For the longest time, I simply just didn’t get how to actually hear God. I didn’t get a vision in my head. I didn’t hear an audible voice. Yet, at the same time, there were times where I knew I heard the voice of God because I felt a prompting to speak to someone and spoke to that individual exactly what he or she needed to hear. Some may attribute it to coincidence, but what if this coincidence just seems to happen consistently over and over again, with great accuracy? Let me explain.
I thought of Hebrews 12:13 “Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” when I was looking at one of my teammates and went up to her to share with her how I saw her ability to pray for others in such a way that brings healing and immediately after I started talking, I was filled with insight regarding her struggles with freedom in truly being herself. I immediately approached another girl and told her that I saw that she had a gifting to impact those that are stuck in lives of alcoholism and meaninglessness. She told me that her heart breaks for those people because she was once there. Hm, this was a bit fishy to me. These were two girls in my squad, that I didn’t know very well at the time, so perhaps I was an incredible guesser.
I decided to experiment on listening to God and moved with every good prompting that I got. While we were packing up for the Philippines, I asked God to give me insight on what to say to a member on the other squad, Jonathan. I had hardly spoken to him this entire month since we were always working in different areas. I went up to him and told him that for some reason, I saw that he had words of power, that he speaks what people really need to hear and that I thought that he was good at discerning between what was genuine and what was inauthentic. To my delight, he told me this had been spoken over his life and had been confirmed consistently. On the airplane, I saw a teammate of mine behind me who was reading and I just asked him if he had a gift of teaching. He opened up to me to tell me that he has had opportunities to teach all his life and was feeling led to pursue this area lately. He was happy to get more affirmation. There have been many more incidents since, but I really do hear God speaking when I try to pay attention and when I choose to speak to someone with any sort of prompting from him. Sometimes, it really makes no sense to me at all and I think to myself, maybe this person will think I am crazy. However, no bad has every come out of it because “…those who prophesy speak to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort.” (1 Corinthians 14:3)
Encouragement is the root of what prophesy is. I had struggled with hearing God. Like any skill, you need to exercise and build up your spiritual muscles- that means just practicing to hear and recognize God. Of course you will mess up at times, but isn’t it worth it when you actually do get to hear the voice of God?
