What if you actually heard God’s voice? How do you think you’d act? How would you respond? Would you be overjoyed or scared to death?

We do hear the voice of God every day through His creation: bird song, cricket, wind in the trees, a baby’s laughter, the melody of a creek rushing over rocks. Our Creator God is manifested in every living thing.

What if God wanted to communicate with you? Would you have to clean up your mouth? Change your ordinary topics? Would you be able to pick His voice out of all the other voices in your head?

I am persuaded that God does want to communicate with us. We have been created with the ability to hear God’s voice in many forms. A conscience that tells us not to do something is a whisper of God’s spirit. A sense of peace in the midst of decision making is a form of God speaking. As a Christian, your spirit and the Spirit of God should be in harmony.

God created man in His own image. He gave man the ability to communicate, to speak, to listen, to hear. I believe it was God’s plan from the beginning of time to communicate with His creation, and man being foremost in that creation. Imagine Adam having the privilege of walking and talking to God in the Garden of Eden as friends!

There are records in the Bible of God speaking directly to man. Some primary Bible characters communicated with God on a regular basis, such as Moses. God was so determined to get Moses’s attention and teach him from the very beginning of His important journey to recognize the very voice of God, He spoke to Moses out of a burning bush. Now that would certainly get my attention!

The priests and prophets of the Old Testament portion of the Bible heard from God. The entire book of Revelation that ends the New Testament is a record of things that God revealed to a man about future events.

There are many ways that we communicate with God. We carry Him in our thoughts and deeds. We sing about Him and write about Him. We praise Him. Perhaps the most commonly perceived method of communicating with God is through prayer. Unfortunately, many people make prayer a matter of telling God what they want, when they want it, or asking for His seal of approval on decisions they have already made. They talk AT God instead of talking TO God.

Just as in any conversation, communicating with God requires talking to Him and then listening for His voice. Most people put their demands on the table, make their requests known, and consider the prayer finished. This is most unfortunate. God speaks, but often He waits for us to listen and we’ve already gone on our way in pursuit of something else.

Even when we are striving to hear from God it can be a difficult process. There are so many voices in the world demanding our attention. The needs of our families and friends, the demands of daily chores and career that we keep on a list running constantly through our head, telephone calls, angry voices, needy voices, television voices, radio, computer, CD. all of these voices can turn into one big distorted blur.

My grandson recently had to have tubes put in his ears because of chronic ear infections. The doctor told my son that it was as if the poor little guy had been running around for weeks with earmuffs on. What he was hearing was distorted and muffled. He couldn’t hear voices and sounds clearly because of the fluid build-up. Therefore, he wasn’t responding to some things or trying to say words as we might have expected him to at 12 months because the sound of our voices were blocked and muffled. He couldn’t respond to what he couldn’t hear.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear from God and couldn’t seem to get an answer, maybe there is a similar reason in your life. Maybe there are things blocking your ability to hear. Are you trying to hear God’s voice through earmuffs of sin? Or perhaps you are listening to so many voices that you cannot discern the voice of God in the midst of the rest.

The most obvious and easily available form of hearing from God is in reading the Bible. The same Spirit of God who inspired those words will speak to our hearts and inspire us with truth from God contained in those pages. It is amazing how certain passages of God’s word will come alive and speak to us right where we need to hear. An example of someone’s life and problems on those pages will jump out at us because it is so similar to our own situation, and the answer they found will still speak to us today.

God often uses our family and friends to speak to us. We may not always want to hear what they have to say, but they might actually be speaking to us through an inspired thought directly from God that is meant to touch our lives.

Some people have dreams or visions with supernatural significance. God gets through to them when their mind and body are at rest. On rare occasions, people experience actually hearing the voice of God as if another person was present with them. Some say it is an out loud voice. Some say it speaks inside their heart or their head so loud and clear that they know for sure God has spoken.

Most of the time God speaks gently to us, reveals truth to us, or enlightens us in a small voice that we have to be still in order to hear and recognize as significant. From the very beginning of creation, from Genesis to Revelation, it has been the desire of God to dwell among His people. He wants his offspring, his children, to know his voice.

Will God speak to you today? He certainly will in one way or another, but will you acknowledge it? Will you recognize it? Will you take the time to be still and listen?

Many people who apparently have never heard from God have adapted the idea that God no longer speaks to men. I believe He speaks, but all too often, men have ceased to listen.