Can God speak to you? Even though many people would say yes, most people live like the answer is no. Most people live as if God only speaks to other people. Prophets. Apostles. Pastors. People who are more worthy.
The truth is that Apostles, Prophets and Pastors are not worthy. None of us are worthy to hear from the Lord, but He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. He loves us enough to speak to us and He longs for us to hear His voice. But still most people do not have many, if any, stories of God speaking to them.
Here are 3 things you can start doing today to put yourself in a position to hear God’s voice:
1. Understand that God is happy to know you and hear from you. He is not mad, disappointed, irritated or upset with you. The only time God is displeased with us is when we willfully and rebelliously reject Him or engage in rebellious habitual sin. I can guarantee you that if you’re reading this to figure out how to hear God better, He’s overwhelmingly happy with you.
2. Let God hear your voice. Talk to Him about what your feeling. Talk to Him about what you’re thinking about. Tell Him what’s on your mind, then ask Him what is on His. He wants us to know Him, not just know about Him. That takes two way communication. You can never have a relationship with an author’s book, no matter how good the author is at crafting a story. You can only have a relationship with the author. Ask God to speak to you every day, but make sure you’re speaking to Him every day.
3. Fill your mind with God’s Written Word. We know our children’s voices well enough to pick them out in a crowd because we are so familiar with how they sound. When we listen for God’s voice, we will hear many other voices: our own, other people, Satan’s and God’s. The only way we can learn to pick His voice out of the noise in our crowded head is to be intimately familiar with what He has already said and how He says it. If someone tells me they heard the Lord tell them to quit their job and move, I don’t know if they’ve really heard from the Lord or not because sometimes He does tell us to do those things. When someone tells me that the Lord told them to divorce their wife, leave their kids and go marry another woman, I can easily tell them they haven’t heard from the Lord because that would go against what God has already said.
I hope this is a quick shot of encouragement for you to start asking God to speak to you. Sound off in the comments with what other things you think I could add to this list.