HEARING GOD (PART THREE)

This is the third article in the series of teachings from the book Hearing God by Dallas Willard. This article covers lessons learned from Chapter Three, “Never Alone.” 

Before discussing hearing God’s voice, a believer must first have an understanding and trust that God is present with them. This understanding of God’s presence usually grows in stages. First, there is a simple faith that it must be true that God is with us, maybe because of some unique past experience or the faith of others in this fact. But we might have no direct awareness of His being here with us specifically.

Then, through time and experience, we might move to awareness at times of a powerful feeling or impression of God’s presence. This type of understanding makes itself known at times when a number of people on a church project, for example, find that their thoughts and activities have been synchronized through a sense of God’s presence and intentions.

Finally, we perceive God acting in conjunction with our actions in a way that changes the circumstances not possible through simple human effort alone. But these three phases of the sensing of God’s presence are only the beginning because of our relationship with God as priests for Him and as His adopted children. God wants to relate to and converse with us actively. This leads us to what Willard defines as our full purpose in God: “A conversational relationship with God where we are consistently and deeply engaged as His friend and co-laborer in the affairs of the Kingdom of God.” 

Next time, we will look more closely at the idea of God speaking to us directly on a consistent basis.