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Hearing God

Take a moment and listen. Concentrate on all the sounds in your environment. Perhaps you’ll hear ventilation noise. There may be sounds made by other people, even if only fabric against fabric and the occasional flipping of a page. Sounds from outside may intrude: traffic noise, birds chirping, a dog barking, human conversation. At any given moment we are paying attention to only a fraction of all of the sounds we are hearing.

We have a sophisticated filtering system which allows us to concentrate on and really only listen to a tiny proportion of what we actually hear. Normally, we are unaware of most of the sounds in our environment. Only if a sound is particularly intrusive, like an alarm of some sort, a cry of distress, or the sound of approaching danger like screeching brakes, does it call our attention.

Without this ability to filter sounds and limit our concentration to only those things that are significant to us at the moment, the onslaught of the auditory stimuli would drive us mad. This is a great blessing because without the ability to intentionally focus our full attention on what is pertinent at the moment, we would be frequently distracted and less efficient. At the same time, being totally absorbed in what we are doing can cause us to miss things that are important though not life-threatening.

On more than one occasion I have had to claim ignorance of something which another family member has a clear recollection of telling me. I never received the communication because while they spoke the words, my mind successfully filtered them out as I concentrated on something else.

Knowing this can happen, sometimes, when I want to speak with someone, I suggest we leave our usual environment. Perhaps we sit down in the quietest room, shut the door and focus our attention on the topic at hand. Perhaps we go for a walk outside where we are able to pay attention to the conversation free of the distractions of the usual interruptions.

Spiritually speaking, the same thing happens. Unless I intentionally make time for God and go to a quiet place free of distractions, I just don’t hear from Him. This is often a factor in those times when I feel disconnected from God. Often, at least part of the problem is that I have not taken time to clear the air between us through confession, to meditate and to intentionally listen to Him.

I find it is absolutely necessary for me to turn off as many sound stimuli as I can so that I can listen. Often I find my last minutes before I drift off to sleep and my first moments when I wake in the morning the best time to do this. I usually like to keep the radio off and I’m not usually bothered by conversation at that time of day.

Those minutes immediately before going to sleep and after waking provide me with silence in which I can intentionally listen to God. Sometimes things going on in my own head are so deafening that God couldn’t possibly speak to me. They may be issues that I am trying to work through, problems to solve, or concerns that I am thinking about, even things I’m praying about. I’ve learned that times when I am busy directing communication outward are not good times for listening to God.

I don’t claim to have the perfect answer to hearing from God, but I do know that without some intentionality regarding this exercise, we make it much more difficult for ourselves. Today I suggest that we make time to listen to God purposefully and that we take whatever steps we can to rid our environment of the extraneous noises which distract our attention and drown out His voice.

Ron Hughes
© August 2007