‍Vince Vitale [00:00:42] Hey guys, welcome to Ask Away. You are listening to Vince and Jo, and we've really been looking forward to this episode. It's a part two. It's following on from our previous episode: Is God Giving us the Silent Treatment, which, at least for us personally, was a real encouragement as we look to deepen our own life of prayer. And basically, the headline from that episode is that God has so much more for us in prayer than we often realize. He's speaking to us both consistently and clearly. And how would that change your prayer life if you really believe that? If you believe that there was no such thing as unanswered prayer, if you believed you could get to know God's voice so well that it could become the clearest voice in your entire life, wouldn't that be amazing? And do you think that is possible? We think it is. And how would that change your relationship with him and how you approach really every part of life? And it's sad that so often we assume the opposite. We assume that we're only going to hear from God once in a while, only if we really grovel and beg him enough times to answer us. 

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[00:01:47] And even when we do hear from him, we assume it's going to be too faint or garbled to really hear it. Or like some sort of puzzle that's impossible to decipher. Like an IQ test. Thankfully, that's not what the Bible says at all. And that's not the experience of so many who have walked closely with Jesus over the centuries. And I just want to say I think that this is such a critical topic. That's why we're doing a part two on this. It's really a battleground because the enemy loves for us to believe that God is stingy and confusing with his communication. It doesn't bother Satan much if we believe in God, so long as he can keep us from a real life giving, life empowering relationship with him. And communication is the foundation of any relationship. So if the enemy can suppress communication between us and God, he can suppress our relationship with him, too. And then what happens is the less we are hearing from God, the more opportunity there is for the enemy to get in our heads and speak condemnation and insecurity and lies. 

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Jo Vitale [00:02:51] And I think this is such a big thing. We see this in human relationships all the time, don't we? When you have a falling out with somebody, and then rather than going straight to them, you hesitate and then you step back. And then the longer you wait to see the person, the more the narrative builds in your head and the worst motives you start ascribing to them. We even rewrite history, all kinds of interpretations are put on things. And then suddenly, as soon as you see them again, they just smile at you. You just look at them, you're like, oh, it's you, my friend. How could I have ever thought that about you? How could I forget all the times we've shared and how good you've been to me and how much you've meant to me? And it totally reframes it. It's like they're no longer demons. They're just your friend again. And I think this lack of communication with God that is such a fertile ground for the devil to sow those seeds of doubt, especially about God's character. 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:40] Yeah. No. That's right. I think you're speaking out of experience because she's been away for four days on a ministry trip. And so she's finally coming back here and looking at me and like I don't like this guy. 

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Jo Vitale [00:03:51] You look better than I thought. Yeah. Okay 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:52] But no it's so true. And the way that this plays out practically when we buy into the lie that God is stingy with his communication, or when we subconsciously adopt that assumption, one thing that happens when this is our mindset is that rather than actually hearing from God and being in conversation with God, we start to settle for just asking ourselves, what would Jesus do? This is a point that I've heard from Richard Blackaby and his father Henry before him said this as well. And now, look, what would Jesus do is a good question. It's a really good question. I asked myself that question regularly. God wants us to use our God given reasoning abilities to figure stuff out, but he also wants us to hear directly from him, and he often wants us to hear him directing us in ways that we could never just figure out on our own very limited, fallible human reasoning. We see this all throughout Scripture. Noah could not have reasoned his way into building an ark. Abraham could not have reasoned his way into ascending Mount Moriah with his son Isaac as the seeming sacrifice. The biblical list of God asking for obedience to things that could only have been discerned by hearing directly from him is countless. 

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Jo Vitale [00:05:08] Yeah. 

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Vince Vitale [00:05:08] We get to hear directly from God. That is our privilege as his children. That is awesome. Directly from the one who created the universe. It's such a gift, and we need to prioritize and learn to absolutely delight in that. I had the privilege of writing my PhD dissertation on some of the research of my supervisors, and so one of the amazing things about that was I never needed to just take my best guess at what they would think of my interpretation of their work. How silly that would have been for me to just speculate and guess when I could ask them directly. But so often that's exactly what we do with God. We guess what God would say, rather than knocking on his door and asking him directly. And that is silly. What would Jesus do is a good question, but it's not a good substitute for actually hearing from Jesus. We don't need to merely ask a hypothetical question about what Jesus would do. We can actually ask Jesus what he is doing and what he wants to do today together with us, because he's not some dead historical figure for us to speculate about. 

