How To Know God’s Voice To Me

How To Know God’s Voice To Me.

We welcome you back for the bonus finale – How to discern God’s voice/How He connects with us.

 

In Part 1 of How To Connect with God, Our Heavenly Father we discussed:

Why does God want to connect with me?

Why do I want to connect with God?

 

In Part 2 of How To Connect with God, Our Heavenly Father, we discussed:

How will I know when God is reaching out to me?

How do I reach out to Him?

When will He reach out to me so that He can connect with me? 

What do I do when God speaks to me at an inconvenient time?

When can I connect with our heavenly Father?

 

In Part 3 of How To Connect With God, Our Heavenly Father, we discussed:

Where will He connect with me?

Where can I connect with Him?

 

In Part 4 of How To Connect With God, Our Heavenly Father, we discussed:

Who will our heavenly Father want to connect with?

Who are we that we can speak and connect with God?

 

In Part 5 of How To Connect With God, Our Heavenly Father, we discussed:

What will He say to me when He connects with me?

What can you say to Him when you connect with Him?

 

This bonus article is on “How To Discern God’s Voice & How He Connects With Us By Activating Our Spiritual Senses”.

 

How to know (discern) God’s voice

After building the foundation on How To Connect with God, Our Heavenly Father, I am writing this bonus article to show you how you can learn to discern God’s voice. Learning to discern God’s voice will help you differentiate God’s voice from your own voice or the voice of the enemy. I will also show you a practical step by step strategy for you to connect with Him in every area of your life.

 

 

First of all, let me emphasize that all of us can connect with and hear God’s voice. We are ALREADY hearing God’s voice because we are all created to hear God’s voice. We are the sheep of the Good Shepherd (John 10:27). The distinguishing factor as believers is that we have the opportunity  to not only hear His voice consistently but to become intimately acquainted with our heavenly Father daily. YOU DON’ T NEED TO BE HUNG UP ABOUT BEING PERFECT BEFORE YOU CAN HEAR GOD’S VOICE  (Cain can hear God’s voice  even after he has killed his brother, Abel).

When God speaks to us,  He will use the language/vocabulary that we are familiar with and use this to communicate with us. It is absolutely important for us to know how God’s voice sounds like so that we can discern and differentiate  between our voice, the enemy’s voice, and God’s voice. However,  we can be assured that it is not so much as us trying to rely on our ability to communicate with God but on His infinite ability to communicate with us using all means and methods.

How does God’s voice sound?

How does God’s voice sound? God’s voice sounds very similar to our own thoughts.  When He speaks to us, it will never contradict the Scriptures. When we know the character of God, we will know that His voice will always match up with and never goes against His character. For example, if I ask you to describe the character of God,  you would most probably come up with words  like “kind”, “loving”, “patient”, “full of grace”, “non-judgemental”, “merciful”, “faithful”, “forgiving”. This list is not exhaustive but what is important for us to know is that God’s voice will sound like His character when He connects with us.

God’s voice will not drive you but lead you. His voice is a voice of peace, joy, righteousness, grace and love. So if we hear something that is out of character of God,  we will know that it was not God’s voice that we have heard. Whenever God speaks, He wants to bring hope, clarity, peace, joy to us so that He can restore, revive and refresh us in our Christian journey.

God always speaks for a reason and He does not waste His words. He is always watching over His words to perform. No one can thwart His words and His purpose for us.  Once His word is released, it will not return to Him void but shall accomplish the purpose and intent that the word is sent.

 

How does satan’s voice sound?

Satan’s voice will also sound like thoughts in your mind and that is why many people are side-tracked when they try to hear God’s voice.  The thoughts that satan puts in your mind will contradict the Bible and may also give you half-truths that appear to be the truth.

The thoughts/voice of satan always brings fear, confusion, hopelessness, bitterness, anger, condemnation, guilt, oppression, shame, torment, discouragement, hate and uncertainty.  Satan’s voice will sound threatening and accusing and will deceive you in such a way that you will begin to doubt God’s words and His love for you.

