If you haven’t been with us, let me catch you up to speed. We are in a sermon series looking at how we know God better and experience God working in our life. If we are not experiencing God’s abundant life right now we need to ask ourselves why? We are looking at three issues: 1) We might have a relationship problem with God. Having a personal relationship with God through Christ is the first thing God wants, it’s why he sent his Son to the earth to die for us. The Bible calls this knowing God. You might know about God through reading the Bible, going to church, or believing certain creeds or statements of faith to be true (like the Apostles Creed), but this is not the same as having a personal relationship with God. The quality of our experience of God’s work in our life is directly impacted by the quality of our relationship with God. The closer we are to Christ, generally speaking, the more we experience God working in our life. 2) We might have a hearing problem. Last week we looked at whether God speaks to us today, and as we looked through the Scriptures we saw that God continues to speak to his children because we have received God’s Spirit. The problem is not whether God is speaking, it is, are we listening. If we have trouble hearing God, we won’t know what God wants us to do. Today, we are going to begin to look at how God speaks and how we recognize his voice. 3) The last reason we may not experience God working in our life is because we may have an obedience problem. We know what God wants us to do, but we are unwilling to step out in faith and make the adjustments in our life and do what God wants of us.
1) God Reveals the Truth through the Holy Spirit
When it comes to hearing God’s voice, perhaps you’ve had questions like: How does God speak to me? How can I know when God is speaking? How can I recognize his voice?
First let me begin with sharing something which will help us understand when God is speaking to us. We only know the truth about God and his ways as God reveals it to us by the Holy Spirit. Sure, there are truths we can learn via our own efforts and intellect, the earth is round, the mass of the earth holds us down, we call it gravity, but any truth we know about God and his ways and how it applies to our life is only revealed to us by God. We cannot discover it, it is revealed by the Holy Spirit. Let me read for you again from 1 Cor. 2:10-12:
1 Cor. 2:10 But we know these things because God has revealed them to us by his Spirit, and his Spirit searches out everything and shows us even God’s deep secrets. 11 No one can know what anyone else is really thinking except that person alone, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. 12 And God has actually given us his Spirit (not the world’s spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.
According to Paul, how can we know the wonderful things God has freely given us? Because God has given us his Spirit who shares God’s thoughts, God’s plans, God’s purposes. Paul goes on to say, this is why unbelievers cannot know or understand the things of God because it is foolishness to them. They don’t get it because God has not revealed it to them. The only way we know anything about God is because he reveals his truth to us.
Why is this important for us to understand? When we talk about hearing God’s voice, this principle is the key for unlocking how we know when God is speaking to us. If we become aware of a truth about God or his ways, or what he wants us to do, what I like to call an “ahah” moment, when something goes ‘ding’ in our heart or in our brain. We didn’t just have a V8, it wasn’t some great thought we can up with on our own, it was God speaking to us, revealing his truth. I will explain this in more detail in a moment.
Let’s say my favorite color is green, and one day you come to me and say, ‘I know your favorite color is green.’ The only way you could know for sure that my favorite color was green was unless I told you, or someone else whom I’ve told has told you. You might have noticed that I wear green a lot, I like to eat spinach, and so you might guess green is my favorite color, but unless I told you that information you wouldn’t know for sure. If you are made aware of a new truth about God, or about his ways, or what he wants you to do, that is God speaking to you.
Too often we desire for God to speak to us in profound ways like he did with people in the Bible. We want God to speak to us directly, with an audible voice, or we want to see a burning bush, or hear from an angel, or have a vision. But just because you haven’t had any of the same experiences as people in the Bible doesn’t mean God isn’t speaking to you. Anytime you become aware of Gods’ truth, he has spoken to your heart and mind.
Let me flush this out a little bit further. Four of the most common ways people hear God’s voice today; through the Bible, prayer, circumstances (others deem coincidence), and other Christians. I am not ruling out other means such as dreams, visions, angels, prophesy. God can speak to us whatever was God wants to speak to us. I am just saying these are the most common.
2) God Speaks through the Bible
One of the primary ways people hear God’s voice today is through the Bible. We believe by faith that the Bible is the Word of God. As Paul said in 2 Tim. 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” People heard from God or experienced God working in their lives and they wrote down those words or experiences.
How does God “speak” to us through the Bible?
