Devotional books rarely survive a revision this heavy, and this audiobook arrives advertising seven new chapters and a thorough rewrite without naming a single person responsible for either. Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes of teaching sit behind that claim, credited to Henry T. Blackaby and read by Dale A. Cuilla, and the publisher's copy promises a version that is bigger and better than the one that reached millions of readers before it.
A Closer Look at Experiencing God
Publisher copy usually treats an audio edition as an afterthought, which makes the opening line here worth noticing: when you press play, it says, you will find that you are not just listening. Somebody wrote that sentence for the ear rather than adapting it from a dust jacket, and the distinction matters, because this is teaching material rather than narrative and the whole question is whether it can hold a listener who has no page to look at. Blackaby's approach, judging by what the description and the written responses describe, is built on scripture references stacked in sequence, each one supporting the next.
Ratings on this page do not survive contact with arithmetic. The tally reports a single rating and displays an average of 4.8, and one vote resolves to a whole star, never to a decimal. Below that same tally sit five separate written responses, each with its own date running from October 2025 through February 2026. Whatever the number in the ratings field is counting, it is not the people who wrote on this page, and a buyer should treat that 4.8 as a display artifact rather than a consensus.
December 2025 brought the longest and most useful of the five, five stars under a headline about not questioning God. It sets out the argument the book actually makes: that Blackaby uses scripture to establish why a believer does not deliberate about a command but simply acts on it, and that what God orders, God equips and supplies. That is a fair one-sentence summary of the method, and it is also a warning label, depending on where you are standing.
What Makes Experiencing God Worth Hearing
Obedience, in this framework, is not the end of a process of discernment but the beginning of one. The publisher describes a listener being remade and reoriented, captured not by a concept but by a Creator, and freed from what it calls stale religion. Strip away the marketing register and the underlying structure is a course rather than a book: a sequence of propositions about how a person recognizes a call, tests it and then moves, with the testimonies functioning as worked examples. The description counts dozens of true stories from people who say this material changed the direction of their lives.
Testimony is what carries the format. Argument on audio is slippery, since a listener cannot underline a premise and return to it, but a story about a specific person doing a specific thing lands cleanly the first time. A January 2026 write-up at five stars makes the case from the other end, reporting that the promise in the title turned out to be literal and that the book taught its writer how to experience God personally rather than theoretically. For a work of practical theology, that is the outcome the whole enterprise is aimed at.
Pacing is the other thing the format gets right, almost by accident. A reader can finish a chapter of practical theology in twenty minutes and retain very little of it, because the eye moves faster than conviction does. Eleven and a half hours imposes the slower speed the material was arguably always meant to be taken at, and the sequence of propositions arrives in the order Blackaby built rather than in whatever order a browsing reader chooses. For a text that asks its audience to sit with an idea before acting on it, the constraint is a feature.
Things to Know Before Starting Experiencing God
Revision is the credit problem here, and it is a real one. Seven new chapters have been added to a landmark volume and the listing attributes them to nobody. Someone did that work, and on a title whose authority rests entirely on the trustworthiness of the teacher, the absence of a reviser's name is more than a cataloging slip. The publisher field compounds the impression, reading as a library imprint rather than the house you would expect on a title of this reach.
Scripture-heavy audio also carries a practical cost that no narrator can solve. This material moves through citations at pace, and a listener who half catches a reference has no way to recover it short of rewinding blind. No accompanying document is mentioned anywhere in the listing, so the verses arrive spoken and then leave. Anyone planning to use this as a study text rather than as background listening will want the printed edition open alongside it, which is a strange recommendation to make about an eleven-hour recording, but an honest one.
Written responses on this page are also thinner than their count implies. One of the five consists of two words. Every one of them grades the book, its argument and its effect rather than its delivery, and the four that describe the encounter at all reach for reading verbs while doing so, which places that much of the pool on a printed page rather than in anybody's headphones.
Who Henry T. Blackaby Is Writing For
Believers already inside this tradition are the natural audience, particularly those who want a structured, unhurried presentation of a discipleship framework that has circulated for decades and has just been expanded. Anyone drawn to testimony as a form will find the case studies the liveliest part of it. Returning readers get an easier deal still: the revision can be absorbed whole without rereading the print edition, and eleven and a half hours is a comfortable way to cover familiar ground again.
A critical or historical account of evangelical thought this is not; the teaching comes from inside a conviction rather than from a study of one. Anyone troubled by the framing of obedience as immediate and unquestioned should know that the idea is the spine of the whole book rather than a chapter to pass over. The audio in particular is the wrong format for serious study, note-taking and reference-checking, since everything about this text wants a page you can hold your finger in.
Before You Press Play
- Narrator: Dale A. Cuilla carries eleven and a half hours of teaching built on scripture citations, which is the hardest kind of material to listen to linearly because you cannot flip back to a verse you half caught.
- Subjects: discipleship, obedience over deliberation, hearing a divine call, testimony as teaching method
- Tone: Warm, insistent, unmistakably devotional
- Bottom line: A landmark evangelical study delivered whole, best used with the text beside you rather than as a standalone listen.
Common Questions
Is this audiobook the original Experiencing God or the revised edition?
The description points squarely at a revision, promising seven new chapters, a thorough rewrite and additional true stories on top of the version that circulated for years. No revision date or reviser is named, so if you need a specific edition for a class or small group, confirm with the publisher before buying.
Can you follow the scripture references while the audiobook is playing?
With difficulty. The teaching moves from citation to citation at a steady clip and no companion document is listed anywhere on the page. Most people using this as a study text will want the printed edition open alongside the audio, and casual listeners should expect to let some references go by.
Why does the page show one rating but five written reviews?
That mismatch is a listing defect rather than anything about the book. A single vote cannot produce an average of 4.8, since one person picks a whole number of stars. Five dated responses sit underneath that tally, so the ratings field is not counting the same pool the review column shows.
How long does Experiencing God take to get through?
Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes, which works out to roughly two weeks at forty minutes a day. Because the structure is sequential and each idea builds on the last, it rewards short regular sessions far more than long ones, and it holds up well to being paused for a day or two.
