Ep 32: I Don’t Drop Shoes (The Habit of Hearing from God)

How do we develop the habit of hearing from God?

Many Christians believe God speaks only through Scripture, while others claim to hear Him constantly. In this episode of the Soil & Roots podcast, Brian Fisher explores the spiritual formation habit of hearing from God and how disciples cultivate a conversational relationship with Him over time.

TRANSCRIPTION

Hearing From God

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The Gap

Today, we’re going to continue looking at the second key element, habits, and more specifically, the habit of hearing from God.

We’re exploring the Formation Gap this season. Human beings require certain elements, certain circumstances, to become like someone else: time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction.

But because of modern-day church struggles and challenges with American society, the necessary elements to form us more into Jesus are often incomplete or missing altogether.

This Third Primary Problem, the Formation Gap, is a bit of a tricky wicket. One solution to the problem is to intentionally form and cultivate small communities designed specifically to form us, in our churches, in our homes, in our neighborhoods.  At Soil and Roots, we call these immersive communities Greenhouses.

Immersive Communities are Common

When I share what a Greenhouse is with some people, they are taken aback by how much time we spend together.  We spend three hours a week in community, exploring stories, practicing spiritual habits, and engaging in spiritual formation.  Some people think this type of community is radical.

But it isn’t.  Not at all. We have all experienced these types of immersive communities. There are dozens of examples of them.

The smallest example of a healthy, immersive community is an intentional, growing marriage.  It’s a specific relationship designed to take two people and form them into one.

Early childhood is the most powerful, most impactful immersive community. It’s intentionally designed to form a small baby into a healthy, loving adult.

There are other modern examples of intentionally formative communities, such as college, the military, medical school, seminary, boarding school, intensive athletic training, AA, and other addiction recovery programs.

These are all designed to form a person. To transform the way a person thinks, acts, speaks, relates…to become like someone else.

And every example of formative community has five things in common: intensive, intentional time; specifically designed habits; trusted community; appropriate intimacy; and increasingly complex instruction.

A person will struggle greatly to be effectively formed into someone else without all five of these elements being present. It would be silly to expect otherwise.

Can a husband become one with his wife if they don’t spend a lot of time together?  Can a young gymnast become the next Olympic athlete without relentlessly following specifically designed habits?  Can a medical student become a top heart surgeon without being part of a trusted community that includes more seasoned doctors?  And can any first grader become an educated adult without being instructed, over time, in more complex, deeper, higher-level areas of study?

Of course not.  We would think it ludicrous to be formed into any of these people without all five elements.

Unless, for some reason, we’re talking about the modern church and our spiritual formation.  For various reasons, modern Christianity has little expectation to form people into the likeness of Jesus.

As it has been for some time, today it’s entirely possible to be a Christian but not a disciple.

No Master List of Habits

Now, when I first mentioned “specifically designed habits” as a key element of discipleship, you may have thought of things like prayer, Scripture meditation, and fasting.  You’re spot on.

Authors over the centuries have written amazing, insightful, and incredibly wise books and materials on what are often called “The Spiritual Disciplines.”  A spiritual discipline is an intentional habit we adopt to shape our character and draw closer to God.  They are indispensable to our discipleship.

Back in the 70’s, the topic of “spiritual formation” enjoyed a resurgence.  In the wake of the Sexual Revolution and increasingly impotent churches, a few thinkers, philosophers, pastors, and theologians rediscovered disciplines that older and even ancient writers had long explored and promoted.  Dallas Willard was one of those thinkers, and he was joined by Richard Foster.

Foster wrote a book called Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, and it’s one of the more readable, accessible books on common spiritual habits.  He introduces the reader to twelve of them, including prayer, solitude, service, confession, and worship.

But he notes, “…I do not know any exhaustive list of the Spiritual Disciplines. As far as I know, none exists.  All we are learning to do is undertake practices of the heart and mind and soul that place us before God.  Some practices may be formal and intently liturgical. Others may be spontaneous and free flowing.  The actual practices of the Disciplines are as varied and as creative as human personality itself.”[1]

I don’t know Richard Foster, but just for giggles, I recently sat in on a video conference with him and his son.  Foster is now in his 80s but certainly doesn’t lack energy or enthusiasm.  The man I saw on the video screen was joyful, extremely kind, relaxed, unassuming, peaceful, and deferential.  He struck me as a person who has walked closely with Jesus for a long time. Certainly, closer than I have.

