“The whole point of listening is that you are given things you would never come up with on your own,” says Paul Pastor, author of The Listening Day and deacon of spiritual formation at Theophilus Church in Portland, Oregon. But according to Pastor, we’ve forgotten how to listen because we’re so focused on the past and the future—on what we’ve done and what we have left to do. “God cannot be known in the past,” he writes. “He cannot be known in the future. … The Father invites us to join him, to know him, now.”

The Listening Day is a 90-day devotional written to help readers listen to God’s voice. Pastor recommends that people read his book slowly, a tall task for a culture that prefers its insights in 140-character tweets and 18-minute TED Talks. But listening requires dedicated time and presence, whether we’re listening to God or to a struggling congregant.

We sat down with Pastor to ask why, when it comes to ...