How Do I Know if God Is Really Speaking to Me?

The Christian faith can feel like a roller coaster sometimes. Just when we think we’ve got it down, along comes a new question or challenge or, like, our whole world falling apart or something. Every day is an exercise in faith, and we need to make sure we’re listening carefully and following closely the leading of the Holy Spirit.

But how do we do this when He’s not speaking in our ear? Sure, a lot of people say, “The Lord told me this,” or, “God put this on my heart”—and He can speak audibly to us—but most of the time, they’re referring to something much different.

One way God speaks to us is through the Scriptures. Sometimes a passage we read or hear will answer a question we’ve been asking or leave a particularly deep impression on us. He also speaks through other people, whether friends or pastors or complete strangers, inspiring them to say just the thing we need to hear at a particular time. Sometimes He will just quietly open or close the doors of circumstance in our lives. In Old Testament days, God used human prophets and sometimes angelic visitations to convey His will to the people. He spoke through whirlwinds and bushes and clouds and donkeys and dreams and fire and even in a still, small voice.

Here in the AD, prophets and angels may not operate in quite the same way, but we have the Holy Spirit Himself living inside each and every believer’s heart. He gives us instruction, comfort, guidance, and discernment, often before we even ask for them. But what we gain in closeness, we sometimes lose in clarity. There’s a noisy, material-driven world clamoring for our headspace and we can so easily set the spiritual phone down, letting the noises of the world drown out the messages God has for us.

But even when we’re trying hard to listen and stay close, some answers just aren’t as apparent. Should I fornicate? No, of course not. We have that one in black and white. Should I flip off that guy on the freeway? No, that definitely doesn’t fall under the auspices of loving your neighbor. But how about: Where should I live? Should I keep this job? What kind of involvement should I have with this person? Questions like these can require a higher level of listening skills.

Now it may be very simple. Maybe you’ve secretly been feeling this magnetic pull towards Pacoima, where you don’t know anyone and you’ve never been, and one day your spouse says, “You know, this is random but I really want to move to Pacoima.” And then you go to church on Sunday and there’s somebody visiting from California who is talking about the needs they have in their town — the very things you want to focus your ministry on — and they really, really need people to come help them out, and guess what, they are from Pacoima! A no-brainer.

But sometimes we pray and wait and read and seek advice from our multitude of counselors, and the only answer seems to be that there is no answer. Does God have an opinion on it? Sure He does. But maybe this is the part in the Choose Your Own Adventure of your life where He’s letting you decide whether you want to keep reading or skip to page 68. The book’s already written — He knows where you’re going to end up either way — but maybe this move is up to you.

A lot of my early adult years were spent dreaming big dreams and then praying, “Lord, please stop me if this isn’t where you want me to go!” I don’t know if that’s a strategy I’d recommend for everyone, but I do believe it’s a lot easier to steer a vehicle that’s moving than one that’s parked with the e-brake on.

Over the last several years though, I’ve been learning more about taking big leaps of faith, not just moving toward what I want or think I should do, but actually following the Lord’s leading. I’ve been fascinated for a long time with the idea of Abraham leaving his home town, “not knowing where he was going.” I started asking God for this kind of faith, and lo and behold, within about a year, I was moving out of my apartment without knowing where I was going next (something I didn’t think was possible in the modern world, but it is!). The closest thing I had to a plan was to start driving east and to stop wherever it seemed like the Lord was telling me to.

I stayed a couple weeks on my best friend’s couch while I finished up a work commitment and said some goodbyes, and by the time I started my trip across the country, I had received some confirmation of my destination. But getting there was only the beginning; I still had a slew of impossibilities waiting for me once I arrived. It took a solid year of what I have to admit were incredibly hard times before I started seeing how God was preparing to throw the doors open in front of me—and was He ever!

Fast-forward a few years to last fall. Armed with my own personal Red Sea story and eyes on a new earthly Promised Land, I made yet another move. A move that made no practical sense and promised me nothing but the risk of failure, financial hardship, and the guarantee that I was going to have a lot of work ahead of me, not only developing a sustainable ground-up business strategy but also building a new network, meeting new friends, finding a new church home, even figuring out where to find healthy food and where I could safely walk. But what are challenges when you’re following the Lord’s will, right? I was positive that I knew where He was leading me—an assurance that has carried me through a lot of ups and downs and discouraging moments.

