Why Does God Speak to Some and Not Others?
Does God speak to some people more than other people? Why do some people hear God speak to them all the time and others never hear God?
Does God speak to some and not others?
The truth is that God speaks to all people, all the time. He’s constantly speaking. But some people have unknowingly hardened their heart to His voice, while others are more sensitive to His voice.
Chances are, when you were a child, you heard God much more frequently than you do now. When you were a child, your heart was still softened toward God. Your ears were still open to hear His voice. But over time, the world hardens us. Bad relationships harden us. Less than perfect parents harden us. We begin to reject this voice of love and kindness. We put up walls around our heart that block His voice.
Think about the last time someone complimented you. Most people have a very hard time receiving compliments. There is something that blocks us from believing the good about ourselves. This is why it’s hard for so many of us to hear God. When you hear the kind and gracious words He speaks, you unknowingly reject them. You refuse to accept them as God speaking.
I totally understand this struggle. The truth is, God is absolutely delighted with you. The ways He sees you is perhaps much different than you have been taught.
You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you. Song of Solomon 4:7 ESV
God simply adores you. He thinks you are amazing. It’s so hard for some of us to accept this truth. How could God possibly be smitten with me? How could He possibly be pleased with me? Despite your doubts, it is reality. He is absolutely head over heels in love with you.
You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. Song of Solomon 4:9 ESV
People that hear God regularly are people that have accepted the truth about who God is and what He thinks of them. They have accepted the reality that God is completely good, and completely in love with them. They have softened their hearts to this goodness and therefore are able to walk in agreement with God.
Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Amos 3:3 KJV
Once you begin to accept the truth about who God really is, how He sees you, and how He feels about you, God’s voice becomes so much clearer. You will be able to discern when He is communicating to you and tune into His voice like never before.
God’s Voice is Kind
More times than not, we are listening for God to speak in a harsh voice, correcting us at every turn, demanding that we straighten up and “be more like so-and so”. But this just isn’t God. He completely enjoys you, exactly how you are. He has taken sin out of the way, completely destroying it. He has washed you clean, as clean as Jesus. Now He just wants to do life with you, to spend time with you. He enjoys every moment.
Until we tap into God’s delight for us, it’s very hard to hear Him. We just won’t be tuned in. God is love, and He’s a good Father. Even if you were one of the few who had a good father in the natural world, God’s goodness is on a whole other level. It is hard to accept, even for the best of us.
Not only does God always speak kindly, He is incredibly gracious and selfless. Somehow religion has given us the idea that God is big and powerful and demanding of worship at all times.
While He is very powerful, this imagination of Him being full of Himself is completely inaccurate. God is extremely humble; He puts others above Himself. He is the most generous being alive. Because of wrong teaching, it can be hard to accept this selfless, generous voice when we hear it. We just can’t fathom how God would put our well-being above His own, but this is truly His character.
God’s Voice is Relational
Usually when we are listening for God’s voice, we are listening for instructions, for corrections, and for guidance. While God does speak these things to us during certain seasons, He is much more relational than we are. We are directional, but He is relational. He just wants to spend time with us. He wants to talk relational things, like how pleased He is with us and how much He loves us.
We can tend to think that conversations like this are a waste of time, like what we really need are instructions on the next assignment. We think we need direction about that relationship. These things are important, but the more we fellowship with God, the more we allow Him to love us, these things come as a side effect. As we walk with Him, we are always led on the right path.
If we start to head down a path that’s not where the Lord is leading us then our spirits will instantly pick up on it because we are in constant relationship with Him.
God’s Voice is Empowering
Unfortunately, many of us grew up with parents who were always beating us down or constantly criticizing and correcting us. While most of them had good intentions, this is not at all the way God leads us or relates to us.
God will empower you more than anyone you have ever met. He believes in you – like really, really believes in you!
We come to God thinking that He’s looking at how bad we’ve failed or how many mistakes we’ve made. But this is not what God sees. He sees someone who has the very spirit of God living in them, ready and equipped for complete greatness. In God’s mind, you can do anything He can do!
