Lesson 7: Practice hearing God

I am glad you made it here. You are gaining power over the enemy; now they know you don’t play. Welcome to Lesson 7 and enjoy your lesson.

How to hear God is one of the major questions on every true believer’s mind. Let me break this down for you; God wants to speak to you. In fact, He communicates to us daily. That’s His desire. This concept was hard for me to grasp, not only as a young believer, but further along the journey as well. I would worry, assume, and stress about why I wasn’t hearing from God.

Before you continue further in this lesson, I want you to keep this at the back of your mind – God wants to speak to you.

How do you hear God speak to you? Doing all of the spiritual disciplines that I mentioned earlier leads to hearing God. When you continue to study your Bible and pray regularly, it puts you in a state where you progressively become in tune with God. It’s a process. Deuteronomy 4:29 says, “But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for Him with all your heart and soul, you will find Him.”

Here’s a word of advice: Worry more about spending time with God and walking in the Spirit than you worry about God speaking to you. Don’t worry about when and how but focus on Him. I have yet to see a good earthly father who does not want to communicate with his child. Our Heavenly Father is perfect. How much more He wants to communicate with us!

John 10:27 tells us, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”

You must be in tune with God to hear Him speak to you. John 4:24 instructs, “For God is Spirit, so those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” The flesh cannot communicate with God. You must continually tune your spirit to the same frequency on which God operates.

You cannot cater to the flesh all week and expect God to speak to you. You must train your flesh to daily yield its will to God. You also have to train your spirit to hear God. Daily train your spirit to tune in to God’s voice.

Hearing God’s voice is vital to your journey in life. It helps you avoid unnecessary pain. God’s voice is even more than a GPS. If you can’t hear God’s voice, you are like a wind tossed to and fro without any particular destination.

As you become in tune with God, you also begin to understand how God communicates with you. The way God communicates to each of us is different. Some will hear Him through dreams, some through prophetic utterance, some through the Word of God, and some others through an audible voice. God speaks to your spirit through other believers, pastors, situations; basically through any means.
A word of caution about prophets: You are your own prophet first. Beware of false prophets and do not be too dependent on others to know what God is saying to you. How do you know if the prophet you depend on is still in tune with God?

Tips for hearing God:

• Desire that God speaks to you (Psalm 42:1).
• You must obey His Word. Man will stop giving instructions to someone who does not do as he is told. Don’t expect God to speak to you if you don’t obey Him and His words. Disobedience will tune you out.
• Expect Him to talk. Have faith that He speaks to you daily. Know that it is your right as God’s child to hear Him.
• Avoid noisy environments. They cause distractions. It is difficult to hear God’s voice with too much noise around you.
• Fear and doubt will not let you hear Him. As a young believer who was eager to hear God speak to her, I was full of doubts. The truth is that they hindered me from hearing Him.
• Give yourself time to grow (1 Samuel 3:7). At first, for me it was God’s Word; later on, through dreams, word of knowledge, and my knower. (Knower is a strong urge within a man’s spirit.) All these took years and a process.

Always check your inner man. It’s okay to make mistakes; it’s all part of the process. Samuel made mistakes as well. He thought that a man was speaking to him when it was God Who was speaking. Later, Samuel became a such a great prophet that the people of his time relied on him for God’s Word to them. God spoke to him expressly (1 Samuel 3:1-10, 20-21). The more you practice God’s presence, the clearer His voice becomes to you.

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Lesson application: This week, each day, say this Prayer: I have access to the voice of God. I am in tune with Him. I free myself of everything that hinders me from hearing God. Amen.