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Many people struggle to understand if it’s really God speaking in their lives. Some Christians even say, “I’ve never heard Him.”

What if I asked you whether you hear God speaking in your life? How would you describe it? Have you ever had just the right Bible verse suddenly come to mind exactly when you needed it?

Have you ever been about to send a text and something made you stop and reconsider? Most of us have had experiences like that. The question is, what do you do when it happens?

Many Christians assume God’s voice would sound clear in their head, like a separate voice that comes out of nowhere. So when God speaks through ordinary thoughts, Scriptures, conviction, or by bringing wisdom, they don’t recognize it as the real thing.

Lots of people say, “How do I hear God?” But underneath, they’re asking:

• Can I trust what I’m experiencing?
• What if I’m just making this up?
• Why does it seem like everyone else hears God more easily than I do?

The problem isn’t necessarily that God’s not speaking. Maybe we’re misunderstanding what it’s like to recognize God’s voice.

When God’s Presence Doesn’t Feel the Way You Expected

I think about a woman I coach. I’ll call her Sheri. She would often hear other Christians talk about sensing God’s presence and feeling His love, and she’d wonder, “Why is everyone else experiencing this but me?”

Whenever we prayed together and asked God what He wanted her to know, her mind would usually just go blank. She’d spent years asking for a deep assurance that God loved her, but nothing seemed to happen when I asked her what God might be bringing to her mind.

Over time, we began to recognize that Sheri wasn’t coming to God with fresh expectations. Her experience with an emotionally absent father had already taught her something about what love and authority felt like.

We eventually realized that she was interpreting God’s presence through that history. So when God’s love came through something small, like a Scripture coming to mind, a moment of comfort, or the support of other believers, it didn’t feel like the presence of God she’d been longing for.

It’s taken years of praying about her painful memories, but now she’s able to hear God when we pray together. This coaching experience taught me that when it feels like God’s not speaking, sometimes we’re expecting His love and His voice to feel different from the ways He’s really showing up.

We All Come to God With Trained Ears

You can’t recognize someone’s voice if you’ve never sensed how they express their thoughts and feelings. It might seem like we come to God with a blank slate, ready for whatever might come to mind.

But the truth is, we all come to Him with trained ears. Our childhood relationships have shaped what we naturally recognize as love, correction, safety, and acceptance.

These experiences form a kind of grid through which we relate to other people. This grid also limits how we receive God’s love.

If you find yourself:

• Replaying certain thoughts over and over, wondering whether God is behind them
• Waiting for certainty from Him before making ordinary decisions
• Treating peace, discomfort, coincidences, or interruptions as messages you need to decode
• Comparing your small experiences in prayer with someone else’s dramatic testimony
• Worrying that choosing incorrectly might mean disobeying God

Those could be signs that you don’t yet feel secure in how you recognize God’s heart and respond to Him.

If you’re reading this right now, you probably don’t have trouble believing that God can guide, prompt, or communicate with you. You just may not feel confident that you’re hearing what He’s saying.

I’ve got to be honest about this, because this is where things get tricky. In order to get past the insecurity, we need a way to recognize when our grid is interfering in the prayer conversation.

We’ve got to have a reason to crush our doubt that He’s actually communicating. The good news is, while you’re thinking, “I can’t hear God,” God’s thinking, “I know how to solve this disconnect.”

That’s why He doesn’t fix it by becoming more clear on His end. He fixes it by exposing the grid where you’re not hearing clearly. He does this by showing you examples of healthy love on the earth, so you can see where you’re missing out with your Father God.

You May Expect God’s Voice to Feel More Obvious

If you keep wondering, “Is God really speaking to me?” it may not mean you’re distant from Him. You may just expect His voice to feel more obvious than it does.

That’s why I coach Christians to write down what comes to mind and then look at whether it sounds like the God described in Scripture. This gives you a place to start, even when you’re not completely sure what’s happening.

Now, there are some people who really have never felt a connection with God before. If you’re not sure whether you actually know Jesus personally, get in touch with me at sophiculture.com, and we’ll talk about becoming a Christian.

