God actually wants to talk with us, and we can do things to help us hear him better. The good news? It's not complicated, and it doesn't take that long. Win-win!

Below is a five-minute guide that I’ve used to start hearing from the God of the Bible. I think it could work for you, too.

Many people feel like they need to reach an elite status of sainthood, or unlock a vault of charismatic gifts, to be able to hear from God. Not true! Anyone can hear from God. It’s not dependent on how long you have been following Jesus, how holy you’ve been, or how much caffeine you’ve consumed. God is always willing to talk to us, whether we’re listening or not.

In the spirit of not burying the instructions at the bottom of the article like that banana bread recipe you’ve googled, I’m going to leave the instructions right here and then explain each step.

1. Find A Quiet Space

2. Pray for God to Speak

3. Write Everything You Hear

4. Test What You Hear

5. Do This Every Day for a Week

Take a screenshot or write these down in your journal. This is your game plan to start building muscle in the art of hearing from God. Grab some tools to help you: A pen or pencil, some paper or a journal, and a Bible.

Why Five Minutes?

I’ve been hearing from God regularly for over a decade, to the point now where it feels like we’re chatting all through the day… and, if we met, you wouldn’t think I was weird. I’m a normal guy who loves action movies, his three girls at home, and is overly optimistic that the Cincinnati Bengals will actually be good this year. I don’t have spiritual superpowers, and I don’t really like Kool-Aid (that’s a cult joke, chill).

Learning to hear from God regularly is a muscle that’s grown through prayer, practice, and lots of learning. The five-steps outlined above is my daily driver, a tried and true method that I use when I'm seeking clarity, need a reset, or find myself in a dry season.

Why five minutes? After years of working on the discipline of listening to God, I had an “aha” moment. I used to believe that to hear from God, I needed to take a day off, or have a block off a large chunk of time at night and go full monk mode for hours. I thought I needed a perfectly quiet place, in a room at the perfect temp of 71 degrees, having prayed for an hour and a half straight, waiting for the divine dove to come down and whisper what God had for me into my ear.

But then I realized, the times God spoke most clearly to me didn’t happen after I sat in silence for hours waiting for God’s divine soliloquy of wisdom. More often than not, God started talking to me as soon as I created space and invited him in. After about five minutes, he’d said everything he needed to say.

I made it a goal to spend five minutes listening to God each day. After a few weeks, my connection with Him grew and His voice became more familiar.

Step 1: Find A Quiet Space

This is just like when you're on a phone call and try to find a quietish space to hear the other person. Whatever space I’m praying in is never dead silent (I have littles at home), and it’s probably a mess too. God isn’t looking for you to be perfectly ready; he’s just waiting for you to make space.

Find a time of day and place where you can be mostly distraction-free. For me, it’s either early in the morning before everyone wakes up or at night when everyone has gone to bed. These are the moments when I’m not chasing kids, answering emails, or distracted by my laundry list of to-dos. I sit in one of my favorite spots in my house, crack open my journal, and take a deep breath.

Turn your phone on airplane mode. Don’t listen to music. Take a deep breath (or seven) and reflect on what the Psalmist said, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Step 2: Pray For God To Speak

God goes where he’s wanted. Next, it’s time to invite him to your space. He loves you and he wants to spend time with you.

The first thing to do is acknowledge who God is. This gets our minds, hearts, and souls in tune with who we are speaking with. Just like you would acknowledge a doctor, a judge, or a captain. You need to address who’s in charge in the room.

This practice comes from the Shema prayer: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Shema in Hebrew means “to hear.” This prayer was given to the ancient Israelites at the time when they had just been rescued by God from slavery in Egypt. After being surrounded by the different gods in Egypt for years, God was establishing a new, special relationship with them; he was teaching them who he was and what he cared about. The Creator of the entire universe was claiming the Israelites as his own, and he desired their love and connection, too. The Shema prayer has been used for generations for people to acknowledge their love for God, and to signal to God (and themselves) that they are here to listen and act on whatever God says.

It’s time to invite God in to speak. Keep it simple and short. Something like this. “Here I am, Lord, I’m listening."

If you find yourself longing to hear from God about a specific problem, you could ask him things like, "What should I do about my job offer?" or "How should I handle that conflict with my friend?" Again, keep it simple and wait for Him to respond.

Step 3: Write Everything You Hear

Now, you do what you said. You listen, and you write everything (and I do mean everything) down.

When I say “hear,” it’s not about hearing a completely distinct voice. Write down whatever words, phrases, and sentences you feel. It also doesn’t have to be words. Any images or colors, maybe a song pops up in your mind, it could be a memory of a smell or taste. Anything and everything is fair game at this point in the journey. Write it all down and don’t try to edit it to make it seem neat or Godly.

God has a habit of speaking to us in mysterious ways, so don’t throw anything away; you might be surprised what it can reveal.

