Every day you need to make time to listen to God. He is speaking to you all day long. If you’re not hearing it, then you’re not listening. Or you’re listening to the wrong things.
When you listen to God, you gain clarity about your purpose and direction in life. You receive guidance on how to navigate difficult situations or make important decisions. And most importantly, you experience His love and presence more deeply than ever before.
God will speak to you more when you are close to Him. As you grow in your relationship with Jesus you will get to know and understand Him better. Then you’ll learn how to hear God.
Yes, it’s something you must practice. You need to focus. This is why you must MAKE time to do it. It’s not simply going to happen. Especially when you have a thousand other things going on. Therefore, make time to listen to God.
Taking a few minutes each day to quiet your mind and listen for His voice can have a profound impact on your life. It’s like tuning into a radio station that is always broadcasting but you need to adjust the frequency so you can hear exactly what God is telling you.
Referenced Verses:
Hebrews 4:12
Jeremiah 33:3
Romans 8:9
John 14:26
Romans 8:26
Joshua 1:8
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries, my name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you for being here today. This is going to be a great message that will hopefully help you out in life, help you to excel and do more, and really connect and communicate with God.
If this is your first time here, hit that subscribe button, follow us on social media, and stay tuned for weekly sermons to come. Also, take some time, navigate back through our old messages. There is gonna be one, the title is gonna jump out at you and you are gonna say, I need to watch it and allow it to change and help you change your life.
If you are a returning visitor, hey start using those share icons. You never know when someone on your social media needs one of these messages to speak into their life. That is the beauty of the Bible, it is timeless. You can have 10 people speak a message on the same verses and you are going to get 10 different messages. Why? Because the Word is alive and active. It is alive. You can read it each and every day, you could read the same verse and get something different.
It can touch you in a different way, because it is living and active, it is not dead. It is alive, it is living and it has this power to be able to communicate with your spirit, the holy spirit, and change your life. You need to be making that connection, you need to be growing your spirit. You need to be connecting with God.
The Bible tells us that the spirit of God longs for God. It calls out father, father and He wants to be in communication with it. How do you do that? Well, you need to take time to listen to God. You have to listen to God. Allow God to speak to you. How does this happen? Well mainly God speaks to you while you are reading His Word, the Bible. That is the main way that God will talk to you.
Another great way God talks to you is through other people, through your teachers, your leaders, your pastors, through these sermons. When you are scrolling through all our videos, there is going to be one and it pops out to you and you see that that is God speaking to you. Watch it and take it in and learn.
Hebrews 4:12, ‘For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.’
That is the Word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. There is a reason why when you speak the Bible or when you share the Bible, people do not know what to do. Some people tremble, others rejoice, some get energy. Because it is alive, sharper than any two-edged sword. It can penetrate, it can cut you deep.
How does it cut you deep? It might convict you of your sin. It can cut you deep. God speaks to you, His Word is alive and active. This is the best way to learn and hear from God, read what He wrote, the Bible. Sometimes God also talks to you in your thoughts and ideas. He can guide you through your thoughts, through your ideas, the Holy Spirit that is within you can speak to you.
This is why it is important that you have to set aside some time every day, some quiet time to be with God. Now you might say, hey my life is so busy, I got six kids, they are all under the age of ten, I got a wife but we have got this. I have got this. I am taking care of my in-laws. They live here. All this stuff you might say. My life is too busy.
Hey, guess what, you still have time for God. When you are driving to work in the morning alone in your car, that could be time for God. Some people say I do not even have that, I have to drop my kids or I do not even have a commute to work. Guess what, when you are taking a shower, time with God. Well, my showers are limited to five minutes. Five minutes is better than nothing.
There is time that you have alone each day and this time with God does not need to be all at once, it could be times when you are by yourself on a lunch break from work or you are in the shower or you are in the bathroom or whatever in your car driving. Wherever you have time by yourself, you can start taking that alone time and dedicating it as time with God. Clear your mind, speak to God. Let Him talk to you.
