God's Voice

By Riaan Engelbrecht

There is this strange notion these days that God no longer speaks to His people. It is said that God spoke in the Old Testament and that God today only speaks these days through His Word. Yes, it is true, that God does speak through His Word, but the wonderful and glorious news is that God does speak to His children. He has a voice, we have ears, and there is definite communication! Some even say that one is crazy to think one hears from God (voices in the head apparently speak of a deep-seated disorder). Others claim it is purely your imagination. This is sad because God is an incredibly personal God who wants to communicate with His children. He wants to talk to us, and He wants us to talk to Him. Just because someone has not heard from God does not mean He doesn’t speak! Think about it. The Creator of all actually speaks to us! He does not just speak to the apostles or the prophets but to each and every believer. This is the God whom we serve. An awesome God who is not distant, but a God who wants a personal relationship with us. Yes, we can hear from God as His children. There is no simple formula, but it boils down to relationship, fellowship, intimacy, and willing to follow and listen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Riaan Engelbrecht
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9791222458960

Riaan Engelbrecht

Ps Riaan Engelbrecht is the founder of Avishua Ministries, the vice-president of Lighthouse Ministries International and the station manager of Lighthouse Radio. His ministry deals primarily with the prophetic, but he also has a passion to teach the Truth of the Lord Jesus and His Kingdom for only the Truth of the Lord sets us free (John 8:32).  He is also a qualified and seasoned journalist.

Book preview

God’s Voice

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Scriptures quotes from the New Kings James Bible, Amplified, and the New International Version.

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Table of Contents

Yes, God still speaks

God as Three yet One

The voices that seek our attention

Act and respond to the voice of God

Live by God’s Word as His Voice alone

God’s voice in dreams and visions

Signs and wonders as God’s voice

God’s voice in the prophetic

Spending time on the ‘mountain’

Angels as God’s messengers

Turn to God’s voice of truth, not worldly narratives

Know God’s voice to know His will

Hear God’s voice above the storm

The voice behind the door

Yes, God still speaks

There is this strange notion these days that God no longer speaks to His people. It is said that God spoke in the Old Testament and that God today only speaks these days through His Word. Yes, it is true, that God does speak through His Word, but the wonderful and glorious news is that God does speak to His children. He has a voice, we have ears, and there is definite communication!

Some even say that one is crazy to think one hears from God (voices in the head apparently speak of a deep-seated disorder).

Others claim it is purely your imagination. This is sad because God is an incredibly personal God who wants to communicate with His children. He wants to talk to us, and He wants us to talk to Him. Just because someone has not heard from God does not mean He doesn’t speak! Think about it. The Creator of all actually speaks to us! He does not just speak to the apostles or the prophets but to each and every believer. This is the God whom we serve. An awesome God who is not distant, but a God who wants a personal relationship with us.

There is no clear and simple formula on how to hear the voice of God. I got saved in December 2001, when I was alone in my apartment late in the evening. My life was a train wreck. Miserable, lost in the dark, and given up hope. Out of that chaos, I hear the voice of the Lord. Before then, I had attended a church but had no relationship with the Lord. Hardly spoke to Him. How did I know it was Him speaking? Well, it is difficult to explain, since I was not even spiritually awake, but in that moment I just knew, somehow, that this is God speaking.

And what did He say? I still remember those words today. Are you ready to serve Me? Yes, those are the first words I heard from God. Sure, I believe God was speaking to me long before that, but I was not listening. There in my apartment, an appointed time had arrived, which is known as a Kairos moment. God spoke, and I listened. Was His voice loud? Was it audible? It was a still inner voice.

Some will say I was probably imagining something. Or it was my own voice. So how do I know it was God’s voice? Because when I answered yes, everything changed. God turned my life upside down. He made me into a new creation. He came to save and redeem me. But I needed to react and listen. I needed to answer God’s call.

I heard God’s voice even before I was baptised in the Spirit of God. I heard even before I was baptised in water. By the way, I was baptised in the Spirit before in the water. With God, there is no set formulas. We often try to place him in a box. After all, we live in a world that so many things come with a manual or a list of instructions. So we want to follow a list of instructions or read a manual on how to hear God’s voice. But it doesn’t work like that, God is not defined by our definitions. He is a supernatural God.

John 10 says, 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. So those who know God know His voice. 