But recently, along came this woman who seems to be a Christian or involved in the church in some way, who started telling me about her divorce and how her ex is in another state and so is her 15-year-old daughter. She never gets to see her daughter because the divorce contract says the girl isn’t allowed to cross state lines without getting her dad’s permission, and that’s never going to happen because, well, it wasn’t a pretty divorce. Just as I was thinking, But you could go to her, the woman looked me straight in the eye and said, “But I have no doubt this is where I’m supposed to be. I absolutely believe I’m meant to be here right now, doing what I am doing.” Really? At the time in her life when your daughter needs you the most?! Before I could shout in protest, I heard a faint echo of myself saying very similar words about my own life. In my mind, this woman’s story was reading like a Greek tragedy; in her mind, it was reading like . . . my story??

I was once apartment hunting with a friend who is also a professing Christian. After an extensive search, we finally found a decent place within our budget and a landlord who was willing to take us on. Before we signed the papers, my roommate-to-be told me that she believed wholeheartedly we were actually supposed to be living in a different apartment she had found on the other side of the city—God had put this in her heart. Wanting to honor her faith (such a beautiful thing to see in action in someone’s life), I agreed to go sign a lease on that place instead. I made the trek across the city, only to find on the other side a dismal, dank, concrete-floored, all-but-windowless subterranean travesty, with walls that were oozing not-yet-stale cigarette smoke and a lease agreement that would leave us open to unspecified costs beyond our control. I was not in the unit for ten minutes before a headache set in. Now my friend didn’t know that I had allergies to smoke and mold (and shady landlords), nor that I had been trying to recover from chronic health issues which would be exacerbated by living in this apartment. But God knew that. Clearly He would not have told her that we should live somewhere that would make me sick. We ended up going back to the first apartment, which fortunately had not been rented yet, but the whole thing got me thinking . . .

My friend was sure that God had directed her to that basement apartment. Just like the divorcée was sure that God had directed her to move three states away from her teenage daughter. Just like I am sure that I am where God wants me to be and doing what He wants me to do.

And I really am sure of this. More sure than I’ve ever been of anything. I’ve had confirmation after confirmation. All systems go. Ne’ery a discouraging word or even the slightest inkling that there’s anywhere else I should be or anything else I should be doing. There is literally no Plan B. This is it. And I will stand on this faith until God moves me along. But there’s a part of me that can’t help wondering: how can I be so sure when other people seem to be getting it so wrong?

What do we do with these murky grey areas? There’s no Scripture telling me what town I should live in or which occupation I should be pursuing in the year 2019. I’m trusting in the record. I’m going off the relationship that God has been building with me over the last four decades. I’m choosing to believe that all the messages and little love notes and secret winks and deep insights He’s been sending me were really what I thought they were. I’m trusting that this life I get to live really is a great story and He really is at work and would let me know if somehow I’d veered from the plot.

And honestly, I don’t know what’s in anyone else’s heart; I don’t know what those other ladies are basing their faith on or how they are confirming that what they are following is really God’s guidance. But what if they really are believing like I am and trying with all their hearts and souls and minds and strength just to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading? What makes my faith any different from theirs?

How do I know if God is really speaking to me? I guess this is why we rely on God to finish the work He started in us, and not on ourselves to figure out how to get there. “ . . . He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ . . . ” (Phil 1:6 NKJV) It is not I who keep myself on track, but God who will get me successfully to the end.

But even in this, I have to exercise faith—faith that my faith itself is not misguided. Faith that God can and will make sure I know when it’s Him speaking and when it’s not. “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27)

I should have warned you from the beginning that I didn’t have an easier answer to this question. No three-step program. No checklist of dos and don’ts or catchy “you know it’s the real thing when” tricks. That’s because the life of faith is based on — you guessed it — faith. Not sight. Maybe in another forty-something years I’ll have a better answer.