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[00:06:12] He's alive. He lives within us. He's closer and more available to us than literally any other person. I really hope that becomes real to you. So we can go directly to the source and ask him and have confidence that he will respond and that his response will be clear. Now, to me personally, that all sounds very exciting, but it's only exciting if we can actually learn to hear God's voice. This needs to become not just something we affirm theoretically or theologically that is possible to hear God's voice. It needs to become our practical day to day lived experience. Regardless of how consistently or clearly God might be speaking, if we can't hear him, if for some reason we've got earplugs in our ears, then our experience of God is still going to be one of silence and speculation. And sadly, that is a lot of people's experience, probably even some of you listening to this podcast. But it doesn't need to be that way. I'm sure of that. And so we need to develop our knowledge of God's voice. 

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Jo Vitale [00:07:14] This is where it gets really interesting because I think we can find this hard. Like if you ask me to train you how to recognize Vince's voice, well, by now you know it because I'll know you've been listening to this podcast. So, yeah, you're well acquainted with the voice of Vince Vitale. And maybe you even have some tips to me of how I could describe it to you. But there are certain things I could tell you about Vince. Like if I tell you he has a New Jersey accent, which gets stronger when he goes home, and much politer when he speaks to my mother, you know, hey, that's Vince. Yeah. Or I could tell you he has a deviated septum from boxing, which still sometimes affects his sleep and can cause him to cough lightly several times a day. So you know if you hear that little cough, that's Vince. 

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[00:07:53] Or I could tell you he talks as much with his hands as with his mouth. I don't know if you realize that when we're recording, sometimes the microphone nearly goes flying. But even so, if you hadn't actually heard Vince's voice, I could say those things about his voice to you. But it wouldn't be enough for you to instantly recognize him if he called to you, especially out of a crowd of new Jersey Italian-Americans, you still might not know which one was Vince. The only way to really know Vince's voice, is to know it's so instinctively that you can tune into it over a crowded room. It's actually by spending intentional and extended time with him, or at least over a podcast, if nothing else. And philosophers-- Vince will be impressed. I listen to you sometimes. 

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Vince Vitale [00:08:31] Well done. Here we go. I'm excited. 

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Jo Vitale [00:08:32] Philosophers call this relational knowledge. The kind of knowledge which it can't be taught second hand. It can only be learned in the context of relationship. And isn't it the same with God-- we want a cheat sheet, don't we? But while there may be some guidelines for hearing God's voice, there are no shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to building meaningful relationships. There are no shortcuts to identifying the voice of God. But we get this through intimate, repeated firsthand experience. As Jesus puts it, "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me." So I think the question is-- it is like we absolutely in the Christian life. And Jesus tells us that we will hear his voice and he will know us and we will follow him. But we have to get to know him by listening. 

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[00:09:17] And so how do we do this? How do we learn to discern and identify the voice of God in such a way that if we had Jesus yelling across a crowded room, we instinctively know that it's him? Just like the way that as a mom, if I hear my child crying in the night, I know it's them. Even last night Vince was like, "Is that one of our kids crying?" I was like, "No, it's the washing machine." [Inaudible]. And he's like, "No, can you just go check? I'm really sure it's our kids." I got up, but sure enough, they were fast asleep. It was the washing machine. If it would have been them crying, I would have been like, yeah, that's JJ. There's something about it. You're zoned in. And so how do we do this? How do we get to know God's voice? Develop a sensitivity to his words and his tone and his intonation. 

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Vince Vitale [00:09:59] There's a great. It's just making me laugh. You don't want to be like me. You don't want to be like, "Was that the voice of the Lord? Oh, no. No, it's just the washing machine." That's not how you want to be. 

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Jo Vitale [00:10:09] Yeah, be like a mother just discerning her child's voice. 

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Vince Vitale [00:10:13] But it good. Yeah. And in the other direction too it's a great analogy that a baby knows it's mom's voice. And I find that encouraging because the baby can't tell you about the mom’s voice and can't tell you how he or she can distinguish his mom's voice from all the other mothers, but there's just this intuitive, instinctive, unmistakable. And so sometimes, even though we might have a hard time articulating our experience of the voice of God to others, that doesn't mean that it's not very real to us. And there's a lot to say here about how we get to know God's voice. But let's start with some big bullet points. First, you don't learn God's voice by speaking to him. You learn God's voice by listening to him. And I hear you responding, duh! But it might be the first time I've used the word duh on this podcast. That just sort of transported me back to my teenage years. But it sounds so obvious when I say that. Almost trivial when I say that you learn God's voice by listening rather than speaking. Of course, that is the case in any other relationship, but somehow we tend to forget this when it comes to God. 

