Are You Actually Listening?
There is a difference between hearing and listening. Most of us know this from experience. You can be in the same room as someone, catch every word they say, and still walk away having missed the entire point. Hearing is passive. Listening requires something of you.
This distinction matters enormously when it comes to our relationship with God. Because the honest truth is that most of us who feel like God has gone silent are not dealing with a God who stopped speaking. We are dealing with people who stopped listening.

The Man Who Should Have Heard It First
In 1 Samuel 3, there is a story that cuts right to the heart of this problem. The high priest of Israel, a man named Eli, was the spiritual leader of God's people. If anyone had a reason to be tuned in to the voice of God, it was him. And yet when God showed up in the middle of the night, Eli slept right through it.

The passage introduces Eli in a telling way. It does not mention his accomplishments or his authority. It mentions his condition. His eyesight was growing dim. And the surrounding verses make clear this was not only a physical reality. The word of the Lord was rare in those days. The lamp in the temple, meant to represent God's presence, was beginning to flicker. Things were not well in Israel, and a significant part of the reason was that the man responsible for leading the people closer to God had drifted far from him himself.

Meanwhile, God chose to speak to a twelve-year-old boy named Samuel. Samuel did not have the training or the title. He did not have the experience or the credentials. What he had was availability. And when Eli finally recognized what was happening, he gave Samuel a piece of instruction that still stands thousands of years later. He told him to go lie down and say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears."

That posture, simple as it sounds, is the foundation of hearing from God. And it breaks down into four practical moves that any one of us can make.

Four Moves That Make Room for God
Show up. Before anything else happens in this story, Samuel puts himself in a position to be reached. He is not on a couch somewhere distracted. He is present. He is still. That is the whole move. It is not complicated. It does not require a theology degree. It just requires a decision. Availability is not a mood you wait for. It is a choice you make. Whether that looks like waking up ten minutes earlier, putting your phone in another room at night, or actually scheduling time on your calendar to be still before God, the question is whether you are willing to make that choice.

Shut up. This one is harder for most of us to hear, but it needs to be said. The way most of us talk to God is essentially a monologue with our eyes closed. We bring our lists, our updates, our plans, and our problems. We talk for twenty minutes and then we hang up and call it prayer. But prayer is a two-way conversation. James 1:19 describes a posture of being quick to listen and slow to speak, and that principle applies directly to how we approach God. If you are always talking and never listening, you are not really praying. You are performing. You are pretending to care what God has to say while never actually making room to hear it.

Open up. When Samuel responds to God, he does not say, "Speak, Lord, about the things I have selected for your review." He says, "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears." He hands over the key to the whole house. And that is exactly what most of us resist doing. We let God into the front door but quickly close the rooms we do not want him walking into. The finances. The phone. The grudge we have been holding. The relationship we know is not right. We want God to speak, just not about those things. But real openness means inviting God into every room, not just the ones we have already tidied up. David captured this posture in Psalm 139 when he asked God to search his heart completely. That kind of prayer requires genuine vulnerability.

Give up. This is where it gets costly. Samuel did not tell God he would weigh his options after hearing what was required. He submitted before he even knew what the assignment would be. And when the assignment came, it was not easy. As a twelve-year-old boy, he was asked to deliver a hard word of judgment to the very man who had mentored him. He did it anyway. That is what submission looks like. It is choosing God's path over your preferences, his will over your own comfort. Jesus modeled this in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood and praying that the cup might pass from him, but ultimately surrendering with the words, "Not my will, but yours be done." Following Jesus has always cost something. Our prayers should reflect that we understand this.

The Harder Question
Here is what makes this story uncomfortable. Eli was not a wicked man trying to avoid God. He was a busy, tired, distracted man who had gradually drifted. He was in God's house. He was doing God's work. And he still missed it.
That is not a story about someone far from God. That is a story about someone who looks a lot like many of us. We are not avoiding God on purpose. We are just consumed with too many other things. And if we are not careful, God can be calling our name over and over again while we sleep right through it.

The question this story leaves us with is not whether God is still speaking. He is. The question is what it is going to take to get our attention. The hope is that we do not wait until something breaks before we finally get quiet enough to hear him.