However the best time would be if you really can dedicate some time to truly be alone, I do not care if it is you go in your closet and shut the door and sit there, that is your business. If you want to do that, that could be your time with God.
My uncle once told me a story of a co-worker of his, who was worried about, I do not know what other people would think of what I was doing. He said, hey listen, if you choose to go home after work and sit in the closet for an hour and meditate, that is your business, you can do it. He said this probably in 1970. There is importance of being alone, meditating, and spending time with God. You have to dedicate time to Him however you can do it.
A great time to dedicate time to Him though is after you have been reading the Bible. Why? Because the Bible is living and active so it will get your spirit stirred up reading these words. When you are done reading, do not simply close the Bible and go about your day. Close the Bible and sit there, allow yourself some time to process what was read. Meditate on it. Listen to God.
We are all guilty of not giving God enough time after we read the Bible. Now it is not that we have to, but it is so much better if we do even five minutes. You read the Bible, you are done, you close it, you set it down, you shut your eyes, and just. Sit there in silence for five minutes and let God speak to you. Doing it after you have read the Bible, you are already in the right frame of mind.
During that time you got to be quiet though, you cannot be thinking about, all right I got to do this and then I am going to do this. I got to pick up so and so, got to go to this, I got to do this. No, you got to kind of shut all that out and just focus on what you read. Think about it. You start actively thinking about the words and verses you read. All that other stuff will stay out. You gotta actively think about it. Think about the words you read, say them in your mind.
You do not say them like you memorized them, but say the ones you remember in your head and guess what, God is going to speak to you through all of that. Because you are focused on what is alive and active. You are communicating in another area.
We live in this world, we are not of this world. So if you are sitting there quietly and you are thinking about all the things you have to do in this world, you are of the world. No, we are not of the world. So when you are sitting there quietly, think about the things that are not of this world. The Bible, the scriptures, what you read, and your soul and your spirit will be not of this world and you will get that insight.
God will speak to you. No distractions, clear mind, focus only on God, close your eyes, great time to pray to Him. Ask Him to speak to you. Ask Him to fill you up. Ask Him to reveal that. Pray and wait, do not let anything enter your head, just focus on that stuff. Focus on the Bible, ask God to enter your mind.
Jeremiah 33 verse 3, this is an excellent verse. We have read it in a number of sermons. Jeremiah 33:3 says, ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ He wants to tell you stuff. He wants you to call on Him.
After you are done reading the Bible, sit there, meditate on it a little bit, be quiet, and think about it. Think about what you read and call to God. Say, God, give me something, give me some answers, give me some guidance. He says call to me and He will give you great and unsearchable things. He will tell you stuff you do not know. How great is this? I want to know more. Just say that, God I want to know more. Just sit there quietly, focus, and listen to God.
It is the holy spirit that will speak with you, to you, communicating with you. Your spirit longs for God. John 14:26 says, ‘But the counselor, the holy spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.’
The holy spirit will remind you. This is Jesus speaking. He is saying right now at this time when Jesus was here, everyone did not have that yet. Jesus died, ascended, rose again, all that, and then now when we become a Christian, we believe in Jesus, we get the Holy Spirit. The holy spirit will tell us and remind us of everything that Jesus told us.
That means as you are going through life, you might think oh I have a little angel and a devil on my shoulder. No, you have the holy spirit within you that is convincing you and convicting you of certain things, that is reminding you of scripture, that is speaking through you, that is flowing through or shining out of you. Be a light. It is shining in the darkness through you. You are the vessel.
Romans 8 verse 9, ‘You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature, but by the holy spirit. If the holy spirit of God lives in you and if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.’ You say, wow that is kind of confusing.
Well the apostle Paul wrote it, so it is very educated. You are not controlled by this world anymore. The old is gone, the new has come. You are a new creation in Christ. That means you have the holy spirit so you do not live by the sinful desires of this world, but by the spirit, and if the spirit of God lives in you, you belong to Christ.