Satan’s favorite questions are:

• Are you sure that God says that He loves you?
• Are you sure that He will forgive you for what you have done?
• Are you sure that He will hear you when you pray?

I am sure if you think of questions that run through your mind bringing great turmoil and confusion, you will realize that it is the voice of satan. You will be able to identify such recurring thoughts that he puts in your mind.   When you feel pressured to hastily make a decision and you feel driven to do something without thinking, you can be sure that it is not God’s voice. God’s voice will allow you to think or reason to make sure that you have made the correct decision or to seek advice from others.

If you read Luke 3:21-22, after Jesus was baptized, God said ‘You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”. God said this before Jesus performed any miracles. God’s approval has nothing to do with what Jesus was to perform in his ministry. Satan when tempting Jesus in the wilderness in Luke 4:3, 9, kept on asking Jesus “If you are the son of God….”.  Jesus has already received affirmation from God that He is God’s beloved son.  Yet satan tried to sway him and put doubts about this truth.

How much more will he try to let you doubt that you are the son/daughter of the heavenly Father whom He is well pleased? You do not need to earn His approval through your own efforts. He already approves and loves you !!

How does our own voice sound?

Our own voice can either be critical, hard and condemning or it can swing to the other end of the pendulum in us being too easy on ourselves.  If we are hard, critical and condemning with ourselves, with this same yardstick, we will most probably use the same yardstick on other people. When we are too easy on ourselves, this will result in us having lack of spiritual discipline in our lives and we begin to live our lives against God’s word.  Our own voice tends to start with “I” eg “ I am not good enough.” “ I am useless”. “ I always fail.” “ I can never do this”

The truth of the matter is that the more clearly we can hear God’s voice, the more accountable He holds us to obey what He says to us. (Luke 12:47-48). One person said to me once: “ I have no problem hearing God’s voice but my problem is obeying what He shows/tells me to do.”  When we hear God’s voice, we must make the commitment to obey Him.

 

How God connects/communicate with us by activating our spiritual senses

Many Christians do not believe they have any spiritual senses. Many can tell of occasions where satan have tempted them. They could not have heard satan if they do not have spiritual ears. It is sad that many people have more faith that the devil can speak to them than God can speak to them.  It is clear from what is written throughout the Bible that we do have spiritual eyes and ears. In  Ezekiel 12:2, God says to Ezekiel, “ Son of man, you live in the midst of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear; for they are a rebellious house.”

God communicates with us through the Scripture.  When we are reading the Bible, He makes the Scriptures come alive by using our five spiritual senses and to give us a “Rhema” word for our situation that we may be facing.  The five spiritual senses are sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

1. Sight

One of the ways that God communicates to us is to let us “see”.    In Jeremiah 1:11, God asked Jeremiah “What do you see ?”

How does this “seeing work?  I want you to close your eyes and picture the front of your house. Do you see the beautiful flowers or pavement full of weeds?  Now picture your car in your imagination. Can you see the color of your car? What color is the seat cover? What took place is that you “saw” a mental picture in your mind’s eye.  God speaks to us by putting pictures in our mind. You didn’t see it outwardly with your natural eyes. You saw this on the inside. We call this the mind’s eye. Yes, God does use our imagination to speak to us by putting pictures or words in our imagination.

Now in your imagination, think of a yellow parrot in a cage. See the parrot flying around and squawking.  Now open the cage and touch the feathers of the parrot. Can you see the yellow parrot in your imagination? Can you see the bird flying and hear the squawking and feel the touch of the feathers?  Sometimes God shows us a picture that is a still picture as when you see a photo.

Sometimes God shows us moving pictures such as when we are watching a movie on TV with sound and color with one scene changing to another scene.  For example, one of the guys that I taught told me that when God speaks to him, it is in the form of a powerpoint presentation. Another lady I know sees big words such as “FAITH” surrounding her so that she can’t miss it and she knows that God is speaking to her.

