Listening Prayer is a skill that grows with practice and intimacy with the Holy Spirit. While there’s no guaranteed way of knowing that what you’ve heard was from the Spirit, there are reliable indicators when the Holy Spirit speaks. His communication typically has these properties: it comes as a clear thought, feeling, image, or sensation that seems disconnected from your own train of thought; it never contradicts Scripture and agrees with God’s nature; it resonates even when surprising and makes sense in context; and it bears good fruit.
In Listening Splankna, you’re listening within the structure of the protocol, which actually makes hearing more reliable because the framework eliminates random content. There are only three possible sources for what you hear: God, yourself, or the enemy. We evaluate what comes by asking: does this sound like God’s character, is it condemning or fear-based, does it contradict Scripture?
The key is remembering that we don’t hear perfectly, but our Father wants to communicate with us and His Spirit lives within us while the enemy does not. As Dallas Willard noted, believers should expect to grow in hearing God’s voice until it becomes normative. Like any relationship skill, listening prayer becomes more accurate and reliable with practice, proper boundaries, and a heart posture of humility and expectation.