How to Hear from God – Part 1

Story Time

Reframing the Problem

Proverbs 1:20-22

• Hearing from God is not a dilemma you have, but a dilemma God has.
• For most of us, our reality can be reframed this way: We are not trying to hear from God. God is trying to talk to us.
• This is us: “How do I get God to talk to me?”
• This is God: “How do I get people to listen to me?”
• Most people seeking information from God are not interested in His perspective. They want for their own perspectives.

Competing Commitments

Most people who seek help from God want one of the following things:

1. for the life they currently live.
2. for the life they would like to live.

Here’s the problem with wisdom: it sits outside of the life we would prefer to live.

Here’s why we resist wisdom: What God wants to tell us is at odds with the life we prefer.

Our preferred life is the one we would live if left to our own devices.

The irony of all of this is that the benefits of God’s wisdom will give us a life that is better than the one we prefer

Proverbs 3:13-18

The High Cost of Wisdom

With benefits like these, why doesn’t everyone heed wisdom?

Because wisdom is not free.

Wisdom costs you your preferred life.

Anyone would heed wisdom if its benefits were simply left out in the open to grab.

Wisdom and its benefits cost us our lives.

Proverbs 1:23

If you respond to God’s words with obedience, then He will give you more words.

Here’s the pattern: Hear and obey, hear and obey, hear and obey. . . .

• Matthew 7:24
• Matthew 7:26
• Proverbs 4:18-19

The Blessings of Wisdom

This pattern of hearing and obeying God is the path that leads to peace and prosperity.

The spirit of wisdom on you is not just to bless you, but to bless others:

• Daniel 5:11–12

The High Cost of Foolishness

The pattern of hearing and ignoring is a path that leads to calamity.

• Proverbs 1:24-32

The Security of Wisdom

Proverbs 1:33

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2022