Every day God calls us by name and asks us to follow Him. He offers all of Himself to us and is ready to give us everything we need to succeed that day. Yet for most of us, we do not hear His voice. We hear many voices everyday, they are calling for our attention. The noise inside of us keeps us from hearing the one voice that can change everything. Our minds can handle a lot of data, images and messages. It’s like a supercomputer on steroids. However, our minds can also stay so busy thinking about problems, fears, what if’s, ourselves and other people that we have no time for God.
Most people live pretty busy, hectic lives. We try to balance Family and work and then squeeze God in when we can. What if our mindset would change tomorrow morning, to waking up expecting to hear God’s voice. What if we could quiet our minds and instead just focus on being with God to listen to His instruction and His guidance. At first this may feel awkward and we may not hear anything and be easily distracted by all the stuff of the coming day. But over time as we practice being silent and listening, God’s voice will start to come through clearer and more often. His voice will begin to be louder than all the others that are trying to get and keep our attention.
Here are some practical ways we can listen and hear what God is telling us each day:
- Start filling your mind with Scripture. The more truth you fill your mind with the louder God’s voice becomes. Several things we can do include:
- Devotional Reading – daily readings on practical application of Scripture.
- Study – Reading to discover what the words meant when they were written. A good study Bible helps a lot.
- Memorization – This helps us to take to heart God’s word and these verses come back to us at important times. We can all do this if we set our minds to it. It helps to do it with someone. I do this with a group of guys every month. We have memorized 16 Verses over the last 8 months!
- Meditation – This is simply turning a Scripture over and over again in our minds. This can be part of our memorization process. The idea is to take God’s word and think about it and roll it around for a while, really letting it soak into every part of us.
- Hear the Word – Hopefully this happens at Church every Sunday, but we can also look for other ways of hearing the Word, through online messages, CD’s and radio.
- Doing the Word – Living out God’s word is one of the most powerful things we can do. It can also be the hardest. It’s one thing to hear it, memorize and think about it, it’s another to go do it every day.
- Start planning times when you can slow down and switch gears. Finding time for quiet reflection can be hard, but worth it. When you get that time, ask God to speak and promise to listen. This won’t happen unless you schedule it.
- Trust God and Obey Him – When our minds start racing and we start worrying or being fearful, tell God you trust Him and will obey Him. Trusting God starts with complete surrender and giving Him control of everything.
- Get involved with a community of believers – We all need some people close enough to us to speak truth into our lives and to share at a deeper level. God often speaks through other people, but we have to be careful what people we listen to. Start praying now for God to bring the right people into your life.
- Pray a lot – The more we talk with God the closer we get to Him. Having conversations with God helps us to hear from Him. Don’t do all the talking though. Praise Him, Thank Him, Confess to Him, Ask Him and Intercede for others, but then stop and listen for what or who He brings to your mind.
- Finally, when you ask God to speak and you have a thought, ask God if that is from Him or not. As we put more of God’s Word into our minds we get much better at filtering what is from God and what is from ourselves or the world. We may even need to talk with someone else about what you think God is telling you.
Listening well means that your attention and focus is completely on that person. It means that when someone speaks to you, you can repeat back what was said. Listening well to God means that we are paying attention and can ask questions to clarify what we think He is saying. It means that we are pursuing truth to the best of our ability and obeying what we hear by doing it.