SCT 11: Practical examples of how God speaks

by Darren Rusco

Note: I'm working on a book about hearing God's voice. The process of writing is a slog for me, so I decided to work it out through blog posts, hoping that would help me get ideas out to print, and also give readers a chance to feedback and help form the end product.

Chapter 11

Practical examples of how God speaks

We’ve discussed the Biblical background to show THAT God speaks, and WHY God speaks, along with what we can do on our side to make sure we are listening when God speaks. While we do need to enter the communication culture of God and understand his vocabulary and values, we should notice that he often enters into our own communication vocabulary. He will create metaphors that we already understand.

Consider the interaction with Jesus and Peter from Luke 5. Jesus could have spoken plainly to Peter and invited him to leave his fishing career and start an evangelism ministry where he would lead people to believe in the Messiah. But instead, Jesus had a much more creative idea. First, he set Peter up with a frustrating night of fishing failure. This was not random, this was a metaphor – it had meaning to capture. This led to an encounter with Jesus with an invitation to put out the nets again. Peter caught a supernatural amount of fish. Again, not random, but another metaphor with meaning to capture. And finally a metaphor statement by Jesus that would have meaning directly to a fisherman: “From now on you will be catching people.” Notice that Jesus valued metaphor communication, but we must see his heart to enter into the culture of Peter, using symbols Peter would understand.

I am not a fisherman. Fishing metaphors will be more easily lost on me. But I have other interests and hobbies. And if Jesus cares enough to use metaphors that Peter can understand, should I not expect Jesus to do the same for me?

Consider how often Jesus used everyday happenings of nature in order to illustrate a spiritual truth – like a bird, or a fig tree, or a vine, or a mustard plant, or a building – all things that would have been in direct sight of the listener. We should not be surprised if the Holy Spirit would point out things of a similar nature while we are on a walk or drive, in order to communicate similar truths.

Throughout the book I’ve shared parts of my story where you can pick up some of the methods by which God has communicated to me. I thought it could be helpful to give space for a few more examples of how God speaks, along with how I tested the word, understood the word, and acted upon the word. The hope is to trigger some memories of how God has spoken to you and give you a picture for how you could understand, test, and act upon the word. Hopefully the simple stories of everyday life can help you discover the ways God speaks to you. I have found that in new seasons of life, God will show his voice in new ways and mute his voice from the ways of the previous season. So we should always be open to every way God could speak, even the ways which may not be your current everyday norm.

Conviction from Bible reading

Inviting the Holy Spirit to speak to you when you read the Scriptures can be a powerful way to hear God’s voice. I don’t mean to limit this simply to the actual text you are reading, but rather, what is God saying to you about what you are reading?

Many years ago, as I was new to hearing God’s voice, I was reading the book of Ephesians and came upon this prayer from Paul in 1:19-20:

I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same power that raised Christ from the dead…

As I read this I had a conviction in my conscience that I was not enlightened to the power available to me. I felt grief. As God revealed this, I instantly knew it to be true. I had read Ephesians hundreds of times prior to this and written papers in Seminary about it, and never saw that verse like I did that day. This conviction set me on a path of faith to discover the accessible power of God in my life.

Stuck thought

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head that is trapped in a loop and won’t go away? If there is no obvious reason for how it got there, consider if it may be from the Holy Spirit. This has happened on numerous occasions for me, where upon investigation, I discovered something very important.

A group of people in a prayer meeting were praying for Mike, someone whom I had never met. I decided to listen to God as others prayed to see if there was a message for him. While listening, I had a phrase from a worship song stuck in mind on repeat:

‘Cause when we see you, we find strength to face the day. And in your presence all our fears are washed away.

