How Do We Know That What We’re Hearing Is From God?

God absolutely speaks to us. But how do we know when it’s Him speaking?

Often when I bring up the idea that God speaks to us, someone will ask me some variation of this question: “But how do I know if what I’m hearing is really from God?”

It’s a good question.

First, because over the centuries any number of scammers and frauds have claimed to hear from God. I heard a story once of a pastor who told his congregation, “God told me that if we don’t raise enough money today, then He’s going to take me home [i.e. kill me].” This seems less like a case of Divide guidance than like greed dressed up in faith.

Second, God can often call us into weird and counterintuitive things. When one of my friends was a police officer, God told him to de-arrest a guy who had committed robbery and knocked out a fellow officer. My friend de-arrested the man, and it turned out to be an excellent decision, but it was pretty hard to explain to his boss. I think it’s very helpful in these situations to know if what we’re hearing is actually from God or if it’s just our minds spinning.

To be clear, I’m no expert on hearing form God; I can and do mishear. But over the past few years I’ve picked up a couple of “tells” that indicate to me when what I’m hearing is from God, versus when it’s just my own mind. The stronger any one of these tells, of course, the more faith I think we can have that what we’re hearing is from the Divine.

First, it’s important to note that sometimes we hype the idea of hearing from God up into this enormous, difficult thing that must take years of study to even begin to learn. The theologian who taught me to pray explained it like this: point your attention to the divine, ask your question, and then listen to the free flow of thoughts, ideas, images, and sensations that come back in response. I think part of his point was, if we really are made by God and made in God’s own image, then hearing from the divine feels as natural as coming home. It’s a language we have to learn, but also a language we were hardwired from our moment of conception to understand.

Which is to say: this doesn’t have to be complicated.

But that said, sometimes I’ll point my attention to the divine, ask my question, and the answer that comes back is definitely from my own mind. So I think it’s still useful to try and articulate how we can be confident that what we’re hearing is really from God.

God’s Tone

The first “tell” is what one of my friends calls God’s tone. How God speaks to us may vary: He may speak in images, in sensations, in words similar to an inner monologue, in words audible to our actual ears, and in a thousand other ways. He can speak to us through other people and through surprising coincidences, through nature and through industry.

And, what he can say to us may vary according to who we are and the needs of the moment.

But for all that, God’s tone remains (in my experience, at least), consistent. When God speaks to us, He speaks in a tone of infinite love, joy, peace, and connection.

I didn’t pluck these words out of the air. The Bible teaches that “God is love,” (1 John 4:8, ESV), and so it makes sense that when He speaks to us, we feel a sensation of love filling us with His words. The Apostle Paul calls God the “God of peace” (Philippians 4:9, NIV) and says that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, NIV), and so it makes sense that when God speaks to us we feel a sense of peace filling our minds and bodies. Joy is one of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22, NIV), and something that I’ve seen over and over again in people who are deep with the Lord. Connection is simply the sensation that comes when we experience the God who made us and who knows everything about us—every hair on our heads, every thought in our hearts—and who loves us utterly and unconditionally.

When we’re asking whether or not what we’re hearing is from God, perhaps the biggest “tell” is: in what tone did God speak? If what we’re hearing makes us anxious, or depressed, or feel worthless or unloved or isolated, then that’s probably not from God. On the other hand, if what we’re hearing invokes in us a sense of love and peace and joy and connection, of being a child basking in the infinite love of a perfect parent, then that may well be from God.

God’s Invitation

Another “tell” that what we’re hearing is from God can come in the content of what we hear.

Is it an invitation? In my experience, God doesn’t speak to us via demands or harsh commands. Instead, God seems to speak to us via a loving invitation. When I ask God for guidance or for help, I’ll often feel the divine hand reaching out to me to invite me from where I am into something better.

This is true even when I’m trapped in sin and I want to be free. In those cases, I’ll ask God what to do, and the answer comes back in the form of an invitation: something along the lines of “I love you just as you are (though I don’t love your sin), but if you’re willing to take my hand and follow me, I’ll lead you into something so much better for you and for everyone around you.”

By contrast, if what I’m hearing feels like a whip at my back, or like I’m being ordered to clear an impossibly high bar, then that’s probably not God. That might be my fear or guilt or shame, dressing up as the divine in order to keep me trapped and hopeless.

If what I’m hearing leaves me feeling imprisoned, and dejected, and stuck, and like I can never get out or be any better than I am now, then that voice isn’t from God. If what I’m hearing is a loving invitation to take God’s hand and to let Him lead me out of my current circumstances or way of being and into something better, then that’s much more likely to be from God.

