Many Christians ask, “What is God’s will for my life?” The answer lives in cultivating your discernment and hearing from God. Here, Trevor Hudson explains how your quiet time can be a life-transforming dialogue with God. It’s taken from his book, In Search of God’s Will: Discerning a Life of Faithfulness and Purpose.

We listen to God through Scripture when we pray the Scriptures. In the early years of following Christ, my praying was separate from my Bible reading. I would talk to God, and when I had finished talking, I would open my Bible and read a passage. This way of reading Scripture would focus mainly on getting more insights and information that I could then apply to my life. Looking back now, I can see that the listening part of prayer was neglected. During these “quiet times,” as they were called then, I seldom had any sense that God was speaking to me. I still needed to learn how to listen to God.

My light bulb moment came on my first retreat, which was in 1978. I remember it clearly. In a time of spiritual emptiness, I knocked on the door of a retreat center called Koinonia in Bez Valley, Johannesburg. Sister Liz, a Dominican nun wearing blue jeans, a chunky sweater, and sneakers, welcomed me. She took me to a small room sparsely furnished with a bed, table, chair, crucifix, open cupboard, and three coat hangers.

She suggested that I spend time with the words of Jesus in John 7:37-39, where he speaks about our need for those streams of living water that his Spirit alone can give. Anytime I wanted to chat, she said, we could arrange a time.

After hanging up my clothes, I sat down on the side of the bed, opened my Bible, and read the three verses. I thought about them for a while, and then, about thirty minutes later, went downstairs to find Sister Liz and to ask her for another biblical passage. She smiled and suggested that I stay with these verses a bit longer. You may not believe this, but she encouraged me to stay with those three verses for the whole three days! During that time, I gradually learned what it meant to bring my praying and Bible reading together into one action. I discovered what it meant to “pray the Scriptures.” Reading the Bible became the means through which I listened to the Lord and spoke with him.

Let me try to describe what happened within me as I prayed the Scriptures on that retreat. In my desperate thirst, I felt myself drawn to the Living Water. I had the sense of the risen Jesus speaking to me personally, inviting me to come to him, and touching my heart through the words on paper. As his words went on that long journey from my lips and ears to my mind and then into my heart, I savored them, reflected on them, and carried them around with me. And as I wondered what they might mean for me, I knew that Christ was meeting me in them. From a deep place in my heart, an intense longing was born that found expression in a simple request: Lord, please pour your living water into my thirsty soul.

Over forty years have passed since that experience of praying the Scriptures. Today the journey continues. Almost every morning, I sit quietly with a passage of Scripture, read it aloud slowly, listen for a word from the Lord, respond to it, and take it with me into the day. Sometimes I use the same Scripture passage for a few days—or a week, a month, and maybe even longer. While I am reluctant to reduce this way of listening to God into a regimented spiritual technique, let me outline below what I like to call the five Ps of praying the Scriptures. Even though they are a mixture of nouns and verbs, I hope they encourage you to give this way of listening to the Lord in Scripture a try.