Because when we do get quiet, when we actually show up and shut up and open up and give up, we find that God has not gone anywhere. He has been there the whole time, calling our name, waiting for us to say, "Speak, Lord. Your servant hears."

Are You Listening? — A 5-Day Bible Reading Plan and Devotional Guide
Day 1: Show Up Before God
Reading: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 — The account of God calling Samuel by name while he slept in the temple, and Samuel's willingness to position himself to receive what God had for him.
Devotional: Hearing from God rarely happens by accident. It requires intention. Samuel did not stumble into an encounter with the living God — he was present, positioned, and available. Before God ever spoke, Samuel was already in the right place. Many of us complain that God feels distant, yet we have never carved out a single quiet moment to be still before Him. Availability is not a feeling you wait for. It is a decision you make. Today, ask yourself: have I actually made room for God to reach me, or have I filled every moment with noise and busyness and then wondered why I cannot hear His voice?
Reflection: What is one practical step you can take today to position yourself before God — even if it is only ten minutes of intentional stillness?

Day 2: The Danger of a Distracted Heart
Reading: Revelation 3:14-22 — A letter to a church that had grown lukewarm, neither fully committed nor fully absent, and God's urgent call for them to open the door and let Him in.
Devotional: Eli was not a man who hated God. He was a man who had simply grown dull. His eyes had dimmed, the lamp in the temple was flickering, and the word of the Lord had grown rare — not because God had gone silent, but because Eli had slowly stopped making room. Distraction is rarely dramatic. It creeps in gradually through busyness, comfort, and compromise. God's message to the lukewarm church in Revelation 3:20 is a picture of Him standing at a closed door, knocking. He is still speaking. The question is whether the noise of your life has drowned Him out entirely.
Reflection: Are there areas of your life where you have slowly grown dull to God's voice? What has been crowding out His presence?

Day 3: The Discipline of Silence
Reading: James 1:19-25 — A call to be quick to listen and slow to speak, paired with the warning that hearing the word without acting on it is self-deception.
Devotional: Most of what we call prayer is a monologue. We bring our lists, our plans, and our problems to God, and then we close with amen before He has had a chance to respond. James 1:19 reminds us that genuine listening requires restraint — restraint of the tongue and restraint of our own agendas. True prayer is a conversation, not a presentation. When we learn to go quiet before God, we create the space for Him to speak into the things we would never have thought to bring up ourselves. Silence before God is not empty. It is where some of the most important things get said.
Reflection: The next time you pray, try spending the first few minutes in complete silence before speaking. What comes to the surface when you stop filling the space?

Day 4: Open Every Room
Reading: Psalm 139:23-24 — A prayer inviting God to search the heart completely, to examine every hidden corner, and to lead the one praying in the way that is everlasting.
Devotional: Samuel's prayer — "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears" — was not a guarded invitation. It was a wide-open surrender. He handed God the key to every room. Many of us let God into the front door of our lives but quietly shut the rooms we do not want Him examining — our finances, our relationships, our habits, our hidden resentments. We want God to bless the rooms we have decorated for Him while we guard the ones we are not ready to renovate. But David's prayer in Psalm 139:23-24 models something different: a complete openness to whatever God might find. Wholehearted listening requires a wholehearted surrender.
Reflection: Is there a room in your life that you have been keeping closed to God? What would it look like to hand Him the key to that space today?

Day 5: Hearing Means Obeying
Reading: Luke 22:39-44 — Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying in agony, surrendering His own will to the will of the Father even in the face of the cross.
Devotional: In Scripture, listening and obeying are not two separate things. They are the same thing. Samuel did not simply hear God's word and file it away — he acted on it, even when it was difficult, even at twelve years old. Jesus modeled the same surrender in Gethsemane, praying that the Father's will would prevail over His own. Hearing from God is never just about gathering information. It always leads somewhere. It always costs something. The real test of whether you have truly listened is not what you felt in the moment of stillness — it is what you did when you walked out the door. What is God asking you to obey?
Reflection: Think back to the last time you sensed God speaking to you. Did you obey what you heard? If not, what is still standing in the way?

