#13 - Hearing Gods voice - How does Lianne do it?

A question we get asked a lot is: 'I hear you saying God says this and that all the time, but how do you know that it's God speaking? And how do you do that? Listening to God?' So we thought, let's write it down. It'll be my story this week and next week it's Ramons' turn :) 

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How did it start?
For me, it started when I was about 17 years old. I was raised a Christian and knew about all the bible stories. I knew that it still happened, but I could count the number of people that could actually hear God's voice on half a hand: One man from church and my best friend Esther. 

When I was 17, I was mostly thinking about me and not about God and in the relationship department I made some choices that in hindsight weren't that smart (This was before I met Ramon, just to be clear ;)). During this time I kept hearing something in my head saying: 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' This would easily go on for a couple of hours and it was happening for a couple of weeks already. I didn't really know what to do with it and at one point I started to get a little annoyed with it. At one point, when I was in the ferry home from Rotterdam it started again and I said to myself: 'What is this, what does that I love you mean and for or from whom would my head think this?

Then I heard very clearly, as if someone was sitting next to me, 'ME'. I can tell you this much, I sincerely started thinking I was losing my mind, but I continued the 'conversation' nevertheless. That went somewhat like this:

Me: Who is ME?
Voice: God
Me: Okay, so I'm definitely losing it, I can't hear Gods voice
Voice: Well, apparently you can
Me: okay ... why 'I love you'?
Voice: Because I see the choices you make and I want you to know that I love you very much so that you don't have to make choices like these. Even more so, I've got someone ready that's much better for you.
Me: Oh. Now what?
Voice: Now I'll give you your daily reminder that I love you until you'll stop looking for that love somewhere else, get out of that relationship and come back to me.

What do you do in a situation like that? Get the help of an expert right? So I texted the only expert I knew: 'Hey Es, I think God spoke to me, but I'm not sure.' She called me and I told her what happened. She said: 'It does really sound like God, what are you going to do now?'

After giving it some thought I decided I was still very skeptical, but that I found it to big a risk to not listen. What if it would be God and I wasn't listening to what He said. That would pretty dumb. Besides, if I was being honest, I knew that the relationship I was in wasn't going anywhere. 

What do you do to hear God's voice and how did you find that?
I decided it would be a good idea to start praying and read my bible. I hadn't done that for a while. The problem was, I kept falling asleep during praying, so I decided to start writing my prayers down. Like some kind of diary/letter to God. After a couple of times of writing my prayers down, I felt like I needed to wait with putting the book down and keep writing, so I did. About 20 minutes later I stopped writing because my hand was cramping. I read what I had written down. It was an answer to what I had prayed, but also a lot of things that I wasn't even really thinking about. There were some firmer things in it, but also very sweet things, but they had one thing in common: it was all really loving. And I wasn't even super aware of what I had written down, I just did. So again I sent it to my expert, to test it. I felt like it was God, but an extra set of eyes could never hurt.

Eventually, this writing-thing became a habit that I did almost daily. It's a little less now because I've got three small kids. But, the times I do have quiet time, I try to get my little book or laptop and start writing. No thinking, just writing the first thing that came to mind and then read it later. Beautiful things came from this, that have really helped me so far and sometimes stopped me from making choices that I thought made perfect sense.

When do you hear God best?
I hear God best when I'm doing something that he gave me the talent or passion for; writing and singing. And since a couple of months parenting came in that list too. I've got a huge passion for creating a healthy family and training others to do so too. I've noticed that, since I started involving God more in how to respond to my kids or ask how I can help others doing that, I hear Him speak more and more. Much like the 'I love you' thoughts were when it all started. And of course it's not so that I ask God: should I vacuum clean or unload the dishwasher? But I do try to involve Him in more of the day to day life and ask Him things that aren't super important or life-altering.

In the beginning, I was really only listening to get answers to my questions. Then I realized that I would hate it to have a relationship with my kids that would only exist of a phone call with a question now and then and total silence the rest of the time. And ever since I started listening to build a relationship with God, I noticed that listening was getting easier and easier.