How to hear God’s voice
We are so often bombarded with noise from our outer world and our inner world that can prevent us from listening. We grapple with hearing our own thoughts, the sound of our own body and more importantly, the voice of our Creator.
In this post, I want to cover the 10 main ways God speaks to us, as seen in the Bible, how you can develop the ability to hear God speak to you and why silence is key to hear the voice of God.
How do we hear the voice of God?
What would you think if I told you that prayer is not a one-way conversation? For many people, this is their experience, they go through their list of things they wish to pray about, and then they move on with their day. If this is your approach to prayer, can I ask you to stop and consider that prayer is a two-way conversation as God wants to speak to you.
Here are the key examples of how God can speak to us. It is not up to us to choose which method He will use. Instead, we must remain open and leave this up to God.
Through the Bible - Psalm 119:9-11, 2 Timothy 3:16
Through the still small voice of God - 1 Kings 19:12, Isaiah 30:19-21
By the advice of others - Proverbs 15:22, Proverbs 12:15
By dreams - Matthew 1:20-21
By visions - Acts 10:9-10
By angels - Luke 1:26-38
By the gifts of the Spirit - 1 Corinthians 12:4-11
By preaching/teaching - Acts 2:37
By the desires of our hearts - Psalm 37:4
By tossing a coin -1 Samuel 14:41
As we can see from the many instances above, God desires for us to hear his voice. However, it is good to be aware that God will speak to us around 95% of the time through the Bible as this is His voice to us in written form. I have left in flipping a coin (number ten) although it is not one I would highly recommend for discovering your life’s purpose.
We can often struggle to listen in our relationships as we are usually thinking of what to say next even before the person has finished their sentence. This can also happen as we speak to God in prayer. This means we should develop our listening skills to hear God’s voice. One of the repeated phrases in the New Testament is, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” It is clear that God wants to speak to us!
Still small voice
This post would be too long to cover all the topics found here. However, I would like to focus on hearing God speak to us through the still small voice (number two). The idea behind this is that we need to create some silence and stillness to hear God whisper to us. When someone whispers, it means we need to get up close and personal. God is looking for closeness and intimacy in our lives.
The Hebrew word whisper in the Bible is demamah. This can be translated as silence, stillness or calmness. Often when we are the quietest, God speaks the loudest. Silence is not passive waiting; it is proactive listening.
Halvor Gregusson, in his original research on “The Science Behind Interruption and Task Management,” showed that we are interrupted every three minutes, and it can take up to 23 minutes to get back on task. From my observations, I think we face much more interruptions these days from notifications, emails, and every other means of so-called communication. For this reason, we should make every effort to create silence in our days.
“Silence is the difference between sight and insight.
Silence is the difference between happiness and joy.
Silence is the difference between fear and faith.”
Two practical steps to hear God speak to you
The easiest way to hear God is by creating space as you pray to listen expectantly for God to speak to you. It may help you to set a timer for 10 minutes to develop some clear focus. If you are not used to this, 10 minutes might feel like an hour. Don’t worry, shorten the time and increase it as you become more comfortable with the stillness. It does not need to be quiet. Some people use music to help them focus. Or if you want to add in a little bit of biohacking to your experience, you could use an app with different brain wave frequencies. The theta brain wave works well for this.
Write down what you sense God is saying to you by the Holy Spirit. We can be confident that God does not contradict himself. Therefore the Bible should always be the filter that we use to check what we have heard.
I have discovered that God will often use several ways to speak to me about the same subject in my own life. This is what makes it so astounding when we hear God speak to us. For example, you might read a passage in the Bible in the morning, then you go to church, and the same passage is preached on, or a friend shares the very same words with you. God will often confirm His word to us in several ways, especially regarding a critical decision in our lives.
Wrapping Up
We need to recognise that God wants to speak to us.
Prayer is a two-way conversation.
Don’t be afraid of silence as you pray.
The Bible is God’s voice in written form.
The Bible is our filter for checking what we have heard as we pray.
A great book that helped me on my journey is Whisper by Pastor Mark Batterson. This book is filled with practical how to’s and great examples of hearing God’s voice in everyday life.
Thanks for reading.
Recommended reading for further insights*
Question
Do you struggle to hear God speak?
Let me know in the comments so we can support you.
