How to Pray and Hear Back from God

This article is part of the How to Pray series.

God’s Response to Us

I first heard Handel’s Messiah performed live in college. My knowledge of the oratorio went as far as this: it’s artsy classical music for Christmas (so I thought), and it’s very long (so I might fall asleep during the concert!). As it turned out, I didn’t fall asleep, and immensely enjoyed the music.

That was long ago. Now when I hear Messiah, I still enjoy it, but the “listening experience” is different. I hear much more in the music. Near the beginning, for example, I hear strings—don’t they sound like the refrain of “Joy to the World”? These strings, however, are quiet, being gently caressed by the bows, like a mother comforting her babe with caresses. And my body veritably vibrates with the very comfort that the tenor simultaneously announces: “Comfort ye my people.” I missed all that on my first rather ignorant hearing. But through various practices (e.g., further listening, reading on Handel’s life and music), my ears have been cultivated to hear better what was there all along.

I am increasingly persuaded that “hearing back” from God in the life of prayer involves an analogous process. It involves a practiced prayer life that matures our perceptions to hear him aright. For it’s not as though God was ever truly silent. And it’s not that we are at too great a distance from the one in whom we live and move and have our being to hear his voice. On the contrary, as G. K. Chesterton suggests with characteristic paradoxy, it may be that “the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.”¹ If such things are so, then

What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by being still?²

Silence

“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). Being still, or practicing silence, is my first suggestion in a course for retraining perceptions.

My primary focus isn’t so much on literal silence (though it can’t hurt); it’s on quieting our voices and hearts enough to listen. Those who would truly hear any other, and certainly the ultimate Other, must relinquish control over what’s said. They must render themselves vulnerable to hearing something they didn’t already expect, something they might not want to hear. They must hold their tongue, quiet their hearts, be still, and practice silence. Silence, for the nations, may be an all too awkward reminder that their hopes are set on “speechless idols.” In stark contrast, the prophet says, “the LORD is in his holy temple.” What, then, to do first? “Hush before him!” (Hab. 2:20, my translation).

To be sure, the practice of Christian silence is no mere negation. We need to hush our murmurings, our many petitions, the voicing of our expectations placed upon God. Yet strangely, such silence is rife with a manner of expectation, for our God is no idol.

Scripture

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak” (Ps. 50:7). It’s possible for us to “hear back” from God the way I first heard Messiah: ignorant about what we’re hearing, untaught concerning what to listen for, missing much without realizing it. At an extreme, we may miss God’s answers to prayer for paying attention to the wrong things.

For example, if the chief answers we look for (and, preceding that, the only prayers we earnestly pray) come in the form of healing from terminal disease, we may miss God’s mighty and merciful presence in sustaining faith and empowering to die well. We might then be tempted to think of the abiding suffering and prospect of death as God’s cold shoulder.

How would we know to listen for God’s loving and wise response to his children’s cries even in (not around) suffering and dying? What could help us hear such minor key “music?” When it comes to Messiah, my learning more about the composer Handel has gone some way toward cultivating a better ear for his music. Surely, in like manner, learning more about the Composer of the true music of reality goes a good way toward helping us hear. By attending to God’s self-revelatory word, meditating on how he has acted in history, and pondering deeply his promises and what he says he’s committed to doing in our lives, we might develop a better ear.

Set Times for Prayer

“Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). The request might be translated, “Give us our bread for this day ahead.” Jesus teaches us to pray not for a fortnight’s worth of groceries in our cupboards but simply for the present day’s needs. It’s reasonable to suppose that the Lord means for us to pray the prayer daily,³ even to pray it first thing daily. Prayer at the beginning of the day is another perception-cultivating practice for the life of prayer.

Through setting apart time at the day’s outset to pray the Lord’s Prayer, we name in truth any bread appearing in the day ahead as a gift to be received from the Giver, the better to disabuse us of a materially godless outlook. More significantly, we ready ourselves to receive our lunch when it comes as not simply any old gift but also a specific, palpable answer to our prayer. Then, as we set aside time at the day’s end for evening prayer, we’ll have ample opportunity to recognize that we have “heard back” from our good heavenly Father and to thank him for it.

God would daily be discerned as answering our prayers and thus known as an attentive, ever-caring, responsive Father. How often do we miss it for not setting aside time daily to pray and pay attention?

Supplicating Regularly with Others

“We recount your wondrous deeds” (Ps. 75:1). God constantly answers our prayers, often in ways that are easy to “hear”—to see, to taste, to recognize and discern. To better hear them, to hear them more often, we do well to develop the regular habit of praying with and for the whole church.

In my church, we gather every Lord’s Day for an evening prayer service. From week to week through the year, I join in praying for others’ good and growth in Christ, and I hear many thanksgivings recounting the varying ways God is answering these prayers in the lives of varying brothers and sisters around me. It might be easy for me praying in isolation, not discerning answers related to my personal needs, to feel as though I’ve not heard back from God in a long time. It’s harder to spiral down to this, or the seasons of silence are shorter, when I’m regularly gathering with others to pray.

God constantly answers our prayers, often in ways that are easy to “hear”—to see, to taste, to recognize and discern.

In evening prayer services, praying with and for others, I’m reassured that God isn’t utterly silent toward us, the family of God of which I am a part. And I’ve been particularly impressed at how some of the most regularly answered prayers are the simple, faith-filled prayers of children in our community. I’m consistently inspired to seek God with child-like faith and motivated to press on in prayer, knowing that God is assuredly not absent but present in our midst, able to be “heard” in response to our praying, constantly working for our good in Christ.

Seeking to Hear God in Jesus’s Name

“In that day you will ask in my name” (John 16:26). Any good answer we hear back from God is assuredly something we receive only in and through Jesus. By way of reminder, it is good practice to—with consistency—pray explicitly in the name of Christ. But doing so also is part of cultivating joy-giving, hope-enlivening hearing of God.

Too often our prayers are twinged with anxiety that the starting point in the labor of prayer is basically an absent and silent God. That is to say, the real starting point must be our praying well enough to get God to show up and speak. Yet the word we most desperately need has already been spoken—the word which is Christ crucified, risen, ascended, and reigning for the good of all who believe, and most certainly returning. Praying in Christ’s name is praying that remembers and pays attention to and listens first and foremost to that word.

Here is the beginning of truly hearing back from God, hearing the word that quiets our anxieties and gives us rest and joy. Here, in the Son’s name, we may even be emboldened to pray more fervently and expectantly: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). Those who pray in Christ’s name truly hear back from God in their most pressing need and are strengthened in hope that they will continue to hear in days to come.

Daniel J. Brendsel is the author of Answering Speech: The Life of Prayer as Response to God.

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