Hearing God Speak

I went with my brother-in-law to a men’s group meeting while visiting out of town. I love it when men get together to encourage each other, being real and authentic, seeking to grow deeper in their trust relationship with Jesus. That night they were discussing a chapter in a book about hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. They debated and discussed the topic, theoretically, questioning if it could be true, wondering how anyone could ever begin to hear God’s voice, and if so, could it be trusted. They asked each person what they thought. When it was my turn, I said this: “You can seek God’s guidance in the Bible, and through wisdom and advisors. But the trump card, for me, is when the Holy Spirit speaks.”

There are many Christians who deny that God would speak to a Christian today. They say that since we have the revelation of God’s Word, the Bible, that we do not need God to speak to us anymore. Furthermore, the gifts of the Holy Spirit – prophecy, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and other sign gifts – were only for the apostles to be empowered to start the church. I was taught this for years growing up. But I guess that I was just rebel enough to leave the door open to the possibility that this was not true. I read the Bible and knew the stories. Abraham heard God’s voice. The boy Samuel heard God speak to him. Noah must have heard God quite clearly.  Adam walked and talked with God, which must have been God’s original desire. The prophets heard God, clearly. Job and Gideon, too. Peter, Paul, the apostles, Phillip, Ananias (in Damascus), and many others heard God speak to them. But I was told to believe that around 90 AD God quit speaking to men.  All guidance was to come from the Bible, and the Bible only. Someone much wiser than me coined a term for this, “bibliolatry”.

At a point in ministry when I was desperate for guidance and reassurance from God He finally broke through and spoke clearly to me, for the first time. I sat in tears in my van, parked along side the road. As I began to hear and trust the voice of the Holy Spirit more and more, I would write down what He said to me. I kept them in a file folder because I thought it was so very, very special. After a couple years the folder became quite full, but I realized that I never referred to them. Rather, I was constantly praying and seeking new and timely guidance from the Holy Spirit.  So, I threw away the folder, and trusted the abiding presence of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, to be my guiding voice, when and how he chose.

After many years of hearing the Holy Spirit --either speaking a message to me, a word of knowledge, or in a dream – I began to talk freely about it, seeking to encourage others to listen and trust. I would hear retorts of every kind. “There is too much emphasis put on that.” “Satan will deceive you”. “I don’t need God’s voice, I have the Bible.” “Every time I hear someone say they had a dream or heard God speak to them the red light goes on”. But the one that really caught my attention was this: “If you hear the Holy Spirit talk to you, and I don’t, are you trying to tell me that you are better than me in some way, or that I don’t have as much faith as you.”

I think I have some answers. First and foremost, for those who have been indoctrinated not to listen for the Holy Spirit, or to trust dreams, they have a spiritual, theological block in their heart and mind. It is unlikely that the Holy Spirit can break through what you have determined to believe. Their theology quenches the Holy Spirit, plain and simple. Secondly, we do not realize how busy our mind is most all the time. There are voices clamoring and thoughts ruminating constantly. And we don’t discipline our mind to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit. I came to this realization one time listening to wives talk about how little their husbands listened to them. They could talk for two or three minutes, while he was engrossed in something else, and realize that he had not heard a single word she had said. We do the same with the Holy Spirit. He cannot even get our attention, because we never, ever listen. A third answer pertains to hearing the voice of God through dreams. Once again, if you believe that dreams are not from God and you jokingly attribute them to eating pizza the night before, you will not pay attention to them. Your belief wins out, but you are horribly mistaken. For those who want to trust God’s guidance through dreams you need to realize something very practical.  For a dream to be remembered it must come to us during light sleep, not deep sleep. When we are almost awake, almost conscious. The Holy Spirit does this so that He can get our attention, when our mind is not cluttered, and when we can awake into full consciousness and remember it. But if we are lazy about spiritual input, we may just roll over and go back to sleep. Then we lose the dream – it will be snatched away, or we just plain will not remember it. So, what I have done for years now is to discipline myself to get up when I have a dream, go to the desk and write it down. Tomorrow, then, I don’t need to try to remember it, only prayerfully determine its meaning.

Jesus said to his followers that when he returned to the Father He would send the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to live in his followers. He did not want us to be orphans, but to have the very presence of the Godhead dwelling in us. Jesus specified what the Holy Spirit would do to help us -- guide us, teach us, remind us, tell us things to come, speak to us, convict us, and testify of Jesus (John 14-16). These all sound to me very much communicative and even articulate. I would not want it any other way.

“My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”  (John 10:27)