Book Review: Listening For God

Listening For God by Marilyn Hontz Trade Paperback: 206 pages Publisher: Tyndale First Released: 2004 Author Website Author on Twitter

Source: Gift from Author

Back Cover Description:
God loves you deeply and longs to speak to you. The question is, are you listening?

With refreshing humility and openness, Marilyn Hontz explains how God taught her--an ordinary person--to recognize his voice in Scripture, prayer, and even the mundane moments of life. In the process, God replaced the anxiety and lack of direction that had plagued her, giving her renewed purpose and an assurance of his unfailing love.

You too can learn to recognize and respond to God’s voice as you get beyond the busyness and distractions that drown him out. Listening for God is one woman’s story--yet it offers practical insights for anyone who longs to live out ordinary days with the extraordinary power that comes from listening to God.


Review:
Listening For God is God-focused and uses scripture to make or support the author's main points. She also illustrates how to put the various things she's talking about into practice by using stories from her personal walk with God. The book is encouraging and easy-to-understand. It has a lot of good, basic points and a variety of ideas on how a person can apply them.

If you know you should be reading the Word more or praying more regularly but just don't feel like you have the time or desire, this book will help you out. I'd recommend this as a good book for anyone wanting to hear from God and be used by Him in their everyday life.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Introduction
Do you long to approach God as you would a dear friend? Is it truly possible for you to hear God speak today? You can learn to recognize God’s voice, if you listen! You don’t need to be a super-religious person to hear from God. All you need is a hunger for him and a listening ear.

I have found what many have discovered: God speaks to each of us through his Holy Word, and he communicates with us as we pray. He whispers to us through his Holy Spirit in the quietness of our hearts. He does this because he wants us to be in an intimate relationship with him—a relationship he desired before we were even created. A. W. Tozer said, “[God] waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.” He waits for you to want him!

If God wants to open his heart to us, why is it so difficult to hear his voice? How do we respond when we feel like God is ignoring our pleas, as I felt while watching my mother’s life slip away?

The rest of this book explores my adventures in learning to hear God speak through the Word and prayer as I stilled myself and listened for his voice. My journey has not always been a smooth, easy one, and my aim is not to tell you how to build your devotional life. Rather, I hope the Scriptures and my personal experiences will create in you a deep hunger to spend time in God’s presence and learn to recognize his voice.

Listening is a lot like waiting. When we’re in the midst of either, we often feel like we are wasting time. Paradoxically, some of God’s greatest gifts come in the still hours we spend in his presence. When we really learn to hear God’s voice, we allow him to share his plans with us and actually involve us in his work! We never know what truth God will show us or how he will impact others through us, but one thing is sure: Life becomes an adventure.

God is always listening to you. He invites you to listen to him as well. “Be still, and know that I am God,” he says to you (Psalm 46:10). Listen. . . .


Read the rest of the introduction and chapter one.