Hearing God? A daring idea, some would say—presumptuous and even dangerous. But what if we are made for it? What if the human system simply will not function properly without it? There are good reasons to think it will not. The fine texture as well as the grand movements of life show our need to hear God. Isn’t it more presumptuous and dangerous, in fact, to undertake human existence without hearing God?

Among our loneliest moments is the time of decision and the need for guidance. The weight of our future life clamps down upon our hearts. Whatever comes from our decision will be our responsibility, our fault. Good things we have set our hearts on become real only as we choose them. But those things or other things yet undreamed of may be irretrievably lost if our choices are misguided. We may find ourselves stuck with failures and dreadful consequences that we must endure for a lifetime.

Then quickly second thoughts dog us—and third, and fourth: Did I do the good and wise thing? Is it what God wanted? Is it even what I wanted? Can I live with the consequences? Will others think I am a fool? Is God still with me? Will he be with me even if it becomes clear that I made the wrong choice?

While we are young, desire and impulse and personal associations may carry us through choices that would paralyze us ten years later. In the bloom of youth we just do what we have to do or whatever turns us on. How simple it seems! Often we are not even conscious of having chosen anything. After collecting a few disasters and learning that actions are forever, that opportunities seldom return and that consequences are relentless, we hungrily cry to God, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” More than reflecting a mere general concern for world affairs to conform to his will, our prayer expresses the burning need for God to be a constant guiding presence in our individual lives.

God has created us for intimate friendship with himself—both now and forever. This is the Christian viewpoint. It is made clear throughout the Bible, especially in passages such as Exodus 29:43-46, 33:11; Psalm 23; Isaiah 41:8; John 15:14 and Hebrews 13:5-6. As with all close personal relationships, God can be counted on to speak to each of us when and as it’s appropriate. But what does this really mean? And how does it work in practice? I hope in the following pages to give a clear and workable answer to these questions.

We need accurate information about this because it isn’t enough to “mean well.” We truly live at the mercy of our ideas; this is never more true than with our ideas about God. Those who operate on the wrong information aren’t likely to know the reality of God’s presence in the decisions that shape their lives, and they will miss the constant divine companionship for which their souls were made.

My strategy has been to take as a model the highest and best type of communication that I know of from human affairs and then place this model in the even brighter light of the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. In this way it has been possible to arrive at an ideal picture of what an intimate relationship with God is meant to be and also come to a clear vision of the kind of life where hearing God is not an uncommon occurrence.

To take this ideal picture seriously is to exclude all tricks, mechanical formulas and gimmickry for finding out what God wants us to do. We cannot reduce it to a device that we use to make sure we are always right. Indeed, I hope to make it clear that the subject of hearing God cannot be successfully treated by thinking only in terms of what God wants us to do if that automatically excludes—as is usually assumed—what we want to do and even what we want God to do. Hearing God is but one dimension of a richly interactive relationship, and obtaining guidance is but one facet of hearing God.

It may seem strange but doing the will of God is a different matter than just doing what God wants us to do. The two are so far removed, in fact, that we can be solidly in the will of God, and know that we are, without knowing God’s preference with regard to various details of our lives. We can be in his will as we do certain things without our knowing that he prefers these actions to certain other possibilities. Hearing God makes sense only in the framework of living in the will of God.

When our children, John and Becky, were small, they were often completely in my will as they played happily in the back garden, though I had no preference that they should do the particular things they were doing there or even that they should be in the back garden instead of playing in their rooms or having a snack in the kitchen. Generally we are in God’s will whenever we are leading the kind of life he wants for us. And that leaves a lot of room for initiative on our part, which is essential: our individual initiatives are central to his will for us.

Of course, we cannot fail to do what he directs us to do and yet still be in his will. And, apart from any specific directions, there are many ways of living that are clearly not in his will. The Ten Commandments given to Moses are so deep and powerful on these matters that if humanity followed them, daily life would be transformed beyond recognition and large segments of the public media would collapse for lack of material. Consider a daily newspaper or television newscast, and eliminate from it every report that presupposes a breaking of one of the Ten Commandments. Very little will be left.

Yet even if we do all the particular things God wants and explicitly commands us to do, we might still not be the person God would have us be. It is always true that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). An obsession merely with doing all God commands may be the very thing that rules out being the kind of person that he calls us to be.

Jesus told a parable to make clear what God treasures in those who intend to serve him:

The watchword of the worthy servant is not mere obedience but love, from which appropriate obedience naturally flows.

Much of what you will read here is only elaboration on this parable. Certainly I do hope to be helpful to those who think just in terms of doing what they are told to do. But in spite of the good in that attitude, it remains the attitude of the unprofitable servant. And it severely limits spiritual growth, unlike the possibilities of a life of free-hearted collaboration with Jesus and his friends in the kingdom of the heavens.

Furthermore, if we are firmly gripped by a true picture of life with Jesus and are moving by experience deeper and deeper into its reality, we will be able to resist strongly but calmly the mistakes and abuses of religious authority. From the local congregation up to the highest levels of national and international influence, we hear people and groups claiming that they have been divinely guided as to what we are to do. This is sometimes benign and correct, both in intention and outcome. But this is not always the case.

Those who understand how individualized divine guidance, on the one hand, and individual or corporate authority, on the other, meld together in Jesus’ community of transforming love will know how to respond appropriately to misuse of religious authority. Today there is a desperate need for large numbers of people throughout various arenas of life to be competent and confident in their practice of life in Christ and in hearing his voice. Such people would have the effect of concretely redefining Christian spirituality for our times. They would show us an individual and corporate human existence lived freely and intelligently from a hand-in-hand, conversational walk with God. That is the biblical ideal for human life.

In the pages that follow I deal with hearing God as it relates to living a whole life in the will of God: the question of who God wants us to be as well as what he wants us to do (where appropriate). What he wants us to do is very important, and we must be careful to learn how to know it and do it. But knowing what God wants us to do is never enough by itself to allow us to understand and enter the radiant life before the shining face of God that is offered to us in the grace of the gospel. Such a life is pleasing to him, one in which he can say to us, “This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.”

Chapter one clarifies the tension in which Christians live, believing that hearing God is very important to our walk with him but at the same time lacking a confident understanding of how it works in practice. Chapter two removes some common misunderstandings about God’s communications with us. Chapter three explains the various ways in which he is with us. Chapter four examines some objections to the very idea of God’s...