Listening to God: What the Bible Actually Says About Hearing God’s Voice

Pastor Amos began with a sound every parent knows. At a crowded party, a child falls and starts to cry, and for a split second every conversation stops. Most parents relax — not my child. One parent is already up and moving. You did not study to learn your child’s cry. You learned it by living close to them. Research suggests newborns prefer their own mother’s voice within days of birth, because they came to know it in the womb before they ever saw her face.

That should be us with Jesus. We do not yet see him face to face, but we can learn his voice and love him long before we meet him.

Most of us talk to God. Far fewer of us expect him to answer. Jesus assumes the opposite. In John 10 he pictures himself as a shepherd, and several flocks sharing one stone fold overnight. In the morning each shepherd called, and only his own sheep came out.

He calls them by name, so the conversation is personal. There are strangers’ voices, so the conversation is contested — your own inner monologue, the enemy, and the constant noise of the culture. And knowing his voice comes from belonging to him and following him. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

Which raises the question Luke 24 answers. How do two of his own sheep walk miles with the Shepherd and never recognise his voice? It is resurrection Sunday. Two disciples are walking about seven miles home from Jerusalem to Emmaus, two or three hours into the setting sun, talking over the crucifixion and the strange reports of an empty tomb.

Rabbis often taught on the road, and the Shema itself pictures it: talk of these things “when thou walkest by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Jesus does exactly that. He asks what they are discussing, lets them pour it out, and then opens the Scriptures to them all the way home.

The road to Emmaus gives three ways to listen.

First, listen to the Word who walks with you. On his first day back, Jesus joins two discouraged people on a country road. They did not go looking for him. He came looking for them. We are not coaxing a silent God into speaking. He will come to you in the middle of your arguments, questions, and confusion.

But being near Jesus and recognising him are two different things. Samuel served in the house of God and still “did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him” (1 Samuel 3:7). Give yourself grace. It takes time and relationship.

Notice what blocked them: “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” They had just celebrated Passover, the feast of deliverance from Egypt, and wanted deliverance from Rome. A crucified Messiah did not fit the plan, so they missed the risen one beside them.

Before the Word is a book, it is a person. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). God “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). The religious leaders had the scrolls memorised and still missed him. “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39–40). Or as the Baptist Faith and Message (1963) puts it, the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.

Second, listen to the Word that burns within you. Jesus does not open their eyes with a light show. He opens the Scriptures.

Their problem was not a lack of information, and neither is ours. It was a slow heart. Scripture is the most objective, clearest, surest place God speaks, and every other voice is measured against it. Study asks, “What did this mean to them?” Listening asks, “Lord, what are you saying to me through what it meant?” We never invent a new meaning. We ask the Spirit to press the true meaning into our lives.

Jesus also waits to be invited. He “made as though he would have gone further,” and they had to constrain him to stay — the same Jesus who stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20). Then, at the table:

Their minds were taught and their hearts set on fire at the same time. Study without devotion has no passion; passion without study tends to lead somewhere bad. Listening to God brings both.

Third, listen to the Spirit who opens your eyes. “Their eyes were opened.” They could not make it happen; he did. Then Jesus promised to keep doing it: “I send the promise of my Father upon you” (Luke 24:49). On the road he walked beside them. Now his Spirit lives within those who follow him. “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance” (John 14:26).

God gives no new Scripture, nothing that adds to the Bible or binds anyone’s conscience. But the Spirit still personally leads his children. Peter said of the last days that God would pour out his Spirit and “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). Elijah heard “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). And “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13), so not every desire you feel is the flesh. How the Spirit speaks is always in harmony with his Word.

The voice of God has been abused — a man in a pulpit announcing that God told him you should give him money. That is God’s to deal with. Our response is not to retreat to a safe zone where God can say nothing to your struggle. Neither chase impressions and dreams nor despise them. “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Test them.

When you think you are hearing God — in Scripture, a desire, a dream, or a word from another believer — run it through four S’s:

• Scripture: does it agree with the written Word of God? If it contradicts Scripture, it is not from God.
• The Saviour: does it sound like your Shepherd and carry his fruit — love, joy, longsuffering, gentleness, temperance, kindness?
• The saints: have you let mature believers in your church speak into it, instead of retreating into isolation?
• Surrender: once it has passed the first three, are you willing to obey?

Start your quiet time with a scripture prayer: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119:18).