Hey friend, how's it going? I will often tell my friends and family that God speaks to me. Today, my little sister, Becky, asked me "Heather, how do you know you're hearing God. How do you hear his voice?"
I'll admit, it sounds like a strange thing to say that I hear from God. And it's even weirder to tell other people that God is telling me things to say to them. You know what happens? I can tell ya, it's not a booming voice from above somewhere, in fact it's not a voice that I even hear with my ears.
I told Becky that it's like a thought in my mind that I didn't think. You know how you have trains of thought and you're like, well I think this is cool and that makes me think of this other thing which reminds about this memory I have. On and on you go right? Well, these thoughts I get from God are very obviously not mine. The source of God's voice to me is so different from my thoughts and usually very out of the blue.
There have been a couple times when God woke me up in the middle of the night to speak to me. The first time, I woke up as my body was getting out of bed. Seriously. I remember opening my eyes as my feet were hitting the floor and I was standing up and starting walking. I'm not kidding, it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me up to that point.
You know that God has something really important to say when he wakes up your body before your mind catches up. So I'm suddenly awake and walking around our house. Not like scared, no feelings of fear. You know how sometimes you wake up suddenly and it's like you sit up and you feel that sudden wave of panic? Nothing like that. Just out of bed, calmly strolling around the house. So I check on my kids just because your mom brain automatically does things like that, then I go to the kitchen and I say to God, "Okay, what am I awake for?"
Now I have to back up this story to the day before. This was early Saturday morning that God had so strangely woken me up. On Friday night, I had been driving home from helping out at the church youth group. While I was driving home I felt/heard God say something to me that was very out of the blue.
"Give $5,000 to your pastor and his wife."
A moment of shock hits me, like wtf? Then I said to myself. That's not God. That's crazy. I should explain, that although farming has blessed us financially a lot, at that time we were headed into seeding and that has usually been our hardest financial time of year because you have to spend a lot of money getting the crops into the ground. In fact, that particular year was too tight. Our budget was showing negative numbers for bills we needed to pay for crop seed and stuff like that. So for God to suddenly tell me that we should give $5,000 away was in fact insane, crazy, mental. Pick a word for nuts and use it.
But I heard it and I immediately dismissed it. That's not God. That's crazy.
So I drive home, go to bed and then suddenly, BAM, I'm awake and standing in our kitchen asking God what's up?
"Go tell Brenton what I said."
Second time around and I still flat out reject him.
"No! I can't do that!" Fear grips my chest. "He's asleep. He won't understand what I'm saying, he'll think I'm crazy. And no, no I just can't."
Let me make something very clear here. God NEVER forces you to do something. He ALWAYS gives you a choice. When satan wants you to do something, he will pressure you. God NEVER pressures, only asks. So when I started getting scared, God didn't say anything more. He simply told me what He wanted and then let me choose. So I go back to bed and back to sleep. In the morning I feel so guilty about refusing God that I tell Brenton what happened. His response? That's crazy, we can't afford to do that right now.
"I told you so." I whispered to God in my mind.
That was Saturday. The next day, Sunday morning, Brenton miraculously comes to church. It's about a five/six times a year thing for him. But he comes and during the Bible study lesson, he becomes convicted about it and agrees with me that we should give the money. So we did. We went to visit our pastor and his wife at their house and we told them what God had said and that we believed God would provide for us because we were being obedient to His will.
They were very glad to receive the money and had faith with us for God's provision. They had been struggling to sell their house where they had recently moved from and very much needed the money for bills and payments while they waited for the house to sell. Which it did a couple months later.
What happened to us? God made a miracle happen somehow because when the time came for us to make our payments, we had the money. It still doesn't make sense but God often works in ways we can't understand.
So that's one way I hear God speak. His voice in my mind, directly speaking to me. I told Becky that this way of hearing from God is hard at first but it gets easier as you practice listening. Like when I met my husband, I didn't know his voice very well. But over the years, I've gotten to recognize the way he talks, words he tends to use, and the way his voice sounds overall. That is what it's like hearing God's voice in your mind. At first you don't recognize it very well but over time you learn what he sounds like more and more. You have to spend time getting to know his voice.
God also speaks to me through the Bible and through other people speaking, like preachers and teachers. If you want to hear from God, take a few minutes to settle into a calmness and ask God where to read or just pick a book like James.
Reading the Bible I think should be like a meditative sort of thing. Rushing it, or just doing it without relaxing is going to hinder you from hearing God. Sometimes when I'm reading the Bible, something just leaps out at me and smacks me in the face. And the same thing with speakers, sometimes in church or on tv, a speaker will say something and I just knew it was for me. It sounds like it's highlighted for me.
Another way God speaks to me is through my feelings.
I know, I know. I hear you thinking, "But you can't live your life by trusting your feelings! Sometimes we feel like doing bad things!" True and true. That's not how it works for me. Let me explain.
Sometimes I just feel like doing certain things, but it's not like a wishy washy feeling of like of maybe I'd love to eat an entire bowl of cookie dough (yes I love cookie dough, raw eggs and all!) but when it's really a feeling that God is leading me with, it feels so strong that I almost can't help but follow it. It's never a weak, or normal feeling. It's like a pull, like a magnet and it always, always, ALWAYS, feels very right and true. It is also never harmful to other people. If I need to confront someone, God speaks to me in my mind and with the Bible.
Often, when I'm being led by a feeling, I don't even realize I'm being led by God until later I look back and it all clicks in. If you read the story about how God led me to a new church but not my husband at first, you'll see a great example there. (Click here to read about that) I just felt like going to check out this other church I heard about and I literally tried to talk myself out of it but couldn't.
And there was another blog post I wrote about the time when I just felt so strongly that I HAD to wear my jean shorts to church on a cold day. It made sense later but at the moment, I just couldn't think about anything except that I had to find the shorts that morning so I could wear them. (Click here to read about that one)
And last but not least, God also speaks to me through animals sometimes. God knows how much I love his creation and the animals in it. Especially horses but also birds, dogs, cats, cows. You know, the fun ones.
God knows that I love admiring his creations and he often brings them into view for me. Like one birthday of mine, God's present to me was seeing a whole bunch of animals, some that I rarely see and never all on the same day! I saw eagles, antelope, deer, foxes, and other birds. It was like parade day for me.
And there was this one special day that God arranged for me to "coincidentally" meet a lady who runs a cattle ranch with her husband and they have horses. I got there on a perfect day and it reminded me of just how much I missed horses in my life. This one particular mare, in the picture below, followed me around and even chased other horses away from me. I had a great time talking with my new friend getting to see their ranch, which has epic views and just driving there was like going on a mini-holiday!
My most crazy story about God speaking to me was this one time, when a lady in a worship band started speaking to the crowd for a message from God that was for one person only and it was me! Read about that time by clicking here.
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