Prayer & Fasting (Part 3): Hearing

TO START

In part three of our Prayer and Fasting series, we discussed what hearing from God looks like, a topic that we seem to rarely talk about for many reasons. This week’s message unpacked how opening ourselves up to seeing God in different ways might also enable us to hear from the God who is actively working and speaking in our lives. 

To start, Zane pointed us to the story of a woman from his first class in college who spoke about a time when she heard from God directly and the reality of the professor then deflating her claim. 

  • When you hear about God talking, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind & experience? How has the way you were raised impacted the way you view God’s talking?

Read 1 Samuel 3:1-9

  • When it comes to hearing from God, what are the major obstacles that prevent you or us from hearing God? How do you know when God is talking when it feels like it is so rare?

  • What role do we have in one another hearing God? How does the relationship between Eli & Samuel influence the way you understand what it looks like to hear from God? 

Read 1 Samuel 3:10-18

In this time with Samuel and in our time, Zane points to the reality that God’s not often silent but what is common is that humanity often mishears God or happens to not be listening to God at all. 

  • What’s a time in your life when you realized after the fact that you either misheard God or weren’t listening to something that God was trying to tell you?

Throughout time, God has spoken in multiple ways: audibly, through creation, through people, through dreams, through written word (Bible) & through experience. 

  • Which way(s) do you feel most ready to hear OR have you mostly heard from God? Which ways are harder for you to open yourself up to hearing God through?

Close 

We have to ask ourselves if we are truly open to hearing and receiving what God might say to us. God doesn’t speak for our senses but for the sake of sending us forward. The voice of God speaks into our lives for us to move in love towards others and so as followers of Christ, we have to prepare ourselves in a way that opens us to receiving the word of God no matter how God reveals God’s word to us. Consider closing your time together by helping prepare yourselves to hear from God…  In silence together, ask your group to answer this question: “What does God speaking to me look like?” (leave 30 seconds or so) 

Close out your time with prayer asking God to open yourselves to seeing God in new ways that might just enable you to hear God in ways that: move us out of our inactivity, that reveal something new about God’s nature, that provide new insights to us about ourselves or God, that addresses what’s happening in us or around us or that helps someone to know the God they have yet to know.

Matt DeLano