By Judy Villanueva

Do you want to hear God? I do! For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to see and hear God☺ Sometimes, as a kid, I’d sit up alone late at night by the light of the Christmas tree and wait, so hopeful for a peek at God! I’d finally get tired and go to bed disappointed. I prayed hard and studied prayer as a young adult, certain that if I kept at it, I’d find the secret to hearing God. I read the Bible and had the sense that prayer wasn’t meant to be a one-way dialog but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to tap into the Divine voice. I often felt like Zaccheus hanging out on that branch straining to see Jesus, until one day, the branch collapsed.

Life had gone from charmed to inexplicable. Circumstances had pushed my faith in God to a breaking point where I no longer felt the surety of Him under my feet. Life felt random and I felt hurt and disappointed with God. It was during this season of complete disorientation where God began to teach me how to hear His still, small voice. No longer able to pray and having lost my way spiritually, God began to sneak up on me from behind with tender words of love. I remember, for example, being on a walk one day during this dry season, and becoming aware of a sweet fragrance that seemed to enfold me. It was accompanied by a lovely breeze and before I knew it, I felt a hug from God! These gestures of love would catch me so off-guard that they’d make it into my heart before I could put up any defense against them, and once in, began their work of healing.

My prior concept of the sound of God’s voice included thunder-like encounters where the “boom” of His voice was loud and clear. I supposed that God’s voice might even be audible or at least, obvious. Many Christians, when speaking of hearing God, recount stories of Him telling them this or that in rather clear, definitive terms. My experiences of hearing God were expanding but remained more ordinary and required an openness to “count” impressions and notice when my heart seemed drawn by God to His goodness whether through a song, a person, in nature or a passage of Scripture.

In the years to follow, I began to appreciate how God speaks through ordinary things, like a smile, a Gerber daisy, a rainbow, through beauty, stars, a kindness or even dark chocolate! I had narrowed the sound of His voice to only include the extraordinary, but God started opening my eyes and ears to His divine voice that sings throughout the day and night. God was awakening a kind of “hearing” that helped me feel, smell, taste and see His voice! And, I began to “count” all of it as His voice of love around me.

I believe that God is always speaking and longs to have us hear His voice of Love. My sincere hope is that this blog will invite the reader to his/her own discoveries of hearing God. One of the sweetest places of encountering God, of course, is in His Word and learning to “hear” Him speak in and through the passages of Scripture is a wonder, a joy, and a life-changing encounter!

The format of this blog will normally be a personal reflection on a passage of Scripture and a few questions to help guide the reader into places of pausing, noticing God, and responding to the Word. I don’t know if this will mean anything to anyone, but I pray God uses this blog to help others tune into His magnificent voice of love.