Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: hearing God

  • “Learning to Listen” by Jo Acharya: 7 Ways to Pray blog series

    How can we hear God? Jo Acharya shares helpfully how she’s been making space for God through silence, minute by minute at first. I especially appreciate her explanation of how she’s been learning to discern when it she’s hearing God and when it’s ‘just her’.

    In prayer, as in life, I’m a talker. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had conversations with God – by which I mostly mean one-way monologues from my lips into his endlessly patient ear. There’s some value in this. It’s helpful to process my thoughts in God’s presence. But no relationship can thrive when one person does all the talking. A sheep needs to stop bleating in order to hear her shepherd’s voice.

    God has all kinds of ways to get through to me, of course. But lately I’ve started bringing short times of silence into my time with him, to create intentional space and invite him to speak.

    Silence is hard. In the beginning I only managed two or three minutes. Pitiful, I know, but I found I didn’t know what to do with it. Think about God or not think at all? Accept the thoughts that come to mind or push them out? As I’ve practised it’s become easier, and the time has stretched a little longer. The quiet is like a bath for my mind. A sweet pause, a ‘save and close’ for all the tabs I have open on the computer in my head. I think silence is something I’ve craved without knowing it.

    As I sit, the clutter gradually moves to the sidelines and makes way for something else. For someone else. And the truth is that when I give God my focused attention, just for those few minutes, he usually does speak. Into my mind will come a line from a song, or a snippet of scripture. These are like clues from a treasure hunt. When I read the full passage or lyrics they come from, relevant themes often emerge which guide or answer my prayers.

    Sometimes words or sentences come into my head. These I find difficult to distinguish from my own thoughts, which used to bother me. Are they really from him, or from me? But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:16, ‘We have the mind of Christ’. I suppose the longer we walk faithfully with God, the more intertwined our thoughts become. Perhaps in these moments, things I have already learned and absorbed are simply brought to mind by the Holy Spirit at work in me. In his book, How to Pray, Pete Greig suggests evaluating what we hear from God with two questions: ‘Is this like Jesus?’ and ‘What’s the worst that could happen if I got this wrong?’ I find that reassuringly sensible advice.

    But there’s still something unnerving about this process. Dallas Willard observes in his book Hearing God that that many of us ‘fully intend to run our lives on our own… The voice of God would therefore be an unwelcome intrusion into our plans.’ I know that one part of me is nervous of what God might say, and another part is afraid he might not say anything at all. Those twin fears: What if I hear something? What if I don’t? unsettle me each time I sit down to listen, and sometimes they get the better of me.

    And yet I keep going. Because I do want his guidance and his encouragement, his correction and help. So I continue these faltering steps to make space in my busy day and my even busier mind. And I listen for the still, small voice of the one who knows me better than I know myself.

    Jo Acharya is a writer and music therapist who is passionate about inviting God into every part of our everyday lives. She lives with her husband Dan and posts regularly on Facebook and Instagram. You can read more of Jo’s writing at ValleyOfSprings.com, where you can also buy signed copies of her new book, Refresh: a wellness devotional for the whole Christian life, an interactive weekly journal with beautiful photography by Dan.

    Order 7 Ways to Pray here, including in the US, UK, and Australia. You’ll also find many resources for small groups – videos and a leader’s guide – here.

  • How can I hear God?

    How can I hear God?

    It’s a perennial question, and one that I explore in 7 Ways to Pray, my book coming out this autumn. Yesterday I had a delightful little experience of hearing God that helps in pondering how God speaks to his children.

    Yesterday was a bit of a mess—and today will be too, I fear. I woke this morning and looked over to the clock but it wasn’t lit up, meaning that half of the house is without electricity. Including the hot water and heat (please do pray that we can get an electrician in to sort it out today!). Yesterday the electrics went out yesterday twice, and both times the desktop computer I was using died (but thankfully I didn’t lose too much work). Of course the wifi router is plugged into the half of the house shrouded in darkness. Then last night one of the kids’ beds broke, so we had to disassemble it and put the guest bed in there until we can get another one.

    The hassles of life, right? We all know and experience them. But the timing for these hassles isn’t great as I need to submit the rewrites on my two books this week and next.

    So in the backdrop of these distractions and the kids trying to stream online school with wifi that was going out and me being on a couple of video calls and also trying to make lots of progress on the rewriting, I wasn’t anticipating receiving from God my word for the year (a spiritual practice I write about here). But that’s what happened, to my delight. Hearing God can take us by surprise—we don’t control the experience but when we keep our ears and hearts open to God, we put ourselves in a position to receive.

    I had an article published with Our Daily Bread yesterday, and thus was interacting on their website with the comments about the article. One of the comments was this:

    My daughter felt God leading her to get a tattoo of the word ABIDE. The woman doing the tattoo asked what that meant and she was able to tell her redemption story! May Your children all abide in You, Lord. Let us tell Your story of love and grace! Amen.

    As I replied I had a flash of insight:

    Abide is such a good word. We abide in Christ; we abide in His word. Hmmm… thank you! Maybe this is to be my word for the year! I’m going to pray about that!