We aren’t going to explore every spiritual discipline as we talk about habits, because that list apparently doesn’t exist.

Definition of “Habit”

Here’s what we’ve reviewed so far on habits.

1. Habits are just repeated patterns of our Eight Heartview Indicators. So how we think, behave, speak, relate, treat money, and so on.

2. As disciples, we identify our habits and compare them with those of Jesus and His close friends. If there’s a mismatch, we determine how our dark habits may be formed into His light habits. That’s the essence of Heartview.

Does Jesus have a habit of being anxious?  No.  Are we anxious?  Sometimes. If we experience that habit, how do our hearts form more into His so that being anxious becomes silly and nonsensical?

Does Jesus have a habit of clinging to money and using it as a security blanket?  No.  Do we do that?  Some of us.  If we do, how do our hearts form more into His so that clinging to money becomes foreign, even distasteful to us?

Did Jesus have a habit of immediately discerning the hearts and motives of those around Him?  Yes.  Do we have a habit of heart discernment?  Hopefully. But if we don’t, how do we become discerning people?

3. Changing our habits may be as simple as just beginning to do the things Jesus taught us to do. We should have healthy expectations that if we do more of those things, they will become habits and our hearts will follow suit. Our ideas and desires will change.

But we recognize this is not a universal principle. Just repeatedly doing something doesn’t automatically mean heart transformation.  Just ask any mom who relentlessly makes her teenage son clean his room.  All the mom wants is for her son to desire to clean his room. But many a teenage son develops no such desire, despite having done the behavior a hundred times.

Sometimes, heart change may need to come first for our habits to permanently change.

Either way, one of the most fascinating and exciting habits we find in Jesus is the fact that Jesus was continually hearing from God the Father.

Three “D”’s and an “F”

The habit of “hearing from God” tends to provoke strong emotions in people.  It seems we typically fall into one of four categories when we consider what it means to “hear from God.” These are gross generalizations and perhaps a bit silly, but here they are:

Group 1: The Denier. “God no longer speaks to me or anybody else.”

Group 2: The Desirer. “I want to hear personally from God, but I don’t or can’t.” 

Group 3: The Demander. “I hear from God all the time and because I do, everyone else needs to listen to me.”

Group 4: The Friend. “God and I have a consistent, intimate, sacred, two-way conversational relationship.”

1. The Denier

The Denier.  I don’t know how large this group is, but it generally contains Christians who believe that, because the Bible is complete and has been codified since the 5^th century, it’s the only way that God “speaks.”  He no longer speaks to individuals, gives specific counsel or teaching, or relates to us in any way except through the reading and studying of the Bible. In essence, God only “speaks” today in verses.

Though most Protestants agree that the canon of Scripture is closed and that anyone who claims they have some new special revelations from God is off their rocker, there is a difference between the Special Revelation given to the entire world and God speaking to the individual today.

Many Christians throughout history have held to a personal God who desires to be in an intimate relationship with His creation and continues to communicate with us, individually, in myriad ways.

It would be odd for a God who created mankind to love, who initially walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, who personally communicated with scores of biblical characters in both testaments, who took human form and hung out with mankind for some 33 years, to not want to talk to us.  Would he not want to counsel us in specific situations?  Or offer guidance and hope, or correction and rebuke as we grow in our relationship with Him?

Is prayer only a one-way conversation?  And if it is two-way, is God constrained only to speak back to us in Bible verses?

Stanley Jones asked, “Does God guide? Strange if he didn’t. The Psalmist asks, ‘He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eyes, shall he not see?’ (Ps 94.9). And I ask: ‘He that made the tongue and gave us power to communicate with one another, shall he not speak and communicate with us?’ I do not believe that God our Father is a dumb, noncommunicative impersonality.”[2]

Scripture is always our final authority, so if a man claims God told him to cheat on his wife, we can be assured he is most certainly not hearing from God. But untold Christians throughout the centuries have testified to God speaking to them in all sorts of creative and wonderful ways.

