ve redirected the stream of ideas flowing through your mind.
But I face limits.
To originate a thought in the mind of another, we humans need media — vibrations of vocal cords; ink on paper; pixels on screens; ones and zeros flowing over cables; waves of electromagnetic radiation. But God does not. He’s already there — dwelling inside us. If we’re followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit occupies our very beings.
And he speaks to us, leading us into understanding of ourselves and him and his work and this world, right from that very place.
“Having learned what he is like and how he sounds, we can go into prayer and listen for his voice there — actively and with intentionality.”
Okay, so how do we do it? How do we pick out God’s voice from amongst the noise and other voices in our world? How do we tune in?
Well, just as the electromagnetic waves broadcast by radio transmitters have unique characteristics, so, too, does God’s voice. We tune in, therefore, by learning to identify those characteristics. And we do that by using his written word — Scripture.
You see, not all methods of hearing God are equal. Reading Scripture — the method by which we hear his voice through the Biblical authors, his faithful intermediaries of old — sits above all others in terms of authority. It sits above “because Christ has endorsed its authority,” explained John Stott:
As we look back to the Old Testament, he has endorsed it. As we look forward to the New Testament, we accept it because of the apostolic witness to Christ. He deliberately chose and appointed and prepared the apostles in order that they might have their unique apostolic witness to him.
Reading Scripture sits above all others, said Stott, because our King said so.
Now, this method of hearing God across the ages through Scripture requires good interpretation and the work of the Spirit, of course. But, with those, we have a trustworthy touchstone by which to evaluate anything and everything, including the many ideas and perceptions that inundate our minds every day of our lives. From Scripture, we can learn the timbre of God’s unique voice.
And this is how we tune in. It’s simply this. Having learned what he is like and how he sounds, we can go into prayer and listen for his voice there — actively and with intentionality. And if we hear something in the silence, if we sense something, if a thought comes to us and it fits squarely within the principles of Scripture, then we can trust its accuracy. And over time, we can begin to recognize what Dallas Willard calls the “unmistakable stamp of divine quality, spirit, intent and origination.” Over time, we can begin to recognize and revel in God’s still small voice, just as Elijah did.
When you begin to sift your thoughts in this way, you might discover that there are a great many ideas that you’ve had that you wouldn’t have had, things you’ve done that you wouldn’t have done, without first having heard the voice of God and having had your choices influenced by him: when a thought triggered you to help a person in need; when one prompted you to speak up for someone who needed an advocate; when a thought moved you to have a tough, good conversation with a friend; when you felt an impulse to pray for someone who was hurting; when a friend encouraged you to confess something you didn’t want to confess; when an acquaintance asked you to share your faith; when a sermon nudged you back into the Bible.
When we open our eyes to him like this, to who he is and how he sounds, we might discover we’ve actually been hearing his voice our whole lives.
Want To Try?
You are fully qualified to experiment with listening prayer. Here, try this: Invite the Holy Spirit to direct your thoughts. Pray against distraction, against fatigue, against confusion. Then, simply ask God a single question. Maybe, “What spiritual practice would bring me life in this season?” Or, “Is there someone with whom you’d like me to connect or reconnect?” Keep it simple.
Remain quiet for a length of time — whatever’s comfortable — and listen for the inner voice. Don’t try too hard. Don’t overthink it. If we want to hear, if we take some time to listen in silence, we’re sure to hear God at some point, in some way. Trust me, he wants to speak to you. And then, when and if you think you might have heard something, simply test it against Scripture — invite a mature believer to comment, if you think it would be helpful. Ask yourself: Does this fit within biblical principles? Does it bear the unmistakable stamp of God? If it does, believe it. If it encourages an action, be bold and take it.
Justin Camp is the editor-in-chief of Rapt Interviews. He also created the WiRE for Men devotional and wrote the WiRE Series for Men. His writing has been featured and seen on Charisma, Moody Radio, Focus on the Family, GOD TV, The Christian Post, Crosswalk, Belief.net, LifeWay Men and other media outlets.
This article was adapted from all three of the books making up the WiRE Series for Men: chapter three of Invention, chapter five of Odyssey, and chapter one of Rescue.
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