When my son was young, he once asked me, “How do I hear God’s voice?” It was bedtime, I was tired, and I didn’t realize it was a once-in-a-lifetime question. I answered him from my own experience—how I had learned to hear God through prayer, music, and the voices of others. It was sincere, but vague, and not something he could rely on.
What I didn’t tell him then—the truest and best answer—is that we hear God most clearly through his Word. Scripture is God’s concrete and reliable voice, and it is how we learn to discern him at all. In a world where seeing is believing, it is hard to trust a God we cannot see or hear audibly.
Yet God reveals himself to us: through Jesus, through the Word, through baptismal water, through bread and wine, and sometimes through the love of a faithful friend. We did not stand at the cross or see the empty tomb, yet we receive forgiveness, resurrection life, and salvation. Even in suffering, we sometimes glimpse our Savior’s pain. But always, God speaks to us through his Word, and we answer him with ours in prayer.
my faith place 