God wants us to hear Him! He wants to speak to us, just as He longs for us to speak to Him. I didn’t know God when I heard His voice, but God allowed my spiritual ears to be open to comprehend what I was hearing. Since that day, my life has been about knowing God. As we know Him, we shall know His voice. God is not silent. The problem is never with God but we as mankind fail to hear Him. We are after all so busy with life and preoccupied with so much noise around us that we do not hear Him speaking.

Few things have the capacity to speak to people more than talk of ‘hearing from God’. People who don’t follow Jesus find it unsettling because it sounds as if we’ve got voices in our heads that we think are divinely inspired. Despite all that, we need to be quite clear: Christians hear from God. We worship a God who speaks; from the third verse of Genesis to the penultimate verse of Revelation.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). Yes, God has always been the Word, and He still speaks to us as the Logos (written Word) and Rhema (spoken word). We are sons and daughters of a loving Father, who wants a relationship with his children. We are the temple in which He lives and makes himself known. We are the sheep of our great shepherd, and sheep know their master’s voice. We are a body in which people prophesy, speak words of wisdom and knowledge, and use other spiritual gifts to edify each other. We are those to whom God has spoken, in these last days, through His Son and Spirit. We may get ourselves into a muddle and silliness sometimes, but as Christians, we are those who hear the voice of God. That’s how we came to follow Jesus in the first place.

The writer of the Hebrews talks about Jesus as God’s climactic and definitive act of speech: in years gone by, he says, God spoke to our ancestors in all sorts of ways, but now he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). The primary way of hearing the voice of God is through encountering God, or in other words, the person of Jesus. John 14 says, 6 Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus is the way of salvation and the way to a relationship with God as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Through the redemption by the Blood, we enter into a relationship with God and we can then hear Him speak!

If we want to hear God, we need to know him. This implies relationship. Samuel heard the voice of God but did not recognise it until he was instructed by Eli (1 Samuel 3:1–10). So many these days are saying they have not heard God speak. The reality is that God does speak, the problem is we are not tuned into Him. We either fail to recognise His voice because we do not know him, or we are too busy in this world or our voice or the voice of the world speaks louder, drowning out divine.

To hear God’s voice we must belong to God. Jesus said, My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (John 10:27). Those who hear God’s voice are those who belong to Him—those who have been saved by His grace through faith in the Lord Jesus. These are the sheep who hear and recognize His voice, because they know Him as their Shepherd. If we are to recognize God’s voice, we must belong to Him.

Yes, God has always spoken to His people. If it be in the Garden of Paradise, or to the kings and prophets of old, or to those under the New Covenant, God is real and alive. In the New Testament, Jesus in the manifested physical form spoke with a physical voice while on earth for 33 years. After His ascension, the Holy Spirit has come to primarily speak on behalf of the Trinity, even though the Father and the Son may speak as well to us as the Sovereignly choose. In Revelation 1 we read of John’s vison of Jesus, 17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. 18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death. 19 Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this." Oh yes, as Jesus in His glorified splendour spoke to John, so the Lord speaks to us who are still living. He will keep speaking to us for all eternity! We serve an awesome and wonderful God!

The disciples knew the voice of Jesus, for they knew Jesus. They walked with Him for years. They were constantly in His presence. They were constantly in His shadow, listening, hearing and watching. If we truly want to know the voice of the Lord, then we need to know God. It is that simple. The more we know someone, the more we know their voice, and as important, how they speak. Granted, God deals with all His people differently, for we are unique, but God is God and there is a way in which He speaks. This is of course incredibly important, for we need to discern between His voice, the voice of the world, the voice of your subconscious and the voice of the devil.

Just remember, our walk with God goes deeper than just listening to His voice. We are called to be intimate with God. Understanding the multifaceted ways God speaks is not just about hearing His voice as much as it is about developing a personal relationship and greater intimacy with Him. People can have a prophetic gift and understand mysteries, but without intimacy, those revelations will lack true fruit and will not be sustained for any length of time. Furthermore, spiritual insight doesn’t come to impart more knowledge to us; it comes to be applied to our lives.

Often believers will question whether God still speaks to us in this day and age. When this question arises, they are often referring to the audible voice of God. God can speak to us audibly if He so chooses; however, when it comes to hearing God’s voice outside the traditionally accepted means, at times it can be through something that gains our attention because it is unusual or out of character. We are not cookie-cutter Christians; we are unique beings, and therefore God will speak to us in ways that are unique to our spiritual makeup. God does not speak the same way to each of us. Sometimes His words come as a natural incident or event that is a revelation to you. This is not an invitation for us to go looking for omens, but if something is a little freaky, jumps out at you, or is regularly repeated, then take the time to get God’s perspective on it by looking at it through the lens of Scripture.