When God Interrupts Your Certainty
There is something deeply uncomfortable about being wrong when you were absolutely sure you were right. Not slightly off, not missing a detail here or there, but fundamentally, completely wrong about something you staked your identity on. Most of us have been there in some form. And if we are honest, the moment we realized it was not pleasant.

Now imagine being Saul of Tarsus.

Saul was not just confident. He was the kind of confident that comes with credentials, education, influence, and religious authority. He was the best of the best in his world, a Pharisee trained at the highest level, respected by his peers, and absolutely convinced that hunting down followers of Jesus was not only justified but righteous. He was not doing this in secret. He was doing it with letters from the high priest, traveling from city to city, binding men and women and bringing them to face consequences for their faith. He was certain he was on the right side of history.
Until he was not.

Acts 9 describes the moment everything changed for Saul. On the road to Damascus, a light from heaven suddenly surrounded him, and he fell to the ground. A voice spoke directly to him, asking why he was persecuting the one speaking. When Saul asked who it was, the answer stopped him cold. It was Jesus, the very one he had been working so hard to oppose. In an instant, every certainty Saul had built his life around was shattered.
This is the first thing this story teaches us: God's voice disrupts your direction.
And here is what makes that so confronting. Conviction is not proof that you are right. Saul was deeply convicted. He was passionate, committed, and zealous. He was also completely wrong. Certainty and correctness are not the same thing. In a culture where the loudest voice often gets treated as the truest one, that is a word worth sitting with. Self-righteousness rarely announces itself. It tends to dress up in spiritual language, calling itself discernment or honesty or faithfulness. Saul thought he was being faithful. He was not.
The question this raises for each of us is simple and uncomfortable: are we willing to be interrupted?

The story does not end with Saul on the road. A second character enters, and his part of the story is just as challenging. Ananias was a follower of Jesus living in Damascus, the very city Saul had traveled to in order to cause harm. God spoke to Ananias in a vision, giving him a specific instruction: go find Saul, lay hands on him, and restore his sight.
Put yourself in Ananias's position for a moment. This man had every reason to refuse. Saul was responsible for the deaths of people Ananias likely knew. He was a threat, an enemy, someone who stood against everything Ananias believed. And yet the instruction from God was not to avoid him. It was to go to him, serve him, and help restore him.

God's voice costs you control.
This is the tension at the heart of genuinely hearing from God. We say we want to hear from him. We pray for direction, for clarity, for a word. But the God of Scripture almost always calls people out of comfort and into something that requires surrender. The version of God that only affirms our preferences, agrees with our plans, and keeps us safely in our comfort zone is not the God of the Bible. That is a version we have constructed.

Ananias obeyed. He went. And what happened next changed the trajectory of history.
There is an image from Paul's own retelling of his conversion that captures what resistance to God actually looks like. He describes his former life as kicking against the goads, a reference to the long spear farmers used to guide oxen. When an ox kicked back against the goad, it did not hurt the farmer. It drove the spear deeper into the ox's own side. The only one wounded by the resistance was the one doing the resisting.

That image is painfully relatable. The job you know you should have left. The relationship that keeps costing you more than it gives. The conversation God has been prompting you to have, the apology, the confession, the hard truth, that you keep telling yourself is not the right time. Meanwhile, life keeps moving, and the only one staying stuck is you.
God does not change his direction because we are uncomfortable with it. He does not revise the answer because we shake the proverbial magic eight ball and hope for something different. The longer we resist, the longer we stay in the pain of our own resistance.

But here is where the story turns toward hope.

Saul, blinded and humbled, spent three days in prayer before Ananias arrived. And when he did, something remarkable happened. Saul's sight was restored, and almost immediately, he began proclaiming the very message he had spent his life trying to destroy. The people who heard him were stunned. This was the man who had made it his mission to silence the name of Jesus, and now he could not stop speaking it.
God's voice sends you for a lifetime.

Paul eventually came to understand that his past, the very thing that could have disqualified him, was part of the story God would use. He was sent to the Gentiles, people who would not hold his history against him, people who needed to hear that the gospel crosses every boundary of background and upbringing and failure.

