Recognizing God’s Voice Through His Word

The first time I heard someone say, “The Lord spoke to me,” I thought they were strange.

My first thought was, Really? You “ heard” from God? I don’t think so! But it was a phrase that I continued to hear in regular conversation with the people who attended our church.

They would say things like “I was praying, and the Lord said to me…” or “The Lord spoke to my heart….” Once I got over the shock, I became curious, and I wanted to know how to hear from Him too. If anybody needed to hear from God, it was me! So, I asked the people in the church. If I thought they had any spiritual know-how, I brought it up in conversation. “How do you hear from God?” Sadly, very few people offered any advice. Most people told me to “just listen.”

One of the few people who did offer a response said, “After you pray, sit quietly and let God talk.” I prayed my prayers the next morning and then sat silently, waiting to hear God speak. I tried to listen with my ears and heard nothing. I tried this for a few days without any success.

Recognizing the Voice of God through His Word

But I didn’t give up. Instead, I continued asking different people how to hear God’s voice. Finally, I asked my pastor’s wife, who really helped me. She said, “Michelle, if you will learn to recognize God’s voice by reading what He has already spoken in His Word, you will recognize Him when He speaks to your spirit.” She explained that the voice of the Spirit of God would NEVER contradict the written Word. She encouraged me to let the Word of God be my foundation. By doing this, I would make it easier for the Spirit of God to lead me.

So, instead of sitting quietly in a room, waiting for God’s voice to ring in my eardrums, I began to put His words in my heart. To my surprise, God’s Word began to speak to me! I encountered answers as I was reading. God comforted me with Scriptures and brought light to situations as I saw His instructions.

Later, when the Lord needed to speak specific things to my heart, I recognized it was the same voice Who had spoken to me through the Bible. I could trust and respond with confidence because I had already been following Him.

The Word Provides Our Stability

And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure (Isaiah 33:6).

From the beginning of my walk with God, He taught me to see His Word in a way I had never thought of it before I was saved. I knew the Bible was a “different” book, a book my grandma read. But I had never considered it to be something I needed to read.

Even though I was a good reader, I was intimidated by the King James version, using words like thou, thee, doest, and saith. In addition, I wasn’t sure where to start reading. Do I start at the beginning? Do I start with the New Testament? It can be frustrating to someone new to the things of God to tell them they need to read their Bible every day. But God helped me by showing me how valuable His Word is to the stability of my life.

While I was very thankful to be free from the drugs, I was even more grateful to be free from the guilt and shame. The destruction that was once the driving force of my life was gone, and I had a peace I had never known. I didn’t want to lose that peace!

God revealed something to me in His Word that made me realize I need to stay full of the Word, which protects me from the enemy gaining an entrance back into my life. In the following text, Jesus is teaching us how the adversary operates.

No sooner however has the foul spirit gone out of the man, then he roams about in places where there is no water, seeking rest but finding none Then he says, “I will return to my house that I left;” and he comes and finds it unoccupied, swept clean, and in good order. Then he goes and brings back with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they come in and dwell there; and in the end that man’s condition becomes worse than it was at first (Matthew 12:43-45 WNT).

Jesus taught us the attack methods of the enemy so we can be on guard against a counterattack. The Lord explains that the enemy will return, looking to see if there is any room for him to get back into that person’s life. In verse 44, it uses the word unoccupied. The Bible in Basic English says, “…he sees that there is no one in it….”

When I understood this, I determined I didn’t want the devil to look at me and find me empty! I wanted to know, “How can I stay full of God?” I discovered that I needed to develop a relationship with God’s Word. The Bible is not just a book about God. The Word is God! The Bible is God speaking to us. The Word of God is alive! Before Jesus had a body, He existed as the Word of God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

We can know God through His Word and grow in our relationship with Him by interacting with His Word. God established His Word as the method to reveal and transmit His will into our lives.

God’s Word Is Spirit and Life

The supernatural ability and life of God is contained in the Word of God. God placed His life in His Word so He could distribute that life to us.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men (John 1:4).

While the Bible includes God’s plans, His love for us, and His will, God’s Word is alive. According to Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV), “…the word of God is living and powerful….”

We should guard against reading the Word of God in the same way we scroll through social media or scan the page of a newspaper. God’s Word deserves a holy approach. We should open our Bibles with the thought in our mind, This is God speaking to me.

God’s Word is not alive with the temporary kind of life like an animal or a plant but with eternal life. The word eternal describes something that is never diminishing in power and never diminishing in value. The Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words uses the following phrase to describe eternal: “persons and things which are in their nature endless.” For example, the blood of Jesus is eternal because it will never diminish in value.

God uses His words to transmit His eternal life to us, so we can live a “never diminishing in power, never diminishing in value” kind of life by His Word.

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63 NKJV).

The power of God that resides in His words is the key to our success in life. When Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3, saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” He was identifying our spiritual nutrition. We need the Word of God more than we need natural food! The Word of God contains what we need to fulfill the plan of God.

When instructing Joshua, the Lord advised him to keep the Word in His mouth. The Old Testament word meditate includes the meaning “to mutter.”

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Joshua 1:8 NKJV).

If you have the Word in your mouth, you have possession of it. You are spiritually “holding” that promise as you mutter it to yourself. Proverbs 18:21 says that death and life are in the power of the tongue. The word power is also defined as hand.

Your born-again spirit has a hand! With that spiritual hand of the tongue, you can hold spiritual things. You may not be able to grasp peace with your physical hand, but you can place Isaiah 26:3 (NKJV) in your mouth and hold it with your spiritual hand, saying, “You will keep me in perfect peace because my mind stays on You, and I trust in You.” Did you notice the Lord told Joshua, “…you will make your way prosperous…”? Joshua’s outcome was not entirely up to God; it depended on what Joshua did with God’s Word.

What happens in our lives is not entirely up to God either. We can choose to meditate in His Word—day and night—until we have the inner image of His plan imprinted in our hearts. Then, we will walk in His success.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and what- ever he does shall prosper (Psalm 1:1-3 NKJV).

Again, the Scriptures point to the Word laying the ground- work for our productivity, longevity, and success. So, if you want to thrive, here is the key! God’s Word is spirit and life!

We can find God’s will for every detail and decision of our lives by His Word. The more we understand God and His ways, the more accurately we align with His plan.

That has happened to me! Every day, I walk in more of God’s Word than I saw or understood the day before. The Lord is leading me and teaching me, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. As a result, my life grows stronger, and things keep improving.