In discussing meditation as a means of hearing God, Foster writes, “and the wonderful news is that Jesus has not stopped acting and speaking.  He is resurrected and at work in our world.  He is not idle, nor has he developed laryngitis. He is alive and among us as our Priest to forgive us, our Prophet to teach us, our King to rule us, our Shepherd to guide us.”[3]

2. The Desirer

The Desirers.  These are people who want to hear from God and have a personal, two-way, intimate relationship. They want His guidance, His discipline, His assurance, His presence.  And they often have a meaningful relationship with God through the Bible. They just can’t seem to experience Him in relation to specific circumstances or their own formation.  I’ve been in this Group at certain points in my life.

There are many reasons we may not hear from God directly.  There are times when He may purposefully remain silent for a season, for our good.  However, if we aren’t hearing from God personally through our hearts, from others, or through various senses and experiences, it may not mean He has stopped speaking.

Remember that how we relate to ourselves and others often becomes transposed onto how we relate to God.  If we struggle to hear from God or recognize His voice, we may ask ourselves whether that’s a struggle in our other relationships. Our struggle may be related to our story.

Do we find it difficult to develop intimate, trusting, two-way relationships with others?  Do we struggle to give ourselves fully to someone else?

Are we poor listeners in general? Not just to others’ words, but to their hearts?  God often speaks in a very quiet, gentle whisper.  Is there space in our lives to listen that carefully?

Do we trust ourselves enough to accept that God is speaking to us? Or do the voices in our heads from our past continually convince us that we aren’t worthy to hear from God?  That such a good God would never condescend to address us personally?

These are all really important questions. If your primary father figure was cold, distant, abandoning, abusive, or just had no interest in pursuing your heart, you may find it difficult to hear from God.  It’s not that He isn’t speaking to you.  Your heart doesn’t trust itself to accept that type of personal, intimate, kind interaction from your Heavenly Father.

3. The Demander

Ah, the Demanders.  Candidly, these folks drive me a little crazy.  They apparently hear from God all the time.  And they are quite loud and public about how often they hear from Him and what He has to say to everyone.

Whether these are Christian celebrities on TV or very talkative people at church, I tend to be skeptical of this group. That’s not entirely fair, because God uses all sorts of means to communicate, and He isn’t constrained by attitudes or personal motives.  Remember, He once communicated through a donkey. Apparently, He still does.  Just kidding.

My concern about the Demanders and the Deniers is that their perspective on God speaking slides more towards power and control than towards serving and loving others.

In the case of a Denier, if a church promotes the idea that God no longer speaks individually, that precludes anyone in the congregation from hearing from God about a specific need, struggle, or situation.

If God is constrained to only speak through the Bible, then the church institution becomes a powerful authority.  A person’s liberty to experience God personally is constrained to only what the church deems an appropriate communication channel. That seems a bit authoritarian.

When I come across a Demander, I often wonder how their very verbal, very consistent claims about hearing from God about many people and many situations align with the fruits of the Spirit.  At least to me, a person like that comes across as insecure and attempting to present themselves as someone more spiritual or advanced than the rest of us.  They want to be seen as important, as deeply Christian, as mature. Perhaps more powerful.

This is not at all to say mature Christians don’t speak, don’t share wisdom, don’t talk about what God has laid on their hearts.  But there is a difference between the attitude and approach of a godly saint and someone who is desperately seeking attention and approval.  The saint doesn’t care who sees them or approves of them.  The Demander cares a great deal.

4. The Friend

Dallas Willard wrote a book titled “Hearing God.”  He quite plainly writes, “Being close to God means communicating with him, which is almost always a two-way street.”[4]

He later writes, “The biblical record always presents the relationship between God and the believer as more like a friendship or family tie than merely one person’s arranging to take care of the needs of another.”[5]

And so, the group we probably want to be in is the Friend group.  A trusted, transparent, two-way regular rhythm of communication between the divine and His created. Between a father and child.  Between a King and his friends.

Does God speak through the Bible? Of course.  Let’s consider just a few other ways He communicated in biblical history: through a burning bush, dreams, visions, prophets, oracles, circumstances, nature, senses and feelings, traditions, an audible voice, a still, small voice, and other people. And this was before the Holy Spirit came to settle in our hearts.

