Trying to Hear God More Clearly? Here’s a Place to Start
There’s a difference between hearing and listening to understand God. I’ve been learning (and keep learning) that the hard way. I’m inviting you to join me in the process.
This week, I’m celebrating two big milestones.
I’m going back to school, which you may have read about HERE, HERE, and HERE.1
This email represents 2 years of writing on Substack. You can read that very first post HERE.
Thank You!
First, let me say “Thank you.” I write this each week at the bottom of this newsletter, but when I reflect on you taking the time to open up this newsletter on a semi-regular to regular basis, I am amazed. That you care enough about what I think to click subscribe and then click “open” week after week fills me with gratitude.
Some of you have taken this a step further by financially backing me. Wow. I believe I am offering a valuable product, and so do you. The encouragement you provide helps me set aside time each week to write.
Now onto another year of writing.
What Got Me Here
When it comes to returning to school, I’ve used this month’s posts to share with you my thought process on what led me to this decision. I’m using a few of my old journal posts to help me reflect back this month. I’ve also found myself incorporating some of the reading I’m committed to in 2025.
As a reminder, I had determined by the Fall of 2026, I would take a definitive step toward what was next. The big question I wanted to answer: What was next?
Hear —> Listen —> Understand
In Luke chapter 8, Jesus tells two parables.2 The first is about a farmer who plants seeds in various soil types. Some of the seeds grow to the desired end, bearing lots of fruit, but others die out—some quicker, some before harvest. The second parable is about allowing your light to shine, not hiding it. Then Jesus wraps up this section with these words:
So pay attention to how you hear. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them. -Luke 8:18
Did you notice the progression? We hear, which is different than listening. If we go beyond hearing and listen, then we will understand. The inverse can also happen. If you hear, but don’t truly listen, then what you think you understand will be knocked out from under you. Even as I wrote that last sentence, I forced myself to sit back and consider the impact on the American church (and honestly, the church globally throughout history).
If you’ve ever spent any time with a counselor, you’ll be familiar with the thought that hearing and listening are two different things. Anyone can hear, but it takes intentionality to listen. Listening means giving your full attention to what is being said. To truly listen to you, I must consider everything behind what you are saying, remembering all that you’ve said to me in the past, the current but unspoken circumstances, and your dreams for the future. It is from this place that I understand.
Now, apply this same principle to God.
I have a hard enough time moving from hearing to listening with other human beings to understand them, but it becomes even more difficult when I apply this understanding to God. To begin, there is a sense in which God is unknowable, which I admit goes against the premise of this newsletter, so hang with me.
A Hidden Side of God
In Exodus 33, Moses requests to see God’s glory, to which God replies that Moses cannot handle seeing God’s face. Seeing the full glory of God would have killed Moses, but God allows Moses to see His back. In other words, there is a part of God which is unknowable. We, as sinful mortals, cannot comprehend all that God is. In this sense, God is unknowable.
At the same time, God allowed Moses to see Him in all His glory. Moses descended the mountain to speak of his experience with the living God. A few thousand years later, this same God left heaven to indwell within a human body. He lived among all of humanity. And now, God is alive and active in our world through the form of the Holy Spirit. He’s not just living among his creation; he lives and breathes within humanity itself.
God is knowable, but knowing God requires investment on my part.
This is where I found myself last year. How do I know God in a way that I can help others know him too? This meant I needed to learn more ways to move from hearing to listening. I understand what I’ve done and works for me, but that only represents a portion of how to listen and understand God.
How We Approach Understanding
I've yet to immerse myself in that endeavor fully, but I’ve been given a list of books to read in preparation for the process. Included in my reading list is a small book by philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek called A Little Manual for Knowing. Thankfully, it is actually short (about 100 pages) because the philosophical nature of the writing stretches me to think deeply about what I know (and understand).
In my words, Meek, in her Little Manual, teaches us how to listen so we recognize understanding (and, as odd as that sounds, knowing isn’t always as straightforward as we perceive it to be). To conclude both this post and the series of posts, I would like to share a few observations I’ve made from this book on the topic of knowing and understanding. These principles apply not only to learning in general but also to understanding God. In other words, this is part of what it means to listen.
1. Knowing God is a journey.
Knowing is a pilgrimage. It requires taking personal responsibility, born of love, to pledge allegiance to what we do not yet know.
-Esther Lightcap Meek
Life is a journey… yeah, this is clichéd, but sometimes clichés become clichéd because they are true. However, notice this is no ordinary journey; it is a pilgrimage. As Meek states, a pilgrimage requires a deeper commitment than a simple trip from A to B. A journey as a pilgrimage is holy. Seeking to understand God is a holy journey.
As God did with Abraham, our pilgrimage leads us into the unknown.
2. Be careful with what you expect.
If we mistakenly emphasize our expectations we will get what we expect, but we will prevent truth.
-Esther Lightcap Meek
This is the scary aspect of acknowledging that there are parts of God that are unknowable, and that even the knowable parts are sometimes hidden. If we don’t admit this, we get the expected but not the real. Again, I sat back after writing that sentence to reflect on how this has impacted the church in the 21st century. Sometimes, we are so sure of so much about God that we’ve missed what He is doing and where He is heading.
This certitude, which seems noble, is actually rigid and domineering. It lacks love.
3. Knowing God is rooted in the love of God.
We love in order to know. Love, not bare information amassing, should characterize the way we relate to the world.
-Esther Lightcap Meek
Have you noticed how often the Christian world relates to its own world and the outside world in an antagonistic manner? To be clear, there are differences in beliefs and understanding of God that legitimately separate Christians within the Christian world and divide them from the outside world. However, that knowledge isn’t meant to lead us to hate each other or the world around us.
Further, hate keeps me from understanding God. If I want to grow my knowledge of God, I must pledge to seek and search for the truth…no matter where it takes me.
4. Knowing God is a pledge to trust God.
Pledge and trust together display the normative and the relational dimensions of a knowing venture. A well-respected philosopher of education makes the point that the word “truth” is related to the old word “troth.” Troth means a solemn pledge of faithfulness in relationship, as in a marriage vow. This link powerfully underscores that pledge and trust are the central nerve of knowing.
-Esther Lightcap Meek
I am seeking to know God relationally. For God, that means a covenantal relationship similar to the bonds of marriage. In my marriage to Kia, I am bound by my pledge to open myself up to her, allowing her to know me as deeply as any person can know another. That means I pledge to be truthful with her.
As humans, we struggle with the transparency required of the marriage vows. We often fight to be truthful or to face the truth that is revealed. There is no struggle for God to be truthful or accept the truth within me. However, I do struggle to pledge to be honest with him and to accept the truth revealed about him. This takes me back to the above point; my struggle is rooted in what I expect to find, so I pledge to seek the truth.
I can rest in this one thought: God is truth. When I find God, I find truth.
You can know God.
To end, I return to the premise of this newsletter: God is knowable.
Above, I provided a trove of philosophy and theory behind how we seek and know God, which may make it seem complicated or challenging. However, I circle back to the opening thoughts to encourage you. Knowing God is the practice of hearing God in a way that truly comprehends Him.
This is a journey of love. I’ve found the more I understand God, the deeper I want to go. This mindset enables me to let go of my expectations and simply trust that God will lead me into His truth. For myself, I’m excited to continue this journey, and in your own way, I encourage you to join me.
That was a not-so-subtle hint to go back and read those posts if you haven’t already ;)
A parable is an earth-bound story with a Kingdom-minded meaning.