Speaking His Language

I have been thinking a lot this week about how to hear from God. I was asked last night how I know that my thoughts come from him. This has prompted me to lay it out as plainly as I can, mostly to better understand for myself why I believe what I do. Since I don’t have anything else I’m dying to share tonight, I’ll let write about how I started to hear God’s voice.

As a teenager, I had a lot of free time. Home-schooled, after it was decided that I didn’t play very nice with others, I spent my days primarily reading and writing. I noticed an interesting phenomenon taking place when I would put down a book and pick up a pen. My writing began to reflect my reading. I would start writing what my character would say, and it would come out as a product of someone else’s imagination. Frustrated, I worked to rid myself of the habit, but found after reading eight or nine hundred pages of the same series in a week, it was very hard to break from the style in which I had immersed myself.

When I became a Christian in my mid-teens, I struggled, as I think most beginners do, with communicating with God. I prayed, but didn’t hear. I thought that was the norm, until I decided it was important to start reading my Bible. I disciplined myself to read one chapter every day and write about it. Soon enough, I noticed a very similar phenomenon to my reading/writing synchronization with fiction. After a short time being immersed in the Word, when praying, I could make a connection from what God had said to others to what he was saying to me. Based on what I was learning about God and what I knew of his character, I was able to gather fairly accurate estimations of how God would respond to me and, through this, I began to guess my way through conversations with God

The more time I spent reading the Bible, the more I knew God’s character. After I knew his character, I began to hear his voice. Not audibly, but I could gradually tell the difference between my own thoughts and those lead by God. Beyond just being in God’s style, they were somehow outside of me in a way that is very hard to describe, maybe similar to when someone offers an idea you never would have though of. It was around that time that I was a sophomore in college and I noticed something else happening when I was praying. I would often lack words, but instead, I would have images in my head that I would present to God trusting he knew what they represented. After another couple months, I began receiving images from him and would understand them, sometimes instantly, and sometimes they would take time to decipher. With great effort, I was able to put them into words.

I grew up exposed constantly to typical conservative Christianity and never took it seriously. The Holy Spirit meant nothing to me for a long time. I didn’t think it was possible to have a relationship with God, only to follow his rules. I certainly didn’t think he who created the universe had any time or desire to converse with me. Sadly, I think this is how a lot of Christians go about their lives. Salvation card in hand, they live as if nobody is watching, seeking, or talking to them. Even when I know that God does those things, I still fall constantly into the routine of doing my own thing, getting through one day at a time, and forgetting to check in and chat for a while with God.

Some people I know heard God’s voice instantly and never stopped hearing it. Some hear him even when they aren’t trying. That isn’t me. I became a Christian thinking there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t hear God or constantly doubted if it was me or him. Before that time, Satan’s voice was much more natural for me to hear and I liked what he had to say. The thing with Satan is that you don’t have to listen to hear him, you only have to not listen to God. The lies were many and they were loud and, unfortunately, they had time to spread roots. Truth is something I need to work at, to practice, and it takes discipline that I don’t always have.

This is all particularly hard to do when God doesn’t work within the realm of human logic. He often asked people to do things that didn’t make sense and seemed insane to those around them. I don’t like doing things that make me look crazy. I don’t like being asked to do things that don’t make sense to me, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that God will say something that is true and also extraordinary. There is no perfect formula to hearing from God because I am not a perfect listener. There are times, maybe more often than not, when I don’t have the clear answer I am seeking or I’m just not brave enough to be sure that it’s not just me talking to myself. Those are the times when I have to remember that the foundation of my relationship with God is that I trust him. I trust that he is always with me, that he speaks to me, that he makes himself available to me, and that if I’m wrong, he will let me know. If I act out of arrogance or twist what he’s told me or mistake my own voice for his, he won’t abandon me in my failure, but teach me how to get it right. He rewards effort when it is pure. 

My attitude towards questionable messages are to weigh them against God’s character and commands, follow if I find no fault with them, seek confirmation in one way or another, and trust that God will knock me back on course if I have drifted. I would rather make a mistake out of misplaced faith than have no faith at all and never move in any direction.

I can’t leave out though the times when there is no doubt or question in my mind. When the truth God speaks to me is clear and pure as light itself. There is nothing that can compare to that feeling. It is my firm belief that God communicates with all of us in some way that we can all experience as truly, and it is my hope that everyone who seeks him finds it.