What Do You Forfeit When You Miss Hearing God's Voice?

Before God can communicate to you what His plan and purpose for your life is, you’ll need to be able to hear His voice. This is an important step in coming to know our purpose, connecting and communicating “two-way” with God.

In this article we’ll address these four questions:

1. Can you have a meaningful relationship with God if you don’t communicate with Him on a regular basis?
2. Can you really communicate with God if you are doing all the talking?
3. How does God communicate with us?
4. What do we miss out on when we don’t spend time with God in
   prayer and in His Word?

Connecting and hearing from God is vital to a very personal, healthy, and meaningful relationship with our Creator. According to Barna Research Group, the nation’s leading faith and culture research organization, 70 percent of evangelical Christians who live in the United States cannot clearly identify God’s plan and purpose for their lives. Now think about this: can the body of Christ (Christians) really function as it should if 70 percent of us are unaware of our function and purpose? What would happen to our physical bodies if our body parts were unsure of their function and purpose? Can you imagine what would happen if a hand thought it was an ear? Maybe that’s where the sarcastic phrase “talk to the hand” comes from. Our physical bodies would be non-functional.

That’s exactly what has happened to the body of Christ, the Church (Christians), because it’s members – that’s us – individually are unaware of our purpose.

So here lies the question: How and why has this happened?

The answer is really simple. As Christians, we fail to comprehend what we miss out on when we fail to spend time with God, reading and meditating on His Word and hearing from Him directly through that living Word, on a regular basis. A whopping 90 percent of Christians have missed out on having the kind of “two-way” relationship that God intended for us to have with Him. You see, only 10 percent of Christians read their Bibles on a regular basis. As a result of not hearing and learning from God firsthand, sadly, most of our information on or about God tends to be second- or third-hand information. Our perception of who God is, what He has already done for us, past, present, and future, are mostly based on this second- and third-hand information.

We have allowed organized religion to replace the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. How? Well, if you haven’t invested time with God and His Word on a regular basis, then you have exchanged the voice of God for the voice of religion or even your pastor. Your perception of WHO God is, and WHAT He has done and will do for you is subject to the opinions of the religious leaders you listen to. Please don’t get me wrong here; God calls pastors to disciple us and help us grow. But pastors are not substitutes for the Bible. In fact, Martin Luther dedicated his life to giving all of us access to the Bible.

If Jesus were alive in the flesh today and you were attempting to understand a Biblical truth, would you ask the disciples or Jesus for an explanation of the truth? You would ask Jesus, the source of all truth, right? So what has changed today? Once we become members of God’s family, heirs to His kingdom, part of our inheritance is that the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us. The Holy Spirit is our personal teacher and mentor, our personal comforter, and guide. When we invest time with God, reading and meditating on His Word, the Holy Spirit mentors and reveals biblical truths to us.

If you are following Christ as you pursue God’s plan and purpose for your life, then hearing His voice is a must. If you struggle in this area, I would advise you to make sure you are spending plenty of time with God in His Word and in prayer. God desires two-way communication with us, but when we can’t hear His voice, we simply miss out on much of what He has planned for us, and what He has generously made available to us through His inheritance for us. Remember, when you became part of God’s family (by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord of your life), you were included as a beneficiary to His will. You are entitled to ALL God wants us to have. Family benefits. Family privileges. As they say, membership has its privileges. Favor ain’t fair; it’s JUST.

Now, at this point you might be thinking, Oh Gerald, that sounds like a prosperity message, not the suffering-for-Jesus message I grew up on. Yes, it is true that we will suffer on our journey, but I’ve got news for you. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so you could fail. He died on the cross so you could succeed. Jesus suffered and we’ll suffer for victory. There is rarely a success without a battle.

The question is, succeed at what? Some would say, “There he goes again with that prosperity ‘name it and claim it’ teaching.” No, those are your thoughts, not mine. The question is Godly success or worldly success? The success I’m talking about is successfully fulfilling God’s plan and purpose for your life. Nothing more, nothing less.

When Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day, this powerful event was part of God’s plan to allow us as His children to gain access to family benefits. Sadly, this is news to many believers.

Most of us already know how to speak TO God; we call it prayer. It’s just us talking to Him through our thoughts or out loud. When we pray, He’s always listening. We can pray on our knees, in our cars, in the shower, at work, in church ... anyway and anywhere. God not only loves us, but He loves to hear from us.

So if praying is the way we communicate with God, how does He communicate with us?

Through The Holy Spirit – When we receive Christ as our personal Savior, the Holy Spirit comes and resides inside each one of us. This is that quiet voice speaking inside you and into your thoughts.