Step 4: Test What You Heard

When you're done with your holy download, it’s time to go down the list of the things you heard. It could be one thing, it could be over ten things, but it’s important to go through and test each one to see what is from God and what is not. There is an active spiritual world dancing around us and is, at times, trying to deceive us. It’s important to always be testing what you hear by running it through a spiritual filter.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” 1 John 4:1-3

Testing is making sure what you hear reflects what’s in the Bible. Seek and ask, “Is this something Jesus would say?”

God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Always base what you hear on the character and identity of God in Scripture. Not what your pastor, friends, or an Instagram influencer has said, but what the Bible has said. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar for this portion (or any portion, really). We live in a time where you can search any keyword or question on Google and add the word “Bible” at the end, testing if what you heard is found in Scripture. Try to read in context, so you understand what the author is saying. A lot of times, this looks like reading the chapter or verses surrounding the one you’re focusing on.

Sometimes it might not be obvious if what you heard or felt was God speaking to you. Keep those notes handy and, as the days go by, keep searching through Scripture. Ask God to give clarity if what you heard is from him, or to take it away if it’s not important.

If you are trying to increase your ability to hear from God, the Bible will be your most important tool. The more you read the Bible, the more you understand God's voice—whether it's through the prophets in the Old Testament or the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. Scripture is where we find exactly what God said; we read to learn to hear and recognize his voice, not to gain more Bible trivia knowledge.

Sometimes I hear God most clearly when reading the Bible. Even without specifically asking Him to speak, he shows up. Scripture is a tried and true avenue to connecting with God that shouldn't be discounted.

Step 5: Do This Every Day for A Week

If you want to hear from God regularly and clearly, what you need most are reps. Just like any physical muscle, you’ve got to flex and strengthen your spiritual muscle to get over the soreness and start seeing improvement.

__As you do this every day, you’ll start building momentum in hearing from God, and you’ll begin to make it personal and your own. __

What I’ve laid out here is the bare bones of my practice in learning to hear from God. It has grown and developed over time, to the point that I don’t need a quiet space most of the time to hear. God and I have developed some specific personal language together that makes this time uniquely ours.

When you do this every day and have a written account, patterns will emerge. Things that God said that didn't make sense initially have come into focus as I notice repeated themes, words, or ideas. On top of that, when you go back and reflect on old notes, you might see that God has delivered on a promise that you forgot about. That can only strengthen and deepen your listening relationship with him. When it happens to me, I feel seen and heard in a special way, almost like an inside joke between God and me. He’s cool like that.

Most important: don’t give up. Maybe for the first six days, you might not hear anything, but on the seventh, you’ll get your first word from God. Consistency and an open heart make all the difference in the world when it comes to listening.

Conclusion:

For me, using this five-step method to hear from God isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a lifeline, a foundational spiritual practice that is creating real and lasting change in my life.

Here’s one example of how it works in real-time: Recently, I’ve noticed anger bubbling inside me. It’s caused me to be short-tempered and suspicious of everyone. A few days ago, I had a couple of minutes before I left for work, so I sat down and asked God, “Why am I so angry all the time?” I wrote down everything I heard in my notes app and saw a theme in what I heard. God showed me I was holding onto some bitterness from a previous job that I hadn’t fully forgiven. Now I’m working through that bitterness, and my anger is starting to go away.

Even doing this, I’ve gone through months where I felt like I didn't hear from Him. Recently, hearing from God felt like he had his hand over his mouth, muffling every word. It was frustrating and isolating. I pleaded to God to be clearer and then realized I was the one actually getting in the way. I was so desperate for God to affirm what I was praying for that it became nearly impossible to hear his voice. It was after I let go and said, “Not my will but yours, God. What do you want to say to me?” that his voice became clear. Then I knew what to do…although I didn’t want to do it. That’s the truth of hearing from God, though. He’s not going to affirm everything you want. More than anything, in my experience, I‘ve found he loves you—and because he loves you, he challenges you to grow.

If you want to hear from God, you don’t need a magic formula or monk’s robes. All you need is five minutes, and a heart willing to ask and then listen.

You can do this.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for being a good King, Father, and friend. I ask that you bless everyone who reads this article. Help them to desire to hear your voice that’s full of love and peace, and it would be clear that they’ve heard it. Give them strength as they step out in faith. I ask that this practice of listening to you wouldn’t feel like a chore, but would instead be the highlight of their day. Amen.

---

Disclaimer: This article is 100% human-generated.

Reflections to share? Got an idea for an article? Email us at articles@crossroads.net

At Crossroads, we major on the majors and minor on the minors. We welcome a diverse community of people who all agree that Jesus is Lord and Savior, even if they view minor theological and faith topics in different ways based on their unique experiences. Our various authors embody that principle, and we approach you, our reader, in the same fashion. You don't have to agree with every detail of any article you see here to be part of this community or pursue faith. Chances are even our whole staff doesn't even agree with every detail of what you just read. We are okay with that tension. And we think God is okay with that, too. The foundation of everything we do is a conviction that the Bible is true and that accepting Jesus is who he said he is leads to a healthy life of purpose and adventure—and eternal life with God.