Hearing God's Voice

I remember when my Christian aunt from the Missouri came up to visit us in Seattle, and she would try to witness to me and tell me about this "Jesus" character that she served. I obviously wasn't a Christian yet, and when she talked, it sounded like she had just chatted with God over a Big Mac at McDonald's. I thought she was either crazy, or very irreverent for talking like that about God. To me, if there was a God, He was probably very far away, and I seriously doubted that He had time to listen to our small talk, or petty problems.

After I did get saved and I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I did begin to hear God faintly, but usually in more of an impression inside me of how He felt about something. I guess you could call it His "still small voice". I had always longed to talk to God, just like we talk to each other, but I thought He must not want to talk to me because I was either too sinful, or I couldn't hear Him clearly or loudly enough, so He must be silent. I found out later on that God is talking all the time, and that He very much wants to communicate with us.

The question is; why do we have such a hard time hearing Him speak? We need to learn to listen with our spiritual ears, and in such a way that we can distinguish His voice from others. There are several sources that we hear things inside our spirit from. It can either be from our mind, from an evil spirit, an angel, another human’s spirit, or it can be God's Spirit. In time, with the more you learn to listen when you pray, you will begin to better distinguish which voice is talking to you. God wants to communicate with you more than you know.

So how can we tell who is really talking to us? Well God's voice is always positive and peaceful, even if He's correcting us. Satan’s and demons voices, are always negative and non-peaceful; and they are either tempting you to sin, or they are trying to make you feel negative in some way, or pressuring you to act rashly, rather than waiting on God. A human’s spirit can transfer thoughts and emotions but this will usually only happen with someone you are spiritually tied to, like your spouse, friends, or family. God forbids witchcraft, which is using your spirit, or an evil spirit illegally to influence or communicate with another human. Our main focus in spiritual communication should be on us communicating with God alone.

The spiritual realm is kind of like the Internet with lots of traffic, and you can choose what you want to log into with your words, prayers, thoughts, or actions. When you log onto God's web site so to speak enough times, you learn what that place is like just like you would become familiar with a favorite web site you go to a lot. So if something else is trying to hack into you, you know that it's not God, because you are familiar with Him. Jesus said, "My sheep know My voice". And the more you listen with your spirit when you pray, the better you recognize it. God can also turn up the volume if need be so don’t worry about missing Him. God’s words match up to scripture.

The next time you pray, just ask God to help you to hear His voice better and verbally bind up any spirits other than God’s spirit from communicating with you. Yield your spirit and shut down your brain. It's kind of like back floating with your soul. God also speaks in different ways, so ask Him to show you how to understand Him individually. He communicates with me a lot in picture form, kind of like trying to make a sentence with just pictures alone, like metaphors. I have heard Him speak audibly once, and it really startled me. But most of the time, I just wait before Him and listen. Worshiping can help to greatly enhance your hearing as well.

Most of our communication in the world is pretty easy, we turn on the TV, radio, or computer, and there really isn't much effort involved. But with God, you have to be willing to put some effort into it because it is a totally different form of communication than our five senses are used to. You are using your spirit sense, which takes a little getting used to, but it is not hard once you do get used to it. Just don't give up, and ask God to help you. Know this day, right now, that God is waiting to talk to you. Yep, right this second. So go, enjoy, and know that He has such good things to say to you. You will find that He thinks much more highly of you than you do yourself. Remember that He is listening to you very carefully, and that He speaks plain English; you need not talk to Him like He's the Pope. He loves you, and He waits and wants to hear from you.