#22: Hearing God Again — What to Do When His Voice Feels Distant

She loves God. She shows up. She reads, she prays, she tries. But somewhere in the busyness and the noise, His voice has gone quiet — or at least it feels that way.

If you've been in a season where God feels distant, this episode is not a rebuke. It's an invitation. The fact that you're longing to hear Him more clearly is not a sign of weak faith — it's a sign of hunger. And God honors hunger.

This is week two of The Reset series, and we're going deeper into the soul.

In this episode we talk about:
• Why God's voice can feel distant — and it's not always sin
• The difference between hearing and listening
• How to create space for God to speak again
• The FAITH Method — a simple five-step daily practice that transforms the way you encounter God in scripture
• The one step that changed everything: pausing after prayer and writing what God says back

Key scriptures: John 10:27 · Psalm 46:10 · 1 Samuel 3:9

This episode includes a full walkthrough of the FAITH Method (F — Focus, A — Ask, I — Integrate, T — Talk, H — Hear), a declaration, journal prompts, and a closing prayer.

The free guide mentioned in this episode — 5 Daily Rhythms That Changed Everything — includes the FAITH Method written out step by step. Grab it by CLICKING HERE.

If this resonated with you, send it to a woman who has been longing to feel close to God again.

✨ Next Step:

If you’re ready to continue this journey with support and community, join the Nova Community—a faith-filled space for women learning to live with clarity, peace, and faith-first rhythms

👉 Learn more at https://thenovacompany.org

✨ Private Mentorship Community:

If you are interested in applying to join my private mentorship community, email me: april@thenovacompany.org

✨ novaRetreat: 3rd Annual Dream with God Retreat

A Spirit-led weekend for women ready to abide deeply, align intentionally, & courageously advance as God reveals what’s next.

👉 Learn more at https://www.thenovacompany.org/novaretreat 

Subscribe to The NovaCo Podcast and share this episode with a friend who’s stepping into a new season.

