Rosie Hunt, Kyabram Baptist Church.
Photo by
Jemma Jones
In my last message I asked the question, “Does God hear us when we talk to Him?”
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Now I want to ask, “Do we listen when God speaks to us?”
Luke 11:28 “But He said ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.’”
Have you ever wondered how to hear God’s voice?
We need to learn how to recognise His voice because He can speak to us in many different ways. It may be a thought, a feeling, a hymn or a Bible verse.
Learning how to recognise His voice can help us make decisions and feel closer to Him.
Our world today is filled with noise from every direction, whether our phones, other devices, television, busy lives, traffic, family responsibilities, anxieties — all can make listening to God hard because our lives are so busy.
But at the heart of our spiritual life is a quiet invitation to hear the voice of God, not just with our ears but our hearts and minds.
The Bible tells us that God loves to speak with us and it isn’t always through dramatic events. Often it is through a “still, small voice” [1 Kings 19:12].
Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19 is a good example of hearing God in the silence. We need to foster silence around us and within us.
We need to learn how to recognise God’s voice because He can speak to us in many different ways. It may be a thought, a feeling, a hymn or a Bible verse. Photo: AP
It isn’t just an absence of sound, it is the presence of stillness and it is in this stillness that God often speaks. In the Kings reading we read that God was not in the wind, earthquake or fire, but, in a “still, small voice”.
That tells us that God’s voice doesn’t compete with the world’s noise. Instead, it waits patiently to be heard in quiet, attentive hearts.
One of the most reliable ways we can listen to God is through Scripture. Hebrews 4:12 says “The word of God is alive and active.”
Sometimes God speaks through a verse that stands out because it seems to speak to a circumstance in our lives.
We need to be open to hearing His voice and allowing Him to speak and listening to what He says to us.
Sometimes our conversation with God brings peace, sometimes He may give us a nudge that there is something we need to do.
As I wrote in my previous message, prayer is a dialogue not a monologue. Our prayers shouldn’t be all about us and what we want.
We make our requests and then we should become still and listen for His voice. Listening involves paying attention and asking, “What might God be saying to me in this situation?”
We need to humbly believe that God is involved in our lives and He communicates through both the extraordinary and probably more often through our ordinary daily living.
To truly listen to God is to obey Him, and when we respond in trust we find that God’s voice becomes clearer each time we listen.
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