How I finally learned to hear from God.

Growing up, the term relationship with God was a term that Christians used all the time. They used it constantly, but no one could ever really explain to me what it meant. People would say things like, “God told me to go do this.” “God told me who to marry.” “God told me no.” “God told me maybe.” “God told me wait.” And it seemed like everyone was hearing from God but me.

So I kept trying to hear from him. I kept trying to figure out how I could sort of force God to tell me the answers that I wanted, but eventually I discovered that trying to get answers from God and learning to recognize God's voice are not necessarily the same thing.

And in this video, I want to explain to you the ways that I learned to stop obsessing all of the time about hearing from God, and instead start developing a personal, intimate, and more importantly, conversational relationship with God.

1. Change Your Mindset About Hearing from God

So, the first thing that I had to change was my mindset. I grew up thinking that God had all the answers to everything, which is true. That's not wrong, theologically speaking, but one of the problems with this mindset is that you feel like you can't do anything unless God tells you yes or no. So it's like red light, green light. You know, like “Mother, May I?” Red light, green light, those kind of games we play as kids. So that's how it felt for me, was that I would only do things if God told me yes, and I would only not do things if God had told me no.

The problem with this sort of mindset, this worldview, this theology, is that sometimes we don't get answers from God. And when I got to university, I learned that some things are morally neutral. So basically what that means is that God is not necessarily worried about whether you do this or that, because either choice is fine with him.

And there's also the element of free will. So we all have free will every day. I got up today and I put on these clothes, and I had the free will to do that. I chose to have oatmeal for breakfast. I had free will to do that. God did not tell me, “Today you are going to have oatmeal.” I did not hear the voice of God tell me, “You’re going to wear this shirt.”

So when we operate in our day-to-day lives, when we go shopping, when we go to the grocery store, when we put, you know, fuel in our car, we're not asking God for permission to do these things. And so then it begs the question of when we're making larger decisions, does every decision have to have God's voice in it before we do it?

And there are times where God doesn't necessarily care if you choose this route or that route. So let's say you're 18 years old. You're trying to choose a degree. If you want to choose science over mathematics, that's up to you. There are morally neutral choices and you have the free will to decide which degree you want to do. And so you can ask God for direction and wisdom in which one you choose.

But I guess the point is, is that I felt I could not do anything. I was stuck. I was like, crippled in moving in life because if God didn't tell me yes or no, then I can't. I can't do anything. It's not like I can even make one choice or another. I am stuck.

Then that also related to dating. If God didn't tell me, yes, you can go out with this guy, then I wouldn't do it. Well, the problem is that makes life really difficult. Because let's say a guy asks you out and you're sitting around waiting for God to say yes or no. You've been waiting forever.

I learned eventually that I have to change my mindset that I can't be obsessed with hearing God's yes or no with every decision that I make. Because some decisions, God is allowing me to have the free will to decide.

Now, obviously we can still ask God for his direction, like I said, but I'm trying to emphasize here that I was obsessed, like I was legalistic. I was so rigid that I wouldn't do any movement unless I felt like God had said yes or no.

The hard part is when God says wait, because that is a yes, but it's like an unknown yes. So like, when will this be? And so that can be difficult as well.

Move Beyond Transactional Prayer

The other thing I had to change about it, was not being so transactional with God about hearing from him, because the problem was, I feel looking back, my prayer life was solely focused on whether God told me yes or no about things that I wanted. And the problem with that is there's no relationship there.

Like, imagine if I called my mom, who's back in the US. I now live in Australia and I call her on the phone and I say, “Can I do X, Y, or Z?” And she goes, “Sure, why not?” “Okay, thanks.” And that's it. That's our relationship.

That's how I was treating God, was that God was only there to tell me, “Yes, go do that,” or “No, don’t do that.” That’s really all I wanted God for. I wanted God to be my ChatGPT chat box. And this was pre-AI, obviously, and I had to re-orient my thinking that this is a relationship. This does not mean saying, should I do this? You know, help me to make my next move. This needs to be a conversational relationship with God, where I don’t just ask God yes or no questions, but I have a conversation with him.

