How God speaks to us

I was recently checking out the conversations on discus.com and came across this question.

You often hear Christians claim that God spoke to them. Ministers and pastors like very much to talk about their conversations with God. 

I was always confused by these claims. How does God speak to them? Is it an audible voice in their head. Does he arrange the clouds into text? Is it more subtle signs? I would like religious people to explain this to me. 

My thoughts on this are at they either lie or that they suffer from some type of mental illness when they hear voices in their head. 

Please enlighten me.

Here's my response

Your frustration with this is understandable. Especially given some of the outrageous claims that that have been made by televangelists who say things like “God told me that if you send me a gift of one thousand dollars he will return your gift ten-fold”.

Here’s my take on this.

Unless you're a prophet of God, I don't believe you'll hear God's voice audibly in this day-and-age. At least not while you're awake. However, there are many instances recorded for us in the Bible about God speaking to people in their dreams. In recent years, there have also been reports coming out of the middle-east from thousands of Muslims who’ve reported that Jesus appeared to them in a dream and had revealed Himself to them as the Son of God. The result has been that thousands of Muslims are converting to Christianity.

A more common way for God to speak to us is through His Word, the Bible. If you're a Christian (which means that you have the Holy Spirit living inside you), when you read or hear God's Word, it can speak directly to your heart to give your life direction.

I also believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to our consciousness in order to prompt us to take some specific action. For example, the Holy Spirit can whisper to your spirit something like "give that homeless person some money" or “go talk to that person about Jesus”. I've experienced this myself but I have never heard God's voice audibly. It was just a strong sense that I was being directed by the Holy Spirit to do something.

All of this said, like yourself, I also wish that Christians who claim that they've heard from God would be specific about how they heard from Him. Was it in a dream? Was it through reading God's Word? Did they hear God's voice audibly, or did they just feel inspired in their spirit?

How does God speak to you?

God bless,
Daniel