How YOU can Hear the Voice of God

In today's message, we will cover how you can improve your relationship with God to the point you can hear His voice. I feel extremely passionate about this topic because it's critical for us to hear God's voice in order for us to develop a relationship with Him. And one of the most common verses that describe God's voice comes from John 10:27, NIV. Jesus tells His disciples, My sheep listen to my voice, I know them and they follow me. Imagine you pick up a phone and call a friend. You talked with your friend for 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes, and you finish. You hang up, moving on with your day. You never heard your friend speak. If this would happen to you in real life, it would get weird fast. Next time, your friend may not answer the phone. Imagine doing that for 1 year. 10 years. Now your entire life. Don't you find it strange that your relationship with God is like this example? There are Christians today that say they have never heard the voice of God. They may have heard the voice, but they didn't recognize it was God speaking to them. Just like in 1 Samuel 3:4 NIV, then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, here I am. After a dialogue with Eli and hearing God's voice 3 times, Samuel returned to his bed. Later, in verse 10, the Lord came and stood there, calling as at other times, Samuel! Samuel! Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. Why are your prayers and conversations with God one-way? Why are you not hearing God speak? I can assure you, God is speaking. He's talking to us far more than we realize. Let's cover the 6 common ways God speaks to us. First, the audible voice of God. One example in the Bible was when God began speaking to Moses through the burning bush. Moses, Moses! And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer, God said. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Another example in the Bible occurred during Jesus's baptism. And the Father spoke from heaven, this is my Son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. This may be the simplest one to understand because it's exactly how we communicate today with everyone we know. Unfortunately, hearing the audible voice of God appears to be the rarest form of communication with the Lord. The second manner in which God speaks to us is through an inner voice. God can communicate this way in a myriad of ways. It could be through single words or short phrases. It could be with lengthy sentences, or it could even be a full-blown conversation. These inner voice conversations are powered by the Holy Spirit. In John chapter 16, verse 13, from the NIV, Jesus describes this to his But when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will only speak what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. Other times, God will show you visions or pictures in your mind. You could see a person walking a dog that needs to hear a reassuring word. It could be a storefront or even an image you haven't seen before. It could even be an elderly neighbor that needs help while taking out the trash. Now let me be clear. People can confuse his or her inner voice with the voice of God. You could use your conscience to reply to the questions you are asking. Pray for the gift of discernment to recognize God's voice from your own will be important here. Discernment is a freely given gift of the Holy Spirit And something you should be praying for every day. To strengthen your relationship with the Holy Spirit, focus on the words Paul writes in Galatians 5:16-17 from the NIV. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, So that you are not to do whatever you want. When God speaks to you, He will never violate anything in the Bible. He will never tell you to lie or to steal. That goes against the very nature of God. Sometimes the voice is like what Elijah experienced, a gentle, still voice. So gentle that any noise, great or small, could drown out God's voice. There's a reason that Jesus instructed His disciples to pray to God in private. You might not hear Him otherwise. The third way, and one of the most common ways that God speaks to His people, are through gentle nudges to your spirit. You feel something inside you pushing you to tell someone at the grocery store that Jesus loves them, or you walk past a neighbor working in the yard and you step in to lend a hand. It can be a combination of inner voice and physical tugging you feel in your heart. The fourth and very common way God speaks to His children is through His Word. You could be reading a chapter in the Bible for the 5th time. Suddenly, a few verses leap from the page, and the Spirit opens your eyes to the deeper meaning. It may even feel like God is taking a highlighter to the text or bolding the letters to make them stand out, to explicitly show you what He's trying to say to you. It's important that we read our Bible on a consistent and daily basis. Our faith is directly strengthened by the reading of the Word of God. In Romans 10:17, in the NIV, Paul writes, Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. The Bible is the word of God. It is God-breathed. The scriptures are blessed beyond measure. There isn't a problem known to mankind that can't be solved by reading the scriptures. Even lifelong students of the Bible will have the Holy Spirit open their eyes to new and wonderful things each time they read it. The 5th way God will speak to his people are through other people that he puts in your lives. Recently, the famous writer of The Chosen, Dallas Jenkins, experienced this. In his testimony about Christ, Dallas received a late-night Facebook message at 4:00 AM from a person he had met through Facebook that stated, remember, your job is