I used to try and hear God — in Scripture, in prayer, in signs — not out of holy reverence but because deep down I was afraid of losing him. 

Theologically, I believed God accepted me in Christ. Practically, I felt as if God’s acceptance hinged each moment on my perfect obedience. 

Turns out God isn’t that fragile or controlling. Praise God.

I discovered that learning to hear God is not first and foremost about receiving instructions about what to do. It is above all about friendship. 

How do I know?

I know because God needs nothing. 

This means God doesn’t need us to do anything — or need us, period, for that matter. The Father, Son, and Spirit created us not to have someone to boss around but to have someone to share in the overflow of their love.

To surrender to God’s will and direction, then, is not to give ourselves over to a benevolent cosmic micromanager who wants to joystick our every move. It is to give ourselves over to a Father whose love spoke us into being and whose heart is ready and available to lead us on a path of vitality and joy.

Nowhere is this love more evident than in the openhanded way of Jesus.

Read the gospels and watch how freely he lets people decide to follow or leave. 

Notice to whom he speaks gently, and to whom harshly, and why. 

Observe how those rejected by religious rulekeepers flock to the very Rule himself — who receives them and, before saying ​“Go and sin no more,” first speaks compassion and forgiveness and healing.

Yes, Christ deserves and requires obedience. But obedience isn’t the point, the end goal; it’s the expression of our trust and love, the means of deepening our friendship with him, a friendship that includes meaningful and creative work for the common good.

He once said, ​“You are my friends if you do what I command.” Left alone, those words might sound like coercion or codependency. But he goes on… 

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends” (John 15).

Learning to hear God personally — through the Spirit of Christ who dwells in us intimately — is to move from rule-keeping to responsiveness, from external religion to an internal reality — from being servants to being friends.