Samuel was serving in the temple, asleep near the ark, when he heard his name called in the night. He ran to Eli, certain the old priest had called for him. Eli hadn't. It happened again — the same name, the same night, the same confused boy standing at an old man's bedside. By the third time, Eli understood what Samuel couldn't yet: this wasn't a person summoning him. It was God, and Samuel had no way to know that, because nobody had taught him what it sounds like. Eli had to give him the words — when He calls again, say, "Speak, your servant is listening." Only then did the boy finally answer correctly (1 Samuel 3:1-10).
I think about that scene often, because I watch a version of it every time someone is newly born again. There's a moment right after conversion where a person is, in a real sense, exactly where Samuel was: capable of hearing from God, but with no framework yet for recognizing it, responding to it, or living from it. What happens in the weeks after that moment decides more than most of what happens in the years after. I have come to believe three things need to be put in place from day one, or the person's journey gets needlessly hard, and worse, they end up half-equipped — sincere, but never fully formed into what the life is actually meant to be.
The first is teaching them to hear God. Not doctrine about God — hearing directly. Jesus said His sheep hear His voice and know it, and He said it as something normal, not exceptional (John 10:27). But nobody arrives already fluent in it. Samuel needed Eli to name what was happening and hand him the words before he could recognize the voice on his own. A new believer needs the same thing: someone naming the sensation, the timing, the difference between a prompting and a distraction, until communion with God stops being theoretical and becomes something they actually do. Skip this step and every future instruction has to come secondhand, through someone else, indefinitely. That is not a sustainable way to grow.
The second is teaching them devotion — not the idea of it, the practice. A daily, unglamorous discipline of showing up with God on purpose, the way Jesus made a habit of rising while it was still dark to pray alone (Mark 1:35). Growth from here tracks almost exactly with this: the depth of someone's walk rarely outpaces the consistency of their private time with God. Nobody arrives already knowing what a devotion looks like structurally — what to read, how to pray, what to do when it feels dry. That has to be modeled and taught the same way anything else worth doing well gets taught, not assumed.
The third is making sure they are filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus told His own disciples — men who had walked with Him for three years already — to wait, because they would receive power once the Spirit came on them. If people with that much direct instruction still needed a power they did not yet have, a new convert certainly does too. This is the difference between knowing what to do and actually having what it takes to do it.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
— Acts 1:8
None of this is a formula that guarantees anything. I have watched people receive all three and still drift, because the choice to keep walking in it stays theirs, every day, not just at the start. And none of it happens in an afternoon — it takes someone willing to stay close enough, long enough, to actually teach it, not just announce it once at an altar and move on to the next name on the list.
But when these three are genuinely in place, something changes in how a person carries the rest of their life, not just their faith. They are not guessing at a voice they were never taught to recognize. They are not running on an excitement that has nothing under it once the excitement passes. They are not drawing on a power they were told about but never received. I think about Samuel again here — not the boy confused by a voice he could not place, but the man he became afterward, someone the whole nation eventually trusted to hear God correctly, because someone once took the time to teach a child what listening actually sounds like.