Through Other People – God often uses other people to speak to us. He may use a message from your pastor, friends, family, or even a complete stranger.

Through His Actions – God often uses His actions to communicate His message to us. The Bible is full of examples of God sending a message through His actions. He opens doors, shuts doors, disciplines us, and rewards us with His actions.

(NOTE: Of all our communications to God, our actions speak the loudest to Him.)

Through Dreams – God has used dreams throughout history to communicate with man.

Through The Bible – This is the primary way that God will communicate with us. When we spend time with God in the Word and in prayer, the Holy Spirit reveals His message to us. He teaches us deep insights and communicates God’s fullest message to us.

While each book in the Bible wasn’t written specifically to you and me, it was written specifically for us.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV) – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

However God chooses to communicate with you, His message will NEVER contradict His Word. I have missed His message a few times when I have confused my feelings with the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

So beware, that feeling inside you may turn out to be the result of the chili you ate for lunch and not the Holy Spirit. Remember, we’re continually hearing four voices in our heads: our thoughts, voices from the world, lies from Satan, and truth from the Holy Spirit. But through time invested in God’s Word, you’ll come to recognize the Shepherd’s voice if you haven’t already.

This is a Biblical truth according to the following two scriptures in the book of John:

John 10:27 (NIV) – “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

John 10:4-5 (NASB) – “When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

When God is communicating to us, His message will be persistent, and He may send it through a variety of His communication channels. Many times when I’ve heard that quiet voice (the Holy Spirit) prompting me, I’m not at all surprised when I happen to read something in the Word that correlates with that specific message. Nor am I surprised when a friend or pastor shares a similar message. It seems that when God is speaking to me, I often get bombarded with the same message from many of God’s various communication channels. So when you think God is sending you a message, take it to God in prayer. Just ask Him, “Lord, is this you?” Wait for His answer; it will always bring peace to you. Then act on God’s instructions. Remember, God’s message to us is persistent, it will always line up with His Word, and it will always give you peace to obey.

The genesis of HisPlan MyPlan began with my hearing the voice of God. Not audibly, but a persistent calling to build a curriculum of how to identify and fulfill God’s plan and purpose for one’s life. The HisPlan MyPlan curriculum began as my personal life success checklist. Over the years of being mentored to, listening to great preachers, and spending much time with God in His Word, the ten chapters of the HisPlan MyPlan book, representing ten critical stages for walking in God’s will, began as my personal checklist. A spiritual how-to for dummies, with me being the primary dummy. I had stacks and stacks of journals and spiral notebooks containing everything I had ever learned from my studies of the Word. Lots of practical how-to’s and what-to-do’s. When my life would get out of balance, or I encountered trouble, or I stopped hearing God’s voice ... I looked to my notes for an answer. My notes always pointed to specific scriptures and what I learned from them.

HisPlan MyPlan also became the curriculum I used to mentor and disciple others. Because I was known as a successful business leader, people gravitated toward me throughout the years, for mentorship. When I brought up faith, they listened. Much of my time, energy, and money have been invested in helping hurting people who were struggling with life. It has always felt like an honor or a privilege when others reach out and share their very personal challenges, and to give me the chance to be part of their solution. The checklist was the center point for all my conversations.

In the late nineties, God began speaking to me about putting the HisPlan MyPlan message into a formal curriculum. I procrastinated and delayed. I reasoned with God that I am a business guy, not a preacher, or a religious teacher. But His message to me was persistent: “Do it. Obey.” At the time I was the president of an educational company. We had a curriculum department and I knew a thing or two about building a curriculum. But I felt so under-qualified to build some kind of faith-based study like HisPlan MyPlan. After all, a curriculum for whom? Who would read it? I didn’t want to do it. But God wore me down, so I finally obeyed and began developing the curriculum.

Months later when it was finished, I thought, OK, now what? Then one Sunday the video announcements of the church I attended advertised a career and purpose seminar. The bullet points on the big screen sure sounded a lot like what I had written. So I decided I might volunteer. I met with the pastor in charge of the event and he asked me to teach the course. That led to many other teaching and mentoring opportunities.

Then God began speaking to me about building a curriculum the world could access. So I pumped some serious dollars into creating an interactive online video curriculum. We had to purchase digital cameras and sound equipment and figure out where we would shoot the series. Getting video to run on a private website was hard to figure out back then. This was pre-social-media. Today everything online is built for video but back then there were many challenges.