And that is the same truth available to anyone reading this today.
Your past does not disqualify you. The things you have done, the ways you have been wrong, the certainties you have clung to that turned out to be false, none of it puts you beyond the reach of a God who stopped Saul on a road and called him by name.
The question is not whether God is speaking. He is. The question is whether we are listening. And if we have heard him, whether we are willing to go.

5-Day Bible Reading Plan and Devotional Guide
Based on the Sermon: "When God Interrupts"
Day 1: When God Interrupts Your Certainty
Reading: Acts 9:1-9
Devotional: Saul was not a passive sinner. He was convinced, educated, and moving with purpose in the wrong direction. His certainty did not make him right. It made him dangerous. Yet God did not wait for Saul to figure it out on his own. He stepped directly onto the road and interrupted everything. This is the nature of a God who pursues. You may be moving confidently in a direction that God never ordained. Today, pause long enough to ask whether your certainty is rooted in Scripture or simply in your own strong will. Conviction is not the same as correctness.
Reflection Question: In what area of your life have you mistaken strong personal conviction for the voice of God?
Practical Application: Spend five minutes in silence today before making any significant decision. Ask God to reveal whether your direction aligns with His Word.

Day 2: The Cost of Actually Hearing God
Reading: Acts 9:10-16
Devotional: Ananias heard God clearly. The problem was not the hearing. The problem was the instruction. Go find the man who has been killing your people. Lay hands on him. Restore him. Nothing about that command was comfortable or safe. This is the pattern of God's voice throughout Scripture. It almost always leads you away from comfort and toward something that requires genuine faith. We say we want to hear from God, but we often want a God who simply agrees with us. The real God calls us out of ourselves and into something far greater than our own preferences and plans.
Reflection Question: Is there a clear instruction from God that you have been avoiding because it costs you comfort or control?
Practical Application: Write down one thing you sense God has been asking you to do. Take one concrete step toward obedience today, even if it is small.

Day 3: Kicking Against the Goads
Reading: Acts 26:12-18
Devotional: Paul describes his pre-conversion life with a striking image. He was kicking against the goads, fighting against the very direction God was pressing him toward. The goad was a farming tool used to move livestock forward. When the animal kicked back, it did not hurt the farmer. It only drove the point deeper into the animal's own side. This is a picture of what resistance to God costs us. The fight is real, but the only one absorbing the damage is the one doing the kicking. God's plan does not change because we refuse to move. Only our own lives suffer the delay.
Reflection Question: Where in your life are you resisting God's direction and absorbing the pain of that resistance?
Practical Application: Identify one area where you have been fighting God's leading. Surrender it specifically in prayer today and ask for the grace to stop kicking.

Day 4: Obedience That Changes History
Reading: Acts 9:17-22
Devotional: Two men said yes. Saul surrendered his pride and his certainty. Ananias surrendered his safety and his right to withhold grace from someone who had not earned it. Neither yes was easy. Both were costly. And the ripple effect of those two acts of obedience shaped the entire trajectory of the early church and the spread of the gospel to the Gentile world. Your obedience is never just about you. There are people on the other side of your yes who will never hear the gospel if you stay silent. The question is not whether God has a plan. The question is whether you will participate in it.
Reflection Question: Who in your life might be waiting on the other side of your obedience?
Practical Application: Think of one person in your sphere of influence who does not know Jesus. Pray for them by name today and ask God for an opportunity to share your story with them this week.

Day 5: Your Story Is Enough
Reading: Romans 1:14-17
Devotional: Paul understood that the gospel carried its own power. He did not need to be impressive. He needed to be faithful. The same is true for you. You do not need a theology degree, a polished testimony, or answers to every hard question. You need your story. You need to be able to tell someone what Jesus has done in your life and then trust the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do. The gospel is for the Jew and the Gentile, for the religious and the irreligious, for the person who has it together and the one who clearly does not. Go and tell someone.
Reflection Question: What specific part of your story with Jesus could you share with someone this week that might open a door for the gospel?
Practical Application: Practice telling your story in three minutes or less. Focus on what your life looked like before Jesus, how you came to faith, and what has changed. Share it with someone before the week is over.