I rebuked that song in order to get it out of my head so that I could actually listen to God. I hate it when songs get stuck! But in a moment I wondered if the song was actually from God. After all, I had asked him to speak only moments earlier. So I asked the Holy Spirit if the lyrics to that song were meant for Mike, and if so, was there anything more to tell him. Then I heard God’s voice come to me in some thoughts: “In the next three days he is facing something that is causing him fear. Tell him to see me and all of his fears will be gone.” I mustered up the courage to gently tell Mike what I thought God was saying. As it turned out, in exactly three days he had an interview for a job that he desperately needed, and he was incredibly worried about it. We were able to pray some more in private to address the fear and find the peace of God.

Sensory feeling

Likely, you have experienced a sensory feeling without assigning it to God’s voice, but it's worth asking where the source of that feeling is from. For example, have you ever gone into a building and felt the “heebie jeebies”? Oftentimes there might be visual indicators that make a space creepy. But especially take note of this sensation when there isn’t anything natural that would cause this. Perhaps God is revealing something to you from the spiritual realm.

After a long day traveling in the car with my wife and young children, we checked into the hotel room we had reserved. We got into the room and I had a sensory experience. It’s difficult to describe, but it felt dark and creepy even though it was just your average hotel room. My wife took the kids on a walk of the hotel grounds while I stayed in the room to pray. As I prayed I asked God if this was a place I could take authority over and drive out the darkness, or did this darkness have a place here that I should walk away from? I have been in places in my life where both outcomes were possible and I simply needed God’s guidance. In this case, I discerned that we were not to stay. So we packed everything up and left for a completely different hotel, one that was free of darkness.

Instant knowledge

This occurs like a file upload, where suddenly you just know something that you did not know seconds ago. God can instantaneously give you information or understanding about anything. For example, you’ve misplaced something and after looking everywhere, you suddenly know exactly where to look. Or you have a mysterious physical ailment and suddenly you know what the cause is. Instant knowledge is unique in that you never heard a voice say anything and you never really thought out the solution - it just seems to arrive out of thin air.

One morning as I was scrolling through social media, I saw a picture of my friend Jason, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. Instantly, I knew he was discouraged because he was under criticism. There was no process or voice, I just knew it. I wasn’t doing listening prayer or anything spiritual actually. It simply happened. It was 10:00 am where I was and 2:00 am where he was. I decided to write him a quick note to tell him what happened and hopefully encourage him. He wrote me back immediately. He was up in the middle of the night unable to sleep because of the anxiety of the criticism he was facing from his job. Indeed he was encouraged because he realized God had actually noticed his pain and revealed it to someone.

Impression or sense

An impression is a lighter form of instant knowledge. It could be described as similar to a sensory feeling, but in your mind instead. Though it is lighter in form, it still can be a supernatural revelation from God. But because we can commonly experience “a sense” from the natural realm, impressions (along with all potential revelation, but especially impressions) should be carefully examined. And similarly to dreams, because they can be commonly experienced without it being revelation from God, we are prone to ignore impressions for the same reasons.

Impressions are also similar to the gift of discernment, where a certain level of wisdom is granted to understand a situation when there is no reason why you would possess that understanding naturally.

My most common space for experiencing impressions is in prayer ministry with an individual or small group. If someone is asking for prayer for a certain reason, at times the Holy Spirit will reveal the deeper root issue through an impression. And because of the revelation being in this mode, it often needs working out, and this is good. Sometimes God reveals or heals in a very dramatic way. At other times he reveals in a process because by working it out, you can gain a certain long term sustainable health.

Words in your mind

These are words that are not heard audibly with your ears, but you do hear them in your mind, coming with the same tone as if it were audible.

I pursue this in listening prayer often. With a notepad in hand, I will ask God to say words or information for a person or topic. Then I wait and see what passes through my mind. Sometimes these will feel like my own thoughts and at others they sound like the voice of another person. But if I am able to just rest my mind and relax, oftentimes words will pop up. And like any other word, I am careful to test these.