After about a year, our work was finished and the website went live. Only one problem! How would anyone find it? How would we market it? I had self-funded the building of the site and the buying of the video and audio equipment, but I didn’t have the budget to market it. So I went back to God and asked, “Now what?” I needed to hear His voice. Then one afternoon God put an idea in my head. How did I know it was God? Because the idea wouldn’t work without a miracle. At the time, my company was the largest buyer of radio advertising in the part of Indiana where I wanted to launch. The idea was that I would approach the radio stations and ask them to give me a free spot for every paid spot I bought for my company. So if I bought 30 expensive drive-time spots at $300 a spot, I wanted 30 more drive-time spots for free. Unheard of. I essentially asked them to give me $30,000-$40,000 a month in free advertising for my platform. Trust me; they don’t do that.

I pleaded with God that this idea wouldn’t work, that perhaps God didn’t understand marketing the way I did. So of course, every station went along with our strategy, which was basically, “If you want to keep our business, you must do this.” The only station that balked was a national Christian station. Go figure. But I pressured them and they gave in too! Sometimes God plays hardball. We ran a 9-month campaign, 3,000 people went through our online course, and 150 people got saved the first month. This led to a year of live events in that city. All this to say, you’ll never get much done for God if you can’t hear His voice. God knows how to get things done. He’s always talking; we need to be always listening.

So what do we miss out on if we can’t hear His voice?

We miss out on two-way communication with God. We pray, He listens, He talks back, but we miss His voice. Why? Because many Christians have never connected not reading the Bible with not hearing His voice. And this has become a HUGE problem within the Body of Christ, the Church. Can you picture a football team where the quarterback could hear the players, but the players couldn’t hear the quarterback? It would be tough to call and execute a play, wouldn’t it? In fact, game-day would be one ugly mess. Or, imagine a battle where the command center could hear from the soldiers, but the soldiers couldn’t hear from the command center. Certain chaos leading to casualties and death. Well, guess what? If you are saved, you have joined the army of the Lord. Try getting anything done for God if you can’t hear His voice. As Christians, we’d end up pretty ineffective, wouldn’t we?

We miss out on a healthy relationship with God. Our Father desires a very personal relationship with us. If we can’t hear His voice, we miss out on a healthy relationship with Him. Let’s face it; it’s impossible to have a healthy relationship with anyone, including God, if your communication is all one-way, (you’re doing all the talking). I think we would all agree that one-way relationships are extremely unhealthy, and that any relationship or marriage would certainly fail if only one person did all the talking. That’s not communication. We’ve all known someone who doesn’t listen and only talks. You know, windbags. There’s one in every
family and plenty at work; they are everywhere.

I spend much of my time counseling Christians who are trying to identify God’s plan and purpose for their lives. I often ask them to describe their relationship with God and then somewhere in the conversation, I’ll ask them how much time they spend reading the Word and praying to Him. I’d say 80 percent of the time, I hear something like, “Well, not as much time as I should.” Usually, that’s code for “very little or none at all.” Without being legalistic I ask you this question: if we desire a healthy relationship with God, how much time should we invest in two-way communication with Him? Not sure? It’s really just common sense. How much time would you spend at the gym if you needed to get in shape? Would five or fifteen minutes get the job done for most of us? Oh I wish.

How about with God? At the end of the day, our results will be the evidence of the time invested. There are no shortcuts here; this is why we have priorities. God’s priorities are simply amazing to me. God has carved out a 24/7 availability schedule for every person on the planet who desires to get to know Him and follow Him. It would do us well to consider this fact as we set our schedules to include time with Him.

We miss out on a healthy perception of God. Who is God? Without a healthy relationship with Him, can we really answer that question? Oh, we can repeat what we’ve been told about Him, but we can’t really know who He is unless we have a healthy relationship with Him. And a healthy relationship only comes from investing time spent in two-way dialogue with Him.
Who is Bill Gates? We can all say “the founder of Microsoft,” or “one of the richest men on the planet.” But unless we’ve spent much time with him, our perception of him is only based on second-hand information. It might be gossip, lies, or the truth, but we wouldn’t really know what to actually believe.

The truth is, God wants us to know Him. He wants us to have an accurate perception of who He is and His unconditional love for us. Our perception of who He is, His love for us, what’s possible through Him, and His ways of doing things can get completely warped without proper perception. We can easily end up at the mercy of religious opinions, second-hand information, and outright lies from others who want to tell us what to believe. As a result, we end up with a plethora of opinions about things spiritual, but we’re unable to back them up scripturally to know what is true and what is false. Our knowledge of God’s truth will lack depth, and like a parrot, we can only repeat what someone else has told us, whether it’s true or false. We can easily end up with religious information about God, but no personal knowledge of Him, which comes only by investing time with God in His Word.