Holy Ground Is Closer Than You Think
Most of us have a mental image of what it looks like to hear from God. Maybe it is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, wind swirling around you, the sheer scale of creation making you feel small in the best possible way. Maybe it is a dimly lit room during an intense worship night, the music swelling, and the sense that you could almost reach out and touch the presence of God. Maybe it is a hospital room, a miracle in your arms, tears on your face, and the overwhelming certainty that God is near.
Now think about last Thursday night. Dishes piled in the sink. Leftovers sitting on the counter. Kids running wild through the living room. The fluorescent hum of ordinary life.
Not exactly what comes to mind when we think about encountering God, is it?
Here is the truth that most of us spend our whole lives missing: God does not only show up on the mountaintop. He meets us in the middle of the mundane. And until we understand that, we will spend our entire lives waiting for the next spiritual high instead of recognizing the holy ground we are already standing on.

The Burning Bush Nobody Noticed
In Exodus 3, Moses is not exactly at a spiritual peak. He is 80 years old, working a job that is not even his, tending sheep that belong to his father-in-law in the middle of the wilderness. His big dreams of delivering his people died decades ago when he became a fugitive. This is not a man on a mountaintop. This is a man in a rut, walking the same dirt he has probably walked for years.
And that is exactly where God shows up.
A bush catches fire. Not a temple. Not a vision in the night sky. A bush, in the middle of an ordinary workday. What is remarkable about what happens next is not just that the bush burned without being consumed. It is that Moses stopped to look. He turned aside. And Exodus 3:4 tells us that it was only after Moses turned aside that God called out to him.
The bush was burning either way. God was present either way. But Moses had to stop and notice before the conversation began.
This raises a question worth sitting with: How many burning bushes have we walked past this week because we were too busy, too distracted, or too convinced that God only speaks in dramatic moments?

Holiness Is Not a Location
When God tells Moses to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground, it is a stunning moment. It is actually the first time in all of Scripture that a specific place is called holy. But here is what we cannot miss: the ground was not holy because of anything special about that particular patch of dirt in the wilderness. It was holy because of who was present there.
Holiness is not a location. It is a presence.
For those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ, that changes everything. Because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, God does not just visit the ground anymore. He moves in. Colossians 1 states plainly that Christ is in you. First Corinthians 6 reminds us that the body of a believer is a temple of the Holy Spirit. That means wherever you go, the presence of God goes with you.
The carpool line is holy ground. The job site is holy ground. The hospital waiting room, the classroom, the cubicle, the kitchen sink on a Thursday night with dirty dishes stacked high and children underfoot. All of it is holy ground when you stand there with Christ.
We do not have to wait to get to God. He has already met us where we are.

The Sandals We Are Still Wearing
God does not stop at simply revealing his presence to Moses. He tells Moses to take off his sandals. This was an act of reverence, but it was also something more. In the ancient world, your sandals represented your claim. Where your feet walked, you had rights. Taking off your sandals meant surrendering that claim to someone else.
This imagery shows up again in the book of Ruth, where a transaction between two men is sealed by one of them removing his sandal and handing it over. In that simple gesture, he was saying: my claim is no longer mine. I am surrendering it. And when he did, Boaz, the redeemer, stepped in. He redeemed Ruth, married her, and their lineage eventually led to King David, and ultimately to Jesus himself, the Redeemer of all.
When we lay down our claim, the Redeemer steps in.
Moses taking off his sandals was not just a sign of respect. It was surrender. Surrender of his comfort, his control, his plans, his sense of how his life was supposed to go. And it was only after that surrender that God revealed the full scope of what he was about to do.
God had seen the suffering of his people. He had heard their cries. He knew their pain. And he had come down to deliver them. But his rescue plan had Moses' name written on it.
That same God sees your suffering today. Your pain is not invisible to him. He knows, he hears, and he is not indifferent. But here is the other side of that comfort: God may be inviting you into someone else's rescue story. Whose rescue plan has your name written on it?

Are You Listening?
We want God to speak so that we feel better. But more often, God speaks so that he can send us somewhere. Into a hard conversation. Into a relationship that costs us something. Into a calling that requires us to let go of the comfortable, anonymous life we have carefully built.
The question is not whether God is speaking. He is. The question is whether we are willing to turn aside and notice. Whether we are willing to take off our sandals and surrender our claim.
The burning bush is closer than you think. It might be right in front of you today.
Will you stop long enough to see it?

