I’m not sure when I started hearing voices, but I know it happened frequently as a teenager. I was barely nineteen when I approached a person I trusted and, without giving any context, asked her, “Does God ever speak to you in sentences?”

She didn’t hesitate for even a moment. She offered a knowing expression and bobbed her finger at me as she spoke. “Don’t ever doubt that,” she said.

Her advice has proven sound over the decades. I still sometimes doubt, and occasionally I have to be told more than once—sometimes I have to be clobbered with a spiritual club—but I’m grateful for my patient guides and the messages they bring.

What doubts keep you from receiving?