ApprehendingGrace.com

How do you best hear from God? Does He speak to your heart/mind/spirit most often or most clearly when you:

• Read Scripture
• Pray
• Meditate
• Write/journal
• Study
• Discuss Scriptures with other believers
• Serve
• Worship

Of course God can speak to each of us in any way at any point in time, but most people have one or two ways they most often hear from God. Since He created us in our mother’s womb, He knows how we’re wired and He tends to speak to us in ways that are consistent with our personality.

I tend to hear God when I’m writing and when I’m worshipping. Sometimes when I’m meditating on passages.

So, for example, when I read our Resting at the River’s Edge reading for yesterday, a specific verse caught my attention:

“How many loaves of bread do you have?” [Jesus] asked. Mark 8:5 (NIV)

I was tempted to fly past it – I’m familiar with the story, I studied a similar story a couple of weeks ago – but like I said, it caught my attention. So after reading the whole story, I went back and asked God what the big deal with the question was. No answer.

But that verse sure did intrigue me.

So I began to write. I didn’t know where I was going, but I copied the verse into my word processing program and I started writing. Then I deleted what I had written and started again. Then I left what I had written but skipped a few lines and started over. And a message began to form. Several messages, actually, and the passage came to life. Or should I say God brought the passage to life. Yesterday’s blog was just a snippet from the pages I wrote. I’ll be blogging more from the passage next week after I preach two sermons based on it.

In the process I learned an important point: If I had not made time for God – if I had not stopped reading and begun to write – even when I didn’t know what to write – I would not have heard from God.

So my question friends is simple…do you make time for God? If you want to hear from, it’s imperative that you make time to listen.

By the way… one thing I’ve found is that God most often speaks to me when I ask Him to! Yep. When I ask God to speak to me before reading Scripture, I am more likely to hear His message. When I ask Him to speak to me during worship, I am more likely to sense His heart.

And another thing… if you don’t know how you best hear from God why not ask Him? Then spend a few months focusing on different disciplines each month until you hear God speak to you. Ask Him. He’ll respond.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 at 8:22 pm and is filed under Confidence in God, Experiencing God, God's ways, Hearing God, Spiritual Maturity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.