One evening I had dinner with some new friends, Ken and Beth. They had asked me to pray for them later on at some meetings we attended. So when I found some private time ahead of our prayer, I grabbed a notepad and listened. I heard two specific dates. I brought these dates to Ken and Beth and both ended up being very significant dates, one of which was Ken’s birthday. God used this to capture our attention. When you really discover that God sees what is happening and is actively working on our behalf, it delivers hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

Picture in your mind

A picture happens very similarly to a daydream in your imagination. Often while in prayer, God will reveal something in your imagination that you can picture, whether literal or metaphorical.

My wife and I led a group of young adults through a prayer exercise intended to help us use other faculties in prayer besides our voice and intellect. We all shared a few prayer requests and then I asked everyone to, instead of praying out loud for God to answer these requests, use their imaginations to picture how they would like God to answer. At the very least, we could trust that God has the ability to see our imaginations and answer the prayers, but just maybe, God might actually lead our imaginations to show how he would actually answer. This exercise has a level of safety, in that everyone can imagine and nobody has to deal with all the things we worry about when we pray out loud in front of a group.

The prayer request I shared ahead of time was for financial provision. When we were done with the exercise, I asked if anyone wanted to share what they imagined. A woman named Emily shared that she imagined someone bringing a check to our mailbox, but then she was perplexed because she saw the person at the mailbox change their mind and then bring the check to our front door and place it under the doormat. As she described it, she was imagining the first part but then it was like her imagination went to a place not in her control.

To everyone’s delight, that very week we found an envelope with a check in it under our doormat. The person who dropped it off followed up with me to make sure I had found it, saying they were planning to leave it in the mailbox but felt like it was safer under the doormat.

Sympathy emotion

A sympathetic emotion will occur most often when ministering to another person in prayer. If that person is going through some sort of trauma, the Holy Spirit can place a burden of grief within you, such as grief or crying, in order for you to sympathize with their pain in a deeper way.

There is a mysterious intercessory power that can occur when we sympathize with another person. Because of this new grief experienced by the intercessor, they will often lose the intellectual words of prayer, and change over to groanings from the gut, which according to Romans 8:26, is how the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, with “groanings that cannot be expressed with words.”

My wife Jennifer experiences this when she prays for women who are unable to get pregnant. Often she will be set to pray as normal, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, she begins to feel the depth of the woman’s pain. The grief and disappointment get into Jen’s gut, usually causing her to simply cry on behalf of the woman. These groaning prayers are powerful for healing. Jennifer has seen many women get pregnant in the days following this intercessory prayer.

I believe many people experience this revelation from the Holy Spirit marked by sympathetic feelings. But typically we do our best to bottle up the feelings and make them go away. And you can hardly blame someone for doing this if they don’t feel safe to minister in front of others with sympathetic feelings. It’s important to establish safe ministry zones where the Holy Spirit can work as he wants and people who are used by the Holy Spirit can feel safe and courageous.

Angels in dreams

Certainly God can speak to us through dreams and this is a very common means by which to receive. Many people should take more time to discern what God could be saying in their dreams. According to Hebrews 1:14, angels are sent to take care of those who inherit salvation - that’s you! But it’s often overlooked how often angels can appear in dreams. In the story of the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1-2, three times an angel appeared in a dream, with two other dream examples that might have been angelic.

So how do you spot an angel in a dream? They might not always be in white robes with wings and halos. But look for a person in a dream who is doing angelic work, like helping or caring for you, or someone who is giving you a message.

I had an intense dream where at the end, I was vomiting and a person came up from behind and brought comfort to me and told me there was something in me that needed to get out and that I was going to be better off. In real life, similar things were happening. I took comfort knowing that God had spoken to me through a dream that, not only was I going to be OK, but that I would be better off having gone through this.

There are countless ways through which God communicates. I hesitate to even make a list because a list cannot capture the depth and mystery of God’s workings. But hopefully you can begin the journey of seeking out what God has for you. And if you’ve already started that journey, hopefully this will give you energy to press on.