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    The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition: How to Hear His Voice
    The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition: How to Hear His Voice
    The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition: How to Hear His Voice
    Ebook190 pages3 hours

    The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition: How to Hear His Voice

    By John Eldredge and Craig McConnell

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    About this ebook

    Our deepest need is to live in conversation with God. To hear his voice. To follow him intimately. This is the most life-changing habit that we can adopt, because it brings us back to the source of life. Yet most Christians have never been taught how to have a conversation with the Creator.

    In this revised and updated study guide, bestselling author John Eldredge dives deeper into his personal journals to tell his stories about walking and talking with the Lord. By putting words to the things God has shown him through some amazing experiences, he will help you shed light on the miraculous truths that God is showing you right now. Packed with questions, stories, and discussion topics, this study guide features:

    • Journaling Prompts: Questions to help you tell your own story of walking with God
    • Relevant Passages: Scriptures to study and memorize to help you along the way
    • Clarity Readings: Short notes to solidify certain key points in your mind
    • Leader’s Guide: A new leader’s guide to help you guide groups through the material

    These stories and reflections will help you recall lessons you didn’t know had been forgotten, open up new horizons, and help you tell and interpret your own story of your walk with God. Includes a new study to accompany the new chapter added to the trade book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateMar 21, 2017
    ISBN9780310084785
    The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition: How to Hear His Voice
    Author

    John Eldredge

    John Eldredge is a bestselling author, a counselor, and a teacher. He is also president of Wild at Heart, a ministry devoted to helping people discover the heart of God, recover their own hearts in God's love, and learn to live in God's kingdom. John and his wife, Stasi, live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

    Read more from John Eldredge

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      Book preview

      The Walking with God Study Guide Expanded Edition - John Eldredge

      INTRODUCTION

      You’ve made a very good decision, picking up this guide.

      For what could be more important, than learning to more closely walk with God?

      That’s why I wrote the book, and why Craig and I then wrote this guide. Now, I’m assuming you’ve got a copy of the book Walking with God as well. The two go hand in hand. Most of the time I recommend users of my workbooks and guides read through the whole book first. It helps to get your bearings, gives you the lay of the land. But Walking with God is different. It unfolds. You could read the whole book (you might not be able to put it down!), but you don’t have to. For this guide I’d recommend you simply read a section at a time (the sections are Prelude, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring). Then go back through and think about it with the help of this guide.

      In the Introduction to the book I said this:

      Some of these stories will open up new horizons for you. That is certainly my hope. Learning to hear the voice of God may itself be a new frontier, and an exciting one, with unexpected joys around each new turn. There will also no doubt be lessons you’ve already learned, probably better than I. But, you may have forgotten. We do forget, even the most precious encounters we have with God. Perhaps I will help you to remember, and recover what might have been lost. I might also help you to tell your own story as well, give you eyes to see what is unfolding and even how to set it down so that it doesn’t slip away (Walking with God, pages xii–xiii).

      Now, because the whole purpose of the book and guide are to help you find God in your story, learn to listen to his voice, and walk with him more intimately, you will want to write down what unfolds for you. Capture what he says. Don’t let it slip away! JOURNAL ALONG THE WAY. Not just your responses to the questions I’ve provided, but whatever is coming to you as you go along. Especially what you believe God is saying to you.

      What is so very cool is that God will seize the opportunity of you working through this guide and he will coordinate the events of your life or the things he is trying to teach you with the topics and the stories you’ll be reading here. What he’ll often do is use the very things I’ve been writing about from my life as a mirror into your life, in order to take you to some very personal and intimate places with him in your own story. It will be good.

      Walking with God is an interactive book. I created a website to go along with it, and on that site I offer a lot more explanation and guidance on particular entries in the book. (Those are marked with a reference to www.walkingwithgod.net.) I think you’ll find those really helpful, so make sure you drop by the site whenever I refer to it in the book.

      Okay, here we go. I’d recommend you read the Prelude to begin with, and then dive into the questions.

      Prelude

      Learning to Hear the Voice of God

      I began the book with the story of our family’s Christmas tree ordeal for two reasons. First, to let you see that my life is just like yours. I face hassles all the time, just as you do. Some of them are exasperating, just like yours. But I also wanted to begin with a confession—this ordeal happened because I didn’t follow God.

      images/ss1.jpg   Has something like our tree ordeal happened to you this year? But of course it has. Trials are part of every life. What do you make of them? How do you understand all the hassles that come your way? Pick one that’s happened to you. Think about it. Did you ask God about it beforehand? Did you even think to ask?

      images/ss1.jpg  If you did seek God beforehand, what do you make of the fact that things still fell apart? If you didn’t, has it occurred to you that maybe the reason for the trial is that you didn’t ask?

      images/ss1.jpg  How many things in an ordinary week of your life do you ask God about? (There’s no shame here. I’m not asking this to cause you embarrassment or self-reproach. It’s just probably a good idea to begin this search for a closer walk with God by admitting where you are.)

      ASSUMPTIONS

      Okay. Let’s look at assumptions. This is a very good place to dive in. Assumptions govern so much of our lives, or at least, our interpretation of our lives.