In fact, when I was in my mid 20s, I was meeting with a spiritual director, and that's what she told me, that your relationship with God is like when you go to the fortune-teller robots. I remember there’s one in Disneyland. You put a coin into the fortune teller, and then he'll give you your fortune back. That was how I was treating God. And I had to reorient that thinking that God is not something I put a coin in and he tells me my fortune. God is a person, and he wants to speak to me, and he wants to hear from me.

You Cannot Force God to Speak

I know this video is all about like how I hear from God, but technically speaking, there's a caveat to this in that you cannot force God to speak to you. You can't do like five tricks to force God to speak to you. It doesn’t work that way. Even in real life, when you talk to a human being you can’t force them to react in a way that you want.

And it's the same thing with God is that I'm going to give you now, general practices that I do that have helped me hear from God. But technically speaking, you can't force God to say or do anything. God can't be put into a box, you know? And so there's only certain practices that will help you do that. But nothing can force the hand of God.

You know, we serve God. God doesn’t serve us. And so, you know, the end goal is not to receive from God answers. The end goal is to develop relationship. And that's really key here. It is to deepen our love for him and be with him as an act of worship.

2. Tell God You Want to Hear from Him

Okay, so the second thing I always tell people in my ministry when they ask me about hearing from God if they've never heard from God before, is to tell God that you want to hear from him. God wants to speak to you. And God is not trying to be elusive to you. He wants to speak to you and have relationship with you.

And so a really easy thing you can just do if you desire to hear from God and you want to feel God's presence is you just tell God that. You tell him, “I want to hear from you, Lord. I want to be in your presence, and I want to feel like I’m in your presence.” As well, if you have things that you’d like answered as you’re seeking, say to God, I actually want to hear from you.

So I think if you are struggling to hear from God, then that's a really easy first step is just to tell God that you would like to hear from him, that you want to feel his presence, and that you know you have a desire to go deeper into that relationship.

And it may not happen overnight, like it may not happen right away. But I know for me, in my early to mid 20s, I was asking God, like, I would like to hear from you the way I see other people hear from you, and just telling God that is part of developing that relationship that you're saying to him, I want this relationship.

3. Sit in Silence and Make Space to Listen

The third thing I started to integrate was sitting in silence and waiting for God to speak.

So often when I was praying, like at night or in the mornings, it was just a rapid-fire prayer. It's like, “Please God, help me with this, this, this, this, this. Amen.” And then I would go about my day or I would fall asleep. And sometimes I still do that. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's not immoral, it's not sinful or anything.

But the problem is, is that when you have a relationship with someone, you need to give them the opportunity to speak back. So one of the first things that I integrated when I started to learn more about spiritual formation was to just sit in silence and wait for God to speak.

So, for example, if I call my mom in the United States and I go, “Hi, Mom,” and I just tell my mom all that's going on in my life, and then I go, okay, thanks. Bye. And then I put the phone down. My mom didn't have the opportunity to tell me anything that was going on in her life. She wasn't even able to reflect back to me anything about what I told her.

And it's the same thing in prayer. If we just go pray and pray and then we say, in Jesus’ name, Amen. How can we then throw up our hands and go, I never hear from God. I don't understand why I don't hear from God. It's because you don't give God the opportunity to speak to you.

So a really easy thing that you can just integrate today is when you go to pray tonight or, you know, in the mornings or whenever you’re going to pray soon, spend the first few minutes in silence or spend the last few minutes in silence.

So sometimes we really feel a burden or something on our heart and we want to tell God about it. Then you can start with that and then end in silence. Or sometimes starting in silence can actually sort of ground you in that prayer time. And give God the space to be there with you, rather than the rapid-fire prayer.

And it's a really easy thing to integrate. Again, it doesn't force God to speak to you, but it certainly helps that you at least give him space to talk if he wants to talk.