We hear His voice when we spend time in Bible study and quiet contemplation of His Word. The more time we spend intimately with God and His Word, the easier it is to recognize His voice and His leading in our lives. We should be so familiar with God’s Word that when someone speaks error to us, it is clear that it is not of God. At the end of the day, we need to know God intimately to know when He is speaking to us. If we fail to do so, we can be led astray by the voice of the world, or even our flesh.

God is so interested in us hearing Him and speaking to us that He sent the Holy Spirit to be with His adopted children. In the gospels, Jesus promises that He will send the Holy Spirit, or Paraclete (John 14:16). Although difficult to translate, we can understand the Paraclete as the One who comes alongside us in order to comfort, encourage, convict and coach. Holy Spirit often speaks to us in promptings and impressions on our hearts, encouraging us through trials, coaching us through challenges and prompting us to share the good news of the Gospel with others. Through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, we hear God’s voice, and we are guided, strengthened, edified, and empowered to do the will of the Lord.

Conversations with God, Book 1: An Uncommon Dialogue spent over two and a half years on the New York Times Best Sellers List, and in 2006 a movie based on the book was released. Conversations with God, or CwG, is the brainchild of Neale Donald Walsch. In 1995, Walsch released the first book in the series, followed by eight more books, all written as dialogues between Walsch and God. The basic premise of the series is that God is speaking to everyone all the time and that Walsch began listening. Walsch claims divine inspiration for Conversations with God, saying that God literally spoke to him (over my right shoulder), and he wrote down what he heard as if taking dictation. However, in an April 7, 2000, interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, Walsch admitted that he couldn’t be sure that it was God speaking and that the books could have been the product of his own subconscious.

In Conversations with God, Walsch says a voice told him that God is everything and everything is God. Therefore, we humans are God. Everyone around you is simply you in a different form, and we are all God. Here, Walsch is repeating one of Satan’s original lies, You will be as God (Genesis 3:5). Walsch also claims in the Conversations with God series that all life is eternal. Death is the great illusion. There is no judgment, no punishment, and no hell, for there is no reason for any of that—there is no sin. After death, a person goes to a different level of existence in order to continue the evolution of the human soul. This teaching in Conversations with God is in direct conflict with Hebrews 9:27 and many other passages of Scripture that teach the reality of judgment after death. Except for so many things in the series of books not lining up with the Word of God, it was simply the ‘way’ or the manner in which God ‘spoke’ that simply didn’t make sense. If we truly know God, we know His voice, and clearly, the book did not contain God’s voice. We also know His truth, and we will not be misled by devious or deceptive teachings.

Another example of the importance of knowing God’s voice is the deceptive work called Jesus Calling, a devotional by Sarah Young, which has multiplied into a publishing empire with offerings of Jesus Calling editions for teens and for children, calendars, editions with special leather covers, accompanying journals, a storybook, and even a devotional Bible. It was followed up Jesus Listens. It is written as though Jesus is speaking the words (Jesus giving advice in first-person language). Young claimed to receive the words directly from Jesus. Young’s admission that a primary influence on her was the book, God Calling by Two Listeners certainly raised red flags. The problem is not that God doesn’t speak directly, for He has always done so, but what He says and how He says it.  If we don’t know God, we shall not know His voice, and not knowing His voice can lead us down a path of deception, confusion and apostasy.

Throughout the history of religion, you will find an impersonal relationship between a god and the devotees.  If this is the ancient Canaanite religions of Baal worship, or the gods of Greece and Rome, or the gods of the Aztecs, you do not find a real personal relationship between man and god. This includes the Vikings who worshipped many gods and goddesses, each with their own personality and stories. There are many tales of the greatness of such gods – impersonal and cold. However, the true greatness of the Lord of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is that He wants to fellowship with man. And such fellowship includes a relationship of intimacy, love, hope and of kindness.

The pagan has always had a fatalistic outlook on life, especially in the ancient days. He believed that the individual is helpless; that he is wholly at the mercy of relentless forces outside of himself; that there's nothing he can do to improve his lot. Mythology tells how special gods were in charge of everything affecting human life. Some gods controlled thunder; some controlled lightning; some controlled rain. There were sun gods, love gods, gods of jealousy, gods of hatred, and gods of war. Whimsical and prankish gods looked after everything. All that man could do was to keep peace with them by making such sacrifices, human and otherwise, as were dictated by tribal custom.

