For almost a year after my divorce, praying felt like leaving voicemails nobody picks up. I’d ask God for direction — real, specific, “what do I do about this” direction — and get back nothing that felt like an answer. No verse jumping off the page. No clear sense He was even in the room. I started wondering if I’d broken something, or if He’d just decided to stop talking to me specifically.
This is close cousin to the identity work I wrote about in Identity in Christ — hearing Him gets a lot harder when you’re not sure who’s even asking the question.
Turns out I was listening for the wrong thing. I wanted a voice — obvious, unmistakable — and God almost never works that way for the everyday stuff we actually bring Him.
There’s a story in 1 Kings 19 where Elijah’s on a mountain waiting for God, and he expects Him in the windstorm, then the earthquake, then the fire. God’s not in any of them. He shows up in what the text calls a gentle whisper — after all the loud stuff, not in it. That’s usually still where He is. Not gone. Just quieter than we’re braced for.
What actually got me hearing Him again
First thing: I had to slow down enough to notice quiet at all. My house is loud — four kids, someone always needs something — and I was trying to catch a whisper over noise I hadn’t turned down myself. Even five minutes before anyone wakes up changed what I started noticing.
Second: I stopped waiting for it to feel dramatic. Most of what I’ve actually received from God over the years has been a quiet, settled conviction that got clearer the longer I sat with it. A verse that kept showing back up. Peace about one option and this low unease about another I couldn’t shake. A friend saying, almost as a throwaway comment, the exact thing I’d been asking God about privately.
Third, and this took me longest: I had to actually treat Scripture like part of the conversation, not homework I did separately from prayer. When I started reading with a real question sitting in my head instead of just checking a box, I noticed how often the answer showed up there — sometimes days later, plainly, once I actually got to that chapter.
Somewhere to start
Pick one honest question — not “show me your will” in general, but something real, like whether to keep a friendship or what to do about a specific fear. Sit in five actual minutes of quiet. Read a chapter with that question still open. Write down whatever resurfaces over the next few days, even if it seems small — I keep one of our Bible verse journals by my bed for exactly this, so the thought doesn’t disappear by morning. The pattern usually matters more than any single moment.
He hasn’t gone quiet. Most of us were just never taught to listen for a whisper instead of a shout.