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[00:11:20] And let me ask you, what percentage of your time in prayer is you speaking and what percentage is you listening? Give an answer in your head. What percentage comes to mind for you? And now is it a percentage that makes sense if you really believed you were speaking with the God of the universe? If we want to learn God's voice, we need to develop really good habits of listening more than we speak in prayer, just like we should seek to do in all of our relationships. So when we pray, it's important to start by picturing God as really being in the room with you because he is so. And when you believe God Almighty is in the room with you, the natural tendency will be to listen more than you speak. Sometimes I just fly into prayer and start talking without thinking at all about the posture I want to adopt as I pray. A posture not just of telling God what I want and asking him to bless it, but saying, "What do you want, Lord? What is your heart in this matter?" Asking questions, waiting for the response. Lord, whatever you want, that's what I'm excited to do. 

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Jo Vitale [00:12:30] Yeah. And the other thing I just want to add in there is that posture is so important, not just in our set aside prayer times or quiet times that we've designated for this is my listening to the Lord hour. But actually we need to be in that listening posture all the day. That actually needs to be the way that we live our life, not just the way we live our designated prayer times. Because sometimes we're not listening well because we're talking too much. Other times we're not listening to God well because we're just listening to too many other things. We're just too distracted. We're caught up in our own stuff. And we're so focused on the busyness of our life or the plans we're making, then we're not actually hearing him. And this really was driven home to me actually just this weekend where I was speaking at a women's conference at this very sweet spa resort in Arizona. And I'm on the bus on the way to the event when this woman that stands next to me on the bus, on the shuttle, and she starts talking to me and asks me a few questions, and we have like a really nice chat. 

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[00:13:29] And to be honest with you, I've got to be so honest here, I even had a moment of wondering like the stranger started talking to me. Am I supposed to do more in this conversation? But I knew that I had some work to do to prepare for the event that I was going to be speaking at. And so we had a nice chat, but I didn't press into it because I was like I can use this time on the bus to actually be doing some more preparation for the ministry. In my head I was like this is the ministry God has called me to do this weekend, so I need to be focused over here. So I just kind of had a nice chat, but then kept things surfaced. We say goodbye. And then three days later when I get to the airport to go on my flight home to San Francisco, she is ahead of me in the line to get on the airplane. The same woman I haven't seen her for a weekend, but she's in the line. Vince doesn't even know this story because we haven't caught up yet. But then she asked me this question. She said, "What was your experience at the resort that stood out for you the most?" And oh my goodness, you guys, this is confession time. Because looking back, this was such an opportunity. What a gift of a question that was. 

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[00:14:29] I could have just said like, well, actually I wasn't doing a lot of activities at the spa because I was there for a Christian retreat, and the best thing was spending time with God. That would have been the right answer. Instead, I was so tired that I just said, "Well, I did a Kintsugi class and I really enjoyed it and I found it very meaningful." But that was kind of it. And then I said to her right as she was sitting down in her seat on the plane and I was walking past to me, I said, "What experience did you enjoy the most at the resort?" And she said, "Meeting with my clairvoyant." And then she got in her seat and I never saw her again. And just, in hindsight, retracing that activity, I just wanted to hit myself because I just thought what a different story. Conviction just shot through me and I was so angry with myself. I played the whole thing back in reverse. And I thought he was this woman desperately searching for meaning, looking for a connection and looking for something deeper, some purpose to her life. She goes to a resort. Jo Vitale sits down next to her on a bus because the Lord has clearly orchestrated this. 

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[00:15:23] There's an opportunity for a conversation, but I'm not listening. I'm so fixated on the ministry that I think I have to do there, that I'm not actually seeing the ministry in front of me. And if I just leaned into that moment, if I just simply asked a listening question of the Lord, "Lord, is there something more you want me to say or do in this conversation?" What might he have said? And maybe we would have had a super meaningful chat on the bus, and maybe we would have had the chance to even connect together over the three days we were in the same place and talk more. And then perhaps she might have left not being like, well, the most meaningful time I had was with my clairvoyant, but it was because I had a conversation with Jo Vitale and she told me about Jesus. And that might have been possible if I had actually been really listening to what the Holy Spirit was doing, but instead I was just in my own head. 