🎸 Intro music produced by Cory Valjien. https://spotify.link/Ot87eEITRDb

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Definitely one of one of the most difficult times of my life. And you know, it's not that I wasn't spending time with God and praying and reading my Bible. Life was just so hard, so overwhelming. It was life was a lot, you guys, during that season. And I just was holding on to everything I knew to hold on to to try to hear something from God. The NovaCo podcast is a faith-filled lifestyle podcast for women who desire clarity, peace, and alignment in their everyday lives. I'm your host, April Nova Scipio. So glad you're here. I want you to just lean into what God wants to share with you today. I'm so excited. We are in week two of our reset series. If you're brand new to the podcast, I not only want to welcome you to this podcast, but welcome you to our community, Nova Community. You can get more information about that in the show notes of this episode, but come hang out with us. We love the Lord and we are helping each other to live differently, to grow. We're building friendships all around God's word. And I just love doing life with y'all. Nova community shouting y'all out today. Love doing life with you guys. All right, so last week we talked about your body, movement, water, sleep, rest. And I hope you found your one thing, the one small act of stewardship you committed to. And if you're just joining us, go back and listen to the last episode. It really is going to set the foundation for everything we're doing this month. This week, we are going a little bit deeper. We're talking about your soul. Specifically, what happens when you love God deeply, but his voice feels distant when you're doing everything right, reading, praying, showing up, and it still feels like you're speaking into silence. If you have been there, or if you're there right now, this episode is for you. And I want to say up front, the fact that you desire to hear him more clearly is not a sign of weak faith. It is a sign of hunger. And God honors hunger. John chapter 10, verse 27, it says, My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. He said, His sheep hear his voice. Not some of them, not the spiritually elite ones, his sheep. If you belong to him, you are created, you are built to hear him. And this episode is going to help you get back to that. The first thing I want to do is remove some shame from the conversation because when we talk about not hearing God, a lot of women immediately go to, what did I do wrong? Am I in sin? Did I miss something? And sometimes, yes, there are things that can create distance between us and God. You know, sin, disobedience, a hardened heart. The Bible is clear about that. But that is not the only reason his voice can feel faint. And for most of the women that I hang out with, it's not the reason at all. Here's what I've seen more often. God's voice feels distant because life got loud, because the pace got unsustainable, because somewhere between the responsibilities and the exhaustion and the full calendar, the quiet got crowded out. You didn't walk away from God. You just stopped having space to hear Him. And there's a difference. I remember seven years ago when I experienced a miscarriage, and it was definitely one of one of the most difficult times of my life. And you know, it's not that I wasn't spending time with God and praying and reading my Bible. Life was just so hard, so overwhelming. It was life was a lot, you guys, during that season. And I just was holding on to everything I knew to hold on to to try to hear something from God as far as just what I needed to do to heal, to to grow, to just take my next best steps. Because I honestly, you guys, was paralyzed by just the pain of that. And here's what I learned. You know, God didn't move, he was there the whole time, he was speaking the whole time. I just needed to slow down enough to hear him and not just slow down the quote unquote busy work of me doing things, you guys. I had to learn to slow my thoughts down. That part, that part, Psalm 46, 10, it says, be still and know that I am God. Be still in the Hebrew, that word means to let go, to release, to stop striving. You see, God is not asking you to try harder to hear him, he's asking you to get quiet enough that you can. That's what this reset is about, creating the conditions for his voice to be heard again. I want to make a distinction that I think is going to shift something for you. There is a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is passive, it happens to you. You hear traffic outside, you hear the TV in the background, you hear your name called from across the room. Listening is intentional. It requires you to turn towards something, to be present, to give your attention on purpose. Most of us approach our quiet time as hearing. We open the Bible, read a chapter, maybe say a prayer, we close it and we move on. We were present, yes, technically, but we weren't listening. And I say that with so much grace because I have been there too. I have been in seasons where my quiet time was a checkbox. I loved God, I was faithful to show up, but I was rushing through it instead of receiving from it. The difference was not the amount of time I spent, it was the posture I brought. 1 Samuel 3, 9, it says, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Samuel, Samuel, he didn't say, I'm reading, Lord. He said, I'm listening. There's an openness in that posture, an expectation. Like he was leaning in. What would it look like for you to come to your time with God leaning in, expecting him to speak, ready to receive rather than just complete? That shift in posture from hearing to listening changed everything for me. And it's going to change things for you too. Okay, so we've talked about why his voice may feel distant and the difference between hearing and listening. Now I want to give you something very practical. It's a simple framework I use every single morning that has transformed the way I engage Scripture, the way I encounter God in Scripture, and I call it the faith method. And it has five steps, one for each letter. So we're going to just talk through each one of these. F is for focus. So every morning I take one verse from what I've been reading and I write it down word for word in my journal. Not a summary, not a paraphrase, the actual words, word for word. And something happens when you do that. You slow down. You actually see the verse instead of just reading past it. Words you have read a hundred times suddenly land differently when you write them with your own hand. A is for ask. After I write the verse, I ask God, what are you highlighting to me in this? What do you want me to notice? And then I write down whatever comes, the whatever that word is that stood out, the phrase I can't stop thinking about, the thing that I felt like, you know, this was written specifically for me this day. This is where hearing becomes listening. You're not just reading the word, you're asking God to meet you in it. I is for integrate. This is where faith becomes