Hearing God’s voice may feel elusive for some, but everyone is invited to listen and discern what God is telling them.
Slow down to hear God’s voice
Crockett’s book, Speak, My Soul: Listening to the Divine with Holy Purpose, helps us step away from overcrowded and noisy lives so that we can better hear God’s voice. She encourages readers to move through the book slowly to allow for personal experience and response.
The book focuses on seven pathways we can travel through our own hearts to experience God, including discernment, discipline, abiding, wilderness, identity, community and contemplation. Some pathways are ongoing, while others might be for a season.
Crockett says, “They are not progressive. They are totally intermingled and experienced sometimes all at once, sometimes one at a time, sometimes you're on it, and then you're off it, and then you go back to it.”
Psalms provides the Scriptural foundation for the book. Explains Crockett, “Psalms for me is the primer for ‘soul talk.’ There are so many phrases and examples of the psalmists speaking to their own souls.”
The book, published by Upper Room Books, was crafted for both individual and small group use. It includes reflection questions, as well as resources on how to start a listening group.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges most people have: They think they are not equipped, that they don’t know what they are doing. That’s not true if we are really listening,” encourages Marsha Crockett, author, spiritual director and United Methodist.
Silence takes practice
“One of the main benefits of slowing down and listening is that we’re resting from the doing and the talking,” says Crockett. “We rest from letting others feed our soul from that continuous flow of online content that comes at us, or television, or whatever we’re looking at and hearing. It just inserts itself into our being.
“I think of the pace and the stimulus and the level of input into our minds and hearts as a sort of silent trauma that’s inflicted on the soul, that it’s bombarded continually, unless we choose to practice moments of stillness.
“The more that we can practice the disciplines of solitude and silence in the world, I think the more we discover that there is peace and the compassion and grace of God that we can access more easily.”
Tune into your soul’s voice and desires
“Listening to the inner voice is much more of a posture of ‘come and see,’ or, as Jesus might say, ‘to watch and pray.’ There's a different posture we take with listening to the voice of God,” shares Crockett.
“I often use the prayer from Augustine that says, ‘Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know Thee,’” she says. “If I am the image of God, then yeah, listening to my soul is listening to God. So I don't see a separation necessarily of the inner voice from the voice of God.
“Even in the Psalms, it says that God gives us the desires of our heart. I think it's often interpreted as God giving us whatever we're wishing for, as opposed to God giving you a desire that you're going to hold. This is the desire God has given you, this longing.
“And so paying attention to that desire, then, indeed is listening to God. It's like God praying into us, saying, ‘I want you to be compelled to this. I want you to listen to this, be transformed by this.’ So in that sense, I think, as we listen to our own heart’s desire, it is a form of listening to God, not necessarily the only way, but it certainly leads us there.
Find a listening companion
Spiritual directors can help you discern God’s voice. They are an observer who can help you notice God’s invitations. Crockett shares, “It was a [spiritual] director who helped me to listen to my own heart and soul, and just to trust that inner instinct on my own spiritual journey.”
Connect with one of these gifted guides by searching these directories:
Hearts on Fire, a directory of United Methodist spiritual directors and retreat leaders
Evangelical Spiritual Directors Association, a Christian directory
Spiritual Directors International, a multi-faith, ecumenical directory
“And there is a discernment of, ‘What is God's voice? What are other voices?’ We've got a lot of interference sometimes that we need to work through, but generally I think most people have that sense of, ‘No, this feels like something.’”
We might even respond to an inner pull, doing something because deep down, we simply have to do it.
“I often think of it as something that won't go away,” says Crockett. “It's a longing for something that just stays with you and usually grows if it's God-given.”
Remember your identity as a child of God
Knowing that we are beloved children of God, believing it and holding it close roots us in truth. This also ensures we are motivated by God’s voice instead of fear, guilt or shame.
“If I am the will of God, just the fact that I'm living and breathing makes pretty much whatever choice I make to honor God okay,” shares Crockett. “Wherever I go, I am the will of God, and that equates to God delighting in me. Feeling the delight of God is, I think, another key element.
“Another thing that seems maybe more ordinary, but probably more telling, are the words of Parker Palmer: Let your life speak. The things and the stories we're drawn to, the movies we love to watch, these are all clues about how we're wired, how God put us together, and the ways that we can love God and the world through that.
“Your personality, your experiences, your desires, your longings. That is the way God is asking you to follow this path.”
Laura Buchanan works for UMC.org at United Methodist Communications. Contact her by email.
This story was published on June 16, 2025.
