How do we Hear God's Voice?

It's not often we're pointed to the truth of God's Word and God's ways on popular TV shows. But I was reminded of the importance of listening for God's voice and learning to recognize it a few times recently as I was re-watching a few seasons of one of my favourite shows.

In a few of the episodes I've watched recently, the topic of God speaking to us and how do we know if it was God or not has come up. I think those are questions we can often wrestle with ourselves:

• Does God speak to us?
• How does He speak to us?
• How do I know if it was God speaking?

I know those are questions I've wrestled with in my own walk. And they're questions that I think are ones we continue to to learn more about all the time.

As I keep growing in my relationship with God, I become more convinced that He speaks to us. And I learn more about how He speaks and how to know if it was God. It's a journey where I don't expect to arrive at the end while I walk on this earth.

When it comes to relationship, it's something where we're always learning and growing. With our friends, the longer we call them friends and the more we take the time to get to know them, the more we recognize things about them easily. The same is true in our relationship with God - the more time we spend with Him, the more easily we will recognize when He is speaking to us.

In the TV show I was watching, one of the characters said something about asking God and then listening carefully for His response. That line stuck with me because I think it's the key to all of this. We have to create space to listen for God's voice.

Just as we create space to listen to our friends, we have to create space to hear God speak. We can't just quickly pray and then move on to the next thing. We can't just quickly read a few verses in our Bible and then run to the next activity we have planned. It our time with God is just to check the next things off a "to-do list," we don't recognize God's voice speaking to us.

To recognize God's voice when He speaks, we have to create the space to learn to listen for His voice.

We begin by learning to linger over our prayer and Bible reading.

We begin by intentionally creating space.

And as we learn to recognize God's voice more in these intentional times, we learn to recognize God's voice when He speaks in the midst of the busy moments of our lives as well.