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[00:16:09] And sometimes we can even be focused on good things like prepping for the ministry. I knew I had to do that. It's not that was a bad thing, but I wasn't listening to what the Lord was doing in the moment because I actually was not in a listening posture. And so I just feel like that this listening it can't just be a matter of, hey, now I'm in my prayer time. God, now I have my office hours open. These are the times of the week you can come to me and discuss whatever you want to discuss. But my whole life has to be one of listening or we're going to miss opportunities like that. And so that's me just confessing I missed an opportunity because I don't think I was listening. 

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Vince Vitale [00:16:42] Yeah. So, Lord, we just pray for this woman and thank you for this conviction which has led to prayer. And thank you that it's different from condemnation, that Jo does not need to hit herself, Lord, that you took any cost for all of our trespasses. But we do pray for this woman, and we just thank you, Lord, that we can we can come to you God Almighty, God of all love, and trust that you can make up for all of the times that we don't take the steps that you're asking us to. For all the times that we miss your voice, Lord, you are big enough and powerful enough to step in where you need to and to do things directly, Lord, when we fail. And yet, thank you, Lord, for just the beautiful invitation to come alongside you and just be part of what you're doing in people's lives. Lord, I ask that Jo and that woman would see each other again in this life, Lord. If that be your will, would you make that possible and to give Jo the joy of being able to interact with that woman once more? And would it be a sign that it's specifically from you or that you did that in a miraculous way that couldn't just be randomness? And would you do something in that woman's life? And we promise, Lord, to give you all the glory for that. So we trust you, Lord. We trust you that missed opportunities are opportunities for redemption only because of who you are and what you've done. So we thank you in Jesus’ name, amen. 

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Jo Vitale [00:18:12] Amen. Thank you. I needed that prayer. 

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Vince Vitale [00:18:15] Of course. And so as I've said that's so important that we're in this posture of listening. And then when we do come to this place of being in the first instance in a posture of listening, like, what does that look like? And it can take all different forms. For me, sometimes this looks like just listening in silence. Sometimes it's listening to everything around me in God's creation and asking God what are you saying to me through all these sounds that I hear in my ears? Sometimes it looks like listening to the counsel of brothers and sisters and then praying as I listen. God, who is speaking what you want me to hear? It can look all those different ways. 

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Jo Vitale [00:18:51] Yeah, I love that those are the examples you use because the times when I was actually listening this past weekend, there were a couple where I was going in to give a talk on John four and about Jesus being the spring of living water that never runs dry. And as I was walking early in the morning towards the event to give the talk, the sun was just coming over at the horizon in a way that it just hit this beautiful fountain in the middle of this courtyard, and all of the water in the fountain just shone like silver, like it was the brightest light. And I'm just looking at the fountain. I just felt like the Lord had been saying this is the kind of life that I have for you. I just felt like this picture of the Lord just being kind to me and saying this is the image I want you to have in your head as you're talking about me of this fountain of life. But it was beautiful the way he just spoke through creation in that moment. 

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[00:19:36] And then there was another moment on the weekend when there was a situation in my life that I was trying to think through, like, how do I love somebody well? And trying to figure out what steps to take. And then someone else was speaking and they started talking about Jesus washing his disciple’s feet. And immediately in that moment, I just sensed the Holy Spirit whispering to me, that's what I want you to do. I want you to wash this person's feet. That's how you show them you love them. I'm still trying to figure out if it's literal or more of that. Finding a way to symbolically do that in another loving way. But I'm open to it being literal. But it was the Lord using somebody else to give me a spark of an idea of how to do something in a relationship that I've been praying about. So, yeah, I was super encouraged. 

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Vince Vitale [00:20:17] And then, of course, very often Been listening to God looks like listening to Scripture. And for me and for Jo, the practice of actually listening to or hearing scripture has become pretty important. 1st Timothy 4:13 says, "Devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching." And mentions just three primary practices of the faith. One is that we are supposed to devote ourselves to. So it's a strong a word there, and one of them is the public reading of Scripture. In other words, reading Scripture out loud in community so that it can be heard and listened to. And when we hear that today, I think we tend to assume, oh, they just did public reading of Scripture back then, like back in the day, because they didn't have printed Bibles that they could take home with them. We don't need to do that anymore because now we have our own Bibles. I think we need to be careful here to not be too quick to just pass off this scriptural command as a practicality of the time. The public reading of Scripture is such a wonderful practice, and I would say especially for today. 

