From the Bible we can see that God talks to us, His people, in different ways.
Jesus says that His “sheep” will hear His voice.
Does this mean that we will literally hear His voice?
Like Paul heard Him when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus?
Paul could hear with his own ears what Jesus said to him.
We know that this kind of hearing doesn’t happen very often.
Usually hearing God’s voice is interpreted as receiving His words that can come to us in many different ways.
Biblical “hearing” can be defined in many ways and includes much more than physical hearing, it also means receiving and acting according to the word.
We can find many different ways how God speaks to us from the Bible.
Most important of all: The Bible
First and foremost God speaks to us through His written word.
Our minds are renewed by it, and through it we can understand and apply correctly the other ways God gives messages to us.
We are living the time of the new covenant, so it is important to know the New Testament so we can understand the writings in the Old Testament in the correct way.
We do not live under the Moses’ law or in the old covenant but we live in the mercy that was given us through Jesus Christ.
Holy Spirit has inspired all the 66 books in the Bible.
When you read Paul’s letter to the Romans you can rest assured that Holy Spirit inspired it and used Paul to write it.
He was given the authority to write God’s message to the Romans.
When someone says that God does not speak to him, we know that it is either a lie or misunderstanding.
We can read and hear God’s own words written by His prophets and apostles daily, if we want to.
This is the most common, and most important, way how the Holy Trinity talks to people.
Through it we can learn His will for us.
We can see that God wants us to love Him, to love each other, our spouses, children, neighbors, and so on.
We are given the faith and understanding that this is the fruit of the Spirit and it is given to us when we are born again.
Through the power and mercy that God gives us.
It does not come from following the law.
Other ways of God talks to us
Through Bible we can learn more about the other ways God can speak to us.
In our lives are many moments where we need special direction and wisdom so we can make the right decisions and choices.
There are people who believe that they need to feel the Holy Spirits guidance every day.
God does not lead us through our feelings.
Knowing Him, is knowing His will.
I do not need special guidance to know that I need to go to work every day.
There are days when I don’t “feel” like going to work.
If I believe that these feelings are God’s speech to me, I won’t go to work.
But this is not God’s way to guide us but we are guided by knowing His will.
If we have a job, we don’t need to ask God every day “God, should I go to work today?”.
Why not?
Because if I have a job, I can know, by reading the Bible, that God wants me to do my work wholeheartedly and with responsibility.
Instead, I can pray like this: God, give me wisdom, joy and strength to do my work today so I could be a blessing to others and fulfill your will.
Starting point in my job is to use all my talents, abilities and common sense in it.
And to trust the Holy Spirit to be with me and to guide me, even if I didn’t have any special feelings.
God talks through angels
When God wants to change our lives, he guides us to the change.
The way He guides us is different from one time to another.
And any way He uses to guide us isn’t holier than another.
An angel appearing with God’s word is not more holy than His speech through the Bible.
We know that an angel can appear to us in a dream or a visible way through our daily experience.
But again, having an angel visit us is not what our faith should be about.
Dreams given us by God
God can talk to us through our dreams.
Not all of our dreams are from God.
We can learn from the Bible that dreams given by God always have a special message and can be understood.
Some of them need to be interpreted and others can be understood in themselves.
Dreams without a clear and consistent message are not God’s speech to us.
Witness of the Spirit and the voice of the Holy Spirit
God talks to us through the testimony and the voice of the Holy Spirit.
These are two different things and they should not be mistaken with each other.
But both happen inside us because the Holy Spirit lives in a person who has born again.
Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:16).
This witness is the knowledge that we have in us of being a child of God.
It does not happen in our intellect.
When we wake up in the morning we do not need to explain ourselves that we are children of God and convince ourselves from it.
We have the witness in us; God’s Spirit bears witness to our spirit.
It is not necessary to hear it, or to be assured by someone every moment.
There are moments when you could have heard the voice of the Holy Spirit.
His voice inside you is very different from the witness of the Spirit.
It really is His voice and you can hear what it says.
If Holy Spirit in deed lives in us, why could we not hear what He says?
God’s speaks to us through our will
In Paul’s letter to Philippians (Phil 2:13-14) we are told that God works in us, both to will and work for His pleasure.
When we grow closer to God, and read His word in the Bible, we start to will what He wills.
His wishes and goals for us become our wishes and goals.
It may be hard, especially at the beginning, but we must not be discouraged but pray and read His word.
That way we can learn what His will is and be changed by Him, so that it will become our will too.
