Written by Dynamis Ministries | July 24, 2025
One of the most significant steps in spiritual growth is when we step out and begin to hear God’s voice. It’s a moment that forever changes us. Some people don’t, but most believe that God speaks to individuals.
What about you? Do you think God wants to speak to you?
The Scriptures affirm that God has revealed himself, making himself known to us—that God speaks. As other than us, God has stooped down to engage our human capacity in amazingly accommodating ways, bringing some knowledge of himself to us.
The main way God speaks to us is through Scripture. The revelation of God through the Word is incredible, not lacking in any way. Yet God speaks in other ways, too, just as he did in various ways in the Bible.
Think about the different ways we communicate as humans, like speech, writing, emotions, protesting, body language, drawing, stories, music, gestures, snaps, fashion, touch, and more. The ability to communicate is vast. Sometimes we forget that we communicate just as much without words as we do with words.
Vanessa Van Edwards from the Science of People says that our brains give 12.5 times more weight to hand gestures. A simple example is this: When people use their hands to greet you, it’s a welcoming gesture. When you hide your hands, it makes people feel uncomfortable. We are constantly sending and interpreting body language signals, and we do this both emotionally and chemically.
To illustrate, Van Edwards talks about a study at Stony Brook University that analyzed people’s sweat. That’s a study no one expected! They collected sweat pads from people after running on a treadmill and from others after their first skydive. Here’s the gross part: volunteers sniffed the two different sweat samples in an fMRI (functional MRI, which measures brain activity).
Without knowing the sources, the skydiver’s pads triggered a heightened response in brain regions associated with fear, but the treadmill sweat did not. Even though the volunteers had no idea what they were smelling, they still perceived fear from the skydiver’s sweat. This shows that our emotions can be contagious!1
If humans, created by God, are so expressive in communication, how much more capable is God in communicating with us? God can speak to us anytime, anywhere. There are numerous ways God shares his “voice” with us. In addition to the Bible, here are just some of the other ways God speaks: creation, thoughts, people, impressions, dreams, circumstances, discernment, promptings, signs, testimonies and peace.
In one of Jesus’ most well-known parables, called “The Good Shepherd and His Sheep,” Jesus beautifully explains that he speaks to his followers using a metaphor of himself as a shepherd and his followers as sheep.
The gatekeeper opens the gate for him (the good shepherd), and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. —John 10:3-4
God wants to speak to you. He will call you by name and lead you with his voice.
Are you listening?
Footnotes
1. Van Edwards, Vanessa. You Are Contagious. TEDxLondon, June 27, 2017. Video, 18:15. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