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[00:21:19] Harkening back to what Jo said about the distractions of today, because it not only puts you in a receiving posture of listening rather than a more active posture of reading, but also listening corporately with others helps to bring focus when you're joining in, you're doing something together, and therefore it's not appropriate to just break out your phone and check the news. It has an inbuilt accountability to it. It's similar to the way you might workout with others and just get so much more out of your workout than when you're doing it on your own and there's no accountability and it's so easy to just stop and take a break whenever you feel like or whenever you get distracted. So I commend you listening to Scripture, and even more so listening to Scripture corporately in community with others. One of the things that we love to do is to listen to a whole book of Scripture with a small group of believers, and then just spend time in silence, just personally asking God what are you highlighting to me for this group and then discussing it? That is a really special way to spend an hour with other believers. 

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Jo Vitale [00:22:24] Yeah, we've had some amazing times of listening in that way. And you know what I'll say love is not just listening to the Lord through Scripture, but listening to the Lord for scriptures for other people. Like it continually amazes me the way the Lord so wants to speak to us, and he so wants to speak to us through his word that sometimes when we're in a place of listening and saying, "Lord, is there a Bible verse you want me to share with somebody else?" I can't believe the ways that he comes through on this. Even this weekend I was meeting for one on one prayer with a number of different women and there were just several times-- but I didn't know these women at all. I didn't know what they wanted to pray about or what they were bringing. But before they arrived, I was just praying and asking God, like, is there a verse you want me to have in mind to be ready to share with them? And I just couldn't believe the way when they then showed up and started talking about what they wanted prayer for, I could literally open my Bible to the bookmark I'd already put it in it to the verse, and say, well, when I prayed for you beforehand, this is what I believe the Lord has for you. And it was just so amazing the way God showed up in that, because they felt so seen and so cared for. And I felt encouraged too that the Lord would want to use me in that way. So I just encourage you if you're not sure how to be listening for other people in your life, asking for Bible verses, intentional Bible verses that the Lord wants to speak to them through specifically is a beautiful way to be listening and blessing other people. 

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Vince Vitale [00:23:41] Yeah. That's awesome. I've seen God use you in that way so many times. It's such a blessing. And then secondly, in terms of getting to know God's voice, when you then do open the Bible to look at the words on the page, not just listening but actually opening the Bible-- and don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of that, too. This needs to be a both and. Both listening to scripture and reading it. But when you open the Bible, perhaps for your typical quiet time in the morning, do you read it or do you pray it? Because those are two significantly different things. As you open the Bible, do you see it as a text book that's going to have some information about someone or is a conversation that you are entering into with someone, someone who is actually in the room with you? Are the words in front of you about a person to be studied, or are they from a person to be known? In short, we tend to read and study the Bible when we should primarily be listening to it and praying it. And I'm all for reading and studying the Bible. That's great. Jo and I spent many years doing so, but if that's all we do with the Bible, read and study and analyze, it can become the equivalent of when you're in a conversation with someone, but you're only superficially listening because most of your energy is actually being spent picking apart what you think of what they are saying and planning what you are going to say next, right? 

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[00:25:04] We've all done that. And if we're honest, we know that that experience is very different from the experience of actively listening to someone to actually understand and appreciate and internalize and empathize with what they are saying. So Scripture is not primarily meant to be read. It is meant to be prayed. It's meant to be conversed with because unlike any other book that you can open, the words of the Bible are living and active. They're inviting you into real conversation with the real God of the universe. And one just very practical tip on this, just to make this really concrete as I finish this point, when you read a question in Scripture, do you actually pause for an answer? I often don't. And I'll just give you one example here. This is how I tend to read Psalm 13. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look at me and answer, Lord, my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. And my enemy will say, I've overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love because you have rescued me. I will sing the Lord's praise, for he has been good to me. 

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Jo Vitale [00:26:15] That was quick. 

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Vince Vitale [00:26:16] Yeah, but that's probably pretty close to my normal reading pace. I've read it. I've understood it. Maybe I've even thrown an underline under some interesting insight. I've completed the task. Now, let's just take a minute to listen to the same Psalm of David. All these questions. How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer. Please, Lord, my God, please. I'm actually waiting for your answer. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. I can't figure this out myself. I need you to respond with your light. I'm waiting for your light because only then can I see anything. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death and my enemy will say I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 

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[00:27:46] But and now, Lord, as I sense you responding, but I trust in your unfailing love because you have rescued me. I will sing the Lord's praise for you had been good to me. There is such a big difference between reading scripture and praying Scripture. And this is one of the advantages too of actually writing out your prayers sometimes. It slows you down. I can read Psalm 13 so quickly. How long did it take David to pray it? As long as it took him to actually write it, to compose that psalm so much longer than I typically take to read it. And it's because of all that silence and all the pauses after each one of those questions, that he must have wrestled with that then you get in verse five, but I trust in your unfailing love. Why? Because he has heard back from the Lord in response to his questions, because he took the time to be listening and to hear from him. 

