I was watching the Chosen the other day, and as I watched the way Jesus interacted with Matthew, it struck me how intentional he is with the way he communicates with each of his disciples. He doesn’t make them adapt to the way he prefers to communicate. He gets on their level.
And I wanted to write a blog on that.
There are many people who struggle with hearing the voice of God. Either they doubt He still speaks to us today (or, sometimes, more specifically them) or they doubt their ability to recognize His voice.
To the first doubt, I just want to say, that if God longs for relationship with you, then why wouldn’t He want to talk with you? Prayer shouldn’t be one sided. (This is not to say that there’s not a place for you to just process everything you’re feeling by info dumping on God, but your relationship would be so much richer if there was variety to your prayers!)
To the second, which is what I mostly want to focus this blog on, God knows your heart and mind better than you know yourself, so why would He talk to you in a way you don’t understand?
Would He speak to you in Bahasa (the native word for Indonesian) if you only spoke English? In the same way, if you don’t understand one form of communication, why would He only try to talk to you through that?
I truly believe that God can grow our understanding and speak to us in many different ways, but everyone has to start somewhere. Did you learn to read before you knew the alphabet? In the same way, if you struggle with understanding visions, will He start with only giving you visions? No, He would start with something you can understand, grow your understanding, then grow the ways you can communicate with Him.
Personally, I hear God’s voice in many ways, but He didn’t reveal them all to me at once. I first audibly heard Him say my name, twice, years apart from each other, then I heard a whisper inside my head, in a voice not my own. It’s so hard to explain, and it sounds a little suspicious, but I’ve tested it and found it to be true (I’ll go deeper in this later).
The whisper is the main way I recognize and hear His voice, but He’s continuing to grow me in hearing Him in different ways. He shows me visions (an image in my head with a meaning beyond the obvious) and He gives me dreams (dreams that come to pass or increase my understanding of Him).
But if He had started with these, I would never have believed, or even recognized that this was God trying to reach out to me. I needed a starting point that I was already familiar with (before He spoke to me, God familiarized me with the idea of hearing His voice this way, through books and testimonies).
Now, do not believe everything dream, image, or thought in your head to be of God. There are ways to test whether something is of Him, of your flesh (the part of you apart from God), or of the devil.
When I first started hearing the voice, I thought it was God, but I didn’t trust it. So I tested it. I asked it questions I already knew the answer to based on the Bible. Sometimes the voice would match what I knew to be true. Sometimes a voice would say something that I couldn’t be confident was true, so I would discard it. Eventually, I came to recognize the voices, and could tell whose it was based on the sound, rather than the words.
If ever you think something is of God, but it goes against Scripture, then it’s not, because we don’t serve a God who says both yes and no. If you hear something big that you’re unsure of, continue to pray about it. Ask God to confirm it multiple different ways. I think you’ll be surprised in how faithful He is in answering.
I’ve told you a lot about how I hear God’s voice, but the whole point of this blog is that He speaks to all of us differently. If you have an experience that doesn’t match mine, that doesn’t mean it’s not from God!
I have a friend who mainly hears from God in illogical visions. A friend who is answered by God’s voice in her head before she can finish speaking. And a friend who hears God similarly to me.
They’re all different, but it’s the same God who’s speaking. You are all His precious children. Why wouldn’t He want to speak with you?
Very good Sofia! I really enjoyed hearing your experiences in discerning hearing answers from God. Relationships take time.
I get you. I’ve had times where God has answered in unusual ways, including, yes, talking such that it feels like I just heard the echo of what He said because if I heard it directly it would be too much for me to take. And answering prayers in a way that makes it so when I tell the story later I have to preface a part with “I know this sounds weird, but…” For the record, doctors don’t appreciate stuff like that popping up in your medical history. Just saying. Whenever it feels like God is saying something to me, particularly if I can’t verify it in the moment with Scripture, I tell it “I’ll get back to you on that” and double check it against the Bible myself. If it really is God, not only will it check, He’ll probably repeat it at some point. At least in my experience. He gives us grace when it comes to recognizing His voice.