Could This Be Why You’re Not Hearing from God?

“God doesn’t talk to me.” “I can’t hear God’s voice.” “I don’t know what God sounds like.”

Hearing from God is pivotal to the life of a Christian. Not only do we seek guidance from His Word, but we also ask Him questions about which path to take, what to do, and how He wants us to behave. We want insight into situations we find ourselves in. And we long to receive His words of love and comfort, especially when life around us is full of chaos and heartache.

Yet there are times when we struggle to hear His voice, when it seems that He is silent. Why is that?

I won’t be able to address any and every situation that might make it harder to hear from God—at least, not all in this episode. But there is one issue in particular that I’ve noticed in my own life, and I bet you can recognize it in yours, too. And if we truly want to hear from God, it’s something that we’re going to have to address.

So what is it? What can prevent us from hearing from God? You don’t expect to.

Let’s take a few minutes and unpack this idea together.

Getting Ready to Hear from God

In the last episode, we went through a Bible journaling session together using a 4-part framework: Ready, Recognize, Receive, and Respond.

And today, we’re going to kind of dive into that first piece a little bit more. Because getting ready to journal with God is more than just a physical thing, where we get our environment and materials ready to go. It’s a heart thing, too.

We sit down with our Bibles and our journals, and we ask God to speak to us as we read His Word… and sometimes it can feel like there’s nothing. Nothing gets highlighted. There’s no big revelation. We walk away feeling like that time wasn’t very useful. We don’t feel like we actually connected with God. We didn’t hear from Him like we had hoped.

And I’ve noticed that there are times when we really aren’t ready to hear God’s voice. We think we are. We say we are. But there’s something getting in the way.

And as I said a few minutes ago, I think it’s because so many of us carry around this belief that we can’t hear from Him. Or to put it another way, a belief that God doesn’t speak to us.

As a result, even though we pray and ask God to help us hear Him, we don’t really expect to hear Him. Because we don’t expect Him to say anything in the first place.

Maybe you can relate to one of these scenarios:

• You walk into your church focused on the lesson you need to teach and getting your kids to their appropriate classrooms. You dive right into teaching and rush to make it to the sanctuary on time for the worship service to begin. There’s no real expectation of actually hearing from God that day; just consuming thoughts of serving others and watching over your family.
  
  
• Or maybe you pray in the morning, asking God to be with you throughout the day and guide you along the way. But you’re more focused on your to-do list than you are sensing those sacred nudges from Him about whether to call a friend, or pause and sit outside for a moment, or listening to your child describe a new discovery they just made.
  
  
• Or perhaps you open your Bible, say a perfunctory prayer asking God to meet you as you read, and then you just read. And your heart isn’t actually listening for God to say anything to you, or you don’t see how something that happened thousands of years ago in a different culture has anything to do with you. You just check it off your to-do list and move on.

Explore Your Deeper Belief

You don’t expect to hear from God. You don’t expect Him to speak to you.

The question is, why? Why do you hold this belief? What is it that makes you think God doesn’t have something to say to you?

Maybe it was taught to you in some way. Maybe someone told you that the only way God speaks to us today is through His Word.

Maybe you feel unworthy, like, “Who am I for God to speak to me? I’m a speck of dust in this big universe. I’m nobody. God’s talking to the more important people—not me.”

Maybe your past sins make you think you aren’t good enough to hear from God. That you’ve already messed up, and He can’t use you.

Take time to explore this in your journal. And if you can’t pinpoint a reason, ask God to reveal it to you. He can do that—if you’re willing to hear it.  

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What the Bible Says

The truth is, God still speaks to His people today. Not to a Bible-level authority. Not always in a big, mind-blowing revelatory way. But He does speak to us as His children. He speaks His words of love and peace and comfort and guidance to us. He reminds us of His promises.

How do I know? The Bible tells me so.

John 10 teaches us about Jesus, our Good Shepherd, and He says that His sheep know His voice. That implies that He is speaking to us, right? We can discern His voice from a stranger’s. We can discern it from the thief’s voice. We can discern it from our own.

And in John 16:13-14 (ESV), Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Did you catch that? The Holy Spirit speaks and declares things to us.

And the cool thing is, God can speak to us in so many different ways. Through His Word, yes, absolutely. That’s the foundational one. But also through other people, through music, through books, through dreams, through art, through nature.

So whatever it is that is making you think that God doesn’t speak to you or He doesn’t want to speak to you, that’s something you need to figure out. Identify the lie that’s there and replace it with the truth. God still speaks to His people today. He does! And He wants to speak to you, my friend. He has something to say to you.

Are You Ready?

You know, when I served as a children’s ministries director, we would welcome the kids into the classroom one by one, and I would ask them a series of questions:

Are you ready to sit quietly and listen?

Are you ready to play with your friends?

Every now and then, I’d throw another question in there. But I would always end with this one:

Are you ready to hear what God might have to say to you today?

It sparked in them the idea that God might actually share something with them during our time together. That God wanted to talk with them personally.

Maybe you need that same spark planted in you. So I’m going to ask you that question, too.

Are you ready to hear what God might have to say to you today?

Journal Prompts

So I’ve raised the question. I’ve shared how there are many times when I’m not actually expecting to hear from God.

And if you can relate to that, I want to offer you some journal prompts that can help you explore some of your beliefs and experiences around hearing from God. You are welcome to go through each of them or focus on the 1 or 2 that really resonate with you.

1. What messages—spoken or unspoken—have I received from others about how God communicates?
2. Do I feel unworthy to hear from God? What experiences might have shaped that belief?
3. What specific fears might keep me from really listening to God?
4. How does John 10 (sheep knowing the Shepherd’s voice) encourage me personally?
5. What would change in my daily life if I really expected God to speak?
6. How could I start my Bible reading time with a posture of genuine expectation?
7. How could I use journaling to capture moments I think might be from Him?

Prayer

Today’s prayer is an excerpt from the book, Every Moment Holy, by Douglas McKelvey (Amazon affiliate link). I chose it to help us recognize any lies we might have believed so that we can replace them with the truth.

O God… if our hearts have… been tempted this day
to believe anything about ourselves or others
that does not take into account your creation,
your mercy, your sacrifice, your grace,
your forgiveness, your redemption,
and your unshakable love, O God,
remind us again of these truths,
giving us faith enough to believe
and hope enough to choose
to embrace them again and again.

RELATED EPISODES:

• Episode 183: [Bible Journal Session] How Do You Need to Be Restored?
• Episode 173: [Written Spiritual Direction Session] Dialogue Journaling
• Episode 99: Spiritual Practices to Help You Learn to Hear God’s Voice (Re-Release)
• Episode 94: Entering the Silence and Stillness with God: A Conversation with Blogger and Writer Celia Miller
• Episode 91: When God is Silent: Experiencing His Presence in New Ways

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