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Jo Vitale [00:28:48] Yeah. That's so good, Vince. It makes me think the same in the New Testament. The way that Jesus asks so many questions and how often after I read a question that Jesus asks do I actually pause either to answer it myself or pause to ask God how he's answering that question? Or if that's something that he's looking for me to learn from it or meditate on or take to somebody else? Or how often am I just keeping moving and reading it like it's just like a novel? 

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Vince Vitale [00:29:16] Yes. And we're just trying to get the plot and keep moving. Okay, we've talked about listening more than speaking in prayer. We've talked about praying through scripture rather than just reading it and studying it. Now, when it is finally time to speak in prayer, because of course there is a place for that, what should come out of our mouths? When I start to pray when I'm not intentional about it, my prayers can tend to be very me focused. God, please give me this and please tell me what I should do. And I see this instinct, even at a really young age, with our kids. It comes so natural to ask God for what we want and have such a focus on that we almost start to treat God like Santa Claus in a very transactional way. And we're trying, Jo and I with our kids, to develop habits of getting the focus of our prayers off of ourselves and onto thanking God for who he is and asking him for the needs of others. Can be a daily grind at first because it doesn't come naturally in our flesh, but once those habits are developed, then it starts to become natural and freeing and even a delight to just gaze on who God is and generously come to him on behalf of others. 

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Jo Vitale [00:30:27] The other thing that happens a lot with our prayers is that, I think if we're honest, how often do we all do this right, though? When people are praying in a prayer group and particularly when you feel comfortable in that group, there can be this tendency to start giving a kind of theology lesson without prayers. I have definitely done this where we kind of use prayer as a vehicle to teach those around us and what we think they need to know, and all of a sudden it's just not clear at all; is it? Are we actually talking to God? Because he definitely didn't need my theology lesson? 

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Vince Vitale [00:30:57] No, I've given some of my best lectures during prayer meetings. 

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Jo Vitale [00:31:01] Some of the greatest sermons ever preached in prayer. So either we're telling God what he already knows or we're actually just talking to the people in our small group with our eyes closed. But either way, that can get weird really quickly. 

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Vince Vitale [00:31:13] Right. And so our point is just that in any relationship, when the focus of our conversation is about our needs and our thoughts, you never really get to know the other person and you never develop a sensitivity to the nuances of their voice. So when it comes to the words we speak in prayer, it's actually worth doing a rough analysis. What percentage of your words are about you? What percentage of your words are about others? And what percentage of your words are about God? For many of us, our prayer proportions might need to be inverted because from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And it's very hard to hear the voices of others when we're so inwardly focused. To really hear others well, it's not just a matter of whether we hear noises with our ears, but whether our hearts are actually focused on them, desiring to understand them and know them and empathize with them. 

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[00:32:03] And if that sounds relevant to you, if you don't like your proportions when you do that assessment, my practical recommendation would be to start inverting the percentages of your prayers by inverting the ordering of your prayers. And what I mean by that is pray about God first, then others, then yourself. I personally find this so helpful in terms of posturing my heart for prayer. It just helps align my heart with the first commandments to love God with all my heart, mind, and strength, and for that love to then overflow into another focused love as a reflection of God's other focused love. And then with my eyes on Christ and on the needs of others, to then be in a place to have a healthy view of myself and to love myself well as I experience God's love for others and realize, wow, that applies to me, too. 

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Jo Vitale [00:32:54] Yeah. That's so good, Vince. It's just like the difference between us waking up in the morning and me saying to you like, "Hey, this is what I'm doing with my day. Does that fit with your plans? I need the car. I got to go." Or I starting the day with me, saying to you, "Hey, what are you doing today? Is there a way I can be involved in what you're doing? Is there where I can bless you?" Imagine if our prayer started with, God, a new day here. What are you up to today? What new thing are you doing? What are you excited about? And how can I just serve? How can I get involved? How do I need to move things around to be where you need me to be rather than like, hey, this is what I'm up to, God. Can you please bless my efforts? 

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Vince Vitale [00:33:29] That's good. We're making a note for tomorrow morning. That's good. 

