Hearing God's Voice
I was riding in an oil field truck with a friend when it happened.
He had his work radio in the truck. From the radio came a continual mix of static, voices, and chatter. The radio’s volume was low so that what you heard was undecipherable to me. It was basically background noise.
All of a sudden, my friend grabbed the mic and began talking to someone on the radio. What I heard gave me no clue that there needed to be a conversation. What he heard was someone asking to talk to him.
How do we, as followers of Christ, know what God is saying? How can we hear His voice?
How We Hear God’s Voice:
God speaks to us through the Bible.
There is a reason we call the Bible - God’s Word. It is His message to us and God speaks to us through the Bible.
If we want to hear God’s voice, we must spend time in His Word. We can spend time in the Bible together as a family and help our children develop their own love for God’s Word.
We can spend time individually in the Bible with reading plans. (YouVersion Bible App).
God has already spoken to us through His Word!
God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit.
The voice of the Spirit is often described as “we hear Him in our heart.”
Bottom line, it is that God directs our thoughts or gives us an idea. Though those words and thoughts are silent and other people can’t hear them, they are real words and thoughts, even though they are not experienced audibly.
The Spirit speaks to us when someone’s name is on our mind. Maybe God is nudging us to pray for that person.
A Bible verse comes to mind. God might be encouraging us to do what the verse says, or He might be giving us peace or help through it.
A picture of doing something plays on the screen of your mind. God could be showing you a way to serve another person or to serve God.
Always remember the voice of the Spirit will never go against what God has said in the Bible.
God speaks to us through other people.
There has to be some filtering here. Not everything someone says is God speaking to us. We are talking about someone speaking to us who we respect, and who has godly wisdom.
I’ve often had people tell me that “the sermon was talking right to me.” I had nothing to do with that reaction. Sometimes that is God’s way of getting our attention.
Sometimes we hear several people tell us the basic same thing in slightly different ways. At times, we find these messages line up with how God wants to direct us. This third way God speaks is the reason being involved in a group of people who help, pray, and correct us is so important.
Again, if the message you’re hearing through people in any way at all goes against God’s word, those messages are not God speaking to you.
God speaks to us, are we listening?