18. Hearing God's Voice - Part 2

FLASHBACK

What did you experience with God this week?
In the last few days, did you have the opportunity to share an experience with God with someone close to you that doesn’t know Jesus yet? Or could you pray for them or help them practically?
Do you need God‘s help in an area of your life?

▶ Pray together: Give thanks for your experiences, ask God for help where you need it.

▶ Pray together to learn new things about God and that your relationship with God deepens and gets stronger.

BIBLE STUDY

Read the passage silently. What words or phrases stick out?
One person reads the passage out loud.
One person retells the passage in his/her own words (Bibles closed).
If necessary, the others complement what was said (Bibles closed).

Acts 8:26-40

²⁶ Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” ²⁷ So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, ²⁸ and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. ²⁹ The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

³⁰Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

³¹“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

³²This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
³³In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
    Who can speak of his descendants?
    For his life was taken from the earth.”

³⁴The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”³⁵Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

³⁶As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?”^[37] ³⁸And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.³⁹When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.⁴⁰Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

Acts 13:1-4

² While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” ³ So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

⁴The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.

Everyone by themselves:

What words or phrases stick out now? Are there any differences to what you noticed before?
Why do you feel drawn to those words or phrases?
What could God be telling you?
What can you learn about mankind?

Share in the group.

SPECIFIC QUESTIONS & ACTION STEPS

Share how and what the Holy Spirit most recently spoke to you and how you reacted.

▶ Did you recently go through a difficult situation? Pause for a second and ask Jesus where He was in that situation and what He says about it now. Write down the answers you get (everyone by themselves).

▶ Where do you need God’s guidance and wisdom? Share in the group.

▶ Pray for each other that your spiritual eyes and ears improve, so you can see better, what the Holy Spirit does and hear better, what He speaks (Ephesians 1:18).

SCRIPTURE COMMENTS

It may be that you don’t recognise God’s voice because you’re expecting something spectacular. But God can speak very softly, such as through a simple thought. More often than not, this seems to be the way that God speaks. Consider what happened to the Prophet Elijah: God didn’t speak to him through a storm as He did to Job (Job 38:1), nor did He speak through an earthquake, as He did to the people of Israel (Exodus 19:16-19), nor through a fire like He did to Moses, but through a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:11-13).
If God corrects you, He always speaks about a specific situation. He isn’t vague and utters phrases as for example: “You’re a failure!” But the Holy Spirit always shows you if there’s something you should confess before God and what exactly it is. This you can then confess and rejoice about His forgiveness and His acceptance.
God’s voice is always a voice of hope. God’s voice does not cause sorrow, unrest or fear about what He tells you. The Holy Spirit will lead you through inner comfort if you’re on the right track. But He will make you feel uneasy if something is not good for you.
God’s voice is reasonable. That doesn’t mean, that it complies with our ideas of reason. Because God’s thoughts are “higher than all human thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). But this doesn’t mean that God speaks against all reason.
What if God remains silent? God is also a God who remains unseen. There will be periods, where God presumably isn’t speaking to us. This also belongs to our life here on Earth. In such situations, we should stand trustfully on what God has told us so far and what His Word, the Bible, tells us.

Basics to hear God’s voice:

Develop a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus.
Inner wounds can keep us from hearing God clearly. Hence live a lifestyle of forgiveness.
Be firmly rooted in the Bible. God’s Word shows us God’s general Will and helps us to discern whether something came from Him or whether it was another voice (Hebrews 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21).
Seek and accept help and encouragement from brothers and sisters in Christ who have more experience in hearing God’s voice.
Practice hearing God’s voice (1 Samuel 3:1-10).
Be a pure vessel (1 Corinthians 6,17-20).