Those other people that do not have the spirit yet, yeah they might think you are weird or different or you are too bright or you are too salty as we have talked about before or you are too hot. You have got to be hot. They might think that, but it is your job to bring them into the light, bring them into the heat, bring them into saltiness, allow them to have the spirit by bringing them to Christ.
If you have not made that decision, it is a great time, comment below, reach out to us, ask Jesus into your heart, ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Say, Lord, be the Lord of my life. I want to live for you. It is important. You can do it when you are silent and you are spending that time with God.
At first 10 minutes might seem like forever, it might be really difficult, but later on, 10 minutes will hardly be enough. Romans 8:26 says, ‘In the same way the holy spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the holy spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.’
Now sometimes this might mean you get a prayer language and you are speaking gibberish really that you do not understand, you do not interpret, it is not really speaking in a tongue but that is what it is called. It is in tongues. But it is just in groans that words cannot express. The words cannot express.
In other ways, you might just be praying in your native language to God, on and on and on, and maybe saying the same thing. People may be like whatever man. But you are speaking, the spirit is speaking within you. You can allow that to happen by connecting. The Bible connects with your spirit. Your spirit connects with God.
It is a circle, God gave us the Bible, He gave you the spirit, He wants us to connect. Our spirit longs for God. You have got to feed that spirit, grow spiritually. Read your Bible. Read God’s Word, meditate on it, pray and be quiet, and listen.
Joshua 1:8, excellent verse, we have used it many many times throughout our sermons. ‘Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.’
That is huge. That means that God says, hey, feed your spirit, meditate on this Word. Be careful, learn what it says, grow, nourish, listen to me. Then guess what, not only by taking care of your spirit that is not of this world, He will take care of that, but He will also make you prosperous and successful in this world here on earth.
That is incredible. That is so incredible. That means that everything is taken care of here. So what is our focus? Our focus needs to be on God and on enriching His Kingdom and everything else will be provided for us.
There is another verse in the Bible that Jesus is saying this, focus on these things, on Him and all the other things will be given to you as well. Everything of this world. So focus first on His Kingdom and His righteousness and then you will get everything else. Riches, honor, glory, that is what He is saying. You will get it all.
So when you are listening to God, when you are taking that time, you have to be quiet. Why do we have to be quiet? Well, because you need to listen. When you are talking or reading, you cannot be listening. Yes of course you might be able to understand a little, but God does not want a little, He wants all of you.
We had a sermon about two eyes, two ears, and one mouth. God wants you to listen and see more than you speak. Listen to Him, understand it. You might be able to listen a little bit, like when you are talking you can kind of hear what someone is saying. Or when you are reading you can listen and hear what they are saying and still understand what you are reading, but your attention is divided. You are not fully attentive.
God does not want you to be divided. He does not want half of your attention. He wants all of your attention. He does not want you to be committed one hour a week or two hours a week. He wants you to be fully committed, 24/7/365.
Check out a playlist, Being Fully Committed to God on the YouTube channel or website. You can find it. It is fully committed to God. There are a bunch of sermons in there that will help you become more committed to Him because that is the goal. You have to be fully committed to God.
I challenge you, if you are not already reading your Bible every day, then you need to be reading your Bible every day. Get a plan. We have had a sermon on using and understanding your Bible, it is a great playlist. You can check out those two messages, a two-part sermon series. Once you do that, you are reading, you are understanding, now I challenge you to take 10 minutes, that is it, 10 minutes.
If you want to set a timer with an alarm, 10 minutes once you are done reading your Bible, so you spend 10 minutes reading your Bible, however long your devotional. You close the book, you set it down, spend 10 minutes sitting in silence. Do not fall asleep, but sit there in silence and listen to God. Yes, it might be really hard for 10 minutes.
