The problem is not God speaking. The problem is us listening. We shut the door and then cry, God, speak to me. The Lord is saying, I am speaking. He speaks most of the time in a still small voice. I appreciate that it is challenging at times to hear Him. All of the problems we have are here on the earth. None of them are in heaven. None of us need to twist God’s arm to get Him to speak.
**You Do Not Need to Get God to Speak**
*And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.* (1 Kings 19:12, NKJV)
I have a friend who once fasted for weeks. He probably nearly killed himself to get God to speak to him. After several weeks of pain and misery, probably out of pure pity, the Lord spoke to him in an audible voice and said, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” Incredible revelation. My friend went around for weeks dazzled by what Jesus had given him. Until one day, a few weeks later, he realized that while that revelation is valid and true, it is also completely biblical. In John 14:20 Jesus said the same thing: “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
My friend could have gone to McDonald’s, had a Big Mac — I am not recommending this — opened his Bible to John 14:20, and read that verse. Imagine him fasting forty days and hearing the audible voice of God say those words. Or imagine him getting up on a Tuesday, going to McDonald’s for lunch, and reading the verse. Which one would have been more powerful? They both would have had the same power. They both were the word of God.
In our flesh, in our weakness, we would like it if we suffered, if God appeared, if there was a blinding flash of light, background music, thunderbolt and lightning. We look at the dramatics. That is actually what the Lord was saying with the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Look for the still. The word of God is the word of God. If Elijah came back from heaven on a chariot of fire and spoke a verse out of the Bible, or a little child in children’s church memorized the same verse, it is the same thing. The power is in the word, not in the mouth.
You do not need to get God to speak to you. You need to learn to listen. I remember a wonderful woman of God, Ruth Ward Heflin, saying in the 1990s, when people still had CDs, that she wanted to record a six-hour teaching on how to hear God’s voice. She said she was just going to sell six blank CDs. People would buy them, put disc number one on, listen to an hour of silence, get really angry because they thought this was the teaching, then disc number two, another hour of silence. After six hours of silence, they might begin to get it.
**How Do I Know If It Is God or Me?**
*Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.* (1 Thessalonians 5:23, NKJV)
Most of what we struggle with in hearing from God is centered in this question. I would say about 80 percent of our struggles. Figure this one out and you will be well on your way.
God is a triune being — Father, Son, and Spirit. We are also triune beings: spirit, soul, and body. When God speaks to us, this is my contention: 99 percent of the time, or 99.9 percent of the time, God will speak to you in your spirit, not in your soul, and not in your body.
What most of us want is for God to speak through our body, through our ears. We want our ears to buzz. We want to see Jesus. We would probably like to smell Him. Like Thomas, we want to touch Him. We are looking for physical communication. On the whole, God will not do that. I know that is frustrating.
When God did speak audibly, the Bible is clear. Jesus said, Father, glorify Your name, and the Father answered, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. As written in John 12:28–29, “Then a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’ Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to Him.’” The physical body heard the voice of God. Straightway the rational, carnal mind kicked in and began trying to explain it away. It was an angel. It was thunder. They rationalized. They minimized. They ignored what He said anyway. God speaking to you in your body is not going to help you.
When God speaks to us through our spirit, it will usually end up coming into our minds. That is a different thing than us simply thinking of something. I can look at a blue hat I have taken around the world to protect a camera in a bag and describe it, think about it, mentally engage with it — boom, boom, boom. That is cognition. God speaks to our spirit, and the overflow, the knowledge of what He says, will come into our mind. It is different from going through the natural cognitive processes.
For the untrained and the uninitiated, it is very difficult to discern between what is God and what is you. Samuel hears the voice of the Lord in 1 Samuel 3. “Samuel. Samuel.” Samuel thinks it is Eli. He goes. He comes back. He goes. He comes back. In the same way, when God is speaking to us, we will often think it is ourselves. We actually will not even notice. Very still. Very small.
What we need to do is practice. I call it kiddie-pool practice. Practice in a low-level way where we will not get ourselves in trouble, or get other people in trouble, when — and frankly when, not if — we get it wrong. Have a walking, talking relationship with God where you have spoken to Him ten thousand times. Father, I love You. He says, I love you too. Or He says, hey, Graham, repent of that bad attitude. The more we speak, the more we know what is me and what is Him.
To most brand-new baby Christians it can seem hard to distinguish between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the condemnation of Satan. You sinned. You got something wrong. The Holy Spirit comes and says you sinned. Satan comes and says you sinned. You are left asking, what is the difference? One is the voice of love. One is saying, though your sins be as scarlet, come to Me, they shall be as white as snow. I will give you rest. I will wash them away. Turn. Call on the name of the Lord. The other is condemnation. If you are sitting there in sin and shame, those two voices can sound the same. The voice of God and the voice of your mind can sound very similar. The way to distinguish them is to practice more and more.
