Culture Convo | The Small Voice in the Noise: Hearing God Clearly | Marquita Moore

In a culture overflowing with noise—social media opinions, cultural pressures, even the good demands of family and work—how do we make space to hear God’s whisper? In this reflective episode of Culture Raises Us, Marquita Moore of How I Grew Today shares wisdom on relearning stillness, discerning God’s leading, and protecting spiritual sensitivity in a world that thrives on distraction.

Marquita speaks candidly about the seasons when she couldn’t hear clearly, the daily practices that help her realign (fasting, prayer, deeper study), and why God’s guidance often comes with peace even when it stretches us—unlike the striving of ambition and pressure. She uses vivid analogies—from naming your brain to the ache after a chiropractor visit—to remind us that alignment takes discipline, but the reward is clarity and freedom.

This episode is an invitation to tune out the noise, set boundaries, and lean into the whisper that knows the way forward. Because God doesn’t always show up in the loud and obvious—often, He’s found in the quiet.

#CultureRaisesUs #MarquitaMoore #HearingGodsVoice #FaithAndStillness #SpiritualDiscipline #FindingClarity #GodInTheWhisper #WalkByFaith #QuietStrength #SmallVoiceBigImpact

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everywhere we turn, there is noise, social noise, cultural noise,
emotional noise. Everyone has an opinion. They got a platform,
a brand, a movement, something, and even the good things,
family work, dreams can get so loud that we don't
even realize how far they've pulled our attention. But here's
a question in the middle all that, can you still

(00:23):
hear that small voice, the whisper that's supposed to guide you,
anchor you and remind you who you are? Or have
you settled for being busy instead of being led? Today's
conversation with our guest Marquita Moore of How I Grew
Today is about sensitivity, right, learning how to be still again,
how to tune out the distractions, and how to make

(00:44):
room for the one voice that actually matters. And so
how can someone practically, I say, practically discern the difference
between being led by God versus just being driven by pressure,
culture or in abi.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Okay, so this is a little loaded, but so we
all know when we get that check in our spirit,
whether it's from God or whether it's from self. And
a lot of times we run through it. We run
through it and we choose to I've even felt myself

(01:23):
God a like I don't want to. I can feel this,
I can feel what God is leading me, telling me
to do. But I'm trying to silence him and to
do right. And I believe the closer we are, the
more intimate we become with God and our walk, the
harder it is to ignore that conviction because it's stronger.

(01:46):
So if I you see, it went from a small
voice to me paying attention to him, learning how he
speaks to me, and getting louder, and then me being
unto a point where I want to quiet it, so
we have to strengthen it.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
God's leading often comes with peace, even when it stretches
us right, So that's another difference. And pressure and ambition
usually come with striving. That's how I can test it.
Am I moving in his peace or in my own?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Put in that piece? I think there's also this this
silence in this calm, and I think we're in a
culture where silence is so rare. How do how do
we relearn the art of that stillness and that listening
that you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Stop giving into the distractions. It takes time to retrain
and re retrain yourself to do this right. But you
have to be disciplined. You got work. We got to
work out our own salvation, right, that's part of it.
We can't just depend We can depend on gods, So

(03:04):
don't take this in the wrong way. But we just
can't sit back and do nothing and allow him to
do everything. Like, we have to position ourselves in a way.
We have to learn how to control our minds to
not be busy. If I'm having prayer time, my quiet time,
I'm not picking up the phone every two seconds.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Like.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
We have to resist the temptation to go with every
pass and thought because we can choose otherwise, right, Like,
we have to train ourselves. Stillness doesn't always mean silence
around you know. It means quiet and my soul enough
to recognize his voice.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that because it's just
recently that I learned, and you know, my meditating and
trying to be still and all the things and quiet
my brain, I learned that your brain is trained to
like be monkey style what they call monkey swings, constantly
moving all over the place to different thoughts all the time.

(04:04):
And it's your job to manage and control that and
also remind yourself that what your brain, and your mind
is telling you all the time is not necessarily true,
which is another wild thing that I didn't know I
even name my brain. But that's a whole other Obviously,
it's net that we get no, because this is what
I was told, Like, name your brain so that you

(04:25):
can have a conversation with it, because it'll help you
with the discipline of kind of what you're saying, compartmentalizing
and calming and keeping yourself in this still focused frame
of mind and not going all over the place. But
name it so you can have a conversation and be like, yo, Adam,
we're not doing that today. It's not happening. Literally, So
George and I have a lot of conversations by right.