Has there ever been a time when a particular scripture jumped right off the page at you while you were reading the Word? You may have read that scripture a hundred times, but this time, you received a deeper truth. In these special moments, we get a revelation of the scripture’s truth directly from the Holy Spirit. This is the revelation that comes from having a relationship with God. It’s where religious information transfers to revelation knowledge, and it comes only from two-way communication with God Himself.

We miss out on having a strong faith. Life lived without faith is life lived in doubt, worry, and fear. Faith is central to receiving all God has promised us.

Hebrews 6:12 (NIV) – ...through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

So why is having faith one of our greatest areas of struggle? I’ve often said with sarcasm, “We Christians don’t have a problem believing in God; we have a problem believing Him.” Look, even Satan believes God exists, but to follow Him, we need to have faith in Him and His Word. And in faith, our actions will match what we believe.

James 2:17 (NIV) – In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

So why is faith such a struggle for us? Because so often our faith is based on will power, not Word power. Faith isn’t something we manufacture; it comes by spending time with God – in the Word, in prayer, and by doing what we believe.

Hebrews 12:2 (NIV) – fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

What an amazing system God has. First by faith, we have access to all God promises, and then God provides us with a process for developing that faith.

Romans 10:17 (NIV) – Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ.

In fact, we can’t please God without it!

Hebrews 11:6 (NIV) – And without faith it is impossible to please God.

The truth is, faith has been called God’s currency to receive all He willed for us to have. In the book of James, for instance, we read how we can receive Godly wisdom by faith. Faith is the currency required for gaining wisdom, and without it, we cannot expect to receive anything from God. God is not moved to action by our need alone. If that were true, there would be no lack in this world; there would be no suffering or hunger. God has a system, His way of doing things.

James 1:5-7 (NIV) – If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

When we accept Christ as our personal savior, we are all born into Christ with a measure of faith. Faith is a spiritual muscle that needs to develop. This faith muscle is like the mustard seed; it may start out tiny, but when it grows, it can move mountains.

Matthew 9:29 (NIV) – According to your faith it will be done for you.

Mark 11:22-24 (NIV) – Have faith in God, Jesus answered. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

Life is miserable without a developed faith. Without it, we live beneath our privilege in doubt, worry, and fear.

We miss out on every Biblical truth and promise meant for us. The scriptures are an immeasurable deep well of God’s truths, principles, promises, purpose, and will. It is our instruction book for life and abundant living. Through it, we get knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of God’s will. His Word is literally His will for us. It is both what He purposed (what will come to pass), and His literal inheritance to us as believers -- sons and heirs to His kingdom.

Acts 22:14 (NIV) – Then he said: “The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth.”

When I first began spending time with God in His Word, I realized the Bible was a book of promises, not a book of rules. The Bible became God’s personal will to me, my inheritance. Only a fool is left an inheritance but does not read the will.

The Bible is where God makes the unchanging nature of His purpose clear. It is where we come to understand the certainty of His promise. Through reading the Word, we can come to understand that we are sons of God and that we have an inheritance. Until we know who we are in Christ, we live like slaves, not heirs.

Galatians 3:26-4:7 (MSG) – But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ’s life, the fulfillment of God’s original promise.

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises.

Let me show you the implications of this. As long as the heir is a minor, he has no advantage over the slave. Though legally he owns the entire inheritance, he is subject to tutors and administrators until whatever date the father has set for emancipation. That is the way it is with us: When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives. But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage.

You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.

To learn God’s master plan and purpose for your life, you must be able to hear His voice. So much is simply forfeited when we miss out on the voice of God’s Word.

The Word is never silent, nor is God.

Jeremiah 7:23 (NASB) – But this is what I commanded them, saying, “Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.”

God is our King, our leader. He has a plan and purpose for each of us. To succeed in our journey to identify and fulfill God’s plan and purpose for our lives, we’ll have to prioritize and invest time with Him in prayer and studying His Word, the Bible. Our God makes Himself available to us 24/7. Communicating with Him is a choice we get to make every day of our lives.

The Big Idea

You’ll never do much for God or have a meaningful relationship with Him without hearing His voice. Miss this, and you will miss out on almost everything that God has planned for your life. Spending time with God in prayer, and in the Word, is essential to a healthy life. Without time invested in this area, you will have a starved spiritual life. Miss this, and you’ll miss out on most of the wonderful adventures, blessings, and rewards reserved for those who identify and fulfill God’s plan and purpose for their lives.

1. Don’t read the Bible. Don’t hear His voice.