Session 3: Listening to God

We often speak about prayer as though prayer were primarily about talking to God. We bring our needs, our fears, our questions and our hopes. We tell God what is happening in our lives. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But a relationship in which only one person speaks is hardly a relationship.

A healthy relationship with God requires us to learn how to listen.

The difficulty is that God rarely speaks in the ways we expect. We may look for a dramatic voice from heaven, while God may be speaking quietly through Scripture, through another person, through an unexpected moment, or through that deep inner awareness that something is drawing us towards truth, love or grace.

Elijah discovered this on the mountain. He expected God in the great and dramatic manifestations—the wind, the earthquake and the fire. Yet God was not found there. Then came what Scripture describes as a “gentle whisper.” And Elijah recognised that God was present.

Perhaps one of our greatest spiritual problems is not that God is silent, but that we are too noisy to hear. 

Our lives are filled with voices. The news speaks. Social media speaks. Other people speak. Our anxieties speak. Our ambitions speak. Even our own thoughts can become so loud that the quiet voice of God is easily drowned out.

Listening therefore requires something more than hearing. It requires attention.

Jesus repeatedly said, “Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen.” He was speaking about spiritual attentiveness—the capacity to become quiet enough, open enough and humble enough to recognise what God may be saying.

This is where Scripture becomes so important. We do not listen for some private revelation that contradicts the character of God revealed in Christ. We listen with Scripture open before us, allowing God’s Word to question us, challenge us, comfort us and reshape us. read more…

Session 2: TRUSTING HIM

“Can I trust God when I don’t understand?”

Last week we began with Knowing God. But knowing someone is only the beginning of a relationship. As the relationship grows, something else becomes essential: trust.

We can know a great deal about God and still struggle to trust Him.

Perhaps you have experienced this. You pray about something that matters deeply to you, but nothing seems to happen. You ask God for healing, but the illness remains. You ask for direction, but the way ahead is unclear. You ask, “Why, Lord?”—and sometimes there seems to be no answer.

It is precisely in those moments that trust becomes real.

Proverbs 3:5–6 gives us these familiar words:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

That last phrase is important: “lean not on your own understanding.”

God does not ask us to understand everything. He asks us to trust Him even when we don’t. read more…

Session 1: KNOWING HIM

“Do you know God—or do you merely know about God?”

There is a very important difference between knowing about someone and knowing that person personally.

I may know a great deal about a famous person—where they were born, what they achieved, what they believe—but that does not mean I know them. Knowledge about someone is not the same as relationship with someone.

And perhaps that is one of the great challenges of our Christian faith. We can know our Bibles, know our hymns, know our theology, attend church regularly—and yet still struggle to say, “I know God.”

Jesus said something remarkable in John 17:3:

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Notice that Jesus did not define eternal life simply as knowing about God. He described it as knowing God.

So what does it mean to know Him? read more…

Part 3 — The False Ways We Seek Significance

There is something deeply human in all of us that asks a simple question: “Do I matter?” We may never say it aloud, but much of what we do is an attempt to answer it. We work hard. We try to succeed. We accumulate possessions. We seek recognition. We want people to like and respect us. We try to remain in control of our lives. Beneath many of these desires lies a longing to feel that our lives have value and significance.

The problem is not that achievement, possessions, recognition or influence are necessarily wrong. They can all be good things. The problem begins when we depend upon them to tell us who we are.

Some of us find our significance in what we accomplish. We think, “If I can achieve enough, I will know that my life matters.” But achievement has a dangerous habit: there is always something more to achieve. Success can bring satisfaction, but it cannot give us a permanent sense of worth.

And what happens when we can no longer achieve as we once did? Retirement, illness, failure or simply growing older can take away the things upon which we built our identity. read more…

Part Two: The Need to Belong

One of the deepest desires within every human being is the desire to belong.

From the moment we enter this world, we begin searching for an answer to a very simple but profound question: “Do I matter to anyone?”

A child looks into the face of a parent and searches for recognition. A young person longs for acceptance among friends. We form families, friendships, communities and churches because something within us tells us that life is not meant to be lived alone. We want to be known—and, even more importantly, we want to be known and loved.

Much of our search for significance is therefore connected with belonging. read more…

Do I Matter? The Significance of Belonging

There is a question buried deep within every human heart: Do I matter?

We may never put it into words, but much of our lives are spent trying to answer it. We want to know that we are noticed, valued and loved. We want to feel that there is a place where we belong and people among whom we are at home.

Perhaps that is why rejection hurts so deeply. To be left out, forgotten or treated as though we do not matter touches something very deep within us. The opposite is also true. There are few experiences more life-giving than knowing that someone sees us, welcomes us and is glad that we are there. read more…