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Hearing the Voice of God- Introduction -
he Bible is full of examples of people hearing the voice of God. It started way back in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Then throughout the rest of the Bible there are many cases of people hearing the voice of the Lord. The prophets of old received the words of the Lord and spoke them out boldly. And this did not stop in the New Testament era. God still spoke and people still heard His voice.
So where do we stand today? Can man still hear the voice of God? Does God still speak to us in this modern age? And if He does then to whom does He speak, and how does He speak? Is it only for the very spiritual and those called to a higher ministry office? Can a person come to the place where they can hear the voice of God on a regular basis? And how can we come to the place where we can hear His voice? These are some of the questions that I hope to try and answer in this series.
Of course there is the unique area of listening that goes with the prophetic ministry. Not everyone has the ability to hear prophetically, but only those who have entered this ministry. But I want you to know from the outset that every single believer can hear from God. This is not the privilege of the prophet only. It is very much like many of the other spiritual gifts. For example God heals by the gifts of healing, but we do not need to wait for a gift of healing to receive his touch on our bodies.
Now before I go into how we can hear the voice of the Lord, we need to establish a few facts clearly in our minds. The first fact that you need to know before you even start is that God does still speak today. Many do not believe this to be true, since they claim that the Scriptures are God’s final word on all matters. To them, the only way you can hear God speak today is in His Word.
Yes, God does indeed speak to us through His Word, and this is one of the areas that I am going to be dealing with. But He did not hand us a book to read and then disappear from the scene, never to be seen or heard of again until we meet him the other side of the grave. Jesus promised that He was going to send us the Comforter to take His place on the earth while He is away. Now what use would the Holy Spirit be if He did not cause us to hear the voice of the Lord?
So I am going to start off by looking at the two main ways God speaks to us – by His Spirit and by His Word. Then I am going to go on and deal with how God speaks to us through other means, such as circumstances, other people, and even His creation. But perhaps before I even start on these many areas I should lay the groundwork from the Scriptures concerning hearing the voice of God.
Proverbs 20: 27 The spirit of man [is] the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Hebrews 3: 7 Therefore (as the Holy Ghost says, To day if you want to hear his voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:Revelation 3: 20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will fellowship with him, and he with me.
Proverbs 4: 23 Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it [flow] the sources of life.
Proverbs 6: 20 My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not the law of your mother:
21 Bind them continually upon your heart, [and] tie them about your neck.
22 When you go out, it shall lead you; when you sleep, it shall keep you; and [when] you awake, it shall talk with you.Proverbs 8: 34 Blessed [is] the man that hears me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
These are just a few passages that deal with God speaking and us hearing Him speak. We will look at this from many different angles. But before we get into actual ways of hearing the voice of God, I want to give you a little teaching on the nature of man and how we were created. Then you will have a better understanding of how these things work.
I want to start by considering man’s tripartite nature. There has been much teaching in this area in recent years, so I am not going to go into a lot of detail here. One of the best teachings was put out by Watchman Nee in his series The Spiritual Man. I am going to assume that you know a lot of what I am going to share because I am just giving a pattern for us to work to.
Man is spirit, soul and body. The spirit of man is the true inward person, made originally in the image of God and marred by The Fall, but restored in Christ. In the spirit, there are three functions as follows
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The body is what enables the spirit to live and remain in the earth. It is the means for communicating with the world via the five senses. All information that a person receives comes in through the body via the five gates that make up the senses. The body also has three main functions as follows
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Then, lying between the spirit and the body is a part of man that at first glance appears to be the real person or control tower. But it is actually a part that brings the spirit and the body together. Any communication that takes place between the spirit and the body has to come via the soul. The soul exists only because the body and spirit need a mediator. When the spirit leaves the body, the soul is no longer necessary. And the soul of course also has three functions as follows
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So it looks like this
| Spirit >> | Intuition | Communion | Conscience |
| Soul >> | Mind | Emotions | Will |
| Body >> | Defense | Reproduction | Nourishment |
And information can flow in two different directions. It can flow inwards from the body via the five senses, or it can flow outwards from the spirit. And in both cases these things are picked up by the soul and affect the mind, emotions and will. Let's see how they affect each part of the soul.
The Mind
The mind is a place where the influences of the senses are stored. With your mind you are able to remember all the things that you see, hear, feel, taste and smell. In fact if you think about it, anything that you remember is based on one or more of these senses. Try to let your mind go back to what happened to you the past while. Can you remember the events of yesterday? Can you close your eyes and ‘see’ what happened. Can you remember something that you saw on television?
Of course you can. Just close your eyes and try to remember these things, and you will be able to ‘see’ it quite clearly in your mind. You will even be able to describe it to someone who was not there or did not see what you saw on TV. And what about the other senses? Have you noticed how easy it is to recognize sounds that you have heard before? Ever heard an old song and found you could recognize the tune immediately? Ever smelled something and noticed immediately that it was familiar? Ever tasted something and you were sure you had tasted it before?
So you see, the mind tends to function according to the influences of the senses and you are able to see, hear, feel, taste and smell with your mind. So how then are you going to hear the voice of God? How are you going to see God, or Jesus rather, since God is invisible? You are going to have to do it in your mind. Some people speak of hearing an audible voice from God. But this does not mean that the sound came physically into their eardrums. They simply received a very strong influence of hearing in their mind.
If you are going to hear from God, then the results of this hearing are going to be first of all in your mind. But how does God speak and where does he speak from? Does He address your mind directly? The answer to that can be found in some of the verses we gave above. Solomon said that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. God is a spirit, Jesus said, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. So if you are going to receive anything at all from God then there is only one way it can take place, and that is from your spirit.
Every believer has been born again by the Spirit of God. That means the Holy Spirit has come to stay in our hearts. He and our spirit are very closely bound together so that our spirit is able to receive from Him. I want you to think about what it is like for two people to live together in the same house, sharing the same room, maybe even the same bed? After a while you get to know this person quite well. And you get to the place where you know everything that happens with them. You communicate with them all the time.
This is how your spirit is with the Holy Spirit. Your spirit knows what is going on in God. When the Spirit of God speaks, your spirit hears it. And since the two are closely connected it is safe to assume that your spirit is able to hear the voice of God 24 hours a day. You don’t have to wait for God to boom out of heaven or burst forth upon your life. All you need to do is find out from your spirit what He is saying.
So of course the question is "how do I go about receiving what God is saying?" And of course the answer quite simply is "learn to listen to your spirit." This is what we are going to be talking about in this series. I am going to be showing you ways of listening to your spirit. And as you learn to become more sensitive to the inner voice you will find that it becomes easier to hear exactly what God is saying to you.
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