It’s a Tuesday evening. I receive a phone call from an old friend who is new to Christianity. We chat for a while. She tells me about her newfound joy, how God is continuing to transform her life, and then she breaths a heavy sigh and mutters the words almost every Christian has faced in the beginning of their walk with God: “I just don’t hear God. He’s silent.”

C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” The power and proof of the sun shines (literally) in and through our lives. In the same way, God’s voice also shines in and through our lives. It’s all around us—if we listen closely.
However, we’ve all had that conversation with a friend, or even asked this question ourselves: “how do I hear God’s voice?”

And just like that— with a heart to please Him, with a faith to move mountains, and with a deep surrender to the One who gave it all—we forget that God is constantly speaking to us. The question is, are we constantly listening to Him?

Here are 4 ways God to speak to us:

1. Private Prayer

Not the Instagram version of prayer that’s blasted out to all of your followers, but the nitty, gritty, on your knees in prayer seeking his face in surrender. The Kitchen floor moment prayers. The silent, the unseen, the private moments between you and God.

God longs to speak to us in this precious space. Why is this space so precious? Because we’ve created margin for it. We’ve hit pause on our everyday life, we’ve opened up the Word of God, and we’ve started talking to the Creator of the Universe. God reveals some of His deepest truths about our lives in this space we’ve created and invited him to make home in our space.

Have you cultivated an atmosphere of private prayer and invited God to speak into your life in these sweet, quiet, and personable moments?

2. Community

I’ve always been a person with very few close friends rather than a ton of acquaintances. One thing I’ve learned in this, is that the friends that are in my life have my utmost trust. God has strategically placed them on my advisory board. Our board of advisory helps us navigate decisions, pains, troubles, and even are with us when it’s time to celebrate our joys. God has marked a board of advisors for you in this current season of life. He’s intentionally placed people in your life to speak life, to speak truth, and to be His instrument in speaking to you.

Have you received wisdom from your board’s council lately, your community?

3. The Local Church

The local church is the hope of the world. God speaks to his children weekly through the local church, and without out the local church— the serving, the participating, the active role we allow it to take root in our lives— we miss out on a new level of belonging to this body of Christ and hearing God’s voice.

Through our Pastors, through our leaders, through the people we’ve entrusted to help guide us spiritually in our local church, God is speaking volumes to us as His children. He’s empowering us as we serve, strengthening us as we find our place on His team, and speaking to us as we discover our gifts & passions in the body of Christ. The greatest thing we could do to incline our ear to God’s voice and move from a consumer to a contributor in our local church. As we act, God speaks. As we say ‘yes’ to being an active contributor, He unravels so many mysteries of who He is and what He longs for us in this life.

4. Our Everyday Routine

The things that wake us up in the morning, the things that drive us to be a better version of us, the things that we are uniquely passionate about and deem us quirky in our own way all at the same time—God’s speaking to us through those things.

God spoke to me one day when I was a teacher in the public school classroom that I would teach the Word of God to students one day. Months later, and I do just that.

God is speaking to us in our everyday life in a still, small voice. Maybe we’re not hearing him through a megaphone, and maybe a giant billboard isn’t flung right across our path.

Sometimes when He’s speaks, He’s whispers. The louder our life is, the harder it is to hear that whisper. Have you turned your life down to hear God?

Our everyday routine can reveal a lot about what God is saying to us in our seasons if we give permission for him to move in and make home in our routine.

The listening doesn’t happen when it’s drowned out by distractions and us always doing the talking to God; the listening happens when we focus on who He’s already called us to be right here, right now to fulfill the assignment right where He’s currently planted us.

This is where He speaks the most.
Right in our everyday life.

Right in the mundane.
Right in the adventure.
Right in the obvious.
Right in the silence.

Right in His perfect will.

God’s speaking; are we listening?