Seven ways to listen to God's voice

                                                                                            

Do you realize that God is speaking to you in your daily life? 

I began to enjoy prayer after discovering that God responds when I pray. God can speak to us in many ways, but I will share seven ways that God used to speak to His people in the Bible.

1. 1. God will speak through dreams.

In the Book of Genesis, we find that God spoke to Abimelek through a dream to warn the king of Gerar about his attempt to marry Sarah, the wife of Abraham, just because he didn't know the truth. But God came to Abimelek in a dream one night and said to him, "You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman." (Genesis 20:3) Besides this instance, God also spoke in a dream to the magi in Jesus' time to warn them not to return to Herod, but told them to leave the country by another way.(Matthew 2:12). Yes, God will speak to us in a dream even today, so develop the habit of recalling your dream in your mind before you wake up (because once you wake up, you will probably forget it) and try to record it as soon as possible on your notepad or mobile phone before you forget it. It will be the first step to understanding what God is trying to communicate to you in your dream before you know the interpretation of it. 

     2. God will speak through visions.

The Spirit of God revealed a vision to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:25). The prophet was being led to the exiles in Babylonia. Daniel also saw a vision of the Lord on the bank of the river Tigris during the time of Cyrus, king of Persia.(Daniel 10:7). Does God only speak to people with a vision in the Old Testament? No, look at Peter in Acts 10:9-16 and 11:5). In a vision, God spoke to the apostle about the gentiles also being welcome to the kingdom of God as well. 

     3. God will speak through the prophets, or people with prophetic gifts.

Without the prophets, we wouldn’t be able to understand God’s will at a particular moment of time, such as when God used the prophet Jonah to call for the repentance of the residents of Nineveh even though the prophet didn’t even want to go to this city in the beginning. The prophet Agapus passed a message of warning to the church that there was going to be a big feminine coming to the entire Roman world, so the church could prepare for all these issues when they finally came true in the reign of Claudius. (Acts 11:27-30) The Bible also mentions that there are nine spiritual gifts, and one of them is the gift of prophecy, or what some people would call a prophetic gift. That means God will frequently speak to a person and use that person to speak out to those whom He wants to speak to. The message will always be a personal message to an individual when it falls into the category of personal prophecy. 

    4. God will speak in a still small voice.

The Prophet Elijah will be a perfect example of God’s way of speaking to us. The prophet had just been through a big spiritual battle with all the false prophets on the mount of Carmel and fled from the life-threatening message from Jezebel. He just wanted to quit. However, when God restored his prophet, Elijah, he heard the Lord speak to him in a new way, "a still small voice," as the scriptures stated. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

   5. God will speak through angelic beings.

The Lord will use angels to speak to us whenever he wants to. For example, God used two angels to save Lot and his family before he wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. (Genesis 19:1-17) God sent his angel to tell Joseph that he shouldn’t be afraid but should take Mary as his wife. (Matthew 1:20) 

   6. God will speak through animals.

God will sometimes use a funny way to speak to us when we don’t pay attention to what he says. For example, the Lord used a donkey to speak to Baalem when this prophet wasn’t listening to God. (Numbers 22:29 –31) Do you remember how God spoke to Jonah and drew his full attention to speak to him? By using a big fish, Jonah started to really listen to God in the belly of this big fish (whether it was a whale or not, we are not sure). For Elijah, God used the ravens to bring him food day and night to show God’s providence and care for him as well. (According to 1 Kings 17:2–6)

   7. God will speak through the scriptures.

(which is the most important and our standard of discernment as well.)

As the apostle Paul said, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Nothing is more important than God’s written word. Although there are many ways that God will speak to us, no voice or message can be contradicted with God’s words, and we should use this as a standard and measurement of all the voices and messages that are claimed to be from God. In order to do so, you will at least have to read your Bible every day and do your Bible study often. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to know what the scripture says about the message you will encounter, whether in a church or with an individual.

