01/12/2025
How to recognize or perceive God's voice to you. A must read!!
Many people wish God could speak to them. But does God speak to everyone? The answer is a definite YES!
Then how come we don't seem to hear Him? It's the way you expect Him to speak to you that clouds your ability to perceive when He is speaking! Therefore, in this article I will try by the help of scriptures and personal experiences to highlight ways in which you can hear the voice of God, for your Christian journey definitely depends on God's personal dealings with you.
God is still speaking even today. But the problem is that many of us are unfamiliar with His voice.
According to John 4 vs 24, the Bible tells us that "God is Spirit " now this means that we shouldn't expect Him to operate like a man. This also means that even the way He speaks is not like a man would speak to you and I. Therefore, there must be a way to hear a spirit speak.
The first, commonest and basic way God speaks to everyone of us whethe you are a prophet or not is through IMPRESSIONS.
IMPRESSIONS
Acts 7:20-23
[20]In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father's house three months:
[21]And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son.
[22]And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.
[23]And when he was full forty years old, IT CAME INTO HIS HEART to visit his brethren the children of Israel.
The Bible is describing the leading of the spirit that came upon Moses to visit his brethren after being 40 years of age as, "IT CAME INTO HIS HEART." Many times we expect God to speak to us in an audible voice like we humans do, well you might not ever have that opportunity but God puts impressions upon our hearts.
What are impressions? Feelings, ideas, opinions, reading in between the lines, nonverbal messages or interpretations.
Sometimes it feels like we are just thinking to ourselves but watch that burden upon your heart it might be God actually communicating something. How do you tell if it's God; pray, watch and wait. The more you get such encounters look at the results that come out then you will be able to differentiate when it's God speaking and when it's just your thoughts. Sometimes it's just someone speaks something randomly to you and yet it's something you were praying about. It's not coincidence!
The second way God speaks to most people is through dreams.
Now dreams just like impressions are tricky.
Before I go further I would like to highlight the 3 sources of dreams. Dreams can come from you, the devil or from God. Many dreams arise from our subconscious from our daily encounters with the environment. The devil can also bring dreams that sometimes might be so sweet to our ears and yet if we act on them can bring destruction.
Now you can ask me how then do we tell if the dream is from God?
Daniel 2:1,3
[1]And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.
[3]And the king said unto them, I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit was troubled to know the dream.
Speaking from experience, many times I had a dream from the Lord this was almost always the case. Your spirit gets to be troubled! When you experience such don't say it was just a dream, pray about it and look through scriptures to find out if it can be interpreted from scriptures. Not all dreams from God will have an interpretation from the bible. I would have loved to go into details about types of dreams but let me stick to the topic at hand. Now a dream can be from God then misinterpreted when you wake up, again it's a story for another day. But one thing is certain, God speaks through dreams and again it goes without saying watch the pattern of your dreams then you will be able to perceive when a dream is from God.
Thirdly, God speaks through visions. Now this is the major form of communication that God uses to speak to prophets and prophetess. Now hear me, it is not only limited to the prophets and prophetess, you can see a vision without necessarily being a prophet. Cornelius in the book of Acts 10 I believe, had a vision of an Angel that told him to go and look for Peter concerning his salvation, yet Cornelius was not a prophet. So sometimes God can show you a vision but don't always expect Him to show you a vision to know He is speaking to you, it might just be a view once 😂 the more spiritually connected to God you get, these things become real to you. Visions are not like you watching a movie or the way things look in reality. Again let me not deviate to describe what visions are, but sometimes you might have seen a vision without even realizing you did😂 spiritual things are actually spiritually discerned and you can only understand when God gives you grace to experience these things not what you just read in the book or heard someone describe.
God speaks through audible voice. This is a rare form of Him speaking, I don't want to comment much on it cause I have not experienced Him speaking audibly yet. But don't think it would be easy for you to perceive when He speaks audibly even it, you'll need to be spiritually aware of how God speaks because my bible tells me that Samuel mistook the voice of God for Eli until the priest realized that it was actually God calling the lad and when Samuel was told what to do then God spoke to him. Despite Samuel being a prophet, he didn't recognize the voice of God at first encounter. What makes you think you will easily believe if He speaks audibly? Won't you run👀 no speak to me audibly, yet He gave you all the green lights and you gave a deaf ear to it.
Now whichever way God speaks to you, you must take time to learn when it is Him speaking.
Listen! No matter the circumstances or how the situation is, God will not change the way He speaks to you as an individual. I don't care how you cry, pray or fast! Sometimes people want to hear an audible voice over a certain situation but my question is, has God ever spoken to you in an audible voice before? If not then don't expect Him to change just because you want to be sure it's Him or just because you're crying to Him. Watch the pattern of how He has been speaking to you that's how He will most of the time be speaking to you. Of course there might be special moments. But if He uses other people to speak to you, He will definitely send someone to speak to you, then yours is to be spiritual enough to catch that as the voice of God to you.
I pray that God opens your spiritual ears, may you never miss the voice of God to you in the time when it matters most. God has been speaking but have you been hearing Him?
Shalom, from your precious brother, Semi Malama Mulenga.
