Wrestling Prophetic Doubt: Am I Actually Hearing from God?
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (John 10:27).
How do you know that you are actually hearing from God rather than just hearing your own thoughts?
John Hansford writes:
As I review decades of pastoral experience, a number of tough questions come to the surface. It seems that we can all hear from God on many fairly spiritually trivial matters: Which job should I take? What church should I go to? Where should I live? But on some of the big issues dividing the church today, or even on issues of what God is saying to whole nations, structures, and institutions, we seem to hear less clearly or we all seem to hear something different from our brothers and sisters! The more voices that are added to the mix, the more it seems that human opinion takes over and the actual voice of God becomes lost.
For example, why do Anglicans hear God telling them to baptize their infant children, yet Baptists hear God telling them not to? What about when believers say painful things such as, “God has told me the reason you are divorced/infertile/unemployed is because of this thing that you did wrong.” Are they really hearing from God when they say this? It can be easy to take all of this and conclude that we don’t hear from God anymore, and some have even taught this and made it a doctrine of the church. But this is not what our Bible really says. We may get ourselves in a muddle of confusion and uncertainty over if and how we hear from God, but we must put all doubt behind us and believe that as followers of Christ we are those who do hear the voice of God.
We need to be crystal clear: Christians hear from God. We worship a God who speaks; He speaks from Genesis to Revelation. He never stops speaking, and because He is the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). We are the sheep of our great Shepherd, and sheep know their Master’s voice.
Receive
Repent of any ways that you have allowed your own opinions and thoughts to cloud or influence what should have been the voice of God on a matter. Meditate on John 10:27, and thank Jesus that He knows you and speaks to you. Do you quiet yourself to listen to His voice enough? Do you follow the sound of His voice or your own? Do business with Jesus over this.
Word Made Flesh
Consider Jesus, the Word made flesh. The writer to the Hebrews talks about Jesus as God’s climatic and definitive act of speaking:
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe (Hebrews 1:1–2).
We are those to whom God has spoken in these last days through His Son! To put it another way, our primary method of hearing the voice of God should be through encountering Jesus. Realizing this is tremendously important, for it makes Jesus central rather than any subjective thoughts and impressions that we might have.
How do we do this? We hear from God by reading about Jesus and listening to His words throughout the whole Bible, by listening to Him all the time, by praying in the Spirit, by obediently living the way He taught us, by being baptized, by laying down our thoughts and opinions and truly dying to self, by regularly sharing in bread and wine with other believers, and by putting others first and Jesus at the center. Encountering Jesus regularly in these ways causes us to hear the voice of God.
As this process continues, something else happens over the days, weeks, months, and years. We begin to think about things in a Christlike way. We might watch a political debate on the TV news, and instead of joining in the partisan debates, we find Jesus’s words from the Sermon on the Mount are foremost in our brains, helping us think afresh about the issue under discussion from His perspective, not ours.
The daily ongoing renewal of our minds through worship gives us the ability to hear what God wants us to do. We have been given what Paul calls, “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor . 2:16). And so we can teach Scriptures, preach truth, counsel by the Spirit, and disciple one another in Jesus’s name. We become a body in which people prophesy, speak words of wisdom and knowledge, and use other spiritual gifts to edify, encourage, and comfort one another.
Decree
Declare again over yourself, “I have the mind of Christ!” And pray: “Heavenly Father, help me to be persistent in developing a relationship with You so that I can truly hear and discern what You are saying. I commit myself to keep talking and speaking out, but Holy Spirit please help me to hear Your words first so that I represent You well and speak Your glory opinion on every matter.”
Hearing God’s Voice
This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy” (Acts 2:16–18).
The New Testament describes a community of people who not only hear from God through Scripture, prayer, and sharing bread and wine, but also through prophecy, known and unknown tongues, and words of wisdom and knowledge. Ordinary people, not just special people like priests or apostles, prophesied. Some of them predicted global events. Others spoke in earthly languages they had never learned. Several had visions that were crucial to the rest of church history. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter said this happened because the Scriptures said it would, referring to Joel (see Acts 2:14–21).
We know God speaks, so when His Spirit is poured out, everyone starts hearing from God. To Luke, the writer of Acts, this is normal Christianity! Hearing from God about things, even major life decisions, is quite ordinary. For example, a church prays together, and God speaks to them (see Acts 13); a missionary decision has to be made, and a man pops up in a vision and sends Paul and Silas to Greece (see Acts 17); a prophet predicts a famine and the capture of leaders (see Acts 11; 21). The gifts of the Spirit radically changed the decision-making process in the early church. At the start of Acts, everyone draws lots to make decisions, but after Pentecost, they stop doing this. Instead, they listen to God’s voice.
For those who are in Christ, hearing from God is one of the most natural things in the world, like children hearing their parents’ voices or two friends talking with each other. We have a God who speaks. What a delight!
Action
Read God’s Word to hear God speak. Does reading Scripture sometimes seem dry and remote? Try using your Holy Spirit–sanctified imagination to read and step into the story as if you were there. Don’t just read about other people being involved with Jesus; read as if you were there and involved with Him. Try this while reading the following passages:
Jesus feeds the five thousand (see Mark 6:30–44).
Jesus heals a crippled women in the synagogue (see Luke 13:10–13).
Jesus stills the storm (see Matt . 8:23–27).
Additional content by: Sarah-Jane Biggart, John Hansford, Micah Hayden, Sam Robertson, and David Stark.