not to feed the 5,000. It's only to provide the loaves and the fish. This was after the lowest point in his career when the movie he had just directed Crashed at the box office. It was a powerful example of God working through other people to get His point across. I'm sure you have a mentor or a sibling that you confide in from time to time. God can work through them for your benefit. The 6th way God speaks to His people occurs within life situations. You could be driving home from work, the same road you've driven for years. All of a sudden, without realizing it, you take a turn down a different road. Next thing you know, you look up and there was a major traffic jam. You just avoid it. Another example could be when you're about to make dinner. Even though you're maybe low on food, you start to visualize a recipe. You go into the pantry, grab some ingredients, then the fridge, then the pantry again. Before you know it, the meal's done, and you didn't even think about the recipe or what to make. This happens to me a lot. I just act and let the Spirit guide me along the way. God could be guiding your actions without you even realizing it. The 7th way, but not necessarily last way, is through trances while you're awake Or through nightly dreams in your sleep. There are lots of biblical examples that have happened this way. One of the most well-known occurrences was when Jesus's earthly father Joseph saw the angel Gabriel in a dream to announce the birth of Jesus. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon saw a vision in his dream that he and his mystics could not interpret. It wasn't until the prophet Daniel was summoned and he told the king the meaning of the dreams. The Bible has many well-known stories about trances. One of them was Peter in the book of Acts. He was on the rooftop when God proclaimed that all food was good to eat. That also meant that all peoples would receive his Spirit, not just the Jewish nation. God revealed his glory to the Apostle John when Jesus told John about the apocalypse that's captured in the book of Revelation. Paul was taken up to the 3rd heaven before his ministry got started. Many Old Testament prophets experienced God in amazing and different ways. One of the most famous examples was Isaiah seeing the glory of God on his throne and subsequently having a hot coal touching his lips, which took away his guilt and atoned for his sins. Now that we've covered many ways that God will speak to us, let's prepare ourselves to hear the voice of God. First, we must be attentive to his voice. Sometimes God speaks in a small, still voice, like a whisper. Are you listening to music or videos that drown out His voice? Stop the distractions. Focus on God. Turn off your iDevice. Go to a part of the house that's quiet. Connect with Him. Give God your undivided attention and your availability. In 1 Samuel chapter 3, verse 9, before God spoke to Samuel again, notice what the young prophet did. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Wait and listen for God's small, still voice. He wants all of you, all of your attention. He does not want you being distracted by the worries of the day, or video games, or your work, or your family. Jeremiah captures this eloquently in chapter 33, verse 3, from the NIV: Call to me, and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Since God can read our hearts, He knows our intentions before we do. We must truly desire in each one of our hearts, in our innermost being, That you want to hear His voice. If you are not hearing the voice of God, you must want to hear His voice badly. Show God that your focus is on Him and nothing else. He'll notice the difference between passion for Him compared to a half-hearted attempt. You cannot hide that from God. If you've reached this point in your walk with God and you are still not recognizing any feedback from the Lord, Then the next step is to look at your life and how you are living. If you are still sinning, that will block your relationship with God. You must stop sinning or begin the steps to stop sinning and ask for forgiveness for both known and unknown sins. Ask God to reveal all of the things that are going wrong in your life. Expose them. Fix them. Don't return to them. Remember that God's standard is Way higher than ours. No sin is acceptable to Him. What we think is normal within this context of society, God may consider it an abomination. There are a lot of false teachers and religions that twist the Bible to justify their actions. We've seen it over time and time in history. The slave traders in the South used Bible verses to justify the smuggling and enslavement of Africans. Which breaks multiple aspects of the Bible's rules and commands, starting with Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, that made people in God's image. You must treat people the same. Exodus chapter 21, verse 16 condemns people that sell other people by putting those sellers to death. Slaves in the Old Testament, and even during the New Testament, were more like bondservants worked for a period of years to pay off debt, not the same as the oppressive slavery that the American South established before the Civil War. Another area that people get confused about what is or isn't sin can be directly tied to politics. When you look at various platforms that politicians proclaim, you'll see many examples that align with God's Word, while at the same time other items that don't. Seeing past those specific instances will help you understand God's expectation for us as as children of God. The last step in preparation to hear the voice of God is fasting. Fasting is an often overlooked aspect in our daily Christian walk today. God commanded us to pray and fast. Fasting should always be done