Discerning The Voice of God in Our Personal Lives

Q: How do you hear the voice of God when He speaks to you?

Q: How do we distinguish between the voice of God and our own thoughts?

We all will have developed our own unique and intimate way of how God speaks to us on a day-to-day basis.

Sometimes you might get a check within your spirit that God is talking to you about a particular matter or have a sense of His abiding presence.

It could be that He speaks to you through a daily devotional you regularly read. Something like the ‘Word For Today’.

He may speak to you through the words of a worship song and it may be describing exactly what you are going through and you find comfort that God is either comforting or reassuring through you through that particular song.

Sometimes He may use an individual that you are close to such as a family member or a good friend, or a Pastor or minister to relay something that perhaps you have been tossing with and can’t get peace on. By talking to that person, God can use them to bring the answer you need.

And there may be other ways you have encountered.

However, by far, the most accurate way that we are guaranteed to hear from God with regards to how we should conduct our lives is through His Word, which is our road map for our lives.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.” - Psalms 119:105 AMP

“I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” - Psalms 119:11 NLT

This particular route is fool proof as God will never contradict His Word.

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” - Hebrews 4:12 NIV

Therefore, as an example, the married person who is fed up with their spouse, can’t say that God told them to marry another person who they have their sights on, because Matthew 19:4-6 NIV says. 

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Q: Has God ever changed the course of your life from a different route you thought that you wanted to take? I.E. a job, a house you wanted to buy; what University to choose, a person you thought you wanted to marry, a business idea etc.

Q: What was the outcome? Did it work out much better than your original plan or not?

Listen to this story when Paul & Silas had ‘A Call For Help From Macedonia’ - Acts of the Apostles 16:6-10 NLT.

“Next Paul and Silas travelled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia because the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time. Then coming to the borders of Mysia, they headed north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there. So instead, they went on through Mysia to the seaport of Troas. That night Paul had a vision: A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was standing there, pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” So, we decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us to preach the Good News there.”

All those areas mentioned are what is now known as modern day Turkey.

So even though something or a decision may seem right on the surface, we still need to be guided by the Holy Spirit whether it is the right route that we should take or not and be open and willing to be obedient to what we hear and are sensing, via the methods we spoke about earlier that we usually test when discerning the voice of God.

Q: When God gives you a specific word for your life; do you let the opinions of others stop you from believing His plan, by sabotaging things to suit what they think you should be doing instead? 

Q: Are you strong enough to stick to your guns and adhere to the Word of God for your life until it manifests?

Let’s look at an interesting story in 1 Kings 13:6-30 NIV where a Prophet allowed another Prophet to convince him that God had changed His original plan from what he was told.

“Then the king said to the man of God, “Intercede with the Lord your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored.” So, the man of God interceded with the Lord, and the king’s hand was restored and became as it was before.

The king said to the man of God, “Come home with me for a meal, and I will give you a gift.” But the man of God answered the king, “Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here. For I was commanded by the word of the Lord: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came.’ ” So, he took another road and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.

Now there was a certain old prophet living in Bethel, whose sons came and told him all that the man of God had done there that day. They also told their father what he had said to the king. Their father asked them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him which road the man of God from Judah had taken. So, he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” And when they had saddled the donkey for him, he mounted it and rode after the man of God.

He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” “I am,” he replied. So, the prophet said to him, “Come home with me and eat.” The man of God said, “I cannot turn back and go with you, nor can I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. I have been told by the word of the Lord: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.’ ” The old prophet answered, “I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the Lord: ‘Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” (But he was lying to him.) 

So, the man of God returned with him and ate and drank in his house. While they were sitting at the table, the word of the Lord came to the old prophet who had brought him back. He cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, “This is what the Lord says: ‘You have defied the word of the Lord and have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you. 

You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore, your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors.’ ” When the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. As he went on his way, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body was left lying on the road, with both the donkey and the lion standing beside it. 

Some people who passed by saw the body lying there, with the lion standing beside the body, and they went and reported it in the city where the old prophet lived. When the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God who defied the word of the Lord. The Lord has given him over to the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of the Lord had warned him.” 

The prophet said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me,” and they did so. Then he went out and found the body lying on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. The lion had neither eaten the body nor mauled the donkey. So, the prophet picked up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to his own city to mourn for him and bury him. Then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they mourned over him and said, “Alas, my brother!””

So, failure to act on what we hear from God can have a devastating effect on our lives. In this story we can see that the prophet was tricked by another ‘so-called’ prophet, who allowed himself to be manipulated by someone who tried to go against what God has said.

We are living in an age, where some individuals who are wearing the labels that they represent the church, are siding and giving way to the voices and popular culture of the day. Questioning our gender, the way marriages are viewed, i.e., dismissing the biblical principles in these areas - we have a huge responsibility to hold fast and stand on the Word of God. 

Revelation 22:18-19 NIV

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll.”