Hearing God

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Description

Being close to God means communicating with him—telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and understanding what he is saying to us. The second half of this conversation is so important—and so difficult. How do we hear God?

In these daily devotionals Dallas Willard helps us understand how we can know the voice of God and act on it. Each day you'll read Scripture on this topic and find suggestions for prayer, journaling and reflection to draw you into God’s presence. You may be surprised—and even transformed—by what you discover.

From the Introduction

This book is an invitation to learn to pray and listen to God more deeply so that you can conform your will to his. As you begin your journey through the year, talk to God about your motives for reading this book. Thank him that you don't have to earn his approval. Tell him about your desire to grow, and thank him for promising to meet you.

At the bottom of each page is an activity that gives you a place to start in responding to the Scripture and accompanying thoughts. That activity may be to reflect, to pray or to meditate. Responding to what God has said to you in the daily meditation is always important. Simply reading something will have little effect on you. The suggestion is just a place to start, however, and you may find yourself praying about what you reflected on, and times of meditation should usually end in prayer too.

Beyond that, you may feel led to journal. Especially if the reflection raises confusion within you, it can be helpful to write your thoughts down on paper. Also, some prayers are better written in a journal because you need to be as concrete as possible in your ideas. And sometimes God will speak to you through reflection and meditation in a way that's so downright stunning that these thoughts should be recorded and read for several days.

The devotions are adapted from Hearing God by Dallas Willard. If you want to read more on these themes, you may want to look for his book.

You'll find a year's worth of devotions here, designed to fill six days a week. We choose to offer six rather than seven for a built-in bit of grace as circumstances do sometimes infringe on our devotional time. But you can use the seventh day to go back to some of the “pray,” “journal” and “apply” suggestions you'll find at the end of the devotion.

Sample Text

God's Care for Individuals

"Because the Lord is my shepherd, I have everything that I need!" (Psalm 23:1 LB)

In the last analysis nothing is more central to the practical life of the Christian than confidence in God's individual dealings with each person. The individual care of the shepherd for his sheep, of the parent for the child and of the lover for the beloved are all biblical images that have passed into the fundamental consciousness of Western humanity. They pervasively and essentially mark our art and general culture as well as our religion. Not only conservative and liberal Christians, high-church and Pentecostal, but also Christian and Jew, and even Jew and Muslim, come together in saying, "The Lord is my shepherd, I lack for nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters." (Ps 23:1-2, paraphrase).

MEDITATE: Take each phrase of Psalm 23 (or the first few phrases), and picture how different you would be inside if you really believed it. How would your life be different if you really believed the Lord was your shepherd? If you really believed you lacked for nothing? How would you feel and how would you interact with people differently if you continually experienced green pastures and still waters with God? Don't evaluate yourself, but delight in how wonderful this would be!

Selected text from Hearing God Through the Year. Copyright © 2004 by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author(s)

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was a professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. A highly influential author and teacher, Willard was as celebrated for his enduring writings on spiritual formation as he was for his scholarship. His books include The Divine Conspiracy (Christianity Today’s Book of the Year in 1998), The Spirit of the Disciplines, Hearing God, Renovation of the Heart and others.

System Requirements

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