Listening Prayer Guide | How to Hear from God

Listening prayer is this beautiful – and little known – prayer practice that helps us to quiet our minds and learn to hear God better. Amidst all the daily responsibilities of work, school, family, and life, our minds can be full of plans, to-do lists, reminders, and noise. Listening prayer is the practice of stilling this noise, just a little bit, and allowing God’s word to come through.

In listening prayer, you sit (or walk) in stillness and silence, and you learn to rest in the eternal presence of your Creator. Pete Greig, one of my favourite authors, describes the practice of listening prayer this way: “The swirling sediment of life settles down quite quickly. You become more aware of your own presence in place and time and of God’s gentle, subsuming presence around and within you.” (How to Pray, 40)

He also describes listening prayer as a way to re-center our priorities, to remove ourselves and our own agendas from the center of our lives, and to refocus our attention on God and his will for our lives: “Moments of stillness at the start of a prayer time are moments of surrender in which we stop competing with God, relinquish our messiah complexes, and resign from trying to save the planet. We stop expecting everyone and everything else to orbit our preferences; we recenter our priorities on the Lord and acknowledge, with a sigh of relief, that he is in control.” (How to Pray, 38)

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What is Listening Prayer?

Listening prayer is a prayer method that helps you to hear God better by quieting your mind.

Often, the first kind of prayer that we learn, when we learn to pray, is a type of petitionary prayer or intercessory prayer. We learn to list all of our concerns before God and ask for his help. We also learn to pray for others in our lives and ask God to help them as well.

But all this speaking and listing things before God often leaves little time for sitting in silence and waiting for God’s response.

Petitionary prayer and intercessory prayer are wonderful things, and things that God asks us to do. And when we record our prayers in a prayer journal, and record answers to our prayers, we can begin to see a pattern and hear from God in our lives.

Listening prayer helps us to deepen that ability to hear God and see him at work in our lives.

Listening prayer can help us to re-center our priorities, and it can help us to hear God better.

In a nutshell: listening prayer is sitting in stillness and silence and listening for God’s voice. This may be for a few minutes before or after your usual prayer time, or it may be a more substantial period of stillness and silence where you simply rest in God’s presence and listening for anything he may want to speak to your heart.

Re-centering Our Priorities

Pete Greig (founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement), in How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People, writes that the act of sitting in silence and listening to God helps us to re-center our priorities, taking the focus away from ourselves and our own goals, lives, and to-do lists, and focusing instead of God. “By doing this, even just for a few minutes each day, we recenter ourselves on Christ’s eternal presence, which enables us to pray from a much deeper place of peace, faith, and reduced anxiety.” (How to Pray, 45)

Spending a few minutes (or more) sitting in silence with God means that you have to put down your to-do list, forget all the things that you have to do today, and just be with your Creator. It means letting God set the pace and listening for his voice in your life. Instead of taking the lead yourself, you sit and wait on God. This can help to put God back at the center of our lives, and it can help us to focus on his eternal presence.

How Does Listening Prayer Help You to Hear God Better?

Listening prayer isn’t just about sitting in silence and pushing away all the other responsibilities of the day for a moment. It’s also about being able to hear God better.

Throughout the day, our minds are so busy and full of distractions. Thoughts race through our brains: work, kids, extracurriculars, dates with friends, meal plans, to-do lists, vacation plans, goals and aspirations….

Sometimes, hearing God can be really difficult if our minds are constantly on overdrive.

Learning how to do listening prayer helps to quiet our minds so that there is not so much noise when God does want to speak to us.

Sometimes, you’ll spend your 3 or 5 or 30 minutes with God in silence, and it will be just that: silence. Maybe you will feel God’s loving presence sitting with you, or maybe you will simply get a much needed break from the pressures of the day.

Sometimes, in that silence, God will speak to your heart and encourage you with Scripture, a song, an idea, an impression, or a picture… Our job, in listening prayer, is not to make sure that we hear something profound from God each and every time we practice this type of prayer, but rather to cultivate the receptivity so that we can hear God when he does want to speak to us.

Silencing our thoughts allows God’s word to come through.

Remember: God doesn’t speak in the wind or the fire, in big, loud, and obvious ways, but rather in a still, small voice. Listening prayer makes us quiet enough that we can hear that still, small voice.

Tuning Out Other Voices

Part of learning to hear God better is learning to tune out other voices. There are so many places in the Bible where we are told not to get too involved with “the world”, but rather to follow Jesus.

Paul, in Romans 12:2, for example, says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The author of James asks us, ” Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”  (James 4:4)

And in 1 John 2:15-17, we are told, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

When we lay down all our pressing concerns and spend a few minutes with God in stillness and silence, we are able to put down the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions for just long enough to re-center ourselves on our Sovereign Creator and his will for us.

And when you practice listening prayer regularly, it becomes easier to tune out the voices of the world and to listen to God instead. The distractions become less distracting, and the pressing responsibilities become less urgent.

Listening Prayer in the Bible

So what about listening prayer in the Bible? Is listening prayer biblical?

There is, in fact, a strong Biblical basis for the practice of listening prayer. While the Bible nowhere uses the term “listening prayer,” we can see examples of this type of prayer, and the need for stillness and silence when trying to hear from God. We can see examples of listening prayer scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments, both in stories of individuals, and in Jesus’ parables.

Our examples of listening prayer in the Bible come where God is seen speaking to people in stillness and silence. God speaks to Elijah, for example, not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a still, small voice (1 Kings 19:12). David recommends silent (contemplative) prayer in Psalm 4:4. And Psalm 46:10 famously tells us to “be still and know that I am God.”

