The Difficulty of Hearing God’s Voice

4/27/22

Dear friend,

We're in the midst of talking about discernment, and one idea we've been considering is the relational reality of discernment—how it is something we experience in relationship with our voice, God's voice, and the voices of trusted others.

So many things can make these voices difficult to hear, and right now we're thinking about factors that contribute to those difficulties.

For example, last week we noticed that there can be voices outside ourselves or voices we project in our own mind that can crowd into all the listening space, making it difficult to hear our own voice.

(If you missed last week's letter and want to read it, you can find it here.)

Today I thought we could talk in a similar way about what makes it difficult to hear God's voice.

One factor, I think, is the many voices that stand in for God's voice. Think of all the sermons and teachings about God you've heard throughout your life. The sacred texts and books you've read. The podcasts you've listened to. The people on social media who talk about God in different ways.

So many people talking about God! It can get very confusing in the God landscape, can't it?

God, as a concept, is so big and vast. There's so much to say and to suppose. And through all that teaching and talking, an impression of God is offered, built up, and established.

A sense of who God is or must be.

A tone for how God speaks and acts.

A persona for God in all God's God-ness.

And then there are the ways those different impressions or personas contradict each other by saying or teaching different things.

It seems important to pay attention to the composite picture that's been created and established in us, doesn't it? It so impacts who we think God is, which then affects how we relate—or don't relate—to that God. We may not even realize how much it's impacting our relatedness to God.

This is where experience with God in a direct way becomes important.

It's where engagement with our God ideas becomes important too.

In recent weeks I've been revisiting some of the texts and teachings that grounded my training in spiritual direction years ago, and one of the reminders that's come up again and again is the importance of direct experience and engagement with God and God ideas in just this way.

Because if we pause and think about it, all those stand-ins for God and God's voice that I named to you above are just that: stand-ins. They seek to speak for God or about God, but they aren't God's actual self.

Who is God's actual self?

What is God like when you actually encounter God?

Have you had any direct experiences of God before? What happened? What was that like? What sense did it give you of who God is?

Yours in contemplative light,
Christianne