    I asked God for confirmation, but I also sensed within a quick yes, abide is my word for 2021. It was a deep feeling of knowing that this was God’s answer. I hadn’t set out to hear God on this yesterday; it was his gift of love. But since the beginning of the year I have been expectant, wondering when God might answer my desire.

    How do you communicate with God? Does my experience resonate with you?

    One of the chapters in 7 Ways to Pray explores hearing God. I will be sharing more about the release of this book in my monthly newsletter. To receive it, click here.

  • How Can I Hear God When Choosing a Word for the Year?

    Have you chosen a word for 2016 yet? Or to be more precise, has a word chosen you? (See here for background on this movement; I also write about this practice and my New Year’s spiritual traditions in Finding Myself in Britain.)

    When I’ve mentioned this practice of holding one word before ourselves for a year, the question often posed to me is, “How do you know what word to choose?” with the subtext of, “How can I hear from God?”

    Eli and Sameul, from the well-known story in the Old Testament about Samuel hearing God while in the temple. Painting by John Singleton Copley.
    Eli and Samuel, from the well-known story in the Old Testament about Samuel hearing God while in the temple. The Lord was speaking, but Samuel didn’t know it was him. Painting by John Singleton Copley.

    Huge topic, with many a book written on it – I like Dallas Willard’s Hearing God and Leanne Payne’s Listening Prayer in particular, but Bill Hybels’s The Power of a Whisper is good too, and Pete Greig’s God on Mute is the best book on unanswered prayer. Here’s a story I told about hearing God – a couple decades into my quest to communicate with our Creator, I’m still learning.

    So in the case of hearing from God when choosing a word for the year, how can we know? What can we do? Here are some short pointers from my experience, but know that hearing God is an individual thing, and what works for one person may feel like a deadend for another.

    Ask

    It’s obvious, but sometimes we forget to do the first thing. Quiet yourself and specifically ask God to give you a word for the year. He loves to communicate with his children, so we shouldn’t therefore be surprised when we do hear from him. He also loves for us to voice our desires.

    Wait

    God is God and we are not – which means we can’t demand an answer right now like a petulant child and expect him to jump to it. (Sometimes he does respond to our demands, of course, just as sometimes parents out of love give an answer right away to children-with-attitudes.) Waiting teaches us humility and patience.

    Expect

    Trusting that God will speak to us helps as we wait, and keeping an expectant disposition also keeps us alert – watching, noticing, hoping. Having a posture of receiving opens us up to God’s word for us.

    Receive

    We might be reading Scripture when a word pops out to us that we can’t ignore, or perhaps we experience a few days of the same concept coming up again and again – ever had that? A lyric from a song might loop through our minds without stopping. We might sense a whisper from the Lord, that still, small voice that through time we recognize as God’s.

    Test

    A key part in the process is to hold your word once you think you have it, testing it out to see if the Lord confirms it. Often I have a sense that what I’ve chosen is right – I don’t have a clear, “Yes, Amy, this is your word for the year” kind of a revelation. Talking with trusted friends helps in the testing process as well.

    How do you choose your word for the year?

  • Devotional of the week: Divine Conversation (4 in 1 Peter 4 series)

    “The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.” 1 Peter 4:7

    roller-skates-415389_1280I’m passionate about prayer, including leading retreats called “Adventures in Prayer.” Why? Because prayer opens up a divine conversation, and wonderfully, the Lord loves to meet us. The ways he reveals himself delight, like the time I was in a listening-prayer group with people I didn’t know, and one of them had a picture for me of roller skates. Sounds odd, but I immediately understood what the image meant – the roller skates symbolized the public speaking I was soon embarking on. Although I felt fear and trepidation when strapping on the skates (standing at the podium), once I got rolling, I’d feel the wind whip through my hair in exhilaration. I knew I was to trust God, including giving up my word-for-word scripts. That picture ushered in a new joy and freedom in my speaking.

    Sometimes prayer is freeing and joyous, like that clear image, but sometimes we are sober of mind. Here Peter alerts us that the end is near, so we should be alert and pray. We might have before us heavy matters: a friend experiencing a crushing loss; a son facing depression and difficulty; a family member holding a grudge against us. As we take these issues to God, asking for his grace and mercy, he will bring us hope, relief and signs of joy.

    Father God, I give you my concerns and delights. I know you hear me, and that you love me. Amen.

  • The Bible: God’s Word for Life, Love, and Change

    Photo: Savio Sebastian, flickr
    Photo: Savio Sebastian, flickr

    Today I have an article on Sacred Reading over at the Kingdom Life Now magazine. Here’s a taste.