But if you’ve already said yes to Jesus’ death and resurrection in your place, you have a connection with the Holy Spirit. If you’re not feeling it, the goal is to find out why.

It may just be that you’re expecting His voice to somehow come through into your head separately from your own thinking. That’s not usually how it happens with prayer.

Compare What You Hear With God’s Character

When you have a thought that God might be speaking to you, ask whether this thought sounds like the God described in the Bible. Usually in Scripture, we don’t see God teaching people a technique for hearing His voice.

We read stories that reveal the kind of God who’s speaking. Why do you think Scripture spends more time revealing God’s character than explaining how to hear His voice?

It’s because we get to trust what a person is saying by seeing their everyday life in action. We don’t first learn how God speaks. We first learn what God is like.

When you read what God does in the Bible, you begin noticing patterns:

• He’s patient with confused people who come to Him.
• He asks questions to make people think before giving them answers.
• He convicts people where they’re wrong without humiliating them.
• He corrects wayward choices while preserving dignity.
• He invites people into honesty rather than manipulating behavior.
• He’s slow to anger and rich in layered, powerful love.

These qualities are what fill in the blanks when we’re uncertain about what His voice is supposed to feel like. The goal is to become relationally familiar with Him.

Familiarity Helps You Recognize the Author

When you first meet someone, even a text that says “Okay” can feel ambiguous. Was that angry, happy, neutral, or dismissive?

A few months later, you can read the same word with confidence because you know the person. Nothing changed about the text. You changed because you got to know the author.

That’s why our Sophiculture process for hearing God includes writing down whatever comes to mind, even if we’re not sure what it means. Then, we go back over it afterward and ask whether these insights line up with the character of God in the Bible.

If you’d like the video where I walk you through this whole four-step process, you can sign up for that training at sophiculture.com/guide.

Knowing God Helps You Recognize Him Speaking

We often think hearing God leads to knowing God. But throughout the New Testament, we also see it the other way around. As we get to know God, we become better able to recognize Him speaking to us.

Romans 12 describes discernment growing as our minds are renewed. As I become familiar with how He acts, I begin recognizing thoughts, convictions, Scriptures, and promptings that show His presence inside of me.

I realize things about myself and others during prayer that help me fill in the blanks in my grid. That’s what brings me the feeling that God knows me intimately and is giving me exactly what I need to grow spiritually strong and healthy.

When you get in the habit of comparing your experience with what you see in the Bible, you get used to the idea that God’s really speaking to you. You start to trust that you’re being led in the right direction.

You can have confidence that you’re really in a relationship with Jesus, not just learning about Him.

Stop Relating to God as Though He’s Absent

The real key is to stop relating to God as though He’s absent until proven present. When I trust that He’s right here, because the Bible says He’s always with me, I begin to sort out what He’d say from what He probably wouldn’t say.

After inviting Him to speak to me and writing down what comes to mind, I review the conversation I’ve written to see whether it has scriptural support. If it matches what the God of the Bible might say, I consider that He may actually be giving me these impressions as a Father who’s taking care of His daughter.

This isn’t a rock-solid discernment process for big decisions, but it works well for everyday prayer conversations.

What We Want

It’s common to wonder whether it’s really God speaking to us when we can’t tell where the thoughts in our minds come from. But we have to trust that He’s always present and speaking through His Holy Spirit if we’re going to say we have a personal relationship with Him.

It’s a relief to realize there’s a grid that sometimes causes miscommunication between us and God, and we can talk with Him about that in honest prayer conversations. I think that kind of conversation is what all of us probably want more than anything.

Let’s Pray This

Lord, we want to be able to recognize when our thoughts are getting in the way of hearing You. This week, give us some special moments to sit down and write out what we think You might want to say to us.

Then, give us discernment so we can tell what’s really from You and cross out the rest. Show us in Your Word how You feel about us, and make us sensitive to receive that unconditional love. Amen.

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Next Steps:

Get our free “Hearing God Starter Kit” and learn the journaling process at:

Sophiculture.com/guide

Get personalized support to build a thriving friendship with Jesus at:

Sophiculture.com/illumination