The picture that God shows us can happen very quickly, flashing before our “mind eye”, then fading and leaving us with only a memory of the picture. Do you know that if we find that the picture is flashing too fast for us to catch the details, we can ask God to show it to us again but this time to slow it down a bit?  Also, if we do not understand the picture that God has showed us, we can ask Him to explain to us.  Remember that God delights to dialogue with us and that showing us the picture is just an invitation to us to have an extended dialogue with Him.

 

2. Hearing

Another method that God communicates with us is through us hearing Him. In Sam 9:15 – 17, the Lord “told Samuel in his ear before Saul came…”  Let me show you how this works.

I want you to think of your favorite song. Did you hear the song in your thoughts?  This is how you hear God’s still small voice. The Lord speaks and you hear something on the inside. It works very much the same way as seeing except that it is hearing.  You hear something on the inside, like intensely focused and flowing/spontaneous thoughts.

When God bypasses our physical ears and drops his words and sentences into our minds, it sounds the same as the voice of our own thoughts. Most of the hearing takes place in your thoughts and not in your ears. God can speak to us by recalling something to our memory or bringing scriptures or songs back into our memory by us “hearing” it.

When we hear from God, it is easier to understand that when God shows you a picture because you do not need to interpret what you have heard. However, the disadvantage is that it sounds so much like our own thoughts, many of us are not sure what we heard is from the Lord or our own voice. To safeguard ourselves, we must always filter what we hear using the scriptures. If we are not hearing Him clearly the first time,  we can ask Him to clarify and confirm the message to us.  Someone gave me this valuable advice. “If it’s exactly what you wanted to hear, it’s probably your own voice you’re hearing.  But if it’s challenging,  re-orienting and sounds impossible to be done, then it is most probably God.” If the voice we heard is telling us to do something to help or encourage someone or to call someone, we will know definitely that it can’t be from the enemy. It can’t be our voice as we have not thought about it and it is out of our comfort zone.  By the process of elimination, we can actually quite easily learn to discern God’s voice from the enemy or our own voice.

 

3. Taste and Smell

God can speak to us through our senses of taste or smell. Paul writes of the “aroma of Christ,” the “smell of death,” and the “fragrance of life” (2 Cor. 2:15-16). Ezekiel and John, each received a vision in which they were given a scroll to eat.  Ezekiel wrote, “So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey on my mouth (Ezek. 3:1-3). John received a scroll from an angel and he wrote, “It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour (Rev. 10:8-10).

The sense of taste and smell can be related to discerning of spirits.  Sometimes we have the ability to smell the fragrance of the Lord or taste His glory. However, sometimes, we can smell the enemy’s presence (foul smell, like rotten eggs or sour milk).  Our sense of taste can also be used by God to communicate with us. For example, if we are praying for someone and we suddenly taste bitterness in your tongue, God may be telling us that this person is feeling bitter or have gone through a bitter experience.

4. Touch

 

 

 

God can speak to us through the sense of touch. Unlike some of the other senses, touch requires proximity. You can see, smell, or hear a person from a distance, but to touch someone or something, you need to be up close.  Sometimes our eyes and ears can deceive us but when we are able to feel the touch, it grounds us and makes us believe what we hear and see is in fact real. In Revelation 1:17, we read about John “When I saw Him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then He placed His right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.’” His touch strengthened John. His touch can bring us up to a new level of strength.

Touch is so powerful and it sometimes does something for us that no amount of words can do, For example, many times when I pray for someone that has lost a loved one, no amount of words can comfort them but a hug speaks volume. In such times, I always pray that this person will feel the tangible and comforting touch of  God. Many times when we pray and we need the touch of God we may feel His loving touch on us.

I am sure that sometimes when someone prays for us, we may feel the heat on this person’s hands. It is God using this person’s hands to touch us in a tangible way.  Many people that have been healed when the healing anointing is present have testified that they feel heat going through that part of their body that is being healed.

