Hearing God Speak

God brought salvation to my sister a few months before He changed my life. She gave me some excellent advice given to her by a Christian missionary. The advice was to “read the Bible until something grabs your attention, then write down the date, the passage, and what it is telling you.”

By following her suggestion, I learned that the Word of God is alive. It speaks to me because God uses it to speak to me. I have a stack of journals that still bless me when I read them again.

Some people think that God is dead, or silent, but as Tozer writes, God is not silent and has never been silent. It is His nature to speak. The Bible begins with the narrative of creation where God spoke the universe into existence. God the Son is called the Word who became flesh. The Bible is called the Word of God and is the outcome of God’s speech, a revelation and declaration of His mind put into human words for us.

This makes no sense to those dead in sin. Their ‘deadness’ means they are separated from God, unable to hear Him because God created the human heart to hear Him, but it becomes dead to His voice by refusing to listen. In contrast, those who have been ‘made alive’ by salvation through faith in Jesus Christ have the Holy Spirit dwelling within. Because He is there, and because God’s Word is active, Christians can hear the voice of God as He speaks to us from His Word and within our hearts and minds.

I must listen, giving Him full attention. Like my sister advised, this started out by reading attentively. At first, I read chapters before God’s voice stopped me at a truth that I needed to hear, but before long, hearing His voice became easier, even continuous. Practice at listening to the Holy Spirit speaking from the Bible became listening to Him as I pray, and prayer is now a two-way conversion.

This is not an audible voice as people might hear in hallucinations and mental illness. However, it is God’s voice. As Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

However, God knows the human mind. Even His children can be prone to fanciful thought and led astray by ideas that are not from Him yet seem good or even ‘godly.’ This is the importance of the Bible. It keeps me on track. The Holy Spirit guides me by the Scriptures. He uses their general principles and teachings to impress passages on my heart. As I read He gives me mental reminders and suggestions and uses various other ways to emphasize what He wants to say to me. Knowing why He does this is important too . . .  

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:14–17)

The living Word of God has a primary task — to make me wise about salvation through Jesus Christ. It will never tell me I can do it myself or suggest that I do not need God in any area of my life. God speaks so I will know and understand His ways. He speaks to confront my sinful ideas, to correct whatever I might be thinking or doing that is contrary to His will, and to train me in being more and more like Jesus Christ, His Living Word. The purpose of all this is not to make me “healthy and wealthy” but to equip me to live for Him.

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Jesus, first I want to thank and praise You for speaking to me, not only every day during this quiet time of personal devotions, but throughout the day as You communicate to me in prayer and to encourage and instruct me. Your faithfulness to speak is the most precious reality of being a Christian. I also want to praise the power of Your words. When You speak, things happen. My life changes. Prayers are answered. Other lives are changed. Great things happen. Those who think You are silent are simply not listening. Please keep my ears open as You speak.