3 Simple Steps to Hearing God’s Voice
Hearing God’s voice is a normal part of the Christian life. When we belong to Jesus, we have the ability to recognize His voice and follow what He is saying. As Jesus says of Himself in the gospel of John:
“But the one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep recognize his voice and come to him. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice.” John 10:2-4 NLT (emphasis added)
We want to follow God, get to know Him personally, and interact with Him as a friend. We can do this in the same way we would build any other friendship: spend time together in conversation!
Having a two-way conversation with God is as simple as praying and listening. Talking to Him and asking questions, then waiting for His reply.
Moses got to experience intimate friendship with God. Exodus 33:11 says it this way: “Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
Can you imagine having that kind of close friendship with God? Well, it’s totally possible and available to you! Let’s get into 3 simple steps to help you hear God’s voice.
Step 1: Desire to hear
The first step in hearing God’s voice is to desire it. God is a good father, and He is interested in giving us good gifts.
In Matthew 7, Jesus states, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
“You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” Matthew 7:7-11 (emphasis added)
God loves to talk to His children–that’s you–and make Himself known to them. His heart is for us, and He created us for an intimate love relationship with Him. What better way for us to grow in that than to come to Him in conversational prayer and hear His words straight from Him?
Step 2: Set it up
When we come to the Lord with a heart of desire to connect personally with Him, the next thing that is helpful is to set up our expectations and get our minds and spirits ready to listen.
Our lives are full of busyness and all sorts of things that would like to distract us from having time and space to hear from God. Even good things in our lives can be filling our minds in such a way that they are acting as a distraction.
Therefore, when we come to listen to God, it is helpful to first set up with a prayer to give everything that is occupying our minds and hearts to Jesus. We let Him hold it all for us while we are spending time with Him.
The other way we set up to listen to Him is to rebuke and silence the enemy in Jesus’ name, and also die to our own desires and imaginations. With this preparation, we can know that we are going to be hearing only from the Lord, and not ourselves or the enemy.
James 4:7-8 says, “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you….”
Step 3: Ask and listen
When we have prepared our hearts by giving everything over to Jesus, and shut down the other possible voices through prayer, it is time to settle in and move into the simplest step of the whole process: asking and listening.
We can ask God a question–whatever is on our hearts–and listen for His reply! Allow some time to wait on Him. He is eager to talk with us, but sometimes we have to “practice”, as it were, catching what He is saying.
If we are new to hearing God, we may first assume that the voice we hear is just us making something up, but very often God talks in a still, small voice that sounds much like our own thoughts–but they are clearly not originating with us!
God’s words bring with them a sense of peace and a “settledness”, and will always line up with His written Word, the Bible. When these things line up, we can be confident that we are hearing Him. (For more about how to differentiate between God’s voice and our own thoughts, see the article “Am I Hearing God? Or Me?”)
The more we take time to converse with God, talking and listening, the more easily we will be able to discern His voice, and our relationship with Him will grow exponentially–our lives will never be the same.