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Summary:
Learn what it’s like to hear God’s voice, how to discern God’s voice versus your own desires or the lies of Satan, and what you can do to help you hear God’s voice.
Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to Journey Together, a podcast for Christian women who want a deeper relationship with God. I’m your host, Brigette, and today we’re talking about how to hear God speak to you.
If you told me five years ago that I would be telling other women how they can hear from God I would think you were nuts. But God does incredible things, so here we are. Now, I would not consider myself an expert on this topic. But I can share with you what God has been teaching me and what I’ve found in scripture.
Introduction
I think when women ask how to hear from God, they’re really asking one of three questions:
- What is it like to hear from God?
- How do I know I’m hearing from God and not being deceived by my own desires or by Satan’s lies?
- And What can I do to hear from God?
So today, I’m going to answer each of these questions as succinctly as I can. If you want more information on anything I talk about today, you can email me at brigette@brigettehenry.com. You can find the email address in the show notes. I would love to hear feedback on what you would like to learn or what you want to hear more about.
What is it Like to Hear from God?
So first, what is it like to hear from God? Lots of people wonder if it’s a feeling, an audible experience, do you see anything? And to those questions I would say, possibly all of the above. I’ve heard stories of God doing all of those things and more, and we see plenty of examples of how God speaks in scripture.
Abraham
Let’s take Abraham for example. In Genesis 12, God told Abraham (whose name was Abram at the time) to take his family and travel to another land because God is going to make him a “great nation”. Based on the text, this conversation took place audibly, and Abraham actually heard God speak to him.
In Genesis 15, it says God spoke to Abraham through a “vision”, which indicates that Abraham experienced some sort of prophetic revelation. Not a direct audible conversation with God, but God somehow made these words known to Abraham.
And it continues. In Genesis 18, Abraham speaks with three angels, one of whom is identified as God Himself. Abraham provides food for them, and God tells Him that his wife, who is 90 years old, is going to have a child. In Genesis 22, Abraham hears God’s voice from heaven tell him not to hurt his son, and the examples go on and on. And that’s just Abraham.
God spoke to Moses through a burning bush. Samuel heard God audibly call his name. In Daniel 5, King Belshazzar saw a floating hand write on his walls during a party. God appeared before Saul and blinded Him for persecuting Christians. There are plenty of examples of how God speaks in scripture.
Examples from My Life
Day-to-day, God speaks to me through prayer, music, nature, images, and most importantly, through scripture, which we’ll talk about in a minute. I don’t experience huge fantastical moments where I see bright lights or hear trumpets of anything like that. I experience a lot of what some people call “God whispers”. Little moments that confirm for me throughout that day that He is with me and He cares.
For example, When I was first married, the number 212 appeared everywhere. Now just to clarify, I don’t believe in angel numbers or astrology or anything like that. But I do believe God speaks how He wants to speak. And 212 was everywhere. It was our apartment number, a bed and breakfast room number, and the number printed on one of my medications. I ran into the number 212 repeatedly for about two years.
And then suddenly, my dosage was increased and I got a new pill with the number 213 printed on it. And I felt this weird shift in my soul. That’s the only way I can describe it. I felt like God was asking me to trust Him as I moved from one season of life to another. Over the next few months, major changes occurred, and I was encouraged to trust God through all of it because of what I had experienced. It was a “God-whisper”, something that may have seemed insignificant to someone else, but that was full of significance and meaning to me.
God Speaks Uniquely to Each of Us
Now, I want to stress that God speaks uniquely to all of us. I don’t want you to miss God speaking to you because you’re looking for something specific. It’s really tempting to want God to speak to us the way He’s spoken to other people. We hear great stories and we want those same great experiences. But God has unique experiences for each one of us. So don’t get discouraged or distracted by all the ways God speaks to someone else. He wants a unique and personal relationship with you.
How Do I Know I’m Hearing From God?
Our second question is: How do I know I’m hearing from God and not being deceived by my own desires or by Satan’s lies?
Know God
In John 10:27, Jesus said “ My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.” Sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice, so they know who to follow when their shepherd calls them.
We can use the Bible to discern God’s voice. As we dive into scripture, we learn more about His character, His will, His desires and His ways. We begin to understand Who He is and what He sounds like. Your ability to discern whether God is speaking to you is directly related to your relationship with His Word.
Learn to Recognize Satan’s Lies
Now, the danger of being deceived by Satan is very real. In John 8:44, Christ says Satan “was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.”
Consider how Satan deceived Eve in the garden of Eden in Genesis 3:
“He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’”
“No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Three things stand out to me here: Satan questioned what God had told Adam and Eve, he told a half-truth by saying they would become like God, and he told a complete lie when he told Eve she would not die. Eve and Adam did become “like God” in the sense that they knew good and evil, so part of what Satan said was true, but they did not truly become like God. And Adam and Eve’s decision did bring death into the world.
So if you catch yourself questioning what God has said in His Word, believing a part of what God has said in His Word but not all of it, or considering something that is completely against God’s Word, Satan is lying to you.