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Jo Vitale [00:33:32] I know. Let's write that down. Yes. And as a final footnote to this point, considering the proportions of our words, it's really important not just when we pray in a focused way, but actually for life in general. Isn't it? Just the words that we hear across the entirety of a typical day, like, how many more of my words do I hear in a typical day than the words of others? How much am I talking more than listening? How many more of my words do I hear than the words of God? And what is the distribution? Have I ever had a day where God took first place? Have I ever had a day where I had more words from him than from anybody else? And if not, or if that is super rare, then can I make that a goal in the next week? And wouldn't that be just a transformative experience and just massively strengthened our faith if we were living days like that? 

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Vince Vitale [00:34:15] I find that really convicting because when you say have I ever had a day where I've had more words from God than from anyone else, like knowing who God is and who I say he is in my life should be such an easy utterly obvious answer, but it's actually a challenging one. So that's something to take really seriously. One more point from me just on how different people experience God's voice differently, because over the years I've seen this be a really significant pastoral point that's often people have really wrestled with. And I would say that God's voice will sound differently to each of us and that that's not a problem. That it's actually a good thing. It shows that God cares for us as individuals and that each of us has a unique relationship with him. And sometimes I've seen this a lot. We can fall into the trap of comparing our experience of God to that of others, and we worry that God is not revealing himself to us unless God speaks to us the way he speaks to someone else. But when you think about it, that doesn't actually make sense. If no one was friends with Jo, unless Jo interacted with them in the same way she interacts with me, we would conclude that no one else is Jo's friend, which would be sad. 

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Jo Vitale [00:35:25] It would be sad. 

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Vince Vitale [00:35:25] And it's not true. God is not a force that interacts with everything the same way. A force doesn't have the discernment to know that different people need different things. Gravity doesn't care who you are. No matter who you are, you're going down. See what I did there? 

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Jo Vitale [00:35:43] I did. 

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Vince Vitale [00:35:45] But God cares. He's not a force. He's a person. A person who desires intimate relationship. And, therefore, we see in the Bible that God tends to speak to different people in different ways, whether through dreams or other people, or through the writing of Psalms or through visions or scripture, or conscience, or creation. Each person and therefore each relationship is unique. And therefore the differences in the ways that we tend to hear from God, they can be healthy and even part of how he cares for each of us as individuals. And there's actually such wisdom that God does it this way, so that only by relying on each other and living in close community with each other can we get a fuller sense of how God speaks than any one of us could on our own. So personally, when I feel I'm struggling to hear God's voice, I find it really helpful to ask myself, how has God spoken to me in situations like this in the past? That's not to say that he won't speak to me in new ways over time, as my relationship with him goes through different seasons and matures and develops, but sometimes I can discern a pattern in terms of how God, in his wisdom, has known how specifically to speak to me in the past, given the specific way that he made me. And that sometimes helps me to keep my eye out for him to speak to me in similar ways in the future if he so chooses. 

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Jo Vitale [00:37:06] One of the beautiful things about that is that because God is so creative in the ways that he communicates sometimes, he'll use several of those things at once to speak directly just to one person. And I think there's a sweetness to that too if we're feeling confused about God's communication, that sometimes he will actually confirm something by saying it not just in one way but in multiple ways in your life to really get your attention in it. It's making me think about a couple of years ago where I was just going through a tough time and I was feeling very stressed out and anxious about some things. Then I woke up one morning and my reading in the Bible reading plan was from the Psalms, where it says do not eat the bread of anxious toil for he gives to his beloved sleep. I remember at the time being like not just that happens to be my reading plan, but it really felt like a direct word from the Lord for me. 

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[00:37:50] His Holy Spirit was speaking through Scripture and saying, hey, trust me. You don't need to keep stressing about everything. Look to me, feed on me, eat the bread of life, not the bread of stress. And I kind of took it in, but then we were in a rush to go to church so I sort of thought about it and then stopped thinking about it. Went on to church and then at the end of the service, someone came up to me who's in our church, a very practical person who spends probably more time than most people listening to the Lord, but she didn't know what was going on in my life, I hadn't seen her in months, but she just came up to me and she handed me a loaf of bread and she said, Jo, right as I was about to go to bed last night, I just felt like the Holy Spirit told me I needed to bake you a loaf of bread. 

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Vince Vitale [00:38:26] You can't make that up. 

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Jo Vitale [00:38:27] You just can't. And I was like, are you kidding me? The Lord spoke through Scripture. Don't eat the bread of anxious toil; he gives to his beloved sleep. And because he knew I would rush on and forget because I'm a bad listener, he then used somebody else and he used a physical act of literally giving me bread to say, "Hey, I know you, I see you, I've got what you need. Come and eat of me and lean on me." And I was like, wow, okay, if the Lord has bothered to go out of his way to make it that clear to me, I bet I'd really pay attention here. And I think one of the things we can do is in this whole listening exercise, when we realize how much goes into listening and living a life of listening before the Lord, we can get a bit frustrated because we can say why do I have to work hard like this? It doesn't seem super efficient as a way of communication. If God is God, why isn't he more directive? Why isn't he just being really clear? Why doesn't he just give me like a wake up in the morning, sitting on my bedside table and there's like a list of here are the 10 things I need you to do today. Here's the to-do list for your life. 

