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When you’re longing for a closer connection with God, it’s easy to focus on whether you can feel his presence. But what are the reliable ways to recognize his involvement in your life when you need to know he’s close?

God’s communication can become much easier to recognize when you begin paying attention to the personal ways he’s already been interacting with you.

In this episode, we’ll explore how to recognize God’s responses and develop a more natural, ongoing connection with him.

You’ll discover:

• How to recognize insights God’s already been giving you through Scripture, conversations, and everyday circumstances.
• How to invite God’s personal perspective into your prayer journaling.
• How to develop relational teamwork with God as you respond to what he’s showing you.
• How the Ask, Write, Test process can help you discern his communication.

As you learn to recognize God’s involvement in your everyday life, you can grow more confident that he’s near, even when you don’t feel anything unusual.

Links Mentioned

Get our free Hearing God Starter Kit at: Sophiculture.com/guide

Get personal support in your relationship with Jesus in our membership community at: Sophiculture.com/illumination

Have you ever wondered whether other Christians are experiencing something with God that you’re missing? They talk about feeling his presence, hearing his voice, and knowing he’s near, but when you sit down to pray, you wonder why it doesn’t always feel that way to you.

One person asked, “Why can’t I feel the presence of the Lord when I pray? I’m not sure I ever have.” When we’re worshipping with beautiful music in church, or listening to powerful teaching, it can be easier to sense God’s presence. But when we’re at home alone with our journal, it’s a whole different dynamic. The atmosphere around us when we pray really makes a difference.

Looking for the Next Experience With God

I remember when I was about 19, standing at my front door after dinner, waiting for someone to pick me up to go to a weekly prayer meeting. I didn’t mind the far drive because I felt so different at this meeting than I did at home. But when I became an intern in their program a couple years later, the feeling of encountering God stopped feeling so special. I realized those people were always looking for the next experience, but the experiences were never getting any stronger.

Eventually I decided that the kind of supernatural connection that I really wanted to invest in was the kind that builds up my sense of God’s personal involvement in my daily life. Because darkness in the culture around us can feel disorienting, and discouraging. There are voices that speak half-truths about our identity and purpose, day in and day out. That’s why I talk about hearing God sustainably.

More than powerful encounters, I need an hourly connection reminding me of how loved I am even in my weakness. I need the consistent presence of God showing up in my mind and emotions, reassuring me that he sees me as I will be.

What Does Feeling God’s Presence Mean?

When I talk about feeling the presence of God, I’m talking about what happens in my kitchen when the music isn’t playing, and I’m asking him to show up with what I need just to make it through a stressful moment with the family.

Sometimes people get the idea that feeling God’s presence can be a constant state of being. So I’ve always been curious to know whether other committed Christians are just saying that or are actually experiencing it.

When Prayer Feels Empty

If I can’t feel God’s presence when I sit down to pray, does that mean I’m not properly connected with him? Church teachings and attitudes can cause comparison traps, unrealistic expectations, demonic doubts, theological errors like works salvation, and lots of other issues. And some people seem to be anointed to help others connect better with Jesus, which can feel kind of strange.

All these factors can cause us to treat him more like a spirit that gets poured out and less like a person with his own individual emotions and desires and thoughts about each of us. What can end up happening is that we get tossed back and forth between feeling like he’s distant and critical, and then remembering that he’s generous and attentive. Our feelings about ourselves do the same thing.

Circumstances and past experiences can make us feel cherished sometimes, alone other times, and even just plain down in the dumps. So when we come to praise him, confess sin or listen to him, all these factors affect how we think he feels about us.

We might expect God to be hovering over us, pointing out our flaws. We may just get the same simple messages from God that we always seem to get, or we may feel blank with no love or support. We may wonder why God’s not showing up, and even feel insecure about our salvation.

Recognizing God’s Communication

Then we might long for a particular teaching or supernatural experience to finally help us sense the connection we think we’ve been missing. If that doesn’t come, we may shift to prayer styles that are less risky or difficult, like talking without waiting for God’s response. Over time, we end up feeling stalled in our relationship with God, unsure what’s happening and wondering whether God’s really speaking.

The good news is that God doesn’t let us stay stuck when he knows the kind of teamwork that’s possible in the relationship. And if you know what you’re looking for, you can write things down and recognize his true presence, even when you’re having an off day.

So if prayer feels empty and you can’t recognize God’s presence, it may not be because he’s not showing up. Your expectations may be shaping what you think you should be experiencing when you sit down to pray. This is why it’s so easy to completely overlook how interested he actually is in you and your life.

Here’s what to try instead: use the Ask, Write, Test process to begin recognizing and evaluating the ways he might be already communicating. Let me give you three steps you can take in your prayer journal to begin experiencing God’s presence in a sustainable way.

1. Start by Recognizing the Insights He’s Been Giving You Recently

There are many ways that God speaks to us, and not all of them create powerful feelings of his presence. God may have been showing you little things through Scripture, inner impressions, circumstances, and other people. These different channels often confirm each other.

As you notice what’s been coming together in your mind and heart lately, write it down in your journal.