Anytime you believe you’re hearing from God, you need to filter what you’re hearing through scripture. And the best way you can do that is to prepare yourself to hear from God.
How to Prepare Yourself to Hear from God
So, I have three suggestions to prepare you to hear from God and the first one is: spend time in the Word.
Spend Time in the Word
As I mentioned earlier, we need to be able to recognize our Shepherd’s voice. So make scripture a priority. Read the Bible. Listen to the Bible. Hang verses throughout your house, leave verse cards in your car, change the background on your phone to a favorite verse, anything you need to do to immerse yourself in the Word of God. When you know what God’s voice sounds like, it becomes that much easier to hear Him in the chaos of life.
Pray and Listen
My second suggestion is to pray and listen. Create a space where you can talk to God and hear from Him. Silence and solitude are key when you’re creating this space. Jesus is our example in this. Throughout Jesus’s life and ministry, we see Him going off alone to talk to His father constantly.
Luke 5:16 tells us, “He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” If this was a priority for Jesus, it should be a priority for us too!
Now, a quick word of caution: The important thing here is to find silence and solitude WITH God. I am becoming increasingly aware of the tendency to pursue silence and solitude with OURSELVES, and not with God. And this can be a very dangerous practice. I’m going to talk about this and some other concerns I have about some of the more popular Spiritual Formation writers in my next podcast, so stay tuned.
For now, just know that getting alone with God is an important part of your spiritual growth as you develop a deeper relationship with Him. And during that time, if you want to hear from God, ask Him to speak to You. Ask Him to reveal anything in your life that is preventing you from hearing Him. And then, when you do hear God speak, you can follow my last point and obey Him!
Obey
When He asks you to give something up, give it up. When He asks you to do something, do it. The more you obey Him, the closer you grow to Him, and the easier it becomes to hear His voice.
And you can start obeying God today. Sometimes we wait around for special instructions, but He’s given us plenty of instruction in His Word. He’s warned us against lying, cheating, idols, drunkenness, sexual immorality; there are so many things we can repent from without waiting for God to give us more instruction.
Obedience is more important than we may think. Years ago, I heard a pastor say, obedience begets obedience, and disobedience begets disobedience, and that is so true. The more we obey, the easier it is to obey, and the more we disobey, the easier it is to disobey. And part of this may be because when we obey God, our relationship with Him changes. We hear Him more, we recognize His voice and obedience becomes second nature. We may naturally obey God without giving any thought to it.
But the same goes for disobedience. Which is why we can’t wait for the big stuff. We have to obey in the small stuff first. I wrote an article about the importance of obedience and why it is so hard to obey. You can find the link for it in the show notes.
Final Thoughts:
A few final thoughts as I wrap up this episode:
- Not everyone who has claimed to hear from God actually heard from God. That might seem like an obvious one, but I’m honestly surprised by how many people blatantly lie and say they heard from God just to accrue money, fame, or attention. And there’s also people out there who are so mentally disturbed they truly believe they are hearing from God while being used as a tool for the devil. In case you have any anxiety about that, I doubt you would have made it this far into this episode if that’s you. But it’s good to practice caution and filter everything we hear through the truth in God’s Word.
- You may experience a “spiritual winter.” I’ve heard many great men and women of God describe seasons where they didn’t hear from God, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. Some of these people poured over scripture, prayer and times of silence and solitude in order to hear God’s voice. But they didn’t. God chooses when to speak. We don’t know all the ins and outs of why He speaks sometimes and not others. We just have to trust that He is good and He will speak when He needs to.
- You might make mistakes. Discernment takes practice. There have been times where I was sure God wanted me to go one way, and then I realized my own desires affected my ability to discern His voice. Spiritual Formation is a process and you’ll never do it all right this side of heaven. Have some Godly grace for yourself and be willing to repent and try again when you choose your way and not God’s.
Conclusion
This episode was a lot of information that I had to condense to fit in my time limit, so if you have any questions about anything I mentioned, please message me! You can find the link to contact me in the show notes, or just email me at brigette@brigettehenry.com.
And if you’re going through a season where you don’t know where to go next and you’re looking for some guidance, I want to recommend my RENEW Study. It’s free and you can find the link in the show notes or go to my website and find it under Spiritual Growth Resources.
That’s all I have for today! If you enjoyed this podcast, don’t forget to like and subscribe to get notifications about my weekly podcast episodes. And if you have a friend that might enjoy it too, share it with your friend! It will give you something to discuss over coffee and will help you deepen relationships with other believers. Thank you for joining me and I’ll see you next week as we continue pursuing this spiritual journey together.
Links:
Music by: Morning Garden – Acoustic Chill by Olexy on Pixabay
My website: https://brigettehenry.com
Interested in 1:1 coaching: https://brigettehenry.com/coaching
Subscribe to my weekly email: https://brigettehenry.com/subscribe
FREE RENEW Study: https://mailchi.mp/6b4edc98bcfe/renew-study-sub-page
Obedience Blog Post: https://brigettehenry.com/obedience-is-the-spiritual-formation-tool-youre-probably-missing/
Contact me at: brigette@brigettehenry.com
All scripture is CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Share Post – Follow Me
