Hearing From God…
05.11.25
(From chapter 21 of Love Does by Bob Goff.)
“Some people describe their relationship with God as an ongoing narrative that includes an audible discussion. I lived with a bunch of surfers during college in Southern California and they would describe hearing God’s voice. It often went something like this… “So, I said, hey God, what’s up with this? And then God said, hey dude, don’t worry about it; it’ll be cool.” And then they’d say back to God, “no way!” and then God said back, “YAHWEH” or something equally biblical.
All of this head-faked me for a while, to be honest, because when I listened for God’s voice, I didn’t hear anything. No cosmic whispers. No movie reels with subtitles. No still, small voice, no booming voice, and no one addressing me as “dude.” I wondered if these surfers were cheating the same way I did in the doctor’s office. Maybe they were pretending to hear just because someone was looking.
It’s not that I haven’t asked God to talk to me. I’ve asked for a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, a word. I’ve even asked if I could just buy a vowel. I’ve told God that I wouldn’t tell anyone if He would just say one audible thing to me. We’d keep it all attorney-client privileged… Yet still, I haven’t heard a thing.
So rather than spending time wondering why I don’t hear audible voices, I just try to listen harder with my heart, and I’ve realized a couple things that seem kind of obvious now. God doesn’t talk to me in an audible voice because God isn’t a human being; God is God. That makes sense to me, because human beings are limited, and God isn’t limited at all. God can communicate to us in any way God wants to anytime God wants to. Though flowers, other people, an uncomfortable sense, a feeling of joy, goose bumps, a newfound talent, or an appreciation we acquire over time. It doesn’t need to be a big mystical thing like my surfer buddies made it out to be.
I haven’t seen a combination of tree limbs that looked like John the Baptist or a cloud formation resembling Jesus. Honestly, they just look like branches and clouds to me. But I do see the beauty in them and the beauty that’s everywhere, that God made for me and you. I especially see evidence of God in other people’s lives. What’s beautiful about them always looks an awful lot like God to me. I wonder if the people listening for voices or looking for cloud shapes MISS the whisper of God’s creation, somehow thinking it’s a lesser form of communication.
I usually understand what God is doing by seeing it through the rearview mirror. Only then can I connect the dots, and even then, it’s a pretty dodgy sketch. Maybe that’s why the Bible described what we are often doing as looking through a mirror dimly. The Bible says that right now we only know “in part” and that one day we’ll know “in full.”
That makes more sense to me because it means our understanding will always have gaps and gaps are good because they leave room for God to fill in the spaces.”