Do you hear from God?

By Jill Krueger Wagner

Hearing voices can be a sign of a mental disorder like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Supposedly, normal people just don’t hear voices in their heads so what are we to think when someone claims to hear from God? Are they unbalanced?

I remember when some new women started coming to my church and one of them talked like she had running conversations with the Lord. She’d say, “The Lord said this or I heard from the Lord…” My first thought was, “say what?” I thought she had a screw loose but there was something very winsome about her. I was intrigued so when she invited me to a Bible study, I went.

There I learned how God generally talks to people – through the written word of the Bible. I came to understand that this was no ordinary book but a library of books all pointing to God’s ultimate purpose for us all – salvation. The Old Testament showed that we can’t live up to God’s demands and the New Testament showed his solution – Jesus. I also learned that in that book, in both testaments, God spoke to people. So my question then was, “Does He still speak?”

Well, personally, I have heard His voice and that is in accord to what Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice.” I’ve discovered that most often He speaks to me when I read my Bible. But I’ve had times when I’ve had an issue and I’ve heard Him give me a Scripture reference that I had to look up.

Once I was extremely frustrated. I felt I was doing everything I knew to do yet things were not working well for me. I literally looked up at the ceiling and screamed, “What do you want from me.” I clearly heard “Micah 6:8.” I turned to my Bible and read, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Yep – I definitely heard God speak.