It really isn't as hard to hear from God as what most people imagine.
The problem is that most of us aren't all that interested in hearing from him. If we had a TV channel with live broadcasts from heaven, we would turn to it occasionally, just out of curiosity. But we would soon return to the commercial channels when we heard what God was saying.
The fastest and most reliable way to hear from God is to fast. Maybe that's how it got its name: because it is so fast!
People are always telling us that they would like a few weeks to "pray about" living by faith. Of course it does not take a few weeks to get an answer from God. But then that is not what they are looking for. Some of them went off to pray about it years ago, and still have not returned.
When someone says, "Give me a few weeks to pray about it", they usually mean "Give me a few weeks to build a case against obeying God... or at least to get so distracted that I can forget what he has already told me to do."
Often they get revelations about what we should do. Usually it's something about us being too hard on people. In other words, we make people uncomfortable by taking Jesus so seriously.
It doesn't take weeks to hear from God if you're serious about obeying him. But we can spend a lifetime in the comfortable ooze of nature walks, fellowship, sleep, advice, church meetings, television, and, of course, plenty of food.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." (Matthew 5:6) Fasting is the best way to show we want to hear from God. But if we pretend to hunger after righteousness (while doing our own thing), we only become filled with self-righteousness.
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
--William James
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