**How Do We Improve?**
*But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.* (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV)
Hearing from God is on a spectrum. Imagine a line. At the bottom we cannot tell the difference. We confuse what is God and what is me. I never hear God. At the top you hear clearly, perfectly, without doubt, without fear. You know it is God. You get it 100 percent right. One end of the spectrum, you get it 100 percent wrong. The other end, 100 percent right.
In my honest but humble opinion, most of us are somewhere on that line. I do not know anybody who lives at 100 percent. Someone told me they never get it wrong hearing from God. I wanted to put them to the test. Tell me some accurate, clear, non-coincidental things with a date and a time stamp. You are still on the journey. You are still on that spectrum.
Paul says we see through a glass darkly. He is talking in the context of prophecy and hearing from God. We hear, but we do not hear perfectly. We get it wrong. We see in part. We know in part. Paul says the day will come when we will see face to face. When Jesus comes or calls, we will see Him perfectly. We will hear His voice perfectly. That is an eschatological promise. It speaks of His appearing.
Can I suggest this to you? The degree to which you see Jesus face to face now, in this life, will determine the degree to which you hear His voice clearly now, in this life. That is a vital contention. You want to grow in your hearing of God? Do FaceTime with Jesus. Do not seek His voice. Seek His face.
Aaron and Miriam came to Moses. We are prophets. We hear from God. We get dreams. The Lord called Aaron, Moses, and Miriam into His presence and said to Aaron and Miriam, you are right. You are prophets. You do hear from Me. Then listen to what the Lord said. When I speak to you two, I speak through a dream, through an enigma, through a dark saying, through a glass darkly. With Moses I speak face to face. As written in Numbers 12:6–8, “If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses… I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings.”
The more time you gaze at the face of Jesus, the more the chatter, the noise, the buzz of the world goes down. There is an old song that says, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
**A Stranger They Will Not Follow**
*Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.* (John 10:5, NKJV)
People often quote John 10:27, My sheep hear My voice. In the same chapter Jesus says a stranger they will not follow. You can take that as a position of faith and declare, I do not hear the voice of Satan. I am hard of hearing when it comes to the voice of Satan.
A lot of people develop faith in hearing the voice of Satan. I have literally heard people say, oh, I never hear God, I never hear God — and then the same people say, Satan said this to me, Satan said that to me. You can harden your heart to temptation. You can harden your heart to hearing the voice of Satan. The Song of Solomon says my heart leapt when I heard the voice of the one I loved. Our posture should be, I do not even listen to Satan. I am not saying you will never fail at that. That should be our position.
This is less about technique and more about practicing. I raised my kids by speaking to them. As a baby, I spoke words they did not even understand. I had to tell them off a bunch of times. As they got older I texted, I called. She knows my voice. Some fellow comes up and pretends to be me. Somebody does an AI version of Graham and tries to con her. She is not going to walk very far. Real soon she is going to smell a rat. She is going to know the real dad, faults and failings and all. The more we spend time with God, the more we know His voice.
It is not about a technique that says God sounds like this and Satan sounds like that. When God speaks, He speaks from who He is, from His character. When Satan speaks, he speaks from his character. He can do none other.
**Encourage Yourself, Then Inquire**
*Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him… But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.* (1 Samuel 30:6, NKJV)
Can your emotions interfere with hearing from God? Yes, they really can. In 1 Samuel 30 David is having a really bad day. The enemies have captured his wives, his children, all of his goods, everything he possesses, while he was away fighting for God. He comes back and his own men are discouraged. They gather and say, David, we are furious with you. We are going to stone you to death. Imagine you have lost everything, and your own friends want to stone you.
David withdrew. He went, and he did two things. Notice the order. Number one, David encouraged himself in the Lord. Number two, David inquired of the Lord. He comes in discouraged, depressed, downcast. David knew depression. If you know the Psalms, David struggled with it. He realized that if, in his depression, he tried to inquire of the Lord, his own emotions, his grief, his fears would surround the question. He had to fly through the turbulence and get above the storm to where the sun was shining before he would hear the Lord.
If you try to inquire of the Lord without encouraging yourself in the Lord, you will often hear from your fears, your doubts, your depressions. Satan speaks to your fears. God speaks to your faith. Sometimes, before you try to hear from God, rejoice in the Lord.
I remember years ago when a member of my family had given me some really bad news, not concerning me. I was trying to pray for them and my prayers were going nowhere. I was staying in Ireland. The Lord said to me, go down into the kitchen — this was at three in the morning — and start praising Me. I said, why? I had to praise my way through my own emotions concerning this member of my family. The Bible does not say praise when you feel like it. As written in Habakkuk 3:17–18, “Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” I began praising Him. I praised my way through the clouds. Then I could pray a prayer of faith for my family, and we saw breakthrough.
