This episode compellingly addresses the pivotal inquiry regarding the discernment of God's voice in our lives. We delve into the significance of recognizing and responding to divine communication, as it is fundamentally intertwined with our spiritual journey and identity as followers of Christ.

Ultimately, we encourage our listeners to cultivate an environment conducive to divine dialogue, fostering a deeper connection with God and enhancing their ability to discern His guidance in everyday circumstances. The podcast episode delves into the profound spiritual practice of attuning oneself to the voice of God, a subject that resonates deeply with listeners seeking to enrich their spiritual lives.

Takeaways:

1. The podcast emphasizes the importance of creating intentional space to listen for God's voice in our lives.
2. Hearing God's voice is considered a fundamental aspect of being a follower of Christ, as stated in John 10:27.
3. The host encourages listeners to practice recognizing God's voice, which often requires time and experience to develop.
4. Participants are reminded that God's voice is gentle and consistent, aligning with His character as revealed in Scripture.
5. Listeners are urged to commit their plans to the Lord as a way to seek His guidance and assurance.
6. Obstacles to hearing God's voice can include distractions, preconceived notions, and feelings of shame or guilt, which should be addressed.

The content shared on Living the Selah Life is for spiritual encouragement, personal reflection, and informational purposes only.

It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace medical, psychological, or professional advice of any kind.

Please consult a licensed healthcare provider or qualified professional for any physical, mental or emotional health concerns.

The views expressed are those of the host, Kimberly Lockanore, and are based on personal experience and Biblical insight, not clinical training.

Welcome back to Living the Selah Life, a podcast that invites you to slow down, breathe deep, and reconnect with the presence of God.

I am your host, Kimberly Lockanore.

You can call me Kim and this is a space for anyone longing to become more familiar with his presence.

Whether you're just discovering what it means to pause with God or you've been walking this path for a while, I'm so glad that you're here.

Each episode is an intentional pause, a moment to reflect, realign, and remember that God meets us when we create space for Him.

So take a breath.

You are right on time.

Let's live the Selah life together.

Hey there friend.

Welcome back.

I hope the last couple of weeks have given you some opportunities to practice what we've been talking about.

Maybe you've tried pausing for a few minutes in your car before work, or taking some deep breaths while while washing dishes and remembering that God is right there with you.

However, you've been experimenting with creating space for God, I am proud of you for trying.

Today we're going to talk about something that I get asked about constantly, Kim.

How do I actually hear God's voice?

I pause, I say lie as you say, I pray.

I try to be quiet.

I but I don't feel like I hear anything.

How do I know if God is speaking to me?

And this is such an important question because learning to recognize God's voice is really at the heart of who we are.

When we pause, we're opening ourselves up to hear from God.

We're making space for his wisdom instead of trying to figure everything out on our own.

Before we dive into the how, I want to talk about why this matters so much.

This is Jesus telling us that hearing his voice is normal for those who belong to Him.

Let me say that again.

It is the Lord telling us that it is normal for those that belong to him to hear his voice.

And many times when people say God said or the spirit of God said, you come across as weird or super spiritual or kind of out there but it is normal to hear Him.

So let's think about that for a moment.

Jesus expects his followers to hear his voice.

He's not surprised when we do.

And he's not withholding his voice from us.

The ability to hear from God is part of our inheritance as his children.

But here's what I've learned over the years that most of us have never been taught how to recognize God's voice and to become confident in in that voice.

We've been taught how to pray, how to read our Bibles, how to serve others.

But somehow the lesson was missed on how to actually hear from God, the God that we're trying to follow.

And because we don't know how to recognize his voice, we end up making decisions based on our own wisdom, our own fears, or our own limited perspective.

We end up feeling disconnected from God, wondering if he really cares at all about the details of our lives and questioning whether he's really involved in our day to day experiences.

Learning to hear God's voice changes so much.

It affects how you make decisions, how you respond to challenges, how you treat people, and how you see yourself.

