How Can We Hear God?

How can we hear God? How does God communicate with us? Amena Brown discusses the unpredictable rhythm of God.

Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection

  1. Why do we sometimes think that God must work within certain parameters and cannot reveal himself in unexpected ways?
  2. How have you experienced God in an unusual or unexpected way?

Rhythm of God. I feel like I am still discovering a lot of that. I think one thing that I'm learning is that I can't box in how God communicates or how God chooses to show himself to us. I've been in a club, listening to a DJ spin, and that taught me a lot about the rhythm of God. The rhythm of God is mixing and mastering and scratching different beats that you didn't think went together. You know, that God's rhythm is a lot like DJ-ing, and that God's rhythm is a lot like dancing, and learning that balance between surrendering to the person you're dancing with and also learning to do your own dance and, and being able to make things up and go with things on the fly. And so I feel like the, the biggest thing I'm learning about the rhythm of God is that I, I always need to be ready for that rhythm to change and that God's rhythm with me is not always the same beat that I think I know, that a part of God is his ability to surprise us and his ability to surpass what our brains can come up with. So I, I, I like that most of the time that God's rhythm is unpredictable. Sometimes I don't like it 'cause I, I, I want him to be predictable and I want him to do the things I think should work well, uh, but a part for me of having this life of faith, this journey of walking with Jesus is that trust, that he knows what's best, and that if his rhythm switches up on me, that it's for the better and that I should trust it instead of fighting that, learning to dance with it, learning to have fun with it, learning to do the best I can with it.