Sometimes the touch of God can be the feeling of peace as His peace begins to cover us from head to toes. Have you ever been in a meeting where the presence of God is so strong that you feel His touch on you and you begin to laugh at the enemy?  I had this experience once when  I was carrying so many burdens. The speaker was used by God to touch me. I was anointed and started laughing non-stop. When I stopped laughing, it was as if all my burdens were lifted away. I started to feel joy again (Laughter is the overflow of joy).  Within a short period of time, my situation was completely changed. Only the God of impossibilities can do this when He used me to laugh at the enemy because no plans of the enemy can prevail against me.

Practical Step By Step Strategy To Connect With God, Our Heavenly Father

1. Exercise to experience the five physical senses

Now let me give you an exercise for you to experience the five physical senses.

Close your eyes. Imagine in your mind, I want you to stretch out both of your hands and imagine that I am handing you a rockmelon (cantaloupe).  As I handed out the rockmelon to you, see yourself touching the skin of the  rockmelon. Can you feel the rough skin on the rockmelon?  Next, imagine that I am giving you a knife to cut the rockmelon. As you cut the rockmelon, can you hear the sound of the knife cutting through the hard rockmelon? Can you smell the aroma emitting from the rockmelon?  Now I want you in your imagination to take a piece of the rock melon  that you have just cut and put it in your mouth and taste it.  How does the rockmelon taste like?  Open your eyes. How many of you have experienced the five physical senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell an taste though you have imagined the rockmelon in your mind?

2. Exercise to experience the five spiritual senses

Now let me give an exercise for you to experience the five spiritual senses.

The Bible says in Zephaniah 3:17  that “God will rejoice over us with singing”.  Close your eyes and ask God to let you hear what He is singing over you. Ask Him to let you see the lyrics. Ask Him to let you smell His fragrance. Ask Him to let you feel His touch. Ask Him to let you taste His sweetness.  In case you feel that it is weird, just remember that when He speaks to us, sometimes He uses all our spiritual senses all at once to communicate with us.

Share what God is singing to you. When I did this exercise with various groups of people, some of the songs that they hear were songs that they already know. However, sometimes the tune of the song is the same but the lyrics are different. Sometimes it is a completely new tune and new lyrics that they have never heard before (this is what we called “new song”).

Many times, I have used this technique with people who are feeling so discouraged and sad. It helps them quiet their spirit to let God sing over them. They will hear what the heavenly Father is saying, feeling His touch,  smelling His fragrance and tasting His love and sweetness.  Many have been brought to tears as they sense so much love from the heavenly Father during their times of discouragement.

I encourage you to do this and you will be surprised at what He is singing over you. You will never be the same again when you hear Him in such an intimate way.

 

For those that still fear that you may not be hearing from God and that you are hearing your own voice/own imagination or the enemy’s voice, the prayers below will help to allay such fears.

3. Prayer to offer and dedicate your five spiritual senses to God

“Dear Lord, I offer and dedicate myself and all the parts of my body and my five spiritual senses to you as an instrument of righteousness.  I receive an impartation right now from the Holy Spirit for my eyes of understanding to be enlightened and for greater vision in the spirit realm.  I give you my imagination. I repent of and renounce viewing any image that has polluted me. I ask You to blot out every negative image with the blood of Jesus. Purify and restore my imagination, Restore my screen, vision and revelation. I ask that you open the unseen realm to me and remove all doubt, fear, wrong theology and wrong mindset from my heart. I bring every thought of my mind and soul into captivity to the mind of Christ. I will receive an impression, thought or word from the Holy Spirit within me.  I  will not doubt or question it. I am a believer and I expect to receive. I thank you for giving me an impression, thought or word from your throne room. In Jesus name, Amen

4. Prayer for binding the enemy

Let’s begin with this  command:

In the name of Jesus, by His power and authority, I take authority over every demon and interfering spirit and I forbid any enemy activity.  Satan  (or any of your demons) you may NOT interfere or imitate God’s voice to me as I open my heart to hear Him. I take authority over fear, anxiety, doubt and unbelief and in the name of Jesus and I command you to leave now.”