When you know that God is speaking to you, when you can recognize his voice in any moment or ordinary moments, you start living with a confidence and peace because you have his guidance for your life.

One of the biggest misconceptions about hearing God's voice is that it has to be dramatic or supernatural.

Air quotes.

We think we need to hear an audible voice from heaven or have some kind of mystical experience.

And while God certainly can speak that way, most of the time, his voice is much more subtle.

In First Kings, chapter 19, verses 11 through 12, we read about Elijah's experience.

Then he said, go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord and behold the Lord passed by.

And a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind an earthquake.

But the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake a fire.

But the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire a still, small voice.

God wasn't in the dramatic displays of power in this instance.

He was in the still, small voice.

The Hebrew word here for voice is cole, although it's spelled Q O L and this word has many meanings.

But in this sense it means a gentle whisper, a soft murmur.

It's the kind of voice you have to be still to actually hear.

And this is how God usually speaks to us.

God's voice is usually gentle, loving and Most of all consistent with his character as revealed in Scripture.

It does not condemn or shame even when God is correcting us.

His voice is genuinely gentle, kind, and patient.

But I want to add this caveat.

Most people will say they pursue the peace of God at all costs.

And what I will say, Jesus gives us his peace, so when we receive it, we have it.

But the Lord will say some things to you sometime that disturb your sense of peace because they are not peaceful.

Not necessarily because of the way he's saying it, but because of what he's sharing.

So there's that.

You might hear an actual voice.

It might be a sudden understanding about a situation you've been struggling with.

It could be a verse that keeps coming to mind throughout the day.

Sometimes it's a gentle conviction about something you need to change or an encouragement about something you're worried about.

For every person, the way he speaks to you might be different from the way he speaks to someone else.

Learning to recognize how he speaks to you is what we're talking about here.

It's also important to create the right environment.

So if God's voice is usually gentle and quiet, then we need to create a space where we can hear it.

This is where the selah life becomes so important.

We have to make room for God to speak.

And so let's think about it this way.

If you wanted to have an important conversation with someone you love, you wouldn't try to do it in a crowded restaurant with music playing loud in the background and people talking all around you.

You'd find a quiet place where you could hear each other.

And it's the same way with God.

If we want to hear his voice, we need to create space where his gentle whisper can actually reach us.

The key to this is creating regular moments of quiet where you're just being present with God and listening to his voice.

Especially in the beginning.

If you're on the beginning end of learning how to hear from God, it will have to be most likely in a quiet space.

So Learning to Recognize His Voice One of the most helpful things that I've learned about hearing God's voice is that it takes practice.

And I'm giving you that permission to practice right now.

To practice and to miss it and then to come back and get it right.

Just like learning to recognize a coworker's voice on the phone.

Learning to recognize God's voice takes time and experience.

I cannot stress that enough.

It takes experience.

The more you do it, the better you will get at it.

And here's something I want you to know you're going to get it wrong sometimes.

You're going to think God is telling you one thing when he's saying something else.

You're going to miss it.

You're going to miss his voice entirely sometime.

And that's okay.

That's part of learning.

There is a fail safe that I have that I want to share with you because I have missed God's voice on many occasions.

But I learned a fail safe that has saved me not one time, not two times, but every time.

And it is because God is faithful to His Word.

And that fail Safe is Proverbs 16:3, and this is the new King James Version.

Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established.

Some versions will say, commit your plans to the Lord and your thoughts will be established.

But either way, the message is the same.

So what I do when I believe that I hear him, but I'm just not 100% sure I commit that thing to him.

Whatever that plan is, whatever that thing is, whatever it is I'm trying to figure out, and I trust him that my thoughts will be established.

And it's never, ever failed me.

In fact, probably about a year ago, I did this because I do it all the time, but I did it.

I was still.

After I committed the plan, I was still worried, like, I don't know.

And the Holy Spirit said, clear as day, either I'm establishing your thoughts or I'm not.

End of confusion.

Never doubted it again.

