Hearing God 3

By Tosin Lawal

Devotional Reading: If you have the ability to speak in tongues, you will be talking only to God, since people won’t be able to understand you. You will be speaking by the power of the Spirit, but it will all be mysterious. 1 Corinthians 14:2NLT

Contrary to many people’s notion about God, God is a talking God. He is more willing to talk to you than you are eager to hear him speak to you. Hearing God is essential in life because it will save a person a lot of unnecessary stress. It will help you understand the plans and purpose of God for your life and how God wants you to go about it. Hearing God speaks to you is like walking in the light. You should not stumble, except you intentionally want to stumble.

In our opening texts, we read that any man who speaks in tongues speaks directly to God deep secrets in the spirit. God’s word says in 1 Corinthians 14:2 NIV that “anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit.” It further says in verse 4a that “anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves.”

Speaking in tongues is a unique ability that God has deposited in his children. There is no child of God without the inborn ability to speak in tongues. God designed speaking in tongues to be a significant part of our prayer life. To tell you how important and helpful praying in tongues is, Paul said to all the Christians in Corinth that he prays in tongues more than they all.1 Corinthians 14:18. Quite interesting and challenging.

The truth about tongues is that even though your mind may not comprehend the meaning, your spirit totally understands everything you are saying. Tongues is a language of the spirit. That your mind doesn’t understand it doesn’t mean that your spirit doesn’t either. Your spirit understands tongues. In other words, tongues is unknown only to your mind. I hope you call to remembrance that you are a regenerated Spirit who has a soul and lives in a body. And like it was said yesterday, your spirit is said to be regenerated because the spirit of God has been united to your own. Hence, by implication, your spirit is one with God and thus knows all things in the spirit of God. Your spirit fully knows all that God wants you to do. However your mind doesn’t. You need to continually renew your mind to position yourself to hear God and decipher his will.

God, our father gave all his children the inborn ability to speak and pray in tongues because it is a means of fellowshipping with God without any hindrance. In fellowshipping with God via tongues, your mind begins to open up, lightened up so much more that it begins to pick information from your spirit. The process of picking information from your spirit is what is known as hearing from God.

The more you pray in tongues in fellowship with God, the more easily it becomes for you to download from your spirit that which the spirit of God has been communicating to your spirit. In other words, Praying in tongues helps you better in hearing God. You will just realize that you just know that you know that this is what God wants you to do. That is why verse 4a of 1 Corinthians 14 says that “anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves.”

In other words, anyone that prays in tongues helps himself to be more open to receiving from his spirit that which the spirit of God has deposited there. This thus means that whenever you pray in tongues, you should also pray with the consciousness that you will hear from God. You should be expectant to hear and pick directions in your heart as you pray. You already know some of the major ways you can decipher that God is speaking to you.

The more you give yourself to practicing this, the more you begin to find it easy to hear God, so much more that with time, you will start to gain mastery of how you hear God. Dearly beloved, God speaks to you. He is a talking God who desires to talk to you more than you want to listen to him. Spend quality time with God daily by praying in tongues in fellowship with him. Live life every day with the consciousness that God is in and with you. Live life every day with the consciousness that God speaks to you and that you recognize his voice, for he is your father, Amen.

Prayer and Confession
You speak Lord and I know. I am one spirit with you. You are more interested in speaking to me than I am in desiring to hear you speak. Help me to prioritize spending quality time with you in prayers.

Further readings: 1 Corinthians 14:1-40, Jude 20
Reading Job: Job 21-25