Hearing God's Voice: Experiencing the Holy Spirit Today

Blog by the Unhurried Living Team

Experiencing the Holy Spirit is not reserved for the theologically sophisticated or the emotionally demonstrative. It is the ordinary inheritance of anyone who has come to Christ, and it is more available in everyday life than most Christian leaders have been taught to expect. In this conversation, Alan Fadling sits down with Tyler Staton, lead pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon and author of The Familiar Stranger, to explore what it actually means to live in the presence and power of the Spirit, and how Scripture's own images can open a door that many leaders quietly gave up on.

Is Living in God's Presence Really Available to Ordinary Leaders?

Living in God's presence is not a secondhand experience reserved for mystics or high-capacity spiritual athletes. That is one of the most freeing realizations Tyler Staton describes in The Familiar Stranger, and it is the conviction that gave the book its shape. Tyler grew up in a church tradition where there was, in his words, "a lot of theology with little practice" when it came to the Holy Spirit. Discernment, intimacy, the kind of supernaturally guided community depicted throughout the book of Acts: all of it felt just out of reach. He believed everything on the pages of Scripture was livable. He just had no model for how to begin.

What he found as he investigated was that this gap was not unique to his tradition. It had become the common condition of the church in the United States. On one side sat communities with deep biblical knowledge and almost no expectation that God speaks or moves in present experience. On the other sat communities where living in God's presence was everything but where the pursuit could become about engineering an encounter rather than receiving one. Tyler found himself asking how what got Jesus so excited had become the most divisive subject in the church.

The answer he arrived at is not a new technique. It is a recovery. Living in God's presence, as he and Alan discuss, has always been the center of what God has been doing in Scripture since Genesis 1:1. The Spirit is not introduced in Acts 2. The Spirit is present at the very start, and every Old Testament metaphor for the Spirit is pointing ahead to something so intimate and available it could not quite be described in plain language. For weary leaders who have quietly shelved any real expectation of experiencing the Holy Spirit, this conversation is an unhurried invitation to reconsider.

Take one step toward that reconsideration and explore it here.

What Does Holy Spirit in Daily Life Actually Look Like?

The most clarifying image Tyler Staton offers for the Holy Spirit in daily life comes from Ezekiel 47. In that vision, a trickle of water begins flowing from the threshold of the temple and moves east into the wilderness. The further it flows, the deeper it grows, until it becomes a river that spills into the Dead Sea. In a sea where nothing can survive, fish of every species begin to swim and flourish. Trees line the banks. Their leaves, the text says, are for the healing of the nations. What was dead becomes alive.

This image was not simply poetic. It was liturgical. The priests of Israel would pour cisterns of water down the temple steps during one of the great annual festivals as an enacted prayer, a communal cry to God: would you fulfill Ezekiel's vision? Would you pour out your presence on us this way? And into that very moment, in John chapter 7, Jesus steps onto the temple steps and interrupts with an announcement: if anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink. Streams of living water will flow from within you. John tells us he was speaking of the Spirit.

Tyler's point is that Jesus was not inventing a new metaphor. He was borrowing Ezekiel's metaphor and raising the stakes. God had promised to pour his presence through the temple. Jesus was now saying: I will pour my presence into you, so that you become the temple through whom this river flows, carrying life to the deadest places in the world. The Holy Spirit in daily life is not an add-on to the Christian life. It is the very mechanism by which that ancient promise is fulfilled in a human body, in an ordinary week, in the quiet decisions of a leader trying to stay present.

When you are ready to go deeper into these rhythms, find it here.

How Biblical Experiential Spirituality Moves Past the All-or-Nothing Trap

Biblical experiential spirituality has been flattened, in much of the contemporary church, into a false binary. Either you pursue the Spirit through high-octane gathered experiences where everything depends on the emotional charge of the room, or you set aside any expectation of experiencing God directly and settle for sound doctrine and weekly attendance. Tyler Staton names this binary clearly and then refuses it, drawing on a far older and more trustworthy tradition.

The desert fathers and mothers of the third century, he explains, were thoroughly orthodox teachers of Scripture who also moved in the power of the Spirit. But their expression of the Spirit looked nothing like manufactured intensity. Biblical experiential spirituality, for them, looked like silently waiting on God and attempting to attune the inner life to his reality. It was much gentler, and much harder to contrive. Tyler carries this same posture into his own pastoral practice. When he waits in prayer at the close of a worship gathering, inviting the congregation into Spirit-led intercession, the inner posture he holds is identical to what he does alone on his front porch every morning: simply trying to grow familiar with God's voice, and then humbly living by it.