with special care to achieve the desired results. If needed, seek help from your doctor before starting a fast. If you haven't fasted before, beginning with a Daniel or vegan fast is a Great place to start. God will see you, that you're pushing aside these pleasures of the flesh in order to satisfy the Spirit. Ultimately, the goal of fasting is to weaken the flesh so that the Spirit can win over the soul, or as it's known today, your mind. Use the hunger of fasting as a constant reminder to get closer to God. Each time you want to eat something, don't. Think about God and focus on Him. When all things line up and you start to hear one or many ways God speaks to us, it's important to recognize who is speaking to you. If you hear an inner or audible voice talking to you, that doesn't mean it's always God talking. It could be the devil. God trusts his children enough to recognize when he's talking and when he's not. Let's revisit John chapter 10, verse 27 in this context: My sheep listen to my voice, I know them, and they follow me. Notice how Jesus says, my sheep listen to my voice. Sheep don't follow an unknown voice. If a stranger starts to call out to sheep, they will not follow that unknown voice. Once they hear the familiar shepherd voice, they immediately obey. This is the same with Jesus. Check the fruit of the voice. How does it impact you? Does it cause confusion? Or does it make you grieve? If the voice creates in you an emotion that isn't related to God, then it's not from God. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, confidence, and grace. Do not hesitate to test the Spirit. 1 John chapter 4, verses 1 through 3 explains, dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus Christ is not from God. Once you recognize the voice as God's, it's very important to be obedient. God may test you before he really starts answering your requests. If you won't listen to him on small things, he won't give you bigger things. You must listen and obey. I myself have struggled with this from time to time. I've heard God say things to me, tell that person in the grocery line that Jesus loves them. God expects you to obey his commands. He may start off the conversation with an expectation of you making the first Leap of faith before going on to your questions. Another aspect of hearing the voice of God will not be all conversations are crystal clear. Some will be fuzzy. Some will lead directly to Bible verses. Some conversations can actually shock your body physically. This is not uncommon from those who had these types of experiences with God in the Bible, like the prophet Daniel. In Daniel chapter 8, verse 27, I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. Then I got up and went to the king's business. I was appalled by the vision. It was beyond understanding. Please remember that whatever God tells you will always, 100% of the time, directly line up with Scripture. If you hear the voice telling you to do something illegal, I would be very wary and test the spirit because you may be being deceived. Once the conversations start with God, get ready for your life to change. This is the exciting part. God wishes to bless us with an overflowing waterfall of gifts. Expect the degree of change in your life will depend on how close you are to already what God wanted for you in your life. If you've wandered far off the path God set for you, you should expect to see a lot of change in your life. You may be asked to give things up— your possessions, your hobbies, maybe friends, or even a job. God knows what's best for you. He created you to be special. He wants you to return to that place in the world that He carved out especially for you. Finally, God's words are never, ever wrong. This may take time to realize and follow through those words. God is perfect. His words are perfect too. His instructions will never lead you down the path of destruction. They are pure. They are holy. In Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 21 and 22, from the NIV, further explains this using the context of prophecy. But it applies to other instructions God would give you. You may say to yourselves, how can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord? If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that, that message the Lord has not spoken; that prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be alarmed. So once the two-way conversations between the Lord and you begin, Your life will reach a place of wonder and amazement. God will begin to guide your life. You will hear God speak to you about calling a friend or family member in need. He will start to open the spiritual world to you. Suddenly, you— God will instruct you how to approach a meeting at work, how to deal with a difficult situation at home. God's voice will guide you every step of the way. You will hear Him speaking to you at the gas station, on your daily walk in the neighborhood. You'll even hear Him during your drive. To and from work. Most people would consider these miracles. You will realize that this is a normal course of your Christian walk with God. I hope you realize after hearing that this is God been speaking to you this whole time. We must just be attentive and recognize his voice and when he talks to us. You'll find out that when he talks to us, it's significantly more often than we think. Remember in Revelation chapter 3, Verse 20. Jesus says, here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Let Jesus into your heart. The Holy Spirit will enter into your life, and amazing things will happen. Your life will never be the same. Your family will never be the same. Everyone a part of your new life with God will be blessed by the power of God actively working in your life. May God bless.