    Recently I led an exercise of meditative reading of the Bible. Four times I read the passage of Isaiah 43:1-8 with instructions to the women with a different emphasis in engaging with the text each time. About a month later, I was humbled to hear from one woman about how God spoke to her through the exercise. She said how she and her husband had been to Brunei in Southeast Asia a couple of weeks before the conference in Somerset, England, to visit their daughter and family (including three young grandchildren), who have lived there for the last seven years. While there, she learned that her son-in-law decided to apply for teaching jobs in Belgium, Singapore, and Oman. With Belgium being far closer to home, she and her husband were hoping this would be their final destination. She said,

    When you read Isaiah to us the only sentences that I heard were verses 5 and 6, where it says, “I will bring your children from the East and your daughters from far-off lands.” How relevant to me were those words and I held onto them as a promise to me from God – that He was telling me that my son-in-law would get the job and my family would come close. I was so convinced that I told others what God was saying. So imagine the great joy when we heard on that he had been offered the job in Belgium and they were to start in September! No more 17 hour flight to see them! God truly had gathered my children from the East and my daughter from a far-off land.

    She said that although before my talk she had never heard of lectio divina – a Latin phrase for the act of sacred reading – but now she had come across it several times.

    Change Agent

    This ancient practice of a slow, contemplative praying of the Scriptures moves what can be a merely rational process deep into one’s heart, for as we chew over a piece of Scripture, it sinks into our being. We begin to slow down, receive, and make a personal response. Continue reading.

  • “Is that you, Lord?” A lesson in hearing God

    Hearing God, I’m learning, is about heeding the nudges. Acting on those little prompts that pop into my mind, which I’m never completely sure are “just me” or are quite possibly the Lord. That sounds cheeky in and of itself, doesn’t it – I heard GOD. But that is the amazing mystery of the Lord on high communicating with his created ones.

    Baby listenerRecently a fragment of a verse from Scripture made itself known to me, and I knew immediately that I should share it with a particular friend. The timing wasn’t convenient – it was after dinner, bath time for the kids, in the rush before the Vicar went to his church meeting. But in that moment I sensed that I should follow the nudge.

    The phrase that flitted through my mind was, “I lift mine eyes to the hills; from whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Not being one of those people who can tell you chapter and verse when it comes to the Bible (and yes, the Vicar does have this uncanny ability), I didn’t know where it came from but guessed one of the Psalms. I looked it up online, and loved reading the whole chapter – Psalm 121 – as it continues in a wonderful vein, about how the Lord will not let our foot slip, and how he never slumbers or sleeps.

    I texted my friend and she texted me back, saying my timing was perfect and sharing some other wonderful “coincidences” about her life, her children, and God, including: “How special peace feels…”

    The Lord graciously used me to bring her comfort and the assurance of his love, but he’s not stingy with his blessings. I received by acting on that little nudge – not only receiving the love of my friend, but gaining confidence that in this instance the nudge was divinely inspired. I’ve been on this journey of hearing God for two decades now, and I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert – I need these grace-filled experiences that teach me to open my ears and heart and obey.

    The Lord – amazingly – uses his children for the meeting of his people’s needs. We are his hands and his feet to bring his love to his people.

    How about you? Have you acted on those little nudges? If so, what happened?

  • Review of Bill Hybels’ book on hearing God

    9780310318224The Power of a Whisper

    Hearing God. Having the Guts to Respond.

    Bill Hybels (Zondervan, 978-0310318224)

    I’ve long been fascinated by the subject of hearing God. In my twenties I edited Leanne Payne’s book on the subject, Listening Prayer. Engaging with her manuscript set me on a path of seeking God’s voice fervently. I felt awe the first time his whisper reverberated in my spirit: “I love you, beloved. You are mine.” But eventually my unbridled excitement that the God of the universe would actually speak to me led me to ignore the practice of testing what I was hearing (even though Leanne Payne counsels against this). For instance, I believed I heard God tell me to move cities to work with a Christian ministry, a place that conveniently was home to the man that I believed God was telling me to marry.

    You can probably guess that none of that happened – the move or the marriage. My hopes and faith splattered when my plans came to naught. I didn’t know what to think or believe.

    And yet I couldn’t give up listening to God. I tried, but I couldn’t cut the lifeline that had been giving me hope and love and affirmation – even though I had messed up in the interpretation. That major crash helped me to mature as I learned to wait before God, asking him to clarify and affirm what I was hearing – through the Bible, through his still, small voice, through trusted friends and family.

    I still gobble up books on this topic, always learning something new about our mysterious relationship with our Creator. When I heard about Bill Hybels’, I was surprised. I thought of him as a high-powered pastor and founder of the massive Willow Creek empire. My husband, also a pastor, has enjoyed his books, but I haven’t read any closely. Yet when I picked up The Power of a Whisper, I didn’t want to put it down. He tells the story of how God’s whispers have changed the course of his life, including creating Willow, learning how to parent, aching for the poor and so on. God has continually shaped him through these sometimes gentle, sometimes persistent communications from above. This book has mellowed my perception of him as an author.

    I thought his book could have been reduced by about a third – it started to feel a bit too long and unwieldy towards the end – but would recommend it as an introduction to hearing God. It’s especially suitable for any type-A guys in your life (I passed along my copy to the vicar with whom I sleep, and he’s loving it).

    Other books on the topic? Leanne Payne’s, as I mention above, as well as Dallas Willard’s Hearing God and Joyce Huggett’s Listening to God.

    What words will God have for you today?

     

    This review originally appeared in the March 2013 Woman Alive Book Club.