2. Now Ask for His Personal Perspective

Relationships are about much more than just insight. You need to know how he’s feeling about what he’s showing you. Ask him to show you something about himself that fills your deeper need for companionship and loving care right now.

Write down the ways that the Bible confirms this part of who God really is. It could be the fact that he has mercy when you’re hurting or that he’s creative when you’re stuck. Tell him how you feel about what he’s communicating with you.

3. Let This Develop Into Relational Teamwork

As you begin noticing the ways that God’s moving in your life, you can recognize signs that he’s orchestrating and creating your life with you. You can experience awe and joy as each day’s experience builds on the last one’s. You now have someone to talk to, receive insight from, trust for guidance, and discover deeper things with.

If you’re just starting out with hearing God’s voice, I have a video where I walk you through that process. It’s called the shortcut because it’s not a long discernment exercise, just a daily check-in with Jesus. You can get the long way and the short way when you sign up for our free training at Sophiculture.com/guide.

Now let me walk you through the simple journaling exercise from our video that you can use to put the three steps above into practice.

First, start with whatever’s on your mind. Think of something that’s been on your mind lately that you’d really like to talk with God about. Tell him how you feel about it in one sentence.

Then, ask him what he wants to show you. Write down, “Lord, what do you want me to know about this?” Then stop and listen to any thoughts you might have. Don’t try to make something special happen, just write down whatever pops into your head.

Then, write down what God might be saying about that. Imagine God as a loving Father sitting right next to you. Imagine what he might say about what you’ve written and write that down, whether it seems important or not. You don’t have to decide yet whether these words are really coming from God.

If your mind goes blank, don’t write anything. Wait until your mind starts moving again and then write down what happens.

Finally, test what you wrote. Does the message on your paper make sense with how the Bible describes God? Where does Scripture show him thinking this way, or show you that this isn’t how he thinks? If there’s anything you wrote that’s obviously not how God sees things, put a line through it.

The rest you can use to continue your conversation with him whenever the time is right. You can trust him to help you sort out which of your thoughts are really from him and which need more testing. And when you’re making important decisions, give yourself time to compare what you’ve written with Scripture and talk it through with trusted Christian friends.

Developing Confidence in Your Conversations With God

The Ask, Write, Test process is a basic skill you can develop for having a conversation with God. It’s something sustainable you can do to experience him, whether or not you feel close to God when you sit down to pray.

Imagining God sitting next to us can bring back that feeling of his presence that we’ve felt during other special experiences. Or it could make us feel uncomfortable if we’re not sure how God really feels about us. Either way, the key is to just tell him how you’re experiencing him and ask how he wants to show up with you now.

As you think about the different ways God may have been getting your attention throughout the week, you have more to talk about than just how his presence feels at a particular moment. You can write down what you’ve noticed, test it with whatever you know from Scripture, and begin recognizing patterns in how he speaks.

This is how the relationship ends up meeting your deeper needs for security, intimacy, purpose, identity, and mastery. Using the Ask, Write, Test process regularly can develop your confidence that God is personally involved in your life. Your sense of closeness grows naturally as you recognize the way he answers your prayers.

When You’re Unsure How God Is Leading You

When you’re facing decisions and challenges, you can look back in your journal and add up everything you’ve been noticing in your conversations with God. You can evaluate connections between the Bible, your thoughts, circumstances, and words from other people in order to see which of these connections are meaningful and which ones may not be.

Just like in our relationships with family and friends, the way we experience God can vary at different times and stages of the relationship. And because recognizing his communication is a skill you develop over time, you will often be unsure how God’s leading you. That’s normal.

Just let your feelings come and go as you keep showing up and asking your perfect Father to meet your deepest needs.

Recognizing What’s Happening in the Relationship

I started out by asking whether you ever wonder whether other Christians experience things with God that you don’t experience. That’s because we all have to develop the skill of hearing God the same way, whether we realize it or not.

Even people who get images and words of knowledge for others started by noticing what came to mind and evaluating it before sharing it. You can do that too if you want, once you’re comfortable with the process I’ve walked you through today.

Remember that every thought you write down isn’t necessarily from God. Always hold your insights loosely and wait on him to show you and others whether these words are really from him. Episode 4 of my podcast explains how to test whether an insight is from God or just you, and #5 talks about testing whether your thoughts are from the enemy.

So what I want you to take away is that God’s thoughts and feelings can bring your thoughts and feelings back to a healthy place. So before you get too focused on how his presence feels, check your journal for what’s actually happening in the relationship.

Remember that Jesus is a genius who’s always paying attention to you, every moment of the day. He knows just how to guide you with his own, personal thoughts and feelings into a closer relationship than you ever thought was possible.

Let’s Pray This

Lord, I’m so glad you have the whole plan of my growth laid right out since the beginning of time. There’s nothing I can do to stall or fail, because you’re such a creative and redemptive person. Please make me confident that you will draw me close, so I don’t hang back from telling you everything. Best of all, remind me to ask for what I want and bring me even beyond what can I ask for and imagine. I love you, Abba. Amen.

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Next Steps:

Get our free Hearing God Starter Kit at: Sophiculture.com/guide

Get personal support in your relationship with Jesus in our membership community at: Sophiculture.com/illumination