So once if I'm not sure or if you're not sure, whatever you're trying to decide, just commit it to him and he will cause your thoughts to be established and you walk in the right direction.

But this is where trusting in his character comes in.

At trusting in his faithfulness and that he's doing that thing for you.

It has never failed me.

And I have my sister doing it as well.

Both of them, it has never failed them.

It just won't fail.

So he really wants us to be able to hear him and to go in the direction that that is called for, for our lives.

So in order to know what he sounds like, you almost always get it wrong along the way.

But thank God that when your heart posture is to hear him, he allows you to miss it because it's part of the learning process.

He will allow you to miss it, but he will guide you back to the correct path.

Don't subscribe to the teaching that if you miss it, you're just stuck.

You're only stuck if you really never cared about what God thought.

When you sincerely desire to follow his voice, he will make sure you are led back to the correct path if for some reason you missed it Because God is so patient with us as we learn, he knows we're going to make mistakes and he's prepared for that.

His grace covers our learning process.

What matters to him is the posture of our heart.

Do we really want to hear from Him?

Are we genuinely seeking his guidance?

If the answer is yes, then he will walk with you.

Even when you get it wrong, he will direct and establish your thoughts.

So Jesus said in John 10:4 and when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

Notice that Jesus says the sheep know his voice.

This knowing comes from relationship, from spending time together, from being familiar with something or someone.

The more time you spend with God, the more familiar his voice becomes.

And the more you practice listening, the easier it becomes to distinguish his voice from your own thoughts, from other people's opinions.

And the big one is from the enemy's lies.

So here are some characteristics of God's voice that I've learned to recognize over the years.

He is love, so his voice will be loving.

He is truth, so his voice will be truthful.

He is faithful, so his voice will be trustworthy.

God's voice often comes with confirmation.

When God speaks to you about something important, he usually confirms it in multiple ways.

It could be through a conversation with a friend, a verse you read, a circumstance that opens up, or your very own life.

God knows we need confirmation, especially when we're learning to hear his voice and he provides it.

God's voice leads to life and freedom.

Praise God.

I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.

When God speaks, it leads to life, hope, freedom, and abundance.

God also speaks through Scripture.

This is probably one of the most common ways for many people.

You're reading your Bible and a verse seems to just jump off the page.

Or you keep encountering the same passage in different places.

Or you could be having an issue with something and you open up your Bible and there's exactly what you need to hear right in front of you.

God loves to speak to us through His Word because it's reliable, it's true, and it's always consistent with his character through prayer.

When you're praying about something and a thought comes to you that you know didn't originate from your own mind.

It might be an idea about how to handle something or an encouragement about something you've been worried about.

Again, it could be correction.

This is another way that he speaks to us is through prayer through other people.

God often uses the people in our lives to speak to us.

A friend says something that perfectly addresses a thing that you've been praying about.

Or a pastor's sermon.

This is another big one.

A pastor's sermon speaks directly to your situation.

Or you could be having a conversation with your coworker, just a random conversation.

And in that conversation they offer a perspective that you need it through circumstances.

And this is another ginormous one, friends, many times God speaks through the way things unfold in our lives.

Doors open or close in ways that give us direction.

Opportunities arise that you know you couldn't have orchestrated yourself.

And obstacles appear that redirect you towards something better through that inner knowing.

And this is me all day long, my sister as well.

Sometimes you just know something.

You just know it, and no one would be able to take you from that knowing other than God.

You don't know how you know it.

But what do they say?

I know what I know what I know what I know.

You can't even explain it.

This is often how God gives us wisdom about relationships, decisions, or other directions to take.

And what I've learned is that many people have an issue with this one, the knowing, or their own intuition or things like that, because they.

They think that it's coming from their own mind.

And what I say is, don't battle with that and stay in analysis paralysis mode.

If you feel like, you really feel like you know something, but you're just not sure it's going to be Proverbs 16:3, all day long, commit your plan to the Lord and he will establish your thoughts.

