God speaks to you, don’t you know?

Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash

One of the mysteries of faith in Jesus must be how God speaks to us through His Spirit. Especially for new believers the ‘aliveness’ of God must be a conundrum. And don’t many believers like to intellectualise how God speaks!

This article is about how God speaks to everyone through the everyday issues of life.

My object is to demystify the holy art of hearing God’s voice whilst showing the relevance of this part of the prayer conversation we ought to be engaged in constantly.

Prayer is not simply what we say to God,
but more what God says to us.

Do we listen? Are we attuned? And here is how that’s to be so.

We hear God’s voice primarily two ways, and this can be understood through the congruence of a balanced message. Any sermon should have sufficient challenge and encouragement in it. In other words, anointed sermons rebuke and convict and comfort and strengthen. And, I want to suggest that God talks to us all in these two ways.

We can imagine God speaks to us through TAP and its anagram PAT. Let me elaborate.

God speaks to us through the metaphors of tapping us on the shoulder and patting us on the back.

The Spirit of God challenges us by tapping us on the shoulder, to alert us to something to heed, like a warning, or to stop something, or to lead us to do something. This can be a rebuke for sin or equally God alerting us to the opportunity to glorify Him through a practical love or care or concern we can show.

The Spirit of God also encourages us via patting us on the back. All believers should know those moments where the Holy Spirit might be heard to say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ particularly when we’ve acted in obedience to His leading and made nothing of it.

As Christians, we must try to actively resist over-spiritualising our faith. It is Christianese at best, and at worst it distances those who might be interested in following Jesus.

God speaks to all of us all the time if only we’ll hear Him within the issues of our lives.