Faith & Spirit Quote by Michael W. Smith

There’s a quiet humility in the way Michael W. Smith stacks those phrases: “I’m learning” twice, then the modest flex of “getting better at it,” and finally the real reveal - the skill he’s describing isn’t hitting notes or working a crowd, it’s “learning how to hear God.” For a musician whose entire public identity is built on performance, he’s reframing mastery as receptivity. That’s a subtle cultural move: in an era that rewards certainty and branding, he’s insisting that the most important work is ongoing, private, and unfinishable.

The intent reads like a testimony without the theatrics. He’s not claiming access to divine certainty; he’s describing a practice. “In worship” matters because it narrows the claim. He’s not saying God speaks to him in traffic or in the studio as a creative hack. Worship is a communal, disciplined setting, with a vocabulary and expectation of listening baked in. The subtext is a gentle correction to the way contemporary Christian music can drift toward concert logic - big choruses, big feelings, big affirmation. Smith’s line suggests that the goal isn’t emotional volume, it’s attentiveness.

Contextually, it lands as the kind of backstage honesty that long-running faith artists use to stay credible: after decades onstage, you either harden into guru mode or admit you’re still being formed. He chooses formation. “Hear God” becomes less a mystical claim than a metric for integrity: if worship is supposed to be encounter, the artist can’t just lead it; he has to submit to it.