I grew up in a Christian family. My mom sang in the worship team (she was the worship team) and my dad drove us to church and read us Bible stories before we went to sleep. I remember being curled up in my bed patiently paging through stories which told of God talking to people in burning bushes, or through the mouths of donkeys. Of course, as a child with a wild imagination, I never thought this was strange at all.
As I became a teenager I was encouraged to “hear the voice of God for yourself,” and I experienced people coming up to me to tell me, “I think God wants you to know…” I always thought, “How do they know for sure that’s God?” I figured if God wanted to speak to me there were lots of donkeys on our farm – why couldn’t He use one of them!
I’ve learnt many years later you can indeed hear the voice of God. This is not special to pastors, evangelists, or overly zealous happy clappy Christians. This is a beautiful gift given to anyone who believes in Christ and is willing to surrender their lives to him.
If you wish to hear God’s voice there are a few things you should know:
Jesus is alive. He’s not mute. He cares about you and He still speaks to His people today.
What Jesus says will never contradict the Bible and what He said previously in the scriptures.
When Jesus spoke to His disciples after His ascension (this is when He went to heaven) it was usually internal not audible.
You don’t have to be able to read to hear the voice of God.
Learning to hear the voice of God is invaluable. It will lead you in difficult situations, it can provide the wisdom for challenges, and heal pain. Often, the problem is not that God is not speaking, its that we aren’t listening. All true believers can and do hear the voice of God; they just don’t recognise what they are hearing as being God’s voice.
We are too busy
Psalm 46:10 says:
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
It’s in stillness, not busy-ness, that we tune our spiritual ears to hear the voice of God. The Lord always speaks to us in that “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), but often it’s drowned out in all the turmoil of our daily lives.
God communicates with our spirit
God’s voice comes from His Spirit to our spirit. It’s not voice to voice like a human experience. The Lord speaks to our spirit in impressions which we vocalise and interpret.
I read a story of a pastor, Andrew Wommack, who was on a trip around the world. He felt the impression that he should not go to his next destination and it wouldn’t leave him. The more he prayed about it the more he felt not to go. He phoned the team on the other side and told then he was not available. This, of course, was not an easy decision. Two days later the plane he was supposed to be on crashed and over 160 people died. He had been saved because of his obedience and ability to hear God’s voice.
“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts.”
It’s not always easy to interpret the impressions on your heart. In these cases, the best you can do, is make a wise decision, ask the right people for advice, and avoid indecision.
The most difficult part of hearing God is the fact that it takes time to learn to discern God’s voice – and it takes a humble heart. Jeremiah 29:12-13 says, “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
We can’t make demands on an Almighty God. We can’t shake our fist at the sky and say, “all right God, let me hear you.” But we can ask, seek, and knock, and the Bible promises that God will open the door. God will reveal Himself to those who humbly seek Him.