From the pagan viewpoint, man is passive. His place is fixed. He has no freedom of will. His fate is decreed. If he tries to resist, his efforts will be futile. So mankind constantly tried to appease the gods. Gods were viewed as the ones who controlled all things. Such a relationship is thus cold, impersonal, and not all based on any form of love, hope or fulfilment. This is, however, not the case with the loving God of Israel, who is the only true and real God – the God of Jew and Gentile. The King of kings and Lord of lords – a personal and loving God.

Some point to the sacrificial system of the Israelites that mirrored the call for sacrifices by other pagan religions. Thus they say all religions are the same. Such sacrifices did exist in the days of Israel, but then again, no human sacrifice was required. The other major difference in the ancient days, even though God did require sacrifices as part of the peoples’ obedience, is that He showed Himself to be a personal and loving God. When God called upon Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22), it was never the intention of God for Abraham to actually commit such an act. This was a prophetic action, even though unbeknownst to Abraham, pointing to the day that Jesus would be a sacrificial ‘lamb’ willing to lay down His life for all mankind.

God thus spoke to Abraham. He spoke to Noah, Moses and so the list continues in the ancient days, all building up to the day of the arrival of Jesus. It says in Exodus 33: 11 The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend... 18 Then Moses said, Now show me your glory. 19 And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But, he said, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. 21 Then the Lord said, There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."

God eased the people gently into the reality of dealing with a personal God within an environment of pagan worship where humanity was completely left to the mercy of the gods. He is after all a personal God. He went before the people in a pillar of cloud and by fire. His very presence was in the Tent of Meeting.

The absolute uselessness of worshipping any other supposed gods is described in Isaiah 44, for they are without life, without the power of without any influence. God’s long-term goal was simple. Establish a covenant where God and man will be united, not yet in a spiritual realm, but here on earth. This was achieved through the coming of Jesus, the death on the cross, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The entire life and message of Jesus were that God is alive, that God is real and that we serve a loving God. With the Great I Am one can talk, and have a real relationship. It is mind-boggling to think that God comes to dwell in man through the Holy Spirit and that God is now with man until the end of all when God finally walks and abides with man – side by side.

A simple definition of a relationship is how two or more people or things are connected or the state of being connected. It can also speak of the state of being connected by blood or marriage. And this is exactly what we have with the almighty divine God – a divine connection sealed by the Blood of Jesus and so we are now as the Bride betrothed unto the Lord. Those who truly remain true to the Lord, thus to the relationship sealed by the Covenant of Grace, shall cry aloud one day as the Bride of the Lord to be with the Lord for all eternity. We are His Bride and He is our Lord. It was always God’s intention not to leave His creation alone, for He is a loving and personal God. Through Jesus, He connected all mankind with God, and then through the Holy Spirit (the living waters) mankind shall always remain connected until the reality of the New Jerusalem.

We read in Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." What a personal and loving God we serve! Yes, He will never leave or forsake us. Even when Jesus died and ascended, we were not left alone. The Holy Spirit was poured out so that we are not left alone! Glory to God.

This concept of abiding in the Lord, and communicating with divinity, thus sharing our feelings and thoughts, is far removed from the pagan module of worship. In our relationship with God, man is not static, and he is not powerless. Man has plenty of power based on free will – thus the power to choose to serve God or not to serve God. Thus to choose life or death. The coming of the New Jerusalem completes the circle from Genesis to Revelation. In Genesis, man walked with God in the Garden of Paradise. A real relationship. And then there was the fall into sin, the separation between man and God, and then the reestablishment of that relationship with through Abraham, Noah and Moses. The connection was made complete with Jew and Gentile with the coming of Jesus, and then Revelation describes how all believers will again have that relationship that Adam enjoyed. Yes, we shall again walk with Jesus who is the second Adam.

Jesus came to show us that we serve an awesome and amazing relationship-building God. This God is not impersonal but cares for us deeply. Yes, we have free will, and we can choose, but God’s desire is for us to lead our life to His Glory, and to follow His path of goodness and hope. Jesus came to show us that God is not aloof but knows all about us. He wants to provide for us, He wants us healed, and delivered, and He wants us to be joyous, provided for and strengthened by His might.

This is after all the premise of John 3:16. The beauty of the Lord’s ministry and His voluntary death to establish a relationship-building Covenant is underlined in Ephesians 1 when Paul writes: "3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to