I don’t hear God speaking to me. What’s it like when God speaks to you? What does the voice of God sound like? How can you hear the voice of God? How do you recognize the voice of God? Does God still speak to us today? These are just some of the many questions regarding the voice of God. When people speak about the voice of God, many times the Scriptures of the Old Testament are cited, which causes believers to create a wrong image and a wrong expectation about God’s voice. Because of that, many Christians don’t recognize God’s voice and don’t pay attention to the voice of God, and don’t listen to God. How does God communicate and what does the voice of God sound like? Can the voice of God still be heard in this day and age?
Can the voice of God still be heard in this day and age?
There are many people, who have never heard the voice of God and wonder what the voice of God sounds like. They listen to preachers and prophets, who have heard from God and believe that you have to be someone special and must be in ministry and have a special anointing to hear from God. But these people are carnal and have an Old Covenant mindset and don’t live in the New Covenant. Because if you are born again in Christ, your spirit is raised from the dead and your fallen position has been restored. You are reconciled with God and are anointed and have received the Holy Spirit and are able to communicate with Him.
However, many times, believers are too busy with themselves and the cares and the things of this world and don’t make time for God and His Word and don’t spend time with Him.
They don’t study the Bible and don’t pray, but spend all their time to the things of this world, but they do expect God to reveal Himself to them and speak to them and tell them what they want to hear. But that’s not how God works.
God speaks in the lives of His children, who are born of Him and belong to Him and are united with Him and who seek those things which are above, where Christ is seated and spend time with Him. They shall listen to God and what He has to say through His Word and the Holy Spirit and they shall hear His voice in the spirit.
Because God is Spirit and communicates in the spirit through His Word and the Holy Spirit, who lives in the born again believers.
Is the voice of God an audible voice?
The voice of God is not an audible sound as you perceive with your senses, in this case your ears. Maybe you think, “yes, but in the Old Testament the voice of God was an audible voice and the people could hear His voice. When God spoke to Samuel, Samuel heard an audible voice, because Samuel thought that Eli had called him. And when Jesus was baptized and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him and during the transfiguration on the mountain, they heard the voice of God, who testified of His beloved Son Jesus Christ” (1 Samuel 3, Matthew 3:17; 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35).
That is true! However… There is one thing that many people forget and that’s, that in the Old Testament and in the four gospels, the new man didn’t exist yet and the spirit of the old man was still dead.
The only exception in the four gospels is Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God and the Firstborn of the new creation.
Jesus was the Firstborn of the new creation; the new Man, who walked after the Spirit. But Jesus walked among carnal people, who belonged to the generation of the old man and were not born again in the spirit but lived in their fallen state. Therefore Jesus spoke in parables, so that God’s people, who belonged to the generation of the old man, could hear and understand the things of God and the principles of His Kingdom.
In the Old Covenant, God had to deal with a carnal people, who were sense ruled. The spirit in those, who belonged to God’s people, was dead. They were unspiritual and couldn’t see nor understand God and His Kingdom.
Therefore God came to the people and used a.o. an audible voice, which the carnal people, who were sense ruled could hear, so that God could communicate with the people.
Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine: And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation (Exodus 19:5-6)
God communicated with a.o. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. God revealed Himself to Moses and made His nature and His will known by giving the law. The commandments of God, which are written in the law of Moses, represented the voice of God and were meant for God’s carnal people. Besides the law, God also spoke through His prophets (Read also: ‘Are the commandments of God still valid‘ and ‘The commandments of God and the commandments of Jesus’).
God made Himself known to His people
Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near: Let the wicked forsake His way, and the unrighteous man His thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord (Isaiah 55:6-8).
He that walks in his uprightness fears the Lord: but he that is perverse in his ways despises Him (Proverbs 14:2).
God was not an unknown God, who hid Himself. God was only an unknown God to those, who hid themselves for God and rejected His law and therefore rejected God and His Word. Because they had rejected God and His Word, they were not familiar with His thoughts and His ways. (Read also: ‘God rejected from many churches‘ and ‘Is God’s way your way?‘).
But to those, who were raised with – and in the law and listened to the voice of God and kept His commandments, God was not an unknown God. They knew their God, Who had delivered them out of Egypt and brought them into the promised land, and through their obedience, to the voice of God by keeping His commandments they showed God that they loved God.
The born again believer communicates in the spirit
After the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the new man, through the death of the flesh and the resurrection of the spirit from the dead, the new man was able to hear the voice of God and to understand the voice of God in the spirit.
Therefore the new birth is a requirement to hear the voice of God and to have a relationship with God the Father, through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.
A born-again believer has become a living spirit, just like Jesus. The communication with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit takes place in the spirit.
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall shew it unto you. A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father (John 16:12-15)
The Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the flesh (a.o. senses, carnal mind, feelings, emotions) but with the spirit.
People, who say that they feel the Holy Spirit and must be led by the Holy Spirit by experiencing a certain feeling before they act, are carnal and don’t walk by faith and don’t rely on Jesus Christ; the Word, but rely on their flesh; their feelings.
The Holy Spirit is not a feeling and the Holy Spirit is not an emotion, but the Holy Spirit is a Person Who speaks and acts according to the Word. The Holy Spirit shall never contradict the Word, because the Holy Spirit speaks the words of Jesus.
Many times when the flesh is still alive and very much present in someone’s life and the mind is not renewed with the Word of God, the flesh stands in the way and strives against the Holy Spirit and prevents a person from hearing the voice of God, because God doesn’t speak according to the expectation or the will of the person.
How can you hear the voice of God?
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand (John 10:27-28)
Those who are born of God and belong to Him shall listen to the voice of God and shall obey His words.
God speaks through His Word and His Spirit. When you read and study His Word, the Holy Spirit will make His words known to you and your spirit shall be fed. Your spirit shall be strengthened and God shall speak directly through His Word to you.
Then it’s up to you, whether you will listen to Him and submit yourself to Him and obey Him or not.
Every son of God shall hear the voice of God and shall be taught and chastised by Him
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons (Hebrew 12:4-8)
Because whom the Lord loves, He chastised. From patting on the back you don’t grow up into a spiritually mature son of God, but you shall only become a prideful loose cannon.
Through the Word, you shall get to know Him, and when you submit to the Word and listen to the words of God and obey His words and be taught, corrected, and chastised, you shall spiritually mature into a mature son of God and shall walk in His will.
When you spend time with Him in the Word and in prayer, you shall maybe be confronted and hear things you’d rather not hear, and maybe His will go against your will, your feelings, and your emotions. Then it’s up to you, whether you really love God and want to follow Jesus Christ and obey Him and do His will or that you want to keep following your flesh and do the will of the flesh.
The Lord speaks through His Word, during prayer, but He can also speak during the day in your spirit. The Holy Spirit can give you insights, knowledge, revelations, warnings, corrections, etc. But every time God speaks, it’s all about whether you want to listen to His words and obey His words or whether you harden your heart and reject His words.
God still speaks to His people
God still speaks to His people, but many times it’s His people, who don’t want to listen to God, because God doesn’t speak according to the will of their flesh. Many times God says something that doesn’t line up with their will and therefore they close their ears to His words.
Jesus has given His commandments and told His followers what to do and Jesus still gives commandments, but if the people don’t want to listen to the voice of Jesus and don’t want to hear His words and don’t want to do what Jesus has commanded to do and still commands to do, then eventually Jesus will leave the person alone. Because what’s the use, if people don’t want to listen?
‘Be the salt of the earth’
