God actually speaks!
The big issue so many find themselves tackling is the idea that God talks. I can understand, and sympathize with, some people who find the idea of a real God, let alone apersonal God, very dubious. We have been brought up in a society that demands empirical evidence, and gives criticism and mockery for any supernatural claims. Real responsibility to God is a hateful idea in Western culture now; we all want to just believe that we can lead our lives our own way without consequence. But I'm digressing. The point is, no one believes in the talking God anymore. I met Him. So many claim they've met Jesus, or know God. Even Justin Bieber declares he has a relationship with Jesus Christ. When you really invest yourself in meeting Jesus, He does prepare to reveal Himself to you. And even more so when, after you've met Him, you give yourself over to becoming intimate with Him. Christ has spoken to me time without number—He speaks to me most every day—but many people say either God has never spoken to them (He actually likely has and they just don't know), has spoken to them on a few occasions, or that they find it difficult to discern His voice when He does speak. Because God usually speaks through the same way that we think to ourselves (remember the "little voice inside your head"?), we are not trained to distinguish between our own thoughts and the still, small voice of Jesus Christ. When we think to ourselves, what is really going on is our spirit is "talking" to us. God is a Spirit, so He usually communicates through the same means; His voice sounds the same as a thought sounds. His voice sounds like you thinking to yourself.
Your thoughts or His voice?
Two little tips, first. The question might then become, "How do you know it's not just your own thoughts?" There are many ways. Here are two. Number one, if you train your mind and focus, you'll eventually realize that God speaking to you is kind of like a thought being placed inside your head, rather than a stream or flow of your own ideas. I know a fellow who was debating doing homework or attending a prayer meeting to which I'd invited him one night. He couldn't decide which to do, so he asked the Lord. Moments later, when he thought to himself, Okay, I'm going to do my homework, another "thought" popped into his mind, not his own: Go to the prayer meeting. He insisted in his mind, I'll do my homework, but the sentence repeated itself in his head: Go to the prayer meeting. He later described it to me as him being unable to make the decision to do his homework; every time he tried to assert his own will, God spoke up and insisted. Seeing his confusion, I told him that the "little voice" he'd heard was Jesus. Now, this seems like a flimsy defense, and yes, sometimes you can trick yourself into thinking that it's you when it's God, or that it's God when it's you. But the second defense is that God can literally speak over your thoughts. You actually can't interrupt a thought with another thought the way God can. Imagine your thoughts are a continual sound track going through your mind. When we suddenly think a thought, the first train of thought is cleanly cut off; like this: This wooden table is very—Whoa, what's Mike doing? But I've experienced God interrupting me in the middle of me thinking something, and it's like two tracks of thought overlapping one another; that is, I continued consciously thinking my own thoughts while God was speaking to me, the same way audible dialogue can overlap when one interrupts the other. We ourselves can't do this in our heads, so far as I know.
How does He speak? How do we hear?
Something that's important to know: human beings don't have just five senses. We have five physical senses which we use to interact with the material world. But we have spiritual senses, too. The physical senses need to be developed and honed; the spiritual senses are no different. Hearing Jesus is a practice that requires training and patience. It will take discipline to tune in to the voice of the Lord and recognize it consistently and clearly. Let me ask you, do we see with our ears? Taste with our nose? Touch with our eyes? Could we possibly describe the experience? I doubt it. So to call the experience of perceiving God's voice as "hearing" it is only as close as we can get to describing what it's like, when, in reality, we don't use our ears; we don't have a word to describe what our spirit does to interpret the experience of God communicating with us. It's not seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, or hearing—but we call it hearing. We use our spirit to do it, much the same way we don't hear our thoughts, but we call it hearing, too. Why am I saying all this? Because many have misconceptions about what God's voice is. Many call it a feeling ("I felt Him say . . ."). It is not. Although God can use feelings to "poke our heart," as I like calling it (for example, when we've done something wrong and feel a twinge of remorse), His primary method of getting your attention is with words. Armed with this information, how do you actually start hearing the voice of the Lord? The first thing to do is simply ask Him for direction; ask Him to talk to you. I guarantee you, He's not reluctant to speak to someone who wants to hear Him and know Him, if they're humble. He will gladly respond on principle (He loves you very much). Once you ask, wait. As you're waiting on Jesus, you'll sometimes notice you're mind suddenly becoming overactive or distracted. You may want to say to every thought that pops up, "Was that the voice of God? Was that the voice of God?" It's possible to get confused and frustrated. But here's why: remember how I said that God is a Spirit, so we hear Him the same way we hear thoughts? Well, the devil is also a spirit, and he tries to mess you up through thoughts. Have you ever felt your mind flooded with nonsense (gotten a song stuck in your head, can't stop thinking about a certain thing)? That's probably Satan trying to mess with you. You've just never known it was him up until now. You say: "This is too complicated; if the devil speaks the same way God speaks, and God speaks the way my thoughts speak, how can I ever know which is which?" Okay, first I want to point out that the reason Satan is trying to distract your mind is because he does not want you to hear the voice of God. He's going to try and get you to give up or doubt. But the difference between Satan and God is that Satan will never speak truth, only lies and lies and lies. And he'll also never encourage you. If you hear a voice in your head saying things like: God won't answer you, He's busy, or Why are you wasting your time? This is all made up! or Aren't you hungry? Thirsty? Don't you want to do something else? Aren't you bored?then you're hearing Satan. The simple point is that, many times, you can know who is speaking just by what's being said. It's really not as complicated as it first seems. Ignore the prattlings of the devil. Shake them off. Don't listen. Just ask the Lord believing that He'll answer you. He won't ultimately leave you hanging, but be very patient; He knows what He's doing if He makes you wait. You'll know it's Him also because His presence often accompanies His voice. When He talks to you, you'll probably feel a rush of peace or joy, and this is the result of His Spirit coming into the room. It's undeniably real. You'll know. I know that sounds really cryptic, but trust me: you'll know.