God is always uplifting you and encouraging you. He never beats you down. He doesn’t nit-pick at all your flaws. In fact, He doesn’t even see them. He sees you in the spirit, where all your sin has been wiped away. He’s completely pleased with you.
It seems counterintuitive, but as you focus on how pleasing you are to the Lord, the areas that you consider weaknesses will naturally transform. You become what you are constantly beholding. If you are always looking at what’s wrong with you, those areas will only grow worse. But if you keep your focus on how God sees you, you will see your behavior transform effortlessly.
God’s Voice is Loving
There’s never been a human on this earth that loves you as much as God loves you. It is so hard for us to understand this type of unconditional love. There are no strings attached, nothing you can do to earn or deserve it. God loves you because of who He is, He is love.
The depth to which God loves us is almost foreign to our brains. It has to be received on a heart level. If you’ve grown up with rejection or the feeling that you aren’t good enough, it can be hard to accept God’s kind of love.
If you grew up with parents who withdrew their love when you messed up, it can take some time to trust that God never does this. His love never changes, no matter what you do. It is constant, never-ending, and powerful.
Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised. Song of Solomon 8:7 NKJV
Everything God does and says is through love. This is why it is so hard to hear Him until you accept His love for you. When you decide to believe and accept His love for you, it’s like you become tuned in to His voice in a new way. You will hear Him and sense Him all the time.
God’s Voice is Close
Most people miss God not because He is so far, but because He is so close.
We brush His voice off as just our own thoughts or feelings. We basically His voice it to the side unknowingly. If you are a born again Christian, you are one spirit with Him. You can’t get any closer than one spirit!
But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 1 Corinthians 6:17 NKJV
God is always with you (Matthew 28:20), and He’s always communicating.
If you think God is afar off, you’ll miss Him. If you think He is going to speak through a booming voice from heaven all the time, you will miss His still, small voice that’s always with you. You’re tuned in to the wrong channel.
The majority of the time, God communicates internally. It doesn’t seem supernatural, it seems so close. His voice has been with you so long that you write it off as your own. But His voice has always been there.
God’s Voice Sounds Like You
This is probably the number one reason people think they don’t hear God! God speaks to your spirit, and then your spirit communicates the message to your brain in the first person. For more about this, read Can God Speak to You Through Your Mind?
So when God speaks, much of the time it sounds like your own voice or your own thoughts. Many people dismiss what God is saying because they think it is themselves. The way you discern what is God communicating versus what is just you is through knowledge of the Word of God.
The more time you spend in the Bible, the more familiar you will become with God’s voice. The Word of God will help you discern what is God and what is not.
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 NKJV
If you are somebody that constantly doubts yourself, it will make it harder to trust that God’s voice comes from within you. You have to begin to trust your intuition. The longer you have spent walking with God and His Word, the more reliable your own thoughts and intuition will become.
God’s Voice is Not Always in Words
Many people are listening for God to speak in words, but He doesn’t always speak in words. Many times His voice comes through knowing, and intuition, a feeling, or a sense. It’s something that comes from inside you. Maybe you see something in your imagination and that is Him speaking. God is not limited to words. He is so much closer than that.
God will communicate to you most of the time in the way you most easily receive it. But because you so easily hear him this way, you write it off and don’t recognize that it’s Him communicating.
Think about the last time that you had an interaction with God, when you really knew that He had communicated with you. How did you receive that? Did you sense something? Did you just know something in your heart? Did you see something? Feel something? This will help you determine how you are already hearing God and help you tune in to that flow!
God is always speaking, and the Bible says that His sheep do hear His voice.
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. John 10:27 NKJV
And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. John 10:4 NKJV
Reject the lie that you don’t hear God. It’s just not true. You are hearing God, even if you haven’t recognized it as Him. As you begin to recognize the way He speaks to you, you too will start hearing Him all the time. And there’s nothing more wonderful than hearing His voice!
For more about hearing God, read:
Can God Speak to You Through Your Mind?