4. Pray About More Than What You Want

The next one is to pray about things besides what you really want. What I mean by this is so often when there's something really burning on our heart that we really want, then we only want to pray about that all of the time.

So I was that way during my 20s. I only ever prayed about “Who will I marry? Will I get married someday? Will I move to Australia?”

And there's so much else going on in our lives every single day. Challenges that come up at work, things going on in our families and with our friends that we just don't pray about. Because it's not like the main thing that we're focused on.

And the problem with that is there's so much God can be speaking into in those other areas of our lives, but we're only hyper-focused on this one thing. And I find that sometimes the main thing that I'm worried about, God isn't going to talk to me about because things need to unfold in time, where he will speak to me about smaller things going on.

So, an example of this is: Who will I marry someday? Will I get married? Yeah, I did end up getting married, but that person was in South Africa, so God couldn't really tell me. Like, I mean, I guess he could have, but it’s a hard thing to explain to someone like, yes, one day you'll get married, but it's going to be in like eight years from now, and they live in another country, and you're going to be in a third country from each other. And, you know, that'd be a hard thing, maybe to explain.

So instead, you know, if I had been praying more about all the little things going on, God still would have been speaking to me, and that major thing would have just happened in due course.

Pray Through Your Day with the Prayer of Examen

One of the main ways that I do this is through the Prayer of Examen. It's a six-step prayer rhythm where you pray over the day like all the things have happened in your day, and then you pray for tomorrow. I just recently uploaded a video of a 13-minute guided prayer through the Prayer of Examen, and if you're interested, I will link it above.

If you’re also interested in integrating more of this kind of practice, then I would suggest utilizing my seven-day Spiritual Reset guide. It's free. You can download it on my website, and it just takes you through one week of, you know, praying and reading Scripture and cultivating all of these different rhythms that I talk about in this video. So you can download that for free in the link in the description box below.

But I think praying over the day and praying for tomorrow has helped me hear from God more, because I'm praying about everything going on, rather than just hyper-focused on the one thing.

5. Keep a Prayer Journal

The next one is to keep a prayer journal. So one thing I'm grateful for was that throughout my 20s, I did keep a prayer journal, and I'm able to look back over that now.

And even during my 20s, I was doing this where I would read through all of the things that I was praying about. And, you know, that I had noted down. And then I could see, looking back: Did this thing happen? Did this thing come true? Did this not get answered the way I wanted? Whatever. And I could check and X it. When I was crossing things out, like, “No, this didn’t happen,” I was usually relieved that it didn’t happen. I’ve never, like, looked back at, “Oh, God didn’t give me what I wanted.” It’s always been like, “Oh, thank God.”

Now, obviously, you know, there are times where we asked for someone to be healed or something really major and it doesn't happen. And that's not a thing we're relieved about at all.

But I guess what I'm just saying it's an easy way to look back on things that I was praying about, where I felt like God wasn't speaking to me and actually saying, “No, he was actually in all of the details.”

So even though I wasn't feeling God's presence, I wasn’t receiving answers strongly, you know, where I felt God speaking to me, I still could see that God's presence was in that situation, and God was answering my prayer from behind the scenes.

That has encouraged me in those seasons where I feel spiritually dry, I feel like I don't hear from God anymore, is I look back over all the things I've prayed about in years past, and I go look at how much God answered for me and how much God provided for me. And then that comforts me. And then I feel in my spiritual dryness season, I can still trust God that he's still there. He still listens to me, he hears me, and he hasn't given up on me.

6. Pray in Tongues

The last tip that I have is to pray in tongues. This is where I differ from a lot of spiritual theologians who are specialized in spiritual formation, because typically with the spiritual formation movement, there's no talk about the gift of tongues. The only one that I've seen is Simon Chan, who is himself a Pentecostal.

But tongues was something I only started doing in the last two years, and that I wish I had done it sooner.