There’s another piece to this too. God can absolutely invite us into hard things. But even when what He’s inviting us into is hard, there should be an underlying peace and joy and lightness to the whole thing.

For example, I struggle with a desire for porn, and a couple of months ago I felt God inviting me to come clean to my wife about my struggle. This terrified me. I was scared that she would leave me. I was in a state of panic for most of the day or two before I told her.

But underneath that fear, there was a sense of peace. Of lightness. There was a sense from God along the lines of: “I know this is terrifying for you, but if you’re willing to do this, it’s going to usher in a better life than you can imagine” (as indeed telling my wife did).

What we’re hearing from God can absolutely scare us, or daunt us, but it should also come with an undercurrent of lightness and peace. If it’s teeth-clenching all the way down, there’s a good chance that that’s not from God.

The Content of What God Invites Us Into

We’ve talked about God’s tone, about how he speaks to us…but what about judging based on what He says?

This is much trickier, because the simple truth is that our ways are not His ways (Isaiah 55:8). Some things that God’s invited me into are frankly confusing. They seem to make me a better person, and to make the lives of the people around me better, but they’re not the kind of thing I would have come up with on my own.

But there are two clues I think we can use to help us discern whether or not what we’re hearing is from God, based on the content of what we’re hearing.

First, everything that God says will align with the Bible (or, in the many cases where God gives us guidance on matters that are too personal to find answers to in the Bible, like what career we should pursue, His words to us will at the very least never contradict His written word). But, in my own experience at least, this can be a little bit fraught. The blunt truth is that interpreting the Bible is hard.

I’ve talked to people who insist that the Bible justifies slavery. I’ve talked to people who claim that Jesus was a racist. One of my friends, who’s a Biblical counselor, once had to take a session with a man who beat his wife and who wanted my friend to quote Ephesians 5:22 (”Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” NIV) to her so that she would submit to his beatings instead of filing for divorce.

If we just read the Bible without any training, we can end up with a pretty skewed idea of who God is.

Rather than trying to interpret the Bible completely on my own, I’ve found it useful to do two things: first, to pray and to ask God what He wants me to get out of a certain verse, and second, to let my understand of Scripture and of God be influenced by theologians whom I respect and admire.

For example: right now I’m reading the book of Jeremiah. To my layman’s eye, the book makes God sound impatient, judgmental, and eager to punish people who don’t do as He says. Maybe that’s the truth of the book, but that doesn’t align at all with either the God I’ve come to know or the God who I see described by theologians like Dallas Willard, C.S. Lewis, and Jamie and Donna Winship.

And so, as I was reading Jeremiah, I asked God: “What do you want me to know about what I’m reading?” And the answer came back: “for you, it’s about the dangers of letting idols keep living in your heart.” This answer fits with my understanding of God (who is relentlessly focused on trying to help me stop sinning), and with the God portrayed by different theologians whom I admire, and so I accept it.

The second clue as to whether or not what we’re hearing is from God is: does what we’re hearing bring us closer to God, and does it make the lives of the people around us better?

This one can be tricky too, because the ways that God invites us to serve others can often feel counterintuitive.

This past summer, for instance, my wife and I were struggling financially and I was looking for a new job. Well-meaning friends and family encouraged me to apply to 20 job posts per day on sites like Indeed. At the same time, I was talking to my friends in the bridge-building industry (where I knew I wanted to work), and they were saying that there weren’t any jobs in said industry.

In the middle of this uncertainty, I felt God inviting me to simply rest and to trust Him. This was nerve-wracking, because my wife does not like financial insecurity and part of me felt like the right way to serve her would be to go out and pound the pavement until I found a new job.

I rested, and trusted God’s providence, and it’s worked out beautifully for both of us. I found two high-paying clients in the bridge-building space who help me provide for our family while leaving us a nice financial cushion every month. I found work that leaves me free for plenty of date nights, and which also excites me and that lights me up, which means I have more energy on said sate nights.

It turns out that trusting God was the best thing I could have done to serve my wife. But boy did it feel counterintuitive at the time.

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This is far from a be-all-end-all guide on how to know whether or not what we’re hearing is from God. Theologians who have been doing this work for decades have written whole books on this topic. But while it doesn’t claim to be comprehensive, I do hope that this guide can provide at least a little bit of clarify on a topic that can feel very murky.

As we walk into this next week together, I’m curious: what’s one thing that you hear God telling you or inviting you into?

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