There are some movies and cartoons and drawings of the people who go to monasteries and such overseas and in the temple areas and they sit in silence in the meditation rooms and they are like oh man it feels like forever and they look and they are like, ah it has only been one minute.
So yes it might seem like a long time at first, 10 minutes really is not that long. After a while, after a few days, after a week, 10 minutes will hardly seem like enough. You are going to be spending your 10 minutes there and you are going to be like the alarm will go off and hopefully, you will be like, oh man, and then you will have to go about your day.
Or you will be like, oh it would be like the little kid watching cartoons, mom, five more minutes. You will say God, Father, five more minutes and you will pray that your kids stay sleeping five more minutes because you want more time with God. Seriously.
Listen to God. He is speaking to you all the time, every minute of every day He is talking to you. He is trying to fill your head with great and unsearchable things that you do not know. How else are you going to learn them and know them unless you listen? How do you listen unless you read and understand and get the living and active words that are speaking to your spirit? How do you get those words and understand them unless you pray and ask for more?
It is almost like what Paul wrote, how can they preach unless they are sent and how can they be sent and this and this? How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news? How can you listen unless you read? How can you understand what you have read unless you have the spirit? How can you get the spirit unless you have communicated with God?
What do you need to do then? You need to be a Christian. You need to ask Jesus into your heart because when you have Him in your heart, you have the spirit. Now all of a sudden you can read the Bible and you can understand what is in there.
Before you were a Christian you could read the Bible and you could have no clue about what is going on. When I was a little kid we went to my extended family, my grandparents, they were Catholics so we went to a catholic mass out of respect. When I was a little kid, we would go with them once in a while on a Sunday and their preacher or priest was up there speaking.
Now, first of all, they should not call him father. We have another message on that. You have one father, He is in heaven. So they should not do that, but they do. So their priest was up there giving a message and he was giving it on the light of the world and he read from the, your word is a lamp and a light and then he read the in New Testament how no one puts a light under a bowl and hides it but instead they put it up for all to see.
You and me, Christians with the holy spirit, we know that that means God is speaking in a metaphorical manner. Saying, hey you guys are the light of the world, get out there, use the Word to be your light. But then get out there like the lamp on the stand and be a light to the world, a light in the darkness and shine for others to see, sharing the Word that you have read.
But this guy did not have the holy spirit, so he was saying how God has given us a light and it is this Bible. He is saying it is a great light for the world and just like how when they lit a candle they put it so that they could see in the darkness, today we have a flashlight to be able to see and we can use that flashlight and we have electricity to be able to see.
He is saying we have light in the dark when you are in the dark and the light of your alarm clock is on or your VCR, this was a long time ago, is blinking 12 12 12. He was saying that it lights up the room, but if you cover it the room is dark. He was going on and on about these earthly worldly lights, he did not have the holy spirit within him and he did not understand what the Bible was saying.
If that is you, if you read this and you say, I do not understand it, you need the holy spirit. You need to say, dear Jesus, come into my life, forgive me of my sins, I want to live for you every minute of every day, fill me up with your spirit. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
You gotta know He died for you. Make Him the Lord of your life. Live for Him then start reading, start praying, start spending time listening to God. He will speak to you.
Let’s pray. Lord Jesus thank you for this day, this message, this time together. I ask that you would use these sermons to speak to people. That they would be getting words from the Bible. That they were reading the Bible. That they are alive and active.
That they would take the time to go through other sermons, other messages, and that those would speak to them as well. That they would take the time to read the Bible for themselves and that they would be able to understand and interpret it. If they need help, that they would be courageous and comment below for some help.
Lord that they would spend time in silence and listen to you and God that you would fill them up. That you would communicate to them. That your voice would be heard. Allow them to hear you. Give them the motivation and the desire to want to hear from you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I challenge you, when you are done reading your Bible, you are done doing your devotion, give it 10 more minutes and listen to God and if you need prayer or you want to make the choice to follow Jesus comment below or reach out to us. We would be happy to be there for you. God bless.