I feel praying in tongues has helped me to pray when I don't have the words to pray like, let's say I've already prayed everything there is to pray and I don't know what else to say. I feel tongues takes over and the Holy Spirit is praying on my behalf and is saying all of the words that I don't have words for anymore, essentially, as well as when I pray in tongues, I feel the presence of the Lord very strongly.

So when Paul talks about, you know, walking in the spirit, I feel like when I pray in tongues, I am doing this.

I remember the first time I prayed in tongues, I started laughing, not because I thought it was weird or crazy, it was because I was just like, I just thought it was not funny, but it was just like, finally I felt I had proof that God exists because there was no other explanation for how I'm able to do this.

Whenever I do it, I really feel God's presence with me as well as I'll talk about this maybe one day in a different video. Not any time soon.

But when I started praying in tongues, there was a huge spiritual breakthrough in my life and people kept using that phrase spiritual breakthrough. And I didn't know what that meant before I started praying in tongues. And then once I started doing it, I was like, oh, this is what they're talking about, where God was revealing things to me about our situation at the time, and it made so much sense. And then it was being confirmed through things.

And so I think if you're really struggling in life, if you're struggling for answers from God like I used to, and you feel God is far away, man, I would tell you, start praying in tongues. I wish I had done it sooner because it has been such a help to me when I'm struggling and when I feel distant from God and I want, like I said, answers from God, I just start praying in tongues. And even if I don't get the answer, you know, I feel God's closeness and that's better.

The Goal Is Intimacy with God

I think that's really what I've learned from all of this. It really is about having intimacy with God to the point that whether God speaks to you or not is kind of sort of relevant, but it's not the main focus anymore. It's I want to spend time with God.

You know how we have different love languages, and one of them is spending time, like quality time together. That's really what we're doing here with prayer and reading the Bible is we are not just trying to get things from God. We are also trying to spend time with him. Spending time in God's presence is a gift, and it's also an act of worship. It is our way of developing our relationship with him. There's a conversational style.

Keep Coming to God, Even When He Feels Distant

The thing I want you to take away from this video is God loves you and he has not forgotten about you. God wants to speak to you as much as you want to hear from him. So my recommendation to you is don't give up. Don't lose heart. Don't get discouraged because even if today you don't feel God's presence and you haven't heard from him, it doesn't mean that it will always be like this.

This is just for a time. In a future video, I'll talk about things like the dark night of the soul, spiritual dryness, wilderness seasons which are all relevant. If you still feel like, “I do all the right things and I still haven’t heard from God,” it may be because of that, and we'll talk about that in a future video.

But for those who have never heard from God, but they don't feel like, “I’m in a spiritually dry season,”, then just start cultivating these practices, these spiritual rhythms, and see if that helps you to walk in the spirit more.

You know, the idea here is regardless of the season that you are in, keep coming to God. Keep coming into his presence, knowing that with him you are safe. You're with someone who knows you better than you even know yourself, and that you can share everything that's on your heart with no judgment. It's like no, no shame, no shaming. And he will listen to you and he hears you. He understands how you feel.

Jesus experienced everything that we've experienced. And so he gets how you feel about everything. And so there's nothing that you need to hide from him.

And remember, hearing from God isn't necessarily the goal. It is a byproduct of our never-ending relationship with him.

Because remember, too, God is omnipresent, so he's always around, so he sees everything that goes on in your life. He's omniscient, so he knows everything that's ever happened to you, everything about you, everything of your thoughts in your heart, in your mind. And if you have the Holy Spirit, then he is with you all of the time and you have intimacy with him, like if you were in the Holy of Holies. So there's nothing that you need to hold back from him.

Closing Question and Next Steps

Now, I want to leave you with a question. Have you ever heard from God? What were the ways with the Lord that have helped you foster communication with him? Let me know down below in the comments.

If you want more prayer tips, I have a video on three contemplative practices that changed my life about just helping us go deeper into prayer. So I will see you over there in just a bit.

But in the meantime, take care everyone. I'll see you in my next video.