Have there been times when you waited to hear from God but heard nothing? Read the bible or prayed but received no revelations? Came to the conclusion that God has nothing to say to you? The fact is that God would love to take any moment to speak to you. So how do we hear from God?

Reading the bible can be a dread when the passage does not connect to any part of your life. I used to experience this as well and my approach of reading the bible was, “Maybe today I will get something from reading the bible..maybe today God will speak to me.” But I have now learned that there should be no maybe’s – God always wants to speak to you and he would take any chance he could to speak to you. If you only dedicate 30 minutes of your day to God, why would he not want to use that time to talk to you?

There are 3 steps to hear from God:

1. Acknowledge that God exists

2. Desire to hear from God

3. Wait on God and expect him to speak to you

We cannot hear from God if we do not first acknowledge that our God exists. 1 Samuel 3 in the bible is a great example of how to hear from God. The chapter talks about how Samuel heard a voice calling him but did not know it was from God. He could not hear the revelation from God until his leader Eli told him it was God who was calling him. 1 Samuel 3:7 says, “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.”

Samuel could not hear God’s revelation until he acknowledged God’s existence. Samuel said to God, “Speak, for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10).  Once Samuel spoke this, God spoke to him a revelation about Eli. We must be like Samuel and acknowledge God and have the desire to hear from God. Samuel in his request told God he was listening, and it was evident that he had the desire to hear from God. God could have spoken to Samuel right away, but he wanted Samuel to acknowledge and desire his presence.

Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” God will never force anything upon us and he will never force his voice over our life. God wants it to come from us – he wants us to desire him.

The last step to hear from God is to wait and expect him to speak to you. If we do not expect for God to speak to us, then we will never have the will and patience to wait on him because we never expected him to speak. If we just lingered a bit longer and mediated on God’s word, we could have received a revelation that would change our lives. God is here to not only give us salvation, but to guide and mold us daily into becoming more like Christ.

Samuel in his request to God told him to speak because he was expecting God to speak to him. Before you pray or read the bible, ask God to speak to you. Use what Samuel said and say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening”. The Holy Spirit is there to guide you to be closer and more sensitive to God’s voice. Lean on the Holy Spirit for guidance and expect to hear from God because he does have something to say to you.

We were not meant to only hear what God has to say from pastors, but to also hear directly from God. Only God himself knows what we need to change about ourselves and he alone has the best word for us. Ephesians 1:17 says, “the glorious father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”

It is not God who needs to speak more, but us who needs to listen more. We need to change our perspective when approaching God and reading the bible by believing he will always have a revelation prepared for us. Receiving God’s revelation directly will take our Bible reading experience to a new level. God wants to speak to us and he longs for an intimate relationship with each of us. So remember, you can hear from God.