How God Speaks to Us

The Lord said to Moses, “. . . I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.”
–Exodus 24:12

God communicates His will to us in various ways. Let’s look briefly at six ways God speaks to us, which we’ll study more in-depth in the coming weeks.

• God primarily speaks to us through His Word. When God wanted to reveal His plan for Israel, the laws by which they would live, He wrote those commandments on two stone tablets. God’s written Word guided the people of Israel, and His Word is still a primary means of discerning His direction for our lives.
• God speaks through prayer. We can do many things to determine God’s will after we have prayed, but there is nothing more important we can do until we have prayed.
• God speaks through special revelation, such as dreams, visions, and supernatural signs.
• God speaks through wise counselors. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.”
• God speaks through circumstances. In Acts 20, Paul rerouted his trip to Syria when he learned about a plot to kill him. God used Paul’s circumstances to direct him.
• God speaks through our desires. Philippians 2:13 says, “God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (NLT). Your passions and preferences could be desires God has placed in your heart to lead you in the way He wants you to go.

It’s a mistake to think God speaks in only one way. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error [would] be to think that He speaks only within, whereas in reality He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books, etc.” The truth is, God speaks to us in a variety of ways.

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Today’s devotion is adapted from “Discovering God’s Will” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

C. S. Lewis to Miss Helen Hadow, June 20, 1952, in Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis and Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017), 542; emphasis in original.

Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.