What methods are most effective for you to hear from God?
Discussion question for February 12, 2010.
We’ve talked before about the need to hear from God. What methods do you currently use to help you hear from Him? How do you filter between your own thoughts and His? What ways do you trust to confirm what you’ve heard? What barriers get in the way?
Here’s my summary of our discussion.
Confidence in hearing from God comes from practice. It is important that we practice hearing from Him so we can learn to recognize His voice. Jesus taught that “His sheep follow Him because they know His voice” in John 10.
God speaks to us in a way that is always consistent with His character. To distinguish between something He says and something made up in my own mind requires that I know His character. Reading the Bible helps lay that foundation. Watching His response to prayer through circumstances also builds that experience. Hearing Him through the words of trusted advisors is also effective.
There are physical and spiritual barriers that get in the way of me hearing from God. I can pray that He remove them, but some require my own will to let them go. Being in healthy relationship with my wife, having a clear conscience about my walk, releasing debts owed to me by others through forgiving, and practicing the presence of God when I’m not too tired or discouraged are all important ingredients.
God can not be put in a box or defined into a predictable system. If my prayer life and devotion to Him leads me to believe that I’ve got the formula figured out, then I am certainly limiting God. Instead of defining God, my goal is to merge my identity with His. This takes humble surrender on my part and gracious love on His.