Does God Still Speak to Us Today?
November 3, 2018
Categories: Religion/Spirituality
I was having dinner with a friend awhile back, and he asked me whether I thought God still speaks to us today.
My friend was struggling. He had been praying and wanted God to encourage him and speak to him. But he felt like God was silent and far away.
When he asked his question, my immediate thought was, “Yes, of course! God definitely still speaks to us today.” But when I thought about the question some more, I could understand why my friend was struggling.
God Speaking in the Bible
In the Bible, we read all these amazing stories about how God speaks to his followers. For example, at church we were studying the book of Jonah, and discussing how God gave Jonah a direct message to deliver to the people of Ninevah.
God Speaking in My Own Life?
As I thought about my own life, I realized I hadn’t ever received a message like that. At least not an audible one.
I remember one time when I was younger; I was struggling with an important life decision. I think it was about a girl. I said to my dad, “Dad, I just wish God would give me an answer like they did in the Bible. I wish he would just give me writing on the wall!”
My dad responded that the “writing on the wall” only happened once in the Bible. And right afterwards the guy died.
Yikes!
Even though I haven’t received an audible message from God, I do believe that God speaks to me. I’ll give you two examples from a trip I took a few summers ago in Guatemala.
Be More Intentional
I was helping lead our church’s college mission trip. A couple of days into the trip, I felt like God was telling me to be more intentional in my conversations and relationships with the students. So I began to ask them deeper questions about how they were doing and what their stories were. There were times I felt like God was telling me to pray for someone. And so I did.
Appreciate Each Person’s Uniqueness
Another thing that happened was I felt like God was telling me to appreciate how everyone on the trip was unique and different. I felt like God wanted me to notice and encourage each person on the trip about how God had created them in a unique and awesome way. So I tried to notice and tell people when I noticed something cool about them. We organized an “award ceremony” to acknowledge each person for something cool they brought to the group.
Was It Actually God?
It’s possible that it wasn’t God speaking to me, and it was just my own thoughts popping into my head. It’s impossible for me to know for sure. But I’d like to think it was God.
Discussion
What do you think? Do you think God still speaks to us today? How do you notice God speaking to you in your everyday life? What do you do when God seems silent?
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God has only audibly spoken to me, and that was when he told me I was going to marry my wife. But that is a story for another time.
The reality for the rest of my life has been that the more I am quiet and still and LISTEN after reading His letter to me, I hear his voice. Not as in, “oh there’s a text from God that just came through” or listen to this voicemail, but a soft still voice that I try to take in and let is soak into my being. Maybe even subliminal?
I often say, “God, here I am, you know my heart, help me be what you’re calling me to be and do what you want me to do.” And in that stillness, He hears, and speaks.
Thanks for sharing. I agree with you; God speaking may look different than we expect.
There is this passage in 1 Kings 19 I love. The prophet Elijah is standing on a mountain waiting for God to speak. First there was a powerful wind, but God wasn’t in the wind. Next there was an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. Then there was a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire. Instead, God was in the gentle whisper. Maybe sometimes God speaks where we least expect it.
Growing up fundamentalist/evangelical, I was told that as a born-again Christian God would “speak to me”, “move me”, and “lead me” so that I would know and could follow his will. I listened to others talk about how God spoke to them, moved them, and led them to do this and to do that…but He never did the same for me. I finally came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me because God had decided he didn’t want to talk to me. So I left the Church.
Many years later I became an orthodox Lutheran and was told that God doesn’t work like that. The evangelicals are wrong. The voice they are listening to is their own. According to “true” Christianity, God speaks to Christians in only one manner: through his Word, the Bible.
That gave me a lot of peace…until I found out that the “Word” is full of discrepancies, errors, and scribe alterations.
I was very sad (and angry) to find out—it is ALL nonsense.
So what about my problem of not hearing the “voice” that other evangelicals were hearing speak, move, and lead them? After deconverting completely from Christianity, I came to realize that it was THEM, not me, that had the problem. They were hearing voices. I was the sane one…who did not.
Thanks for sharing Gary. I’m sorry you had to go through all that. I think sometimes religious folks (myself included) are very locked into one way of thinking about how God works, and there isn’t space to consider differences in people’s experiences.