Lord, I think that this is what you're saying.

I'm not sure I commit this to you.

And let me say this.

When it says plan, actually have a plan, Because I have actually committed what a thought to him.

And he said, that's not a plan.

Yep, indeed.

So have a plan and I write mine down.

But I'm not telling you what you have to do.

I do on the times I'm not sure I'll actually write down what my next intentions are, what I'm going to do, just so that when he scatters my plan 80 ways from Sunday, I can come back and see what I originally had.

Or if my plan goes exactly as I thought I would know, I actually did not Miss him through dreams and visions.

While this is not common for everyone, I know a lot of people that it is for.

But everyone does not have dreams and visions.

And that's okay.

God does speak through dreams and visions or mental pictures.

If you have a dream that seems significant, ask God about it.

He might be trying to tell you something.

The key is learning to pay attention.

Most of us can be focused on our own thoughts and our own plans.

That we miss the gentle ways that God is trying to communicate with us.

And God does speak, my friends.

So let's talk about what to do when you don't hear anything.

Because this happens to all of us.

And it doesn't mean that God isn't speaking or that you're doing something wrong.

Sometimes God is silent for a season.

But in those seasons, we have to keep showing up, keep creating space for God and trust that he is working even when we can't hear his voice clearly.

And sometimes we don't hear God because we're too focused on getting an answer to a specific question.

We come to God with an agenda.

And we're so focused on what we want to hear that we miss what he actually wants to say.

I have done that several times.

So try coming to God without an agenda.

In those moments, just sit with him and ask, what's on your heart today?

What do you want to tell me?

And see if that changes.

And sometimes we don't hear God because we're really not ready to listen.

We're asking for his guidance, but we've already decided what we want to do.

God knows when we're not really open to his direction and he's patient with us.

But if you want to hear from God, you have to be willing to do what he says.

And then other times we don't hear from God because we're carrying guilt or shame that makes us feel distant from Him.

Remember that God's voice is not condemning and it does not cause shame.

We know whose voice does that.

It could be our own or it could be the enemy.

And if you feel that way, I urge you to to take that shame and that condemnation to God first.

Allow him to heal you from that, and then his voice will become more clear.

Don't stay away from him because you feel condemned and shameful.

And it may be for things that are condemning and shameful, but Christ died for that.

So don't not go to him because you think he's distant.

Go to him and ask him to.

To help you.

That's going to be my answer to everything, y', all, because he's so helpful.

Go to him and ask him to help you with the feelings that you feel and the things that need to be aligned so that you can feel as if you hear his voice more clearly.

And then, last but not least, sometimes we don't hear God simply because we're still learning and we're new at it.

And that is perfectly normal.

Keep practicing, keep creating space, and keep listening.

The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

So we're going to move on to today's Scripture Spotlight, which comes From Psalms chapter 32, verses 8.

Let's look at a beautiful promise about God's guidance.

Psalms 32.

8 says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.

I will guide you with my eye.

Love that Scripture.

This verse is God speaking directly to us, promising to instruct us, teach us, and guide us.

Notice that he doesn't promise to give us general principles.

He promises to guide us in the way that we should go.

That's personal, specific guidance for your unique life and circumstances.

The phrase I will guide you with my eye.

It is so beautiful.

It's the picture of a parent, a loving parent who guides their child with just a look or a gentle nod, a slight gesture.

It speaks of intimate relationship, of being so connected to God that you can sense his direction even in the most subtle ways.

And this is what God wants with each of us.

He wants to be so involved in our lives, so connected to our hearts that he can guide us with just a gentle whisper or an impression, a sense of peace about a decision.

God is not trying to hide his will from you.

He's not playing games or making it difficult for you to know what he wants.

He wants to guide you even more than you want to be guided.

He's just waiting for you to create space to listen and to keep returning, even when you don't think you got it right.

Okay, so we're gonna move on to this week's Pause prompts.

Remember, pause prompts are just personal reflections that allow us to see what is going on within.