Jesus himself often retired to quiet, secluded spots in the wilderness or on the mountain where he could converse with his Father. Jesus obviously believed it was important to get away from the noise and distraction of the crowd (see, for example, Mark 1:35).

We can also see undertones of listening prayer in Jesus’ parable of the good shepherd and his sheep in John 10:1-21. In that parable, Jesus tells us that the sheep of his flock know him and listen to his voice. Of course, reading Scripture is the primary way that we get familiar with Jesus’ voice and learn to recognize him. We learn the stories that he tells, the cadence of his voice, and we learn to recognize when he calls us. When we combine a strong Bible study practice with various forms of prayer, including sitting in stillness and silence with God, then we are well-equipped to hear God speak into our lives and be confident of his voice.

The practice of quieting our minds, seeking silence, and waiting to hear from God is a practice that we encounter throughout Scripture.

How to Practice Listening Prayer

So how do we practice listening prayer? While the practice of listening prayer isn’t always easy (distractions will inevitably come), it is fairly straightforward.

Here are some simple steps to start your own listening prayer practice.

1. Set aside some quiet time when you can focus.

Finding the time to sit in silence and listen for God to speak isn’t always easy. But if you commit to it, you can always find a few minutes in each day for this type of prayer.

Here are some ideas of how and when to find some quiet time to be with God:

• Set your morning alarm 5 minutes earlier, and wake up before everyone else in the house. Sit with God over your morning coffee.
• Take a few minutes at night after everyone has gone to sleep.
• Include your family and take a few minutes before bed to practice this type of prayer together. Listening prayer can become a regular part of your bedtime routine. (We’ve done this with our kids when they were as young as 6 years old.)
• Take a walk by yourself. Leave behind the music, the phone, and any other distractions. Just walk in silence in God.

2. Take a few deeps breaths to clear your thoughts.

Once you’ve found a pocket of time in your day for listening prayer, you’re ready to begin. Take a few deep breaths to clear your thoughts and calm your mind. Focusing on your breath can help to calm the inner noise.

3. Ask God to be with you in the silence and to speak to your heart.

After your few deep breaths, set your intention to sit (or walk) with God. Ask him to be with you in the silence. Ask if he has anything he would like to say to you.

Often, when I go for a walk with God, on the way out the door, I just ask him to come with me: “Ok, God, let’s go for a walk together.” I then do my very best to listen to what he might have to say to me as I walk in relative silence (just me and the birds) through the neighbourhood.

Or when we do this type of prayer before bed with the kids, we’ll just ask God if he has anything to say to us, and tell him that we will be sitting here listening for a few minutes.

If there is something that is weighing on your heart that you would like to pray about, tell God about it.

4. Sit in silence and listen for God. Start with 3 minutes and work your way up to more.

This is the “listening” part of the prayer. Sit in silence and listen for God. Total silence and stillness will be hard, especially if you are not used to this type of prayer. Start with 3 minutes and work your way up to more.

To prevent yourself from constantly interrupting your silence with thoughts of “How long has it been?”, set a timer.

5. When your mind wanders, gently acknowledge the distraction and return your attention to your breath.

When I first started practicing this type of prayer, the distractions came almost immediately. Your mind will wander, and that’s okay. When you notice that you’ve been thinking about a work project, or a homeschool project, or a conversation with a friend, or anything else, just gently acknowledge that distraction and return your attention to your breath. Take a few more deep breaths to re-center yourself.

6. Take notes of what God places on your heart.

After you sit with God in stillness and silence for a few minutes (or more), take note of what God has placed on your heart.

This may be Scripture or a song that comes to mind, or maybe an impressions, ideas, or pictures that God gives you. Recording your experience in a prayer journal is an excellent way to keep track of what God is saying to you.

If you are using a prayer journal, try recording your own thoughts in one colour and what you sense God is telling you in another colour.

It’s always good to check your impressions against Scripture, as well.

Seth Barnes, in The Art of Listening Prayer, notes that this type of prayer “contains the potential for mistaking ordinary thoughts for the voice of God. But the important thing is that you are giving God the opportunity to speak to you. Just as children must be taught to listen and to sit respectfully during adult conversation, so we must learn to stop our one-way monologues with our heavenly Father” (page 29-30).

As you practice listening to God, combined with a consistent Bible study practice, you will learn to be able to pick out God’s voice from your own: just like the sheep learn to recognize the shepherd’s voice in Jesus’ parable of the good shepherd.

When and Where to Practice Listening Prayer

Listening prayer can be a practice all on its own. Often, when I sit (or walk) in stillness and silence, it makes up my entire prayer time. This isn’t the only type of prayer that I practice throughout the day, but my listening prayer times are often just that: stillness and silence with God, without the petitions and intercessions.

You can also add a few minutes of listening prayer into your usual prayer time. You can begin with a few minutes of stillness and silence with God, re-centering yourself and allowing God to speak into your heart before you rejoice in the glory of God, give thanks for things in your life, and ask for things that you need.

Or you can close your prayer time with a few minutes of silence. When we practice this type of prayer as a family, we will say our bedtime prayers as usual, thanking God for the day and praying for people and situations who need prayer, and then we will invite God to sit with us and speak into our hearts for a few minutes at the end.

Try this out for yourself! Take a few minutes in your day and sit in stillness and silence with God. See what he has to say to you.