17
The Art of Listening

My mom heard God’s voice for the first time when she was eighteen years old and stoned out of her mind. She lived in the small town of Ellisville, Mississippi, and after a big fight with her dad she rolled a joint, had a few drags, got in the car, and drove to the next town over. My mom had been a sex-crazed pothead since junior high.

She knew little about Jesus and even less about herself.

She had no idea she was loved by God or created with a purpose. The only thing she knew was that she was good at public speaking. She knew because her government teacher told her so during her senior year of high school. So Mom entered a speech competition, and less than a year later she had won so many scholarships at speech competitions that she was able to go to the local junior college. It was during her first semester of junior college, living at home with her parents and little sister, that Mom got in a huge fight with Grandpa and left the house, hoping to get lost.

She made her way to Laurel, Mississippi, the next town over. She saw the lights on in the football stadium and went in to watch the game and get lost in the crowd. Instead of a football game, there was a stage in the middle of the field. On the stage was a man asking people to put money in the Kentucky Fried Chicken tubs as they were passed down the aisles. Mom watched in amazement as the charismatic man asked for money and people willingly dumped all that they had into the buckets. She stayed to take notes. Anybody who could speak so persuasively that people would just hand over money must be the best of the best.

The man was James Robison, an avid evangelist who preached God’s name in revival-like settings all over the country in the ’70s and ’80s.

That night, the story goes, Mr. Robison said, “If you are here tonight, it’s not an accident. God loves you and wants you to know He has GOOD plans for your life.”

My mom vividly remembers thinking, If there is a God, He doesn’t want anything to do with me. There’s no way He could love me.

To which she heard a voice in the deepest parts of her soul respond, I came here for you, Debbie. I sent him here for YOU. I love you and have good plans for your life.

Mom assumed she was hallucinating, a trippy side effect of some powerful marijuana. But she heard the voice again.

I am talking to you, Debbie. I sent him here for you.

She remembers Mr. Robison saying, “If God has just spoken to you, I came here for you. Come down front and give your life to Jesus!”

She still doesn’t quite understand it, but in that moment, she walked the stairs of the old stadium and went down to the center of the field. The tall, skinny, gorgeous nineteen-year-old from a nonreligious family, strung out on marijuana and beer, went down the aisle to accept Jesus because the man on stage echoed what the voice deep inside of her soul was saying.

I came here for you.

That was the first time my mom heard God’s voice. And from that moment on, she heard God’s voice a lot.

That night she went home and read the pamphlets that the man had given her. They said she needed to get a Bible and she needed to be baptized. She didn’t know how to do either, but the following Monday she heard some guys on campus talking about going to a Bible study, so she secretly followed them all the way to the house where people went to have Bible studies. It was a little place on the campus of Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Mississippi, called the Baptist Student Union. She walked in, asked for the person in charge, and told the man, Brother John Sumner, that she had gone to the football stadium and heard a voice in her head and became a Christian and needed to be baptized right away.

The man chuckled a bit and invited my mom to pull up a chair. For the next year he taught her how to read the Bible. He taught her the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how to pray, and yes, he was waiting side stage on the Sunday morning she was finally baptized. Brother John was a spiritual guide for my mom and taught her much. Most importantly, he taught her that God spoke to His children. That God’s voice, through the Holy Spirit, was discernible. Brother John taught my mom that if she would inhabit the stillness and listen, she would hear God speak often. And she did.

Not only did Brother John marry my parents, he flew out to Texas and preached on the night my mom was ordained. Now she has a doctorate in spiritual formation and has led thousands of people down the same road of learning to hear God’s voice. I can still find her most mornings with a cup of coffee, eyes closed, listening for God’s voice in the backyard. My life is different because of a hippie who heard God speak to her and years later insisted that her daughters listen for His voice too.

Hiking trips? Mom asked us to walk quietly and listen. Time-out in our bedrooms? Listen for God’s voice. Fights with friends? Hard decisions? Temptation? Boredom? Loneliness? Purpose? Listen for God’s voice. Preferably in the backyard. Because we got the sense from Mom that God talked a lot more if there were squirrels and birds and a few plants around. Growing up, my sisters and I spent a lot of time listening for God’s voice. Though my mom’s childhood was void of spiritual meaning, ours certainly would not be.

From the earliest age I knew two things. There is a God. And He likes to talk a lot, preferably with everyday, ordinary people. So I should shut up and be listening, looking, and expecting to see Him at work.

In her breathtaking book on living a wonderstruck life, author Margaret Feinberg says, “Many of us say we want to experience God, but we don’t look for his majesty. We travel life’s paths with our heads down, focused on the next step with our careers or families or retirement plans. But we don’t really expect God to show up with divine wonder.”1

In my lostness it became clear to me that while I believed in God, I had lost my daily desire to listen for God’s voice. His divine wonder on display was sorely missing in my life and it wasn’t because God wasn’t showing up for the job. Walking through life with my head down, I had become like the grown-ups in The Polar Express and I could no longer hear the ring of the sleigh bell. My lack of connectedness to Christ became apparent when I found myself straining to hear His voice and coming up short. If God touched my face would I know Him? Looked into my eyes could I behold Him? What did I know of Holy anymore? It had been so long since my ears strained, my heart pleaded, and my whole being desperately waited in holy expectation for God to speak, move, and guide.

When we forget that God speaks, we begin to lose the ability to hear His still small voice, which more often than not shows up like a whisper and not the roar of a hurricane. The less dependent I am on God, the less likely I am to really listen for the sacred echoes of God’s voice. And then, when I most need those echoes—that holy guidance—I am surprised by the silence. Only, it isn’t actually silent. My ears are just jammed, humming with noise, clutter, and chaos.

“To believe that God can reach us and bless us in the ordinary junctures of daily life,” Richard Foster says, “is the stuff of prayer.”2 In my lostness I found myself stopping and standing still for the first time in a long time. How could I expect to know if God was unfurling a map for my unknown future if I had lost the basic ability to experience Him in the ordinary junctures of life? I had to pause and recalibrate my hearing. Relearning the art of listening to God began to happen in the humbling season of lostness. With nowhere to go and nothing yet to do, I spent many mornings on the floor of my closet, a place I have gone since childhood to get away from the noise, listening for God’s voice. Reengaging in the conversation. Remembering what my mom told me time and time again: “Be QUIET, Jenny!”

Just listen. God will speak. He always does.