We get it wrong. I get it wrong. You get it wrong. Your friends get it wrong. Your pastor gets it wrong. I am a pastor. Here are some safeguards.
Number one: walk in humility and admit you get this wrong. That saves an awful lot of heartache. If we start with the premise, I am so good at hearing from God I cannot miss it, we block God from telling us we are missing it. When you are in pride, God will let you go off with your pride and learn from your mistakes. Start here: I love God. I am sincere. I am in good faith. My heart is right. I can miss it. I am a learner. In the UK, when kids learn to drive, they put a big white plate on the front and back of the vehicle with a large letter L. Learner. Give me a bit of space. Do not tailgate me. Cut me a bit of slack. In the prophetic we should be learners, lifelong learners, not experts, not prophets to the nation. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Number two: all of our hearing from God is subject to the Bible, the written word of God. Whether personally or in a church, that hearing needs to be tested. That is what the Bible says. People quote, believe the prophet and you will prosper. Test the prophets. You have a right — you have a duty, not just a right — to test a word that comes from somebody else. You do not have a right to test the Bible. The Bible will test you. Psalm 105 says of Joseph that the word of the Lord tested him. The Bible comes pre-tested. It is seven times purified. If you want to hear from God, spend nine times out of ten hearing from God through the Bible, and one out of ten following the voice of the Spirit in that other way. Put the Bible first. Put the objective before the subjective.
Number three: have a community of people around you. I do not mean some heavy shepherding arrangement. If God tells me, go speak to that person, I am not going to crowdsource it to a bunch of other ministers. I am going to go and speak to them. If I get it wrong, what is the curse? I did a biblical thing anyway. If I felt the Lord say, pay for that person’s coffee, and I get it wrong, I have lost five dollars and they have a free cup of coffee. Not a big deal. When the decisions become important — speaking into other people’s lives, finances, direction of life, marriage, churches — we should have the humility to allow other people to speak into that. We all have blind spots. We all have desires, and at times those desires block us. At times we need others to say, you are missing it there, or you heard from God here but you have added to what He said. You need people who are hearing from God on a regular basis. A pastor. Elders. People more mature than you at this.
Number four: build a personal history. 1 Samuel 3 begins with Samuel learning the ABCs of hearing from God. It ends with Samuel building a track record. He establishes a personal history, and then a reputation in Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, that he actually was hearing from God. Begin to take baby steps. Develop personal history. When you have got something right twenty times, you are probably going to get it right time twenty-one.
Over the years I have learned that one of the best skills we can learn is how to learn. If I am learning a new song, I play it through until I hit the point where I cannot remember the words or the chords. Then I go back to the paper. Then I start again. I keep hitting that breaking point until I finish the thing. Give yourself grace when you get it wrong. I can often tell, leading worship, the people who practiced and the people who showed up winging it. A lot of people wing it when it comes to hearing from God. Practice. Practice in the small things. Before you stand up in church and tell other people what to do, get it right on your own. You will find you begin to get it right with others.
Simply put, God is already speaking. The word already has the power. Learn to listen in the spirit. Seek His face, not a technique. Know the Shepherd well enough that a stranger smells wrong. Encourage yourself before you inquire. Stay a learner. Stay under the Book. Stay among people. Stay in the kiddie pool until history has been built.
Let me challenge you. Stop fasting God into a corner. Open the Book. Sit in the silence. Say, Father, I love You, and wait for the still small answer. Practice where a miss costs a cup of coffee, not a congregation.
Selah
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**Scriptures for Study**
1 Kings 19:11–13, John 14:20, John 12:28–29, John 10:4–5, John 10:27, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, 1 Samuel 3:1–10, 1 Samuel 3:19–21, 1 Samuel 30:6–8, 1 Corinthians 13:9–12, Numbers 12:6–8, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Isaiah 1:18, Song of Solomon 2:8, Habakkuk 3:17–18, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5, 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21, Psalm 105:19, Psalm 12:6, 2 Chronicles 20:20, Hebrews 4:12, Romans 8:16, Psalm 46:10, Revelation 3:20.
**10 Questions for Reflection**
1. Where have you been trying to twist God’s arm to speak, while He has already been speaking in a still small voice?
2. Would you receive John 14:20 with the same weight from a child’s memory verse as from an audible voice after a long fast?
3. In what ways are you demanding that God speak to your body — ears, eyes, feelings — instead of to your spirit?
4. Where do the conviction of the Spirit and the condemnation of the enemy still sound the same to you?
5. Are you practicing in the kiddie pool, or only attempting the deep end where other people can get hurt?
6. What would change if you sought His face more than you sought a word?
7. Have you developed more faith in hearing Satan than in hearing God?
8. Do you inquire of the Lord from inside the storm of your emotions, or do you first encourage yourself in Him?
9. Are you wearing the learner plate, or have you declared yourself unable to miss it?
10. What personal history with His voice can you point to, and where do you still need a community to test what you hear?
