Listen up....

The last few weeks we have been looking at the topic of listening to God.

How does God speak to us today? Do our prayers consist more of a shopping list for the day, or do we wait to hear what our Creator has to say to us personally?
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God desires to speak to each of us. More than that, He also knows how much we need to hear from Him and so He tailors His approach to each of us, so we understand clearly what He is saying.

The primary way God speaks to us today is by using His word. We call it the Bible. Reading God’s text message to the world enables Him to speak to us today. It encourages us, corrects and challenges us, gives us wisdom and insight. It reveals the character of God, it’s God telling us exactly who He is and His love towards us His creatures.
God impresses scripture on our hearts in times of need, to encourage and to comfort. By reading God's word daily we build a filter in our minds that enables us to see God’s truth in situations and call out those things which would be deceptive or cause us to stumble.
 
God uses His Holy Spirit to speak to us. This isn’t an audible voice. Let’s face it, who wants to hear an audible voice in the night?
God uses His Spirit to impress His will on our spirit. The communication isn’t audible, but it is precise. He may use scripture; He may use a conversation we’ve had or something we’ve listened to or watched or any variety of ways in which to speak into our inner person.
 
Other people are another way in which God gets our attention and speaks to us. Often those closest to us are the people God uses to communicate to us. They are the people who love us and pray for us the most. There are times when God delivers a message and it will come through family members or friends. When we miss their intent, God may use another person to come with the same message.
God may use these people to call us out on bad behavior, or on an unwise decision we may be heading towards.
 
God also uses circumstances. Those things in our lives that force us to restock and evaluate where we are at. Sometimes this can be through failure, sometimes through success, it can be a surprising event or a health event, a promotion or an end to a vocation. Either way when God uses circumstances His desire is for us to seek His will out for our lives.
 
God desires for us to comprehend the truth of what He is saying. God adjusts His approach to each of us to speak to us so we can understand clearly what He is saying. Sometimes we may need to meditate on something and seek him for understanding, but again this is the interaction God desires from us. In John 8:32 Jesus said; ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. God desires that we are set free by His truth. God desires for us to sometimes know the truth of the situations around us or the truth of a decision where we cannot know the outcome.
 
The next part God wants us to understand is that we are conformed to His truth. God’s plan is for us to become more like His Son Jesus, that we become reflectors of His glory in the world. Conforming to His truths is the polish that makes us reflect His glory more and more. Rather than be pressed into the worlds thinking and mold, God desires that we become truth bearers as His truths change the way we think and act bringing His love and light into the world.
When we hear God’s truths we have a choice, either we obey and are conformed to the truth and become more like Christ or we refuse to be changed and our hearts are hardened to God.
 
Like His love, salvation and finances, God’s truths are to be shared. God desires that we share with each other the things He has spoken to us. It is by shared experience that we grow and see how our Heavenly Father is working in the world around us.
 
These are some of the ways God desires to get our attention. Are you listening for His reply to your prayers? Do you spend as much time expecting a reply from Him to your prayers? God desires an intimate relationship with you that is one on one. He could speak corporately to a group and sometimes does but he also desires to communicate with us as individuals.
 
David Maharey