But can God speak with an audible voice in my ear?
I have to admit, I find it funny when God is portrayed in movies as a booming voice coming from Heaven. You know, that's an interesting thought: does Jesus ever speak with an audible voice that you can hear in your ear? The answer is a resounding yes. Although apparently He doesn't often do this (at least in the West), He is both capable and willing. I for one have been so blessed. He's spoken to me audibly five times at the last count. I'll show you some references of this happening in the Bible:
Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” - Acts 9:1-4.
Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and to him the Lord said in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” - Acts 9:10.
The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. [. . .] And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” - Acts 10:9, 13.
“Now it happened, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance and saw Him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me.’ - Acts 22:17-18.
So, you get the idea. In these examples and many others, people said that they literally heard a voice. This same voice that's spoken of in these above examples has come to me. I've heard it. I can speak personally of the same thing that these passages speak of. But although this may sound exciting, I would encourage you not to seek the Lord for signs and test Him; hearing Him audibly is not the most important thing. For now, focus on the still, small thought impressions He gives you, because that's the most common way He operates. If He chooses, He will come to you with an audible voice. You have to just trust Him. But I'll tell you of my experiences.
The first time I heard the audible voice of the Lord, I was in my bed with a splitting headache, praying for it to go away. Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain. But I was wide awake, and I was not tired, nor dreaming, nor imagining this. All of a sudden, as I was praying, I heard a voice speak quietly into my ear: “You must stretch; be strong; wait for Me to bless; hold on.” Immediately I felt a special calm flood me, and the headache started ebbing away slowly. I began to praise the Lord for healing me and speaking to me. I hadn't been startled or scared by the voice; just delighted. I knew it was God the same way you recognize the voice of your own mother.
The second time, I had just woken up from a deep sleep in the morning when I heard a shout. You can imagine the funny situation when someone wakes someone up from sleep by startling them, I'm sure. As soon as I opened my eyes I heard God say loudly, “Thank the Lord for this lovely day!” I jumped and then laughed. I began to sing that sentence like a mantra as I got up out of bed to commence my activities. I believe the two things the Lord had spoken to me were spiritual hymns given to my heart. I still sing them sometimes to this day.
The third time was a little different. It was late at night, and I was praying once again, but I was planning on going to sleep. As I prayed for my mother and sister and my house, the Lord began to speak to me about His judgment (with His inaudible thought-voice): Your mother thinks I will do nothing, either good or bad . . . . As He was speaking, I began to drift off because I was tired. But in that state between sleeping and waking, I heard a loud voice say in my ear, “. . . and your sister thinks My judgment is a joke!” At the last word, I was startled out of sleep. The word joke had been like a trumpet. Scared by the seriousness of the statement, I got up from my bed and went downstairs to deliver the message to my mother. Now, this was a year ago, and the situation of my house has changed, but I'll never forget that night.
The fourth time, I am not sure whether or not I was sleeping and dreaming. All I know was, in the middle of the night, I was once more in my bed, and I heard Him speak: “Our lives should be lived with as much liberation as those in the early church.” Why He said our instead ofyour, I don't know. I knew somehow that He was referring to the lives of the saints, and obviously didn't need to put Himself in the equation. It doesn't matter. The message was powerful and convicting.
The last time wasn't so long ago. From the day writing this (April 13, 2014), it was probably about three weeks. I went up to bed one night to pray briefly and then go to bed. Jesus had different plans. As I had my face down, the Lord said to me in my spirit, Wait on Me. I knew He wanted me to seek Him and not just pray a dismissive prayer, so instead of laying down, which would make it easier to fall asleep, I sat right up and began to wait for what the Lord wanted to do. Within two minutes, I suddenly heard the voice of the Lord clearly say, “Longsuffering!” But the voice that spoke sounded like the voice of someone who was grief-stricken and weeping. Perplexed, I said, “Lord, are You crying? What's wrong?” He began to tell me that He is broken-hearted because people refuse to longsuffer; many of His people are abandoning their prayer altars, and abandoning Him, all over the world. Almost no one loves Him enough to wait on Him anymore. This is why He urged me with the word longsuffering. If you love the Lord, you will wait for Him and be patient and never give up on His plan.
The next day I prayed a peculiar prayer: “Lord, I know that You're my friend, and You always hear what I say, and You comfort me. But I want to be Your friend and listen to Your thoughts and comfort You, if I can.” Sometime after praying this, I was reminded that before I had even asked this request, the Lord had answered it by sharing with me why He is so hurt. Has the Lord ever answered a prayer that you were going to ask in the future, and then when you ask it, He reminds you that He answered it before? It was amazing. He knows everything you need and desire. I assure you that I'm not lying. The Lord does exist and can speak with an actual voice, just as I could speak to you face-to-face. These are amazing experiences, no doubt, but whether He uses an audible voice or not doesn't really matter. What matters is you listening to Him and obeying what He tells you to do, by faith.
Conclusion.
Jesus Christ is constantly speaking, truth be told. It's not that He only talks when we ask Him questions; He always has a message to deliver to His people. It comes down to you deciding to tune in to His radio station that's on 24/7. He'll speak to you as often as you listen. If you want to meet Him, hear Him, and get to know Him intimately (which you need if you have any hope of making it to Heaven), then get on your knees and ask for Him, like a child asks for his/her father. Ask Him to speak to you and deliver you from sin. The only thing standing between you and God is you. If you seek Him through humble and persistent prayer, you will find Him. He is waiting on you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.