5. Connect with God

After praying the above prayers, we are now ready to dive into the amazing adventure of connecting with the heavenly Father and hearing His voice.

Now relax because this is about us having fun. Isn’t it fun when we connect with our best friends? Connecting with God is hundred times more fun and exciting.  Go “down inside” and open your inner ears and eyes to receive the grace to start off.

• Begin by asking God to show you something by asking him a question and anticipating an answer. Ask the Lord to show you something in your imagination and ask Him what the picture means.
• Pray in the Spirit or in English for a few minutes.
• Keep quiet and listen/see/sense what information presents in your mind’s eye.
• Write down/draw anything that comes to your mind without trying to figure out whether it is really from God  (remember that it cannot be from the enemy as he has been forbidden to interfere with you. It also cannot be your thoughts as you have already prayed that every thought of your mind and soul is captive to the mind of Christ.).
• He may speak conversationally. Write what He says.
• He may recall verses or portion of scripture to our memory and if so, jot it down.
• He may show you a picture. If so, draw it or describe it.
• You may be overcome with some sensation of joy or peace. Spend a few minutes enjoying it.
• If you do not think that you are hearing anything from God, then jot down whatever thoughts are going through your mind.
• Sometimes it may help to take a step of faith and write these words, “Lord, I believe You  are saying/showing this to me ………………. (Begin to step out in faith and fill in whatever thoughts that come to your mind. Place no limitations or expectations on what you write. Just let your pen flows with what you hear/see/sense).
• When you think that you are done, ask God if there is anything else He would like to say to you.
• Invite the Lord to be involved with you in the process of sorting this out. Cross out anything that is unscriptural or that contradicts the Bible and anything that is harsh and condemning (you will know that this is not from God. Note that sometimes we are so used to hearing critical things that our default mode is “critical” in whatever we think. These sort of thoughts are from your own voice).
• Go over what you have written and prayerfully read it again. It is very likely that God may give you more details as you ask Him more questions in order to have more clarity.
• Remember that God’s word to you is always full of love, grace and mercy because He loves you and has already planned a great future for you.

 

Below are examples of questions you can ask God. You can ask Him any questions in your heart.  Feel free to ask Him further questions and remember this is not meant to be a one-way conversation but a dialogue with our loving heavenly Father who loves us. He may, in turn, ask you some questions as well !!! Have fun because communicating/connecting with our heavenly Father is supposed to be fun and stress-free and life-changing experience. Please also remember that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of revelation and that He will be able to reveal to you what the Father is saying to us.

Questions to ask God that the Holy Spirit can reveal to you

• Heavenly Father, can You please show me/tell me/let me sense “What were Your thoughts about me when You were creating me in my mother’s womb?
• Heavenly Father, can You please show me/tell me/let me sense “What do you want to say to me about Your love for me?”
• Heavenly Father, can You please show me /tell me/ let me sense  “What are You doing in my life now?”
• Heavenly Father, please show me/tell me/let me sense “What are the things I do that bring delight to You and bring a smile to You ?”

Conclusion

This is the end of the series on Connecting with God, our heavenly Father. I pray that you have enjoyed this journey of connecting with God as much as I have in writing this series.  I would like to take this opportunity to pray a blessing over each of you reading this blog:

 

Dear heavenly Father,

I thank you that every one of  Your children reading this series, on connecting with You, is precious in Your sight. You desire them to come closer and nearer to You so that they can hear You and know what is in Your heart. I pray that every one of Your children reading this series will have their five spiritual senses activated. I pray they will fall in love with you all over again as they realize that they can connect and speak to you about anything that concerns their lives.  I pray that this is just the beginning of the intimate journey of knowing You. As they learn to hear Your voice and obey Your lead in every area of their life, they can fulfill the destiny that You have for each of them. May all their spiritual senses be activated. I bless them with the overflowing abundance of God’s love, God’s fullness of joy and God’s peace that pass all  understanding. In Jesus mighty name, Amen.