Last week I wrote about my own experiences with listening to God's voice. Today the same questions I answered last week, are answered by none other than our family's coach and my favorite husband: Ramon Bakker :)
How did it start?
When Lianne asked me if I could write something about this subject, I answered 'yes' almost immediately, because this is a subject that I've been thinking about a lot. I wanted to 'talk' with God from the moment that I came to believe at age 17. This had different reasons. In the bible, I saw the special things that happened when God spoke. I couldn't and wouldn't settle with using the Christian faith as some kind of a coat rack to hang my ideals on. I heard a lot of people talking about having a relationship with Jesus. I thought that in a relation, you need to be able to communicate with each other; after all, communication is key. That's why I really reached out to every information I could get on learning how to hear God's voice. The church I went to after I came to believe, gave me a lot of space to practice this. They gave me room to make mistakes, it didn't have to be perfect. This really allowed me to learn from my mistakes.
What do you do to hear Gods' voice?
I love this question. I'm not going to pretend like I got this spiritual gift down to a science, because I believe that I can't and don't want to fully fathom God. I hope He will find new ways to surprise every time again. I will write from my own experience here, so you can do with that whatever you deem right.
First of all, I like to hear God's voice to get to know Him better, not to solve the worlds' big problems. I actually want to get to know his heart. I'm not looking for a place to lament and then expect Him to give me the solution. If I think about my relationship with Lianne, this is also not what I do to her or expect from her. It might be nice and easy for the moment, but in the long term, I will not learn to cope with and handle my own problems. That doesn't mean I don't run to God when I run into a problem, of course I do! But I'm not asking Him to solve the problems. I ask Him: What's your perspective on this situation and what do you want my attitude towards this to be?
When I just started listening to God, I needed absolute silence and all my concentration to even hear something a little bit. So I created situations that made it possible for me to hear God the best. Nowadays it's getting easier and easier for me, even when my surroundings are noisier.
After I created the right circumstances for myself (quiet), I simply asked God if He wanted to tell me something. A lot of times it stayed really quiet. This was really frustrating of course because I wanted it so bad. I found out that wanting it so bad was blocking God's voice because I was listening out of insecurity instead of from a place of relationship. At one point I started recording or writing down anything that popped into my head, even if I only slightly suspected it was from God. I started allowing myself to make mistakes and made myself teachable. I am an image-thinker, so I noticed started to show me more and more images. A lot of people ask me if I see it with my eyes when I see an image. That hasn't happened so far. I think you can explain it as what you would 'see' if I'd say to think of a pink elephant. God has shown me a lot of images in this exact way. Sometimes an explanation comes instantly, sometimes it comes later and sometimes it just doesn't come at all.
When do you hear God best?
It's easiest for me to listen to God's voice for other people because I don't know what's going on in their heads. This way it's harder for me to fill in the details of the situation with my own thoughts and opinions, simply because I don't know about it. Sometimes, when I'm stressed, it's really hard for me to listen, because I'm focused on the problem. In situations like those, I choose to worship Him, to get my focus to Who's actually important.