Are You Listening? A 5-Day Bible Reading Plan and Devotional Guide
Day 1: The Ordinary Is Holy Ground
Reading: Exodus 3:1-5
Devotional: Moses was not in a temple or on a stage. He was in the wilderness, doing ordinary work, when God showed up. The ground did not become holy because of its location. It became holy because of God's presence. This is the truth that changes everything for the believer: you carry that same presence with you. The kitchen, the carpool line, the hospital waiting room -- none of these places are too small for God to speak. Stop waiting for the next mountaintop. Turn aside and notice what God is already doing right where you stand.
Reflection Question: What ordinary moment this week have you overlooked as a possible place where God was speaking to you?
Practical Application: Choose one routine task today -- washing dishes, commuting, folding laundry -- and approach it as holy ground. Ask God to speak to you in that moment and remain attentive to what surfaces in your heart.

Day 2: He Sees, He Hears, He Knows
Reading: Exodus 3:7-9
Devotional: Before God gave Moses a mission, He made something clear: He had seen the suffering, heard the cries, and knew the pain of His people. God did not look away. He looked directly at the affliction and moved toward it. If you are in a season of suffering today, this passage is not background noise -- it is a direct word to you. Your pain is not invisible. Your prayers are not bouncing off the ceiling. God sees your situation with precision and compassion, and His heart is already moving toward you with a rescue plan that you may not yet be able to see.
Reflection Question: In what area of your life do you most need to believe that God sees and hears you?
Practical Application: Write down one specific struggle you have been carrying. Beside it, write the words: "God sees this. God hears this. God knows this." Return to that page throughout the day as an act of faith.

Day 3: Surrender Your Sandals
Reading: Ruth 4:1-10
Devotional: In the ancient world, removing a sandal was not a small gesture. It was a formal act of surrender -- a declaration that your claim, your rights, and your plans now belonged to someone else. When God told Moses to remove his sandals, He was not asking for a cultural courtesy. He was asking Moses to lay down control. The same invitation stands before you today. God does not ask for your ability or your confidence. He asks for your surrender. And the remarkable pattern woven through both the story of Moses and the story of Ruth is this: when we lay down our claim, the Redeemer steps in.
Reflection Question: What area of your life are you still trying to control rather than surrender to God?
Practical Application: Identify one specific decision or worry you have been gripping tightly. In prayer, symbolically "hand it over" to God. Speak it aloud and release it intentionally, trusting that the Redeemer will step in where you step back.

Day 4: Drawing Near With Confidence
Reading: Hebrews 4:14-16 and Colossians 1:27
Devotional: Moses could not even lift his face toward God. The holiness of that moment was overwhelming, and Moses knew it. But believers today stand in a different position -- not because God is less holy, but because Christ has made a way. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we can now draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. Colossians 1:27 declares that Christ is in you, the hope of glory. The same God who appeared in the burning bush now dwells within every believer. This is not a reason for casual indifference toward God. It is a reason for deep, grateful, confident worship in every moment of every day.
Reflection Question: Do you approach God with confidence, or do you still feel like you must earn your way into His presence? What does the finished work of Christ mean for how you pray today?
Practical Application: Spend ten minutes in prayer today, beginning not with requests but with the simple acknowledgment that God is present with you right now. Let that reality settle before you bring anything else before Him.

Day 5: Whose Rescue Plan Has Your Name On It?
Reading: Exodus 3:10-12
Devotional: God told Moses plainly: I have come down to rescue them -- now go, because I am sending you. God's rescue plan and Moses' assignment were inseparable. This is still how God works. He sees the suffering. He moves toward it. And He invites His people to be part of the answer. You may be waiting for God to act in someone's life while God is waiting for you to move. The comfort you have been holding onto, the reputation you have been protecting, the plans you have been guarding -- these may be the very sandals God is asking you to remove so that His work can move through you.
Reflection Question: Is there a person, a community, or a need that God has placed repeatedly before you? What has been keeping you from responding?
Practical Application: Take one concrete step this week toward someone who needs to experience God's rescue. Send the message, make the call, show up, or speak the truth you have been holding back. Surrender your comfort and let the Redeemer work through you.