(04:46):
But and I think it's it. It comes down to
how do we protect that inner sensitivity while still engaging
with the world, right or family or career, social media
community without completely withdrawing. Right, there's a balance. Do you
have any insight on that balance? Because well we just
talked about that's a lot of work. Yeah, and oh

(05:08):
I'm sorry. You have to be of the world.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh yeah, but not in the world, but not of it, right, Oh.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
It, thank you?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yes, but you have to make it a priority to
live in that place right. And at first it might
feel like work, but then it kicks. The ease kicks in.
It's you go to the chiropractor right and you get
an alignment. Well, you leave the place you're feeling sore,

(05:35):
but you're in the right alignment. Right. It takes time
for you right alignment to feel right in you, so
it feels awkward at first, but you have to protect
that alignment. You don't pick up heavy things. You're more
mindful of how you move so you don't get out
of alignment. That's what you have to do spiritually. And
part of that protection is boundaries, right, setting boundaries for

(05:58):
other people and yourself. All right, I'm not gonna watch this,
I'm not gonna do this. I'm gonna put the phone down.
I'm gonna, you know, do whatever I need to do.
You have to set those boundaries spiritually too. You can't
protect what you want prioritize, and sometimes that means saying
no when everyone around is saying Okay, I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
It right, that's right. And and thank you for the
analogy of the chiropractor, of going to a chiropractor and
the pain or the strain that you feel after it
is part of the healing. Yeah, it's part of the process.
So thank you for you know, just bringing that to light,
because we would think coming out of a chiropractor, Oh,

(06:38):
everything should be smoothie doe, it's you know, you're you're
you're back to normal, you're back on track. Or but no,
there is a period of you have to now work
through the aftermath to let everything settle.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, because you've been wrong for so.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Long boom boom, so now we got to fix that.
You think it's just gonna be immediate. You think it
was immediate that you got in the place that you're in.
It took you time to get into the place that
you're in, So why do you think it's gonna it's
not gonna take time to get to Yeah? Why does
this thing? Life sound so simple marketed? And then we
find out all the nuances and the work. This is

(07:16):
the real job.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
This is Oh my gosh, this is it. That's why
I love these conversations because this.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Is this is the real work. I hope people are
looking at this as like this is the real training
tools for real life, your real life job and our
real life job. Is to be the best versions of
ourselves and allow for God's gifts to be utilized through
us and shared with others to hopefully unlock the gifts

(07:43):
that others have and that God intended and sent us
all down here to share. So with that sharing, everything
is sharing. Have you ever experienced a season where you
couldn't hear clearly, like where everything felt cloudy or loud?
And if so, what helped you to find and gain
that clarity?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Again? Okay, the answer is yes, and.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Many times, many times yeah, no, listen human, you're human, seriously.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
But sometimes it's because God is leveling me up or
I'm moving into a new dimension with him. And there
are other times where it's because I'm feeding the natural
more than my spiritual and he just chin checked me
real quick. But I have to be able to discern
which one it is, you know, in the And there

(08:35):
was times where I'm like, why did you leave me?
I don't hear you, I can't And it made me
question everything about him and me and my ability to
be led by him and all these things. But he
was stretching me and teaching me how to depend on
him and saying if he can trust me because if
he feels like he just went somewhere real quick, Am

(08:57):
I going to leave too? I'm going to snit and
wait and see what he's doing, right, you know? And
in that time of being sensitive to discerning where I
am and not just moving blindly, I have to pay
attention to what season I'm in spiritually. So I'll do

(09:18):
a checklist. God, is it time for me to fast?
Do I need to increase my study time or the
time I'm spending with you? Do I need to pray
in a spirit longer? You know? I need to be
able to also reach in my box to see what
it is that He's requiring me to do in that moment.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
So are these part of like your daily life checks
that you make sure you do to make room for
that whisper? Share those again because those are some good ones.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Okay? So fasting? Is it time? Fast? Increasing my study
time as reading the Bible or some spiritual tech book
or whatever it needs to be, and then spending time listening.
Do I need to pray in the spirit longer to
build myself up? So if that's thirty minutes or an hour, like,

(10:15):
do I need to just pray in the spirit to
build my spiritual stamina. These are the key, man like,
these things are key, And when it feels cloudy, I
know what to do. I can remind myself he's still speaking.
I just need to be sensitive to see where I
am and what I need to be doing right now.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Which you need to be doing. So you've got a
nice toolbox. You've got a nice toolbox. And at the
end of the day, the noise never goes away, right.
Society will keep talking, people will keep building, pressures will
keep pressing. But in all of that, you still have
a choice. And yeah, you're talking about this choice. You

(10:57):
can either be pulled in every direction or or you
can be led by the quiet, steady whisper that knows
the way forward. And in the Bible, Elijah almost missed
it because he was looking for God in the you know,
the dramatic and the loud and in the obvious. But
God was in the whisper. And I think that's a
reminder for us to moving forward. It's not always about

(11:20):
the biggest platform, or the biggest breakthrough or the loudest voice.
It's about being still enough to catch the whisper that
GUIDs your next step.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Marquita can't thank you enough and look forward to doing
the theeter.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Thank you, Esther