Have you ever had the experience of reading the Bible and suddenly something catches your eye, you are drawn back to a certain verse, sentence, or phrase? Or perhaps you have read a passage a hundred times before but this time as you read it you see something new, something about God, or his ways, a new way of looking at or thinking about a passage of Scripture, you might think to yourself something like, “I never noticed that before, isn’t that interesting.” In the past perhaps we feel good because we’ve had this new thought or awareness.
But there is more going on than that. Since truth is revealed by God, we know nothing about God or his ways unless he reveals it to us. When you are reading the Bible and something new comes to you, that is God speaking to you. It isn’t just a cool new thought you came up with on your own. It is your Creator trying to share his truth with you so we will know something about him, or adjust our life to his truth. The problem is we don’t often recognize this as God’s “voice” because it isn’t audible, but it is God communicating his truth to you. He is revealing himself personally to you. If we don’t recognize this is God speaking to us, we might run the danger of dismissing it as our own thought, and put it out of our mind as quickly as it came in. But then we have also missed an opportunity to follow the Good Shepherd and experience his work in our life.
Once we realize God is speaking to us, we need to take him seriously. If you are reading the Bible and hear God speaking (God draws our attention or we have a new realization), don’t keep on reading, stop, reflect, pray, and ask God why he is revealing this truth to you. God is not arbitrarily sharing a new truth with you for no reason, God is leading you someplace. You need to know what that is. Why is God revealing this truth to you? Is there something about himself that he wants you to know? Is there something God wants you to do or say? Is there a sin to confess? Is there a way God wants to show you his love for you? If we fail to listen or respond to God’s prompting we will miss out on the corresponding blessing God wants to bring into our life as a result. We won’t experience God working in our life because we have failed to hear and respond to him.
Rather than reading the Bible for information or understanding, gaining knowledge, read the Bible expecting God will speak to our hearts, revealing himself or his ways to us?
3) God Speaks through Prayer
a) Prayer is Being in Relationship with God
God also speaks to us through prayer. Prayer is not just us offering a list of concerns and needs to God. Prayer is communicating with God, it is the way we stay in relationship with God. If the only reason we are praying is to get God to do something for us or someone else, we have missed the point of prayer. I refer back to a couple of weeks ago where we looked at what God wants most and that is a personal relationship with us. We stay in relationship and grow in our relationship with God through prayer. If we look at Jesus’ life, he spent significant amounts of time in prayer with his Father in heaven. Early in the morning, late at night, sometimes even all night long.
Part of Jesus’ time his Father was listening to what his Father wanted him to say and do.
NIV John 8:28 So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.
Relating to God goes both ways, it is talking, telling God our fears, our concerns, our needs, but it is also listening. If you’re like me, talking to God, telling him what I want him to do, is a lot easier than listening for what God wants to share with me because that requires patience and time. But God is trying to tell us things too. Henry Blackaby writes in Experiencing God, “What God says in prayer is far more important than what you say.” Ouch, that hurts, but it is true isn’t it? It is true because God already knows what he wants to do, God knows how he wants to work in this world but we are usually too busy doing all the talking or too busy to spend time listening in prayer, hearing what God wants to say to us. Have you ever had a phone conversation with someone where you needed to share something important with them but the other person did all the talking, and you couldn’t get a word in edgewise? That is frequently us in our prayer time with God. I’m glad God is patient with us!
How do we “hear” God speaking to us in prayer?
There are different ways which people “hear” God in listening prayer so it is difficult to define.
One common way we hear God in prayer, God will lead you to a passage of Scripture. It is important then to go back to the Bible, find that verse, and review passage to see what God is saying to you. Another way I “hear” from God in prayer is receiving the image of a person, I assume God has brought that person to my mind, they may be on my prayer list or they may not be, it doesn’t matter because God knows their needs. I begin praying for that person. I may not know what their need is, but God does. God may give me another person, I pray for that person.
If you are interested in this I would recommend two books, one is the book we are using in our Monday night Bible study, Hearing God’s Voice. This is a more general book. A book more specific to prayer is The Joy of Listening to God by Joyce Hugget. She tells the story of her journey to hearing God speak to her. I would highly recommend getting a copy of this book.
Looking for Confirmation
Whatever we sense God is saying to us in prayer, we must confirm it through the Bible. The Holy Spirit will not contradict himself. For example, if you pray and sense the Holy Spirit guiding you to cheat on your spouse or to physically harm someone, you’re not hearing from God because God has already told us not to do that in the Bible. That thought was not God’s, it is either your own selfish desire.
Conclusion:
If two of the primary ways God speaks to us are Scripture and prayer, than the natural question is how often are we spending time doing these with the expectation of hearing God speak to us?