Though we are limited in the ways we communicate, God has no such limitations.  He seems to delight in communicating in ways that show us His love for us, that sometimes take us by surprise.  He may speak to us through a spouse, a friend, or a walk in the woods. A YouTube video, a song, a sermon.  Through an emotion or intuition, someone’s story or pain.  He speaks to us through trial and suffering, through hardship and struggle. He speaks to us through themes in our lives, through the telling of our stories.

Hearing God is a habit to be developed.  It’s cultivated through community, through practice, through experience, through diving back into our stories.  Like any relationship, it takes time and consistent communication to learn to recognize God’s voice.  The more we hear it, the easier it is to recognize.

Though at least in my life, He likes to keep me on my toes. He doesn’t always speak through the same channels or in the same way.

I Don’t Drop Shoes

We’ll close today with a short story about one of my experiences hearing from God, and I hope it’s an encouragement to you.

I went through an extended period without hearing from Him.  As best as I can tell, it wasn’t a “dark night of the soul” type of experience.  For a variety of reasons, I had just unconsciously tuned Him out.  I don’t think I really expected to hear from Him, and so I didn’t.

Through a series of events, I “woke up” to the fact that I wasn’t attuned to His voice, and we began having two-way conversations again.

At least in my life, sometimes God speaks directly to my heart. He often communicates with me through other people, through intuitions and impressions, and through circumstances, but of late, He’s been whispering things in my soul now and then.

I’ve never heard God audibly speak as some have, and I haven’t had any visions or dreams. But I’m learning to recognize the difference between my thoughts and something God is speaking to my spirit.

It’s hard to explain, but the best way for me to describe the difference between my thoughts and God’s whisper is that there is a “shimmer” to what He says.  That may sound strange, but it’s the best I can come up with.  I’m usually quiet when He speaks, and He’ll generally interrupt my chain of thought with whatever He wants to say.

As of late, when He does whisper to me, it’s in bullet points.  He speaks in very short, concise statements.  My guess is that’s all I have the attention span for.  He speaks in images and pictures to my wife, but I typically get Cliffs Notes.

Some time ago, I was sitting in Big Chief – that’s my chair where I sometimes read and think.  I don’t remember what I was mulling over, but God whispered one short sentence to my heart.

He said, “I don’t drop shoes.”

I responded, “What?”

He repeated, “I don’t drop shoes.”  And that was it.  The shimmer was gone, and the conversation was over.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it and was confused for a few moments.  But then it dawned on me.

For a long time, whenever things were going well in my life, I would wonder when something bad would happen.  We’ve had our share of trials and sufferings over the years, like most people, so I would find myself cautiously and pessimistically assuming the bottom was always about to fall out.

In other words, my default state was to wonder “when the other shoe would drop.” When God would back off and let me have it, whether I had done something wrong or it was just my time to suffer.

But He said, “I don’t drop shoes.”   My mind immediately went to James, who wrote, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”^[6]

God was gently re-forming an unconscious dark idea in my heart – that God was out to get me.  That He was incapable or unwilling to bless, but also unable to use our trials and sufferings for our good. When, in fact, He is always working things out for our good, even when it seems like He is uninvolved, uncaring, or distant.

“I don’t drop shoes.” I’ve thought through that short phrase hundreds of times since God whispered it to me. It was just such a perfect thing to say at the right time.  Something you’d expect from a good, gentle, kind Father.

He wasn’t chiding me, He was healing me.  He knew the dark ideas in my heart and spoke to one of them very specifically, very directly.

“I don’t drop shoes.” What He said is slowly taking root in my heart.  He is progressively taking a bad idea from the domain of darkness and transforming it into a good idea from His Kingdom.

God still speaks. And as we develop the habit of hearing God, we will find our relationship with Him deepening and maturing, and we will be formed more and more into a person who loves Him, others, ourselves, and His good creation.

[1] Foster, R. (2018). Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (p. xvi). Harper One.

[2] Willard, D. (2012). Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (p 90). Intervarsity Press.

[3] Foster, R. (2018). Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (pp 18-19). Harper One.

[4]Willard, D. (2012). Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (p 9). Intervarsity Press.

[5]Willard, D. (2012). Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (p 27). Intervarsity Press.

^[6] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Jas 1:17). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.