They are not meant to cause condemnation or for you to judge yourselves.

They are simply a check in so that we can see where we are.

Because we can move further when we know where we are.

So here we go.

When was the last time you felt like God spoke to you about something?

And what did that experience feel like?

What makes it difficult for you to hear God's voice?

Is it a lack of quiet time?

Too many distractions?

Fear of what he might say.

Or is it something else?

Are there areas of your life where you've been trying to figure things out on your own instead of asking for God's guidance?

How can you create more space starting today in your everyday to listen for God's voice?

You can take your time with these questions.

Let them be gentle invitations to examine your relationship with God and your openness to hearing from Him.

So let's move into our Selah moment so we'll take a moment to practice what we've been talking about.

Create a space to listen for God's voice together.

So wherever you are right now, take a deep breath and let your spirit settle.

Put your hand on your heart if you can, and feel it beating.

And remember that that's God sustaining your life right now, in this very moment.

This is your Selah moment.

Maybe he wants to encourage you about something you're worried about.

Or he might want to give you wisdom about a decision you're facing.

He might just want to remind you how much he loves you.

Or he might simply want you to rest in his presence without needing to hear anything specific.

Whatever he wants to give you in this moment, receive it.

You don't have to try hard, you just have to be present and always open to whatever he says.

So Father, thank you that you are a God who speaks.

Thank you that you don't leave us to have to figure out our lives on our own, but you want to guide us and direct us and give us your wisdom for every situation we face.

I pray for every person listening right now who has been longing to hear your voice more than clearly.

I ask that you remove any barriers that have been keeping them from hearing you.

For those who feel like they never hear from you, remind them that you are always speaking.

Help them to recognize your voice, Lord.

Help them to recognize it in ways that you choose to communicate with them.

Give them patience with themselves as they learn and grow in this area.

For those who are facing decisions right now, speak clearly to them, Lord.

Give them your wisdom and your peace about the choices they need to make.

Help them to trust your guidance even though they can't see the whole picture.

And for those that are in difficult seasons, I ask that you speak words of comfort and hope in their hearts.

Remind them that you are are with them, that you see them and that you have good plans for them.

Lord, help us all become people who live with our ears tuned in to your voice, who make decisions based on your wisdom and who walk in the confidence that comes from knowing we're Being guided by a loving father, creating us a hunger to to hear from you that's stronger than our need for anything else.

Help us trust that your voice is always available to us, that you're always ready to guide us.

And that learning to hear from you is one of the greatest gifts that you've given us in Jesus name.

Now I'll give you a minute to sit in your Selah moment.

It.

Sam.

Okay.

Okay.

So that is it for this week.

Thank you so much for having this time.

Having me during this time.

So in our next episode, we're going to talk about something else that's very important.

I actually had to learn how to do it myself and it's resting without feeling guilty, living a life of rest from rest, shall I say?

So we'll explore what the Bible says about rest and why so many of us feel guilty when we're not able to be as productive as we think we should be.

And how to create sustainable rhythms of rest that actually restores rest rather than make us more tired or exhaust us further.

So until next time, remember that God is speaking.

He wants to guide you and direct you and give you his wisdom for your life.

Create space to listen.

Be patient with yourself as you learn and trust that the same God who spoke the universe into existence wants to speak into your everyday life.

So thank you for listening to Living the Selah Life.

If this moment stirred something in your spirit, share it with someone who needs to be reminded to pause and listen.

You can connect with me on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube at Living the Selah Life.

Or you can email me your story or a Selah moment that you want to hear at Living the Selah Life at Proton Me.

May you go from this place rested not just in body, but in spirit, carrying the awareness that his presence is always near.

May you be rooted not in the shifting voices around you, but in the unshakable word of God, the Logos that ground you and the rhema that guides you.

For men does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And may you keep rising into the life he designed for you, into purpose, into peace, into the fullness of his calling.

May your life become a living Selah, an intentional pause that reveals his presence in Jesus name.

And it is so Selah.