Does the Lord Speak to ME?

One of the biggest reasons we don’t trust God’s heart for us is that we wonder, What if I show up to listen to God and He’s silent?

There’s tension in this question.  A worry that:

1. You’re struggling to trust your own ability to hear form God and

2. You’re wondering if He actually speaks to you

At a women’s Bible study, I realized I was believing this lie that it can feel hard to show up and spend time with God when I’m not sure He’ll meet me there with His presence. It showed up the loudest right before I taught at church when I wanted to make sure it was the lord’s words through me.

See, I can know up here the Lord’s presence is with me always, but if you’ve ever experienced tough season with God where hearing Him or feeling Him is difficult or where it seems like the busyness and overwhelm of life puts distance between you and God, then you know this feeling of doubt.

So, I began going on about 40-minute walks almost every day. And it would take me about 35-minutes to quiet my mind enough to hear Him until the last 5 minutes of the walk. God wasn’t waiting to show up, He’s there, but it takes my mind sometimes 35 minutes to become present. God was there the whole time walking with me, but I just noticed because I was expecting a whoosh of the Spirit to fill me as I prayed. Or goosebumps to let me know His presence was near, when what usually happens is just a small sensation of thankfulness. Warmth. Or nothing at all.

If you wait for a whoosh, your trust for God remains unsteady.

Maybe you long for the mountain top moments and steady faith feels dull. You're want a big moment with God but if you’re honest, you know that high fades fast.

When you’re in this headspace of hoping you’ll hear God… You feel:

• Guilt that I “should” be doing more, maybe then I’ll get clarity.
• Shame that I’m not enough or what if God has changed His mind.
• Comparison, everyone else seems to hear from God.
• You wonder if I don’t learn one of the lessons He wanted me to quickly enough, then what?
• Easily drawn into the lie that to hear from God, I had to carve out massive amounts of time to be really present or else He won’t speak to me.

All of these thoughts try to take an untamable God and fit Him into a nice formula to make things feel safe and predictable. But God’s heart is to lead you into a secure relationship with him. One where you trust His lead whether He speaks to you every day or once in a lifetime.

You hear it in my story, my focus was completely set on my ability to hear God instead of believing that because He is a God that speaks to me, I can’t miss what He says if I get quiet and still enough to listen.

If there is pressure to hear the Lord, then you’ll overthink it.

But Jesus says in John 10: 27 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”.

If you’re a believer, then you’re a sheep. No second-guessing necessary. He wrote it plainly that He speaks to you. You don’t have to try harder to listen or muster up more faith. He wants to speak in a way you will hear. He’s not a God of confusion.

Simply pray: Lord, attune my heart to your voice, then watchfully wait.

Maybe you’re wondering, Do I have the Holy Spirit? At that same women's bible study I was in, women who had believed for decades questioned similar things, so you’re not alone in that thought. 

I was the kid at summer camp who went up to every single altar call because I wasn’t sure I had received Jesus into my heart correctly, and I just wanted to make sure it worked and that I was set. Even if people told me I was good, I still doubted.

But we have assurance and security that when we put our faith in Jesus, our salvation is sealed and we receive the Holy Spirit. Scripture assures us in 1 Corinthians 12:13 “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

This assures us the Spirit is available to all of us.

Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us that, “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”

This tells us two things. One, that the second you believed, you were set and covered with the Spirit. And two, that your inheritance of heaven is guaranteed because you are God’s beloved.

Scripture reassures any wonderings or worries by plainly stating for you that you are set. Whether you’ve felt the spirit in you a bunch or never before, as soon as you believe, you have it.

But receiving the Spirit and attuning to the Spirit are different things -- here, we're focused on the attunement.

As Jesus calls the disciples, He always goes to meet them where they’re at. We see in Luke 5, He meets Peter and asks if He can use His boat to speak on so the crowd can hear Him better. Peter let’s Him. Then, Jesus tells Peter to let down His nets for a catch after Peter had been fishing all night, catching nothing.

Jesus spoke Peter’s language. He met Him right where He was at. He gave Him choices. He showed Him how He works in a way that was Peter’s language – fishing. The spirit speaks in a familiar way only you can understand.

He speaks differently to me than He does to you, that’s why comparison is a distraction -- He won’t speak to you the same way He does to someone else.

Think of when you know someone for a long time and you become so familiar with their voice. It takes time, but then you know when they enter a room just by the sound of their voice. It takes attunement to recognize a voice. And you will spend your whole life discovering all the different ways the Lord speaks personally to you.

One way to cultivate more of the Spirit’s voice in your life is by getting quiet and still. Slow your pace and practice presence. The Spirit is with us all the time, but we notice it when we attune to it. And we can only do that when we slow down.

Often, what I hear from folks when they experience the Holy Spirit for the first time is that they’ll realize how often they’ve had that experience before but were dismissing it because they had an idea in their mind of how they thought it should look. But there’s no wrong way to encounter the Spirit because He’s so personal to you and can show up in countless ways.

Here’s an incomplete list of the ways the Spirit can show up just to give you an idea:

• Feel goosebumps or shivers on your skin.
• A powerful tingling in your belly, rising up.
• A warmth, a stillness, a quieting. A knowing.
• Through gifts of something you’ve been needing or wanting
• I’ve heard it as a warm pad of butter melting over your head
• Through smells that remind you of something
• Visions, dreams, pictures playing in your head, prophesy
• Awe in nature
• A filling of joy
• Comfort
• Peace in any circumstance
• A word from another person
• A closeness to the Lord in worship
• Through themes showing up multiple times
• Scripture standing out on the page

📢 The Spirit still speaks. Among the megaphone of noise in this world, His voice is a hush leading to life through unexpected promptings.

I lead you into Spirit-led encounters throughout my course REconnect. There is no pressure to experience anything in particular. They are a low-risk way to practice releasing control so you can safely allow yourself to enter more deeply into God’s presence.

So if it feels new or hard, that’s okay! You’re practicing presence so you can listen.

Focus on this truth: God is not a God of pressure. You don’t have to get things just right in order for Him to speak to you.

So let your confidence be not in your ability to hear but in the word written to you that He DOES speak to you. You can trust that.

Inside my REconnect course, I focus on how to build your attunement to the Lord's voice by leading you into moments of presence where you can get quiet enough to hear.

Then, we help build your discernment to know the difference between your voice, the Lord and the enemy's whispers so you can walk more fully in God's truth for you!

LEARN MORE ABOUT RECONNECT