Alan Fadling draws on his own varied theological history here, having moved from a cessationist Baptist tradition to spiritual formation to the Vineyard renewal to contemplative spiritual direction. What he and Tyler arrive at together is something like Ezekiel's river: different streams of the church are all genuinely experiencing the Holy Spirit, just through different vocabularies and expressions. Biblical experiential spirituality is not the property of any one stream. When those streams flow together, carrying the best of their respective traditions, something closer to the full inheritance Jesus described becomes possible. The inner life becomes, as Tyler puts it, the source of the living river. That is not aspiration. That is the promise.

One honest step toward this integration: identify which stream you were formed in, and notice what it may have left underemphasized. Where has your experience of the Spirit been narrow, whether through theological caution or emotional excess? Sitting with that question, without rushing to answer it, is itself a form of contemplative prayer.

What Does the Bible Say About the Holy Spirit's Presence in Us?

Where Weary Leaders Find Their Way Back to the Spirit

There is a particular ache Tyler Staton describes that many ministry leaders will recognize without needing it explained. It is the experience of believing everything Scripture says about the Holy Spirit and still feeling, in honest private moments, that the gap between the text and lived experience is wide and possibly permanent. The good news is not that this gap means something is wrong with you. The good news is that it is exactly the hunger the Spirit meets.

Alan Fadling has spent decades accompanying leaders who carry this quiet exhaustion, leaders who are functionally capable but spiritually depleted, who have given generously from a well they have not had time to sit beside. What this conversation points toward is not a new program or a more energetic practice. It is a recovery of something ancient and unhurried: the posture of a person who has stopped trying to manufacture the Spirit's presence and has learned instead to turn inward, quiet the noise, and grow familiar with a voice that has been speaking all along.

If you have found yourself in that place, you are not behind. You are thirsty. And that, Jesus said, is exactly where the invitation begins.

If this conversation stirred something in you, the Weekly Email from Unhurried Living is a gentle, consistent way to keep going deeper. Sign up here. If you want a longer on-ramp into these rhythms, the Unhurried Daily Email is a 40-day devotional sequence designed to slow you down and open you up. Get started here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I hear God's voice clearly if I've never been taught how? A: Hearing God's voice clearly is less about unlocking a special skill and more about growing familiar with a relationship. Tyler Staton describes it as learning to attune your inner life to God's reality, the same posture in a gathered worship setting as alone in morning prayer. Starting with simple, honest silence and Scripture is a reliable beginning. Over time, the voice becomes more recognizable because the relationship deepens.

Q: What does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit's role in everyday life? A: The Bible presents the Holy Spirit not as an occasional visitor but as an indwelling presence available to every believer. Jesus, drawing on Ezekiel's river vision in John chapter 7, described the Spirit as living water flowing from within those who come to him. Paul describes the human body itself as the temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 6. Scripture's vision of the Holy Spirit in everyday life is intimate, continuous, and deeply personal.

Q: How can I experience the Holy Spirit today if my church tradition has been skeptical of it? A: Many believers come from traditions that emphasized biblical knowledge while offering little guidance on Spirit-led experience. Tyler Staton's recommendation is to look to the desert fathers and mothers of the third century, thoroughly orthodox Christians who expressed the Spirit's power through contemplative attunement rather than emotional performance. Their example is a historically grounded entry point that does not require abandoning theological integrity.

Q: What is the difference between seeking spiritual experiences and genuine biblical experiential spirituality? A: The difference lies in orientation. Seeking spiritual experiences tends to focus on what I want God to produce in me, and can lead to manufactured intensity or spiritual manipulation. Biblical experiential spirituality, as Tyler Staton describes it, is oriented toward what God wants to do in the world and in me, and involves a posture of humble receptivity rather than spiritual striving. It is less about drumming something up and more about quieting enough to receive what is already being offered.

Q: Can the contemplative tradition and the charismatic tradition learn from each other? A: Yes, and Tyler Staton argues this integration is essential. He describes the church's different streams as tributaries that, when joined together, can become something like Ezekiel's river: a rushing flow capable of bringing life to the deadest places in the world. The contemplative tradition offers rootedness, attunement, and resistance to manipulation. The charismatic tradition offers expectancy, boldness, and hunger for God's present activity. Neither alone represents the full inheritance Scripture describes.