Last week we discussed the ways that God speaks to us. Now we are going to discuss how to recognize when He is speaking to us. (If you need to catch up on last week’s blog, click the link at the bottom.)
God wants us to recognize His voice so well that we know when Satan is sneaking in and trying to give us his “advice.” Satan is not going to encourage and bring sin to the forefront. He is going to plant those seeds of doubt in your mind about your salvation and condemn you for every bad thing you have ever done. And he’s going to make sure God knows about every bad thing you have done too.
Let’s define two important words: conviction and condemnation. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, condemnation is defined as censure, blame; the act of judicially condemning; the state of being condemned. Conviction is defined as the act or process of finding a person guilty of a crime especially in a court of law; a strong persuasion or belief; the state of being convinced of error or compelled to admit the truth; the act of convincing a person of error or compelling the admission of a truth. Condemnation is placing blame and conviction is admitting and finding the truth.
The Holy Spirit’s voice is a voice of conviction, a voice that sets you on the right path if you have fallen off the path of God. If a voice you are hearing is condemning you, reminding you of how horrible of a person you used to be, and reminding you of past sins, the voice is not from the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:1 tells us “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Satan accuses and tries to condemn us before God (Revelation 12:10.) The Holy Spirit will not speak anything contrary to scripture. He will also not condemn you or make you feel bad about yourself. His job is to teach and convict. This is not to say that the Holy Spirit does not bring sin to light. He may reveal sin and bring it to your attention, but He won’t continually remind you of forgiven sin.
The next way we can recognize God’s voice is through repetition. If something is important and God wants to bring it to your attention, you are going to hear about it a lot until you pay attention as act on it. When I started to write my next book, I had no clue what I was going to write about. I just knew it was to be on obedience. One night I was reading my son the story of Jonah and I thought what a great story about obedience and disobedience. Right then I knew I was supposed to base this book on Jonah’s story.
As if that gut feeling wasn’t enough, all I heard about for the next few weeks was Jonah. My husband mentioned he had heard a teaching on Jonah, I saw a Bible study on Jonah when I was looking for my next study book, my pastor mentioned Jonah during one of his sermons, and someone preaching on television talked about Jonah. All I could do was laugh because I had gotten the message that Jonah was the topic of the book. I mentioned to my husband how consistently I was hearing about Jonah and he was to be the topic of my obedience book.
The Holy Spirit will often confirm messages to you. If you are continually hearing the same message, He wants you to pay attention. God uses people, scriptures, and circumstances to affirm what He is saying to us. God usually will communicate in a way that is important to us or that we will most likely listen to Him. I’m a reader and a studier. I also enjoy music. God uses all these avenues to speak to me and to correct me when I’m not walking the path I should.
God also uses our disobedience to speak to us, and for some reason, we tend to recognize His voice much easier. Sometimes His voice is clearest when we are in a less than perfect situation, circumstances that are difficult that we either brought on ourselves or someone else brought on us. Crisis draws us closer to Him and shows us our need and reliance on Him. Sometimes we are happily ignoring God because everything is going great in our lives. We wouldn’t listen to God or recognize His voice without the crisis.
One other way we recognize the voice of God is by staying in His word. If you don’t know scripture better than Satan, he will distort it and try to convince you to do something completely against the will of God. During Jesus’ time in the wilderness, Satan used scripture to try and convince Jesus to accept everything he was offering (Luke 10:10-11). Jesus knew the context behind the verses and the true meaning and rebuked Satan. We have the same power to rebuke Satan and thwart his advances, but we have to know God’s word and use it.
We will hear God best when we remain constant and consistent in His word. This means we study daily. We aren’t just Sunday worshippers. We develop our relationship with God through our own reading and studying of His word. When you are reading the Bible daily and asking for revelation and wisdom, you will be amazed that scriptures you have read a hundred times jump off the page at you. If this happens, stay right there. God is speaking to you. If something comes to you in the middle of the day, seemingly out of the blue, write it down and listen. God often speaks to me out of nowhere and when I least expect it.
If we have a heart turned towards God’s will, He will keep talking until we listen. Don’t be too hard on yourself though. We are all in a process of being transformed into Jesus. Some of us are quick learners and some of us need a little more time and teaching to understand. But we must listen and take heed to what we hear. James 4:17 tells us “if anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
Priscilla Shirer also mentioned this in her book Discerning the Voice of God: “When you recognize that the Holy Spirit has given you specific insight and direction on a matter, and you sense that your conscience is giving you assurance to confirm that leading, yet you deliberately go against it…you weaken and desensitize your conscience, and you sin against God.”
It isn’t always easy to do what God wants and asks of us. Eventually, with time, the desires of our heart will sync up with the desires of God’s heart (Psalm 37:4). We just must be obedient and listen for our calling.
Discerning the Voice of God. Priscilla Shirer, 2007, 2012. Moody Publishers, pg. 97
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