Introduction
Today, I would like to talk about a very exciting topic and of much interest among Christians and that is, how to hear God’s voice. In spite of an abundance of Christian materials and sermons available today, many believers still struggle to hear God’s voice and have a genuine desire to know how God speaks to His people in the New Testament. In our discussion today, I will try to provide answers to 5 questions: „Why Do We Need to Hear God? Does God speak today to all born-again believers or only to certain people who are more holy or chosen by Him? How does God speak? How can we discern God’s voice from all the other voices and What can we do to learn faster to hear God’s voice?”
Why Do We Need to Hear God?
Some believers may wonder why they should ever hear God’s voice in their lives. How would it help them? Is hearing God’s voice something of vital importance that deserves our attention, time, and effort, or is it just a good skill to have in any event? Well, there are many great benefits to hearing God’s voice. First, it will protect you from many harmful decisions, situations, people, or things that might try to come into your life. Second, it will help you see many opportunities and open doors for you to be blessed and be a blessing for other people. Third, it will direct your steps to your destiny and calling on this earth, so that you will fulfill as much as possible of what God has planned for you and your life. Fourth, it will encourage you and strengthen you in your spirit and your faith in those moments when you will feel weak or discouraged. Hearing God is vital to a life of continuous glory, victory, success, peace, joy, health, well-being, and prosperity here on earth.
To Whom Does God Speak?
In the New Testament, God wants to speak and speaks to all born-again believers. This is different from the Old Testament, where God spoke only to certain people chosen by Him. You may ask, Why is that? Things are this way because in the Old Testament all people were under the authority of darkness. Jesus had not died yet on the cross and the Holy Spirit was not yet dwelling in human beings in a permanent way. The Holy Spirit was given from time to time to certain people for specific and temporary tasks and in partial measures. In other words, the Holy Spirit would come and go. However, in the New Testament, the Spirit of God has been sent on the inside of believers to be in them and with them forever. We see this in John 14:16-17 and 1 Corinthians 6:19:
John 14:16–17 (NKJV)16 And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper,
that He may abide with you forever—
17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for
He dwells with you and will be in you.1 Corinthians 6:19 (NKJV)19 Or do you not know that
your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
God always speaks to all believers in Christ and that is something normal. That should be a daily normality for Christians and not something abnormal happening from time to time in some very special anointed moments. Every believer in Christ has the ability to hear God. God wants to speak to us much more than we are ready to hear Him. In fact, He speaks much more than we hear. Look at what John 10:27, John 14:26, John 16:13 tell us about hearing God’s voice:
John 10:27 (NKJV)27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
John 14:26 (NKJV)26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name,
He will teach you all things, and
bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.
John 16:13 (NKJV)13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come,
He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and
He will tell you things to come.
Christ’s sheep hear and recognize His voice. The Holy Spirit in us will teach us all things, guide us in all truth, and announce to us certain things from the future. These are not all stipulated in the Bible, but the Holy Spirit will speak them directly to us.
Moving forward, another important thing is that it’s not enough to know God speaks and that it is normal for believers to hear Him. We must also search to hear His voice, be preoccupied for it, and we must tune our minds to the right spiritual frequency, the same way we search for a radio channel until we find the right frequency. As long as you can live without hearing God’s voice, you will continue to do so. But it will not be to your advantage. In Jeremiah 29:11-13, God speaks to His people through the prophet Jeremiah the following:
Jeremiah 29:11–13 (NKJV)11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
13 And you will seek Me and find Me,
when you search for Me with all your heart.
We need to take time to quiet our minds and reduce the volume of all the other voices to a minimum so that we can hear that still small voice of Him. We need to disconnect frequently from the daily noise and meditate on who we are in Christ, where we are going, what we are doing, how we are doing things and why we are doing them and so on. We need to make a habit of meditating on God’s Word. I was once test-driving a new car and, while we were driving, I could hear the noise of the wind quite loud from outside, even with the windows closed. And that was one of the things that I was looking for in the next new car: to hear as less noise as possible from outside. I asked the lady who was doing the test-drive with us why we could hear the noise from outside, since this was a new car. She replied with a very serious face, “Well, you know, if you turn on the music louder, you will not hear any wind noise from outside.” I couldn’t tell if she was joking or being serious when she said that. I didn’t even know how to react to such reply. The point is that, as long we have other louder voices in our lives, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to hear God’s voice. And in our day and age, the voices have multiplied exponentially: the internet and social media, smart phones, digital media entertainment, and all kinds of gadgets. And as believers, we now have to be even more intentional in hearing God’s voice th...