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Vince Vitale [00:39:24] You would hate that. 

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Jo Vitale [00:39:25] I would absolutely hate it, but it would be clear. Vince is like you never get to my to-do list, so let's not pretend like that would work with God. But just this morning I asked ChatGPT this question because I wanted to see what kind of responses does AI give? And the question was there's a colleague I'm having trouble with at work who's constantly undermining me, I want to address the problem but in a way that also shows this person my Christian faith. What should I do? And then in like one second I got back the most phenomenal seven part answer. It's better than anything most of my Christian friends could have said. It was biblical. It drew on so many scriptures that would have taken me forever define by myself. It was reasonable. It reflected this thorough understanding of H.R. policies and workplace dynamics. And it was this balanced, wide, practical, and most importantly, frame by Jesus’ ethic of love and forgiveness. And it offered a great way forward to my made up hypothetical dilemma. And best of all, it arrived in under one second. I didn't have to wait at all. 

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[00:40:23] I'm reading this thing like no wonder people hail AI as the new God of this generation. It raises the question is AI better at God's job than he is? Is it a clearer communicator? We certainly find it easier to listen to. But then I just think, well, it all depends on what God's goal is, doesn't it? If God's sole aim was for us to know his will and to do it, there are easier ways to ensure that happens. Just play out the to-do list. But is that what God is after? Is that what he wants for a life or is it a relationship? If God just send a memo every week of the tasks that needed completing, he'd want it with minions but he's actually looking for children. Children who come running to him every day because they're longing to hear from him, excitedly chattering and eagerly asking the kind of questions that all kids ask all the time. Like, dad, dad, what are you up to right now? Oh, you're making chicken. Can I help? Can I stir the rice? Oh, dad, that toy you bought me for Christmas, I don't know how to set it up. Can you show me how? Like, can we play with it together? Dad, I don't know how to write the letter Y. Can you help me? Oh, cool, dad, you're going surfing. Can you teach me how to swim so that I can come with you? 

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[00:41:29] Sure, if God's goal was for us to function independently of him, then this current approach is inefficient. But if what he wants more than anything is for us to keep coming back to him again and again, to seek him out consistently because we want to hear his voice. We want to learn his voice, to lean on him rather than our own understanding, to experience how much richer and fuller and more wonderful every day is when we seek him first, then the beauty of this relational approach just makes sense, doesn't it? Because this leaning in to listen, that is what actually builds the kind of relationship where we gradually do get to know him by heart, to truly know the voice of our shepherds. And the other thing I just want to end by saying is that don't be afraid in this. I think it's possible to live in a constant state of fear. Of what if I make bad choices in this? What if I miss out on hearing all the time? Because Jesus himself promises that not only is he giving us the spirit of truth, but that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. That he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 

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[00:42:40] When I hear that news, that the Holy Spirit will guide me into all truth, I just find that so incredibly liberating because it takes the pressure right off. That's actually God's job. He's sent a translator. He sent an interpreter to live within me to actually help in this process of communication when I'm being a bad listener like I was the other day. But the Lord still brought conviction. He showed me that I had missed it. And in his kindness I know he will pursue and reach out to that woman. It's sad that I missed the blessing of getting to be involved in it. I know I can't mess up his plans, but nevertheless, he's using that conviction in my life by his spirit to approach things differently so that next time I'm praying I'm going to be a better listener. 

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[00:43:21] We don't have to live our lives paralyzed by this fear that we're going to miss him or that we're going to miss out, because I really believe the Holy Spirit is listening to God the Father and the son on my behalf, and then declaring those truths straight to me. Like this thing is not set up as a test for us to fail, I think to see this as an invitation. This is God's invitation to do life with him. And I love those words in Isaiah 43 when he says, "See, I'm doing a new thing. Now it's springs forth; do you not perceive it? I am making ways in the wilderness and streams in the desert." I think that's what this is about. This God who is at work in the world always doing new things and inviting us to have the listeners hearts to come to him and say, God, what new thing are you doing today? And then just listening as he excitedly and gladly invites us to join in with his amazing work in the world. 

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