Most believers I know long for—and long desperately for—God’s voice, but we don’t hear his voice because we are unaware of the lavishness of his methods and moments.
Scripture says, “God speaks in many and diverse ways, but nobody notices (Job 33:14). We miss his voice because he’s not a paint-by-number God. He speaks in ways we can’t imagine.
Far too often well-meaning people describe conversations with God with unhelpful, misleading examples. Their exchanges with God sound like dialogues written by master playwrights:
I asked God: What should I do with my life?
God answered: Are you willing to take a risk?
I replied: Yes, but I don’t know what to do.
God said: Move to Timbuktu.
When people tell these stories, we think, I never hear God so clearly. Let me tell you a secret: neither do they. At least not most of the time. Those stories are usually shorthand summaries of hours spent reading Scripture, reflecting on his words, praying, getting Godly nudges, and recognizing God’s voice in circumstances and through friends.
Because God speaks through his infinitely imaginative, artistic mix of methods and moments.
Many Methods
God speaks through multiple methods: let’s not put him in a box. If we limit his voice to a few methods—the scripted dialogue or heavenly visions—we will miss his voice when he paints his words with different brushstrokes. Below are eight common methods in which God speaks.
Responsive Resonance: God’s Spirit often resonates in our spirits as a response to external events. Perhaps it’s a burning in our heart or a sense that God has something significant for us in this moment: a Scripture passage leaps out at us in prayer, or we overhear a “chance” comment in the coffee shop. God moves speaks to our hearts to pay attention.
For example, “While waiting in Athens, Paul’s spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was full of idols” (Act 17:16). Now, think with me: every city Paul visited was filled with idols , but something stirred in him in Athens.
Spontaneous Nudging: Sometimes God nudges our heart out of the blue: to pray for a friend or to act on an issue. It comes more as a sense on the heart than as a direct word.
I once got a sense to pray for a friend, so I phoned him. He had been let go from his job just hours before. We prayed on the phone and he thanked me for my concern. Only I hadn’t been concerned—I hadn’t even known—it was a concerned God who spontaneously nudged me.
Direct words: Sometimes God speaks direct words—usually just a sentence or two, or perhaps just a phrase. The first time I heard God speak, I had just become a ten year-old atheist. He simply said, “Sam, I am real and you don’t understand.”
I must say though that for me, most direct words—if any—only come after I pursue God in prayer and reflection following a resonance or nudging.
Unbidden Memories: Sometimes God bring to mind a past event. I once remembered my twelve-year old self saying something harsh to a neighborhood kid. Weeks after remembering, I bumped into that kid, now a grown man. I reminded him of the story and repented. He too remembered and wept when I repented.
I admit to a tear or two myself. Just don’t tell anyone.
Planted Images: God isn’t limited to nudges and words. Sometimes he even paints pictures.
Around 1915, my grandfather received a mental picture in which the letters KWANGSI were spelled in red letters across the sky. In the local library he discovered that the letters spelled a province of China (now spelled GuangXi). He spent the next two decades living in that very province, founding four churches. Do we really want to limit a God like this?
Recalled Passages: God often brings unbidden passages to mind at just the right moment.
Once while talking with a man—and when I had zero wise words to say—a verse popped to mind: We comfort others with the comfort we’ve been given (a paraphrase of 2 Cor. 1:4). I told him of a comforting word God had recently given me. Nothing wise, just comfort. It answered an unspoken question of his.
Since my Bible memorization is abysmal, it simply had to be God.
Visions and Dreams: I’ve never had one, but I know people I respect who get them. Unlike still pictures, visions are more akin to short video sketches, like when Paul was sleeping: “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9). Who’s to say God can’t do this today?
God Shaped Thoughts: Perhaps these are the hardest to recognize because our thoughts feel like our own. Yet how many times have you felt utterly empty, no words to pray, and then a brilliant (and obvious) thought streaks through your mind? C. S. Lewis expressed it like this:
Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role and through
My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.
God speaks in many and various ways. We are just learning to hear him.
Multiple Moments
God speaks with more methods than we expect, but he also speaks in more moments. He’s not limited to Sunday sermons or personal prayer times. His moments include: Scriptural meditation, watching a movie, conversations with friends, in brainstorming, while driving to work, at the coffee shop, in moments of curiosity, and even in his silence.
God mixes his many methods of speaking with the extensive variety of moments in our lives; he creates an infinite assortment of opportunities for us to recognize his voice. Take the “moment” of reading the verse, “God is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
- He may remind you of another verse, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves;”
- He may give you a responsive resonance of his great care for you;
- He may speak a direct word, “You are trying to get your deepest need filled elsewhere;”
- Or he may give you an image of a satisfied child.
Our lives are filled with multiple moments—from waking at 2:00 am, to an afternoon walk, to an unpleasant meeting with your boss—and into each of those many moments God can speak thorough his many methods.
Let’s not put God’s voice in a box.
Sam
This article includes material from my upcoming book Hearing God in Conversation: How to Recognize His Voice Everywhere. It will be released in mid-July.
