I wish I could tell you the number of times that I have been asked about how I knew God was real, how I pray, or how I hear God.
These questions are ones we all want answered. Part of the reason these are hard questions is because of how much people and religious institutions tell us how we should hear God.
The way that your pastor hears God seems so easy. Your best friend is always describing some new clarity she has gained from prayer. Your sister says she listened to God to make a big decision in her life.
If you are scratching your head, asking yourself why you aren’t as confident about what God is telling you, or if He’s even talking to you at all, know that you are not alone.
It can be confusing to hear other people’s experiences with God because God has a special bond with each of us. We all have different communication styles, and God takes who we are and chooses to speak to us in a way that He thinks is best.
I remember my friend once told me a crazy story about her pastor. Apparently, this pastor became a believer when one day, she was sitting in church and literally witnessed Jesus’s hands outstretched to her at the altar.
I don’t know about you, or what amazing spiritual experiences you have had, but I have never seen Jesus, and I don’t expect to until I reach heaven.
These kinds of stories are powerful, and can strengthen our faith, but unfortunately they can also have the opposite effect.
Anytime I hear stories like the one my friend told me, I get a little freaked out. It reaffirms my own faith, but also makes me question why I have not had a similar experience.
Why doesn’t God show up for me the same way? If so many of us are looking and yearning for God, why don’t we all see Jesus on the altar?
I don’t have all the answers, but I can share some of the ways that have helped me have more encounters with God.
So, for my relationship with God, I have learned a foolproof way of hearing my heavenly father is through individualized Bible Studies. If you missed my last article on how I talk to God, check it out here, it describes some ways to cozy up with a bible study. Essentially, I follow a study and read from the Bible. I use guided questions to try to understand the verses better and apply them to my life in that particular moment. Some questions I have adopted when I do bible studies were inspired by Jordan Lee Dooley’s bible study on Isaiah 43 (click here to start this bible study for free).
Some of my favorite questions are:
What stands out to you most and why?
Does anything surprise or confuse you?
Does God begin to address the tension/problem/sin in this passage? If so, how? What is God’s response?
The way I get all my thoughts out in a Bible study is through a combination of praying in my head or out loud to God and journaling.
However, what almost always happens to me while I’m doing a study is this: I start to doubt myself. About halfway through journaling, I get anxious, and I think to myself, “Well, I’m not getting anything out of this! I’m not hearing anything!”
Still, I always keep journaling because, from experience, it is not long after that breaking point that God finally speaks to me.
How? The way I hear God’s voice is through new realizations and thoughts that enter my head. I’m suddenly able to see things in a light I hadn’t been able to before. Some people have trouble trusting that these new thoughts and ideas are “God’s voice,” and I understand that. I can only speak from my personal experiences, but I have made some absolutely mind-blowing insights into God’s character and my own through doing these bible studies that I believe are coming from outside of myself. I always end Bible studies feeling completely in awe of God and how much He has revealed.
Another way I believe God speaks to me is through signs. Now, I think this is possibly the riskiest way to hear from God because, sometimes we imagine signs that aren’t there. After all, we are simply humans desperate for answers. See my story here about why looking for signs can be pretty harmful.
My relationship with God used to center on how God was using signs to speak to me. If you’ve read my testimony, a sign helped bring me to the faith, so, for a while it was the only way I knew how to hear God.
I advise you to make sure when you think that you have received a sign from God, use critical thinking. From the signs I have received in my life, I trust them only when the thing I experienced was something so amazing or unbelievably beautiful that it had to come from heaven. If you aren’t sure about if something was a sign or not, pray about it. If it was definitely a sign from God, He will certainly want you to get whatever message He is trying to send. If it wasn’t blatantly clear, it probably was not the Lord.
God also uses people, even people who don’t know Him yet, to speak. Our God is sovereign over all and loves all of the people on this earth. Just because someone isn’t a Christian does not exclude them from being able to deliver God’s wise words.
As humans in community and interpersonal relationships with one another, God can use people to guide us to where we need to be, and teach us. I have learned so much about life, love and selflessness from my friends, family members and even from complete strangers.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to hear certain words, and without even asking for them, someone out of the blue recited those exact words to you? Consider the idea that it might be God speaking through them to you. I know when I’m in difficult situations where I don’t know what to say to someone, I also find a lot of comfort in asking God to help me form my words.
God’s spirit is in all of us, and it is powerful.
Occasionally, I hear God through intuition. Sometimes I get bad feelings about something or someone, or I feel the need to do something I wouldn’t normally do. It is easy to write intuition off as being a personality trait or something coming from inside of yourself. However, when your intuition protected you from something, or led you to somewhere you needed to be at a given time I think it could be God.
God is constantly talking to us, so stay open to Him, and the idea that He is speaking to you. Like with my bible studies, too often I lose hope in God, but it is soon after I’ve lost hope that a new realization from Him hits me loud and clear. It is the same thing with signs. Often if I don’t get what I was looking for immediately it’s because it doesn’t come that day. God will make something apparent days, or even months, later.
Be open to the different ways God will reach you.
Sure, people have instances and spiritual experiences that are instantaneous and beautiful, but those are not the only times we can experience His voice. I think God knows if He spoke to me in such a way I’d be scared. He comes to us where we are.
How do you think God should be speaking to you? I encourage you to meditate on that idea and consider changing your mindset.
If you feel like you have been trying to get God to speak to you in a specific and obvious way, remember that is not necessarily the way God wants to reach you. Don’t put Him in a box. God knows exactly how to reach you.
What are some new ways you can try to hear from God this week?
Lots of love!
Alena
