Knowing God and His Will For Our Lives

We know that we were created to hear and to know Him in an intimate way. John 10:27 tells us this very fact: "My sheep hear My voice ". So our challenge is not in hearing Him, but in becoming familiar with His voice.

When the Lord speaks to us, we need to be able to recognize what He is saying. We need to tell His voice apart from our own heart. To understand this, we need to start with our physical senses. God has given us the ability to hear. Our physical hearing is always on. Whether we are awake or sleeping, our ears are always hearing.This is the same with our spiritual ears. Just as our physical hearing is always hearing in the physical. Our spiritual hearing hears the Spirit of God.

So we are actually receiving from God, but the problem is that we are not recognizing it is Him. Recognizing the Lord's voice means zeroing in on Him alone. The more time we spend reading His word and worshipping Him, the more we become sensitive to Him and His ways, the more clearly we will hear His voice and become confident in this fact.

As we come before the Lord, we lay our requests down before Him and wait on Him to speak to us. As we do this, we should anticipate and look for Him to speak to us. One of the ways that He will speak is to our spirit, which is an extension of His Spirit. So you may be asking, "How can I know it is the Lord speaking and not me?"

The process of hearing the Lord is just that 'a process'. The process of knowing the Lord's voice is like that getting to know a friend. When we first meet each other, we are unfamiliar with each other. So when our new friend calls us, we are unable to recognize their voice. Instead, they need to identify themselves, so they will say, " Hi, this is Mary." However, after spending more and more time together, we are able to recognize their voice on the phone with just a "Hello". This is the exact process in coming to know the Lord's voice.

Once we hear and recognize God's voice, we then need to compare what we have heard with what Scripture say. What you are hearing must line up with what the God's word says. The Lord will not speak things to us that go against His word. Once, we have confirmed what He is speaking to us is His word, we then need to stand firm in what He has said. James 1: 6 - 8 tells us, "But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do."

One of the biggest temptations that occurs after hearing God is to doubt. The enemy will come against you and say just as he did with Eve, "Did God really say…" (Genesis 3:1). This temptation causes us to take what we have heard in our spirits and try to comprehend with our minds. The things of God are not things of man. Just as oil and water do not mix, the mind of man and the things of God do not mix. We allow the Spirit of God to interpret the things of God. I Corinthians 2:11 - For who knows a person's thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Let me give you an example, say you pray and ask the Lord to open up a new job opportunity for you. Then as you are waiting, you run into an acquaintance. You begin talking with them and the Spirit nudges you to tell them about desiring an new job opportunity. You feel led to speak, but then your mind says, "Why would I bring this up with them, I hardly know them. What would be the reason to share this with them?" However, you relent to what the Spirit is leading you to do and share, the person then says that her company is looking for new people to hire for new job opportunities! The Spirit leads you into things of God that at times do not make sense to our human mind and way of thinking, but we must trust God and what He says.