      I left the store thinking about assumptions—how they are either helping us or hurting us, every single day of our lives. Our assumptions control our interpretation of events, and they supply a great deal of the momentum and direction for our lives. It’s important that we take a look at them. And life will provide hundreds of opportunities to take a look at our assumptions in a single week. Especially as we walk with God (Walking with God, page 5).

      images/ss1.jpg  Think of an event in your life where things didn’t turn out the way you hoped, or expected. What did you assume about all of it?

      As we get set to enter into a closer walk with God, it would be good to note that so much of what God is doing as we go along is surfacing our assumptions, or challenging them, so that he can help to set them right. After all, Jesus said when we know the truth we are set free. I talked about my friend at the bookstore, how he held to the assumption that A + B = C.

      He assumed that God, being a loving God, was going to come through for him. In the sense of, bless his choices. His ministry. Make his life good. He looked sort of dazed and hurt that it hadn’t happened. He was trying to put a good face on it, but you could see that he had lost heart. This may be one of the most common, most unquestioned, and most naïve assumptions people who believe in God share. We assume that because we believe in God, and because he is love, he’s going to give us a happy life. A + B = C. We may not be so bold as to state our assumption out loud—you may not even think you hold this assumption—but notice your shock when things don’t go well. Notice your feelings of abandonment and betrayal when life doesn’t work out. Notice that often you feel as though God isn’t really all that close, or involved, feel that he isn’t paying attention to your life (page 4).

      images/ss1.jpg  Can you relate? Do you recognize it in your life or in the lives of those you know?

      images/ss1.jpg  It might be good to jot down a few more assumptions you hold about God and life. You might be surprised what you confess. What are you assuming about God these days?

      images/ss1.jpg  How about God in your life?

      images/ss1.jpg  And happiness—what do you assume about that?

      The reason I’m pushing into that with these questions is, as I wrote, If you don’t hold the same assumptions Jesus does, you haven’t got a chance of finding the life he has for you.

      DOES GOD STILL SPEAK?

      images/ss1.jpg  I confessed in the Prelude my assumption that God still speaks, personally, to his people. What do you believe about that?

      Seeing as how this book is in part a tutorial on how to hear the voice of God, we’d better pause here and deal with the evidence on which my conviction is based. (I suppose you could still gain a good deal from this book if you don’t believe God speaks, but you’ll miss a pretty central point.)

      images/ss1.jpg  Do you believe God speaks to you?

      images/ss1.jpg  What is your assumption based on?

      images/ss1.jpg  Reread Psalm 139. How intimately does God know you?

      But does God speak to his people?

      Can you imagine any relationship where there is no communication whatsoever? What would you think if you met two friends for coffee, good friends, and you knew that they’d been there at the café for an hour before you arrived, and as you sit down you ask them, So, what have you been talking about? and they said, Nothing. Nothing? Nothing. We don’t talk to each other. But we’re really good friends. Jesus calls us his friends: I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father (John 15:15, The Message).

      Or what would you think about a father if you asked him, What have you been talking to your children about lately? and he said, Nothing. I don’t talk to them. But I love them very much. Wouldn’t you say the relationship was missing something? And aren’t you God’s son or daughter? Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12) (pages 10–11).

      images/ss1.jpg  Well—what about those analogies? You are God’s child. You are Jesus’ friend. Why would he never speak to you, personally?

      The Bible is filled with stories of God talking to his people. Abraham, who is called the friend of God, said, The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me . . . (Genesis 24:7). God spoke to Moses as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11). He spoke to Aaron, too: Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites . . . (Exodus 6:13). And David: In the course of time, David inquired of the Lord. ‘Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?’ he asked. The Lord said, ‘Go up.’ David asked, ‘Where shall I go?’ ‘To Hebron,’ the Lord answered (2 Samuel 2:1). The Lord spoke to Noah. The Lord spoke to Gideon. The Lord spoke to Samuel. The list goes on and on. Now, if God doesn’t also speak to us, why would he have given us all these stories of him speaking to others? Look—here are hundreds of inspiring and hopeful stories of how God spoke to his people in this and that situation. Isn’t it amazing?! But you can’t have that. He doesn’t speak like that anymore. That makes no sense at all. Why would God give you a book of exceptions? This is how I used to relate to my people, but I don’t do that anymore. What good would a book of exceptions do you? That’s like giving you the owner’s manual for a Dodge, even though you drive a Mitsubishi. No, the Bible is a book of examples of what it looks like to walk with God (pages 11–13).

      images/ss1.jpg  Have you assumed the Bible, or at least all those stories of God speaking to his people—those are exceptions?

      images/ss1.jpg  Why would God give you a book of exceptions?

      The Bible teaches that we hear God’s voice:

      He wakens me morning by morning,

      wakens my ear to listen like one being taught (Isaiah 50:4).

      For he is our God

      and we are the people of his pasture,

      the flock under his care. (Psalm 95:7)

      Today, if you hear his voice,

      do not harden your hearts . . . (Psalm 95:7–8).

      The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice . . . I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:2–4, 14–16).

      Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me (Revelation 3:20).

      We are his sheep. Jesus says that his sheep hear his voice. He stands and knocks. Who is the offer for? Anyone. That would include you. What does Jesus say will happen? Hears my voice.

      So there—you have my first assumption. An intimate, conversational walk with God is available. Is normal, even. Or, at least, is meant to be normal. I’m well aware that a majority of people do not enjoy that . . . yet. But it is certainly what God desires, and what he offers.

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