Conclusion

There are many other ways that God will speak to his people as well. As long as God uses it, we need to be aware of how God speaks to us. Will God only use the Scripture to speak to us? In principle, yes. In our daily situation? No, we can’t limit God, since God uses a variety of different ways to speak to his servants in the bible as well. Some people may argue that since the canon hasn’t been completed in that period of history, God would use different ways to speak. However, after the canon has been established and the New Testament churches have been built on solid foundations, we don’t need any other ways to listen to God except the Bible alone. Again, I can’t agree with people like that since we can’t limit God and God loves to speak to us in his own way with his own strategy. Since we are all created differently, some would receive a message with a vision or a dream in a better way. Some would be born with a rational mind. That type of person may be better able to communicate in a more logical way or with a written message on a piece of paper. It really depends on whether you are a right-brained or left-brained dominant person. God knows what the best way is for you to receive his voice, and we should never narrow down how God speaks to us. He knows what will be best for us in terms of communication, so just yield to the Holy Spirit and experience God’s voice in a new way. Whenever you encounter difficulties in hearing God’s voice, it is a wise decision to pray for confirmation and see how God will confirm his voice with the scripture and also by your Christian mentor or pastor, who knows how to discern God’s voice as well. Hearing God’s voice is an exciting experience and also a life-long learning process. I pray that you will become more mature in your communication with God each and every day, and don't be afraid to make mistakes along the way. One tip I can give you is that the more you draw near to Jesus, the more you can discern his voice. As Jesus says clearly, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27) The more you draw near to Jesus, the more you know whether it is God’s voice or not. A sheep knows the voice of the shepherd due to their close relationship. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in your communication with God, and I am sure your prayer will be rewarded.

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How to experience a powerful prayer life ?

                                                         

Every Christian who wants to experience the power of prayer need to learn how to pray.prayer can be  very simple to a child but sometimes it is hard for a grow up person. Why ? It is just because we grow up person make things too complicated  but a child make things simple.The best way to improve our prayer life is learn how to pray as a child, then we will see breakthrough in our prayer life.How can we do that? We can do that with the following steps :

1. Start to pray in the morning ?

  I still remember the first time when I was experience  a revival in my prayer life after I had attended a church conference. It was just a 180 degree life change experience for me. Before this conference , I have already been a Christian for more than 15 years in the Evangelical realm. Prayer is just an important issue in my head but never in my heart. Actually prayer was a boring experience for me even I always attend the church prayer meeting in the past years.Why did I feel boring? There were two reasons for this problem? First of all, I have never enjoyed prayer because it was just like talking to a person who will never response in the air.Secondly,my former prayer experience in the church prayer meeting was just like a sitting in a meeting and listen to everybody's prayer one by one for an hour but I was only allowed to pray for three minutes for the whole night. All these have been changed after I experienced by prayer revival. I started to pray for an hour early in the morning when I woke up and worship the Lord at the same time. It was just like a fire within me and also a thirsty that motivated me to meet God in the morning with my morning prayer time. Was I tired ? Yes, I was but within my spirit I could feel the power and energy within me after 1 hour of prayer. The rest of the day was full of positive thinking in my mind and always wanted to praise God on those days.That's the reason why I highly recommended you can start your morning prayer all over again. Actually, there were many Christians in church history who have the similar experience as I did and I am sure I am not the only one who has such an experience in  the world as well.Commit yourself to pray for one hour in the morning and you will certainly experience the fire of prayer within you.


2. Start to improve your prayer habit.

Don't expect you can sit on a chair and pray for one hour because you will fall into sleep especially when you didn't have a good sleep the night before. First of all, stand before God and starting to praise Him with songs. Secondly, change your posture whenever you feel tired from one posture (eg. standing) to another posture (eg. walk around in your own room) and keep on praying out loud (but you don't have to wake up anybody who are still sleeping in your house) and that will keep you awake at all times. You can kneel down whenever you feel like it and you can open your eyes and praise God when you feel like falling into sleep during your morning prayer time.Most important of all is to keep you awake and you are praying.


3. Start to listen to God during the prayer time.

Prayer doesn't mean that you are the one who do the talking all the time because you need to let God speaks to you. God will speak to you by telling you in your mind that turn to certain passages or verse of the Bible. The Holy Spirit can speaks to you through a picture in your mind or a vision as well. Whatever God will say to you, just prepare a notebook and  a pen on your table and get ready to write it down or draw it down first. If you can't understand what it means for the time being, just keep asking the Lord about the meaning and He will let you know in times.The Holy Spirit is a great teacher in teaching you how to pray and get to know His voice.As the Bible says that "I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice (John 10:1-5)." All you have to do is to getting familiar to His voice just like sheep get to know the voice of the shepherd and relationship and daily encounter with the Lord Jesus are the two main keys on listening to God. on the other hand, the more you obey on God's words, the more you can hear about His voice.

 Conclusion :

Your prayer life will be different if you are willing to ask the Holy Spirit to fill in your life. You will also experience the power of prayer in that one hour prayer and worship meeting with God. Once you can act like a child and keep up this prayer habit everyday. You will see a major breakthrough in your prayer life. Once you will enjoy prayer and really see God will speaks to you in a way that you are the only one who will gets it, you will start to enjoy your prayer life and you will hear God's voice often.