Roger spoke on Sunday morning about how we can know when God is talking to us. We often speak of God as One who reveals Himself to us and speaks to us, but it can be notoriously difficult at times to discern between our voice, God’s voice and the enemy’s voice. How can we tell when God is speaking? What does it sound like?
God speaks in many different ways. Primarily, He speaks to us through His word, often seeming to highlight something for us (‘it jumps out of the page.’) We may have read a particular passage repeatedly, but all of a sudden, God underlines it for us! We should always seek confirmation from His word, because God will never contradict this.
God may speak in other ways: through the words of people (after all, He even used a donkey once!), through circumstances, through pictures and visions, through dreams, through the words of prophecy. He speaks to us through impressions and, occasionally (though rarely) through audible voices. What matters is that we are receptive to God’s voice and learn to listen carefully. God’s words will always build us up, whereas the enemy seeks to lie, deceive and distort. Hearing is the first step, but this must then be married to obedience. (Jn 2:5)
Quite often, people say in response to this question, ‘You just know’, which doesn’t seem much help to those who don’t know! But there is a sense in which we acknowledge the truth of this: God’s voice often leaves us squirming or with a deep conviction we cannot shake off. If God is speaking to you today, test that word (remember Gideon’s fleece?) and then obey. Our hearing and obedience arise from our relationship with God. We don’t have to be afraid; we do have to step out in faith and do what He says.