Name
Learning to Hear God’s Voice by Herman Riffel

Prayer Category
how to hear from God

Description
Published by Chosen/Revell

The author starts out by helping us realize that even well balanced people hear many voices inside of us, such as the voice of our desires, the voice of reason, the voice of selfishness, the voice of temptation, etc. He believes that we can as easily hear God’s voice because Jesus says in John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and the follow me.” He goes through his own path of discovery of being taught that God doesn’t speak to us today and how the Scriptures proved to him that God in fact does continue to speak to us in the modern world. He goes on to say that God speaks to us because He “is vitally interested in us.” He shares tips on how to listen for God’s voice such as creating alone time with God, hearing God through the Scriptures, asking whether God might be speaking to us in our dreams, through visions and through prophecies. He discusses receiving words of wisdom and discerning God’s voice in healing prayer. He doesn’t shy away from suggesting that we might even hear from God via an angel, or we might hear from Him through more ordinary means as a couple giving words of insight to each other. He also goes into hearing God as a group and has a chapter on testing out what you hear. He ends by challenging us to be obedient to what we hear and then suggests we keep a journal to write down thoughts that seem to come from God.

Review: I read this book years ago when I was struggling to hear God’s voice and today it’s very gratifying to revisit the book and see how my life experiences now line up with everything that Herman Riffel shares. (Except perhaps having an angel speak to me – I don’t think that has happened yet!) In my revisiting of the book I was particularly drawn to his chapter about hearing from God in visions because I have been following a vision of The Way of Prayer for Many in writing prayer studies and in founding Prayer Igniters International. His book confirms that visions are symbolic and that they do represent a different kind of reality. I can heartily add that being obedient to the word or idea communicated in the vision has been the experience of a lifetime!

Added by Karen Barber on July 5, 2011