practical. I write down how am I going to live this out today? Not someday, not in theory, today. One specific application. Because the word was never meant to be just believed, right? We have to walk this thing out. James 1.22. It says, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. The T is for talk. This is where I write my prayer. Not a formal prayer, a real one, based on the verse, based on what God showed me. I pray it back to him. I let his word become the language of my conversation with him. There is something so powerful about praying scripture. You are literally agreeing with what God already said. And that kind of prayer, it carries weight. It allows you to pray with confidence. It is a game changer. And then H. And this is the one that changed everything for me. H is for here. After I pray, I don't just say amen, close my journal, move on with my day. I pause, I sit in the quiet, I give God space to respond. And then I write down what he says. Now, some of you may be thinking, how do I know if it's really God talking to me? And that's a fair question. And here's what I found: the more you practice this, the clearer his voice becomes. It's like a muscle. The first few times you might not be sure. And that's okay. You write something down and you wonder, was that him? Was that me? But keep practicing. Stay in scripture so you know his character. You know, you know, things that he speaks to you, because he's never going to speak something that doesn't align with scripture. And over time, you will know his voice will become so familiar, and you will find yourself hearing it, not just in your quiet time, but throughout your day. That is the faith method. Five steps, five letters, 20 minutes or less. And I'm telling you, it will change the way that you encounter God. Psalm 119, 105. Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. And I gotta do a plug here because very soon in the near future, um, you're gonna get an opportunity to grab your copy of your Nova journal. And in this journal, you're gonna get a chance to have a space to keep your faith method. So that's just a small little plug for the near future. But in the meantime, you can totally do this. Just grab a blank journal, blank piece of paper. You know, do this method, regardless of where you write it. Do this, it will change your life. I can't wait to unpack this more inside Nova community this week. Okay. Here's your one thing for this week. Try the faith method for seven days. That's it. Seven mornings. I know I'm asking you to do something every single day, but we are building our consistency with this, you guys. Set aside 15 to 20 minutes. Get a journal that's dedicated just for this, if you can, and work through your F A I T H every single morning. And especially don't skip the H. After you pray, set a timer for like three minutes and sit in silence. Write down whatever comes. Don't overthink it, just write. Seven days, I promise you, something will shift. Let's declare something together today before we pray. I want you to say this out loud with me. I'm gonna say a part of it and then you repeat. We are declaring God's word over ourselves today. All right, here we go. I am a sheep who hears my shepherd's voice. God has not stopped speaking. I am learning to listen. I come to his word not to complete a task, but to encounter a person. I give God space to speak. And I expect him to show up. His voice is becoming clearer. Clearer to me every day. I am not too busy. I am not too distracted. I am not too far gone to hear him. He is near. He is speaking. And I am listening. I love that for us today, you guys. We are leaning into here to listen. Here are your journal prompts for this week. I want you to sit with one or all three, whatever you have space for this week. Number one, when did I last feel like I clearly heard God's voice? What was happening in my life at that in that season? And what made space for it? When did I last feel like I clearly heard God's voice? What was happening in my life that season? What made space for it? Alright. Number two, what is the difference between how I currently approach scripture and what it would look like to truly listen? What is the difference between how I currently approach scripture and what would it look like to truly listen? What posture shift do I need? What posture shift do I need? And the last one. Or he would say. What am I hoping he would say? Oh, I cannot wait to sit with these questions myself, believing for God to just speak so many things to us this week. I want to pray for us today. It's going to be an amazing day, an amazing week. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are a God who speaks. You're not a God who is silent, who is distant, or hard to find. You're a God who speaks, who whispers, who calls us by name. God, I pray for anyone who feels like they haven't heard you in a while. And Lord, I ask you to meet them right now in this moment. Let them feel just how near you really are and remind them that you haven't moved. Thank you, God, that you have been speaking all along and you are still speaking. God, I pray that today we have the courage to slow down, to create space, to have our journals and open our hearts to hear you every morning this week and practice this faith method, Lord. And God, I'm believing that you're going to show up in these moments in a way that is undeniable. Make your voice even more clear. Make your voice familiar to us. God, our heart is to make it so we recognize your voice above any other voice. And Lord, I pray for the things that we've been wanting to hear from you. The direction, the confirmation, the peace that we've been asking for. God, let this be the week that we begin to truly receive that. Father, we believe that you are speaking and we want you to know that we are listening. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen, you guys. Oh man, I can't wait to hang out in the community to keep unpacking this. Before you go, listen, if you want just to have a written copy of what the faith method is to keep in your journal or on your desk, I have a free guide called Five Daily Rhythms That Changed Everything. The Faith Method is one of those five rhythms in there laid out for you step by step so you can reference it every morning completely free. The link is in the show notes. Go grab it today. All right. And if this episode helped you, I want you to share it. Send it to the woman in your life who's been wanting to feel close to God again. Sometimes the most caring thing you can do for someone is hand them exactly what they need. Next week, we are talking about your space, your home environment, and the rhythms that either restore you or drain you. That is a conversation I'm definitely looking forward to. Until then, make sure you keep your journal open, you keep listening. He is definitely speaking. I love you guys so much with the love of Christ. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'll see you on the next episode. This is April Nova Sipio, and this is how we live faith first rhythm always. Be blessed. Love you guys.