Pre-order it now by clicking on the link or 
on the image. Topics include:
- Learning to recognize the sound of God’s voice
- Hearing God in his silence
- How to Brainstorm with God
- Hearing God in Scripture
- Hearing God for guidance
Gary Wilkerson (pastor, author, and son of David Wilkerson) said this:
A key longing in every human heart is to connect with God, to actually hear his voice. Sam Williamson has written a remarkable book that teaches both how to hear God’s voice in Scripture, and then to hear his voice in every avenue of life. It’s filled with humor, insight, practical tips, and sound theology. I can’t recommend a better guide than Hearing God in Conversation.
Hearing God in Reflection
Good article Sam! My Dad had a great description of how God sometimes communicates with us: ‘It’s as if someone has just said something. The voice is gone, but the words are still hanging in the air.’
Hi Ted,
I’ve never heard that, but it has the sense of it all. I’m going to use it. Hopefully attributing it to you dad.
I had felt the need to move to a larger city for a long time. When my husband passed suddenly, it changed everything, I knew that it was time. It was scary, I would have to quit a good job and move, all alone, with my two young children, away from family. I looked for a job in the new city with no luck. But, I still felt such an urge to move there. Finally, I took a leap of faith – I flew there and rented a house. The day after I signed the lease, I was offered a job! I flew home, quit my job, and announced the move. My house sold in 4 days! I immediately found a good preschool that had an opening for both of my children, in the area of our rental house. We have found a great community that we love and are so happy in our new city!
Emily! That’s an amazing (and inspiring!) story.
I love the way God confirms his word with other words, circumstances, and additional “nudges.”
THANKS SO MUCH.
I used to expect God’s voice to be really outside of my everyday experience. What I have learned in the past few decades is that God’s voice is always with us. For many years I dismissed his voice as my own thoughts, or my own wishful thinking. When I heard loving words, I assumed that because it was what I wanted to hear, it couldn’t be God. Now I know that he’s been speaking loving words all along. I recommend the book The Shattered Lantern, Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God, by Ronald Rolheiser. It conveys the organic nature of our relationship with God. Since we were made to have relationship with him, the way we perceive him is often so obvious that we don’t register it as an experience of God. I have learned not to be so resistant to the obvious.
Hi Cynthia,
I think God’s movements in our thoughts is the hardest to discern as his voice. They feel … like us! (And some, of course, ARE us.)
But think about it. If God actually appeared in the flesh and spoke, his voice would from his vocal chords, through sound waves, tickle our eardrums, and … enter our thoughts.
Sam
True! Also, one of the things addressed in The Shattered Lantern is that the REASON we long for God is that we were made to need him. So, we need not reject a word because “it’s what we want to hear.” Of COURSE we want to hear that God loves us. We were made to hear it.
Sam,
Excellent article and so needed these days.
I recently had a nudge after a good friend younger than myself passed away from a long battle with lung cancer. I remembered a ministry for men to reach out to widows , widower, and single moms. I had no idea where the brochure was I collected two years earlier. The next morning I reached for a book on my shelf and out tumbled the brochure. I emailed the sponsor for all the materials to begin the ministry at our church. I went to work and read my email. My good friend Kimo, who works with me to organize men’s ministry had sent me an email.
I opened it and read it. He said Jim I just discovered a new men’s ministry that we should consider. Yes, you guessed it. It was the same ministry I found that morning on the brochure.
I told him it was taken care of. The materials were on the way. God,s timing is so amazing and always perfect!
Hi Jim,
Your story is such a great example of the many ways God works: a responsive resonance, an unbidden memory, and his confirmations.
Thanks
I think you covered this subject thoroughly. One fits one person and another fits someone else, like clothes made just for them. What a personal God we have.
The part about fitting God in a box is probably humorous to God because if we can’t contain Him in a house, how are we going to contain Him in a box. His Spirit would just leak out. Our brains just can’t seem to think outside of the box sometimes. Okay, often.
Thanks for reminding me how many different ways God has spoken to me,I forget to listen sometimes. God often speaks to me through other people but he puts in us to know whether it’s from an article or signs of some sort. You got me thinking again!!
Keep on listening man, God has things he wants to talk about.
But mostly, he simply likes to talk with you.
So, “god” talks the same way as clairvoyancy, tarot and divination? He talks the same way as every other “god”, each of which you say is fake?
Hi Papasan,
I understand that you dis-believe the things we believe. Fair is fair. I bet I dis-believe some of the things you believe too.
We don’t necessarily say that the other gods are “fake” as much as we say that there is one true God who made the rest of reality, including the spiritual world. (Although, yes, there are “fake” practitioners and charlatans too.)
I’m not surprised if some of the spiritual world tried to capture people (who are open to the spiritual world) with God-like practices. Dumb counterfeits don’t work, only counterfeits the resemble the real thing.
Thanks for commenting, even if you disagree. This is meant to be a place for open dialogue. (Some of my readers don’t think God speaks today either, so you have something in common with them.)
Sam
Good stuff. Have you heard of another book on this topic by Brad Jersak called “Can You Hear Me?”
http://www.amazon.com/Can-You-Hear-Me-Tuning/dp/0973358602
It might be a good resource for you to interact with in your book. Just a suggestion.
Thanks! I appreciate the tip.