So friends, we're looking at how to decode God's voice. There are various ways God speaks to us. The text we'll be looking at today is 1 Samuel chapter 3. But just on an introductory term, it is possible you're already hearing God. The issue is either you're not attentive or you don't understand when He speaks or you've not been taught on how to be able to decode what He's saying.
And so in this short exhortation, I would like us to look at the five ways God speaks to us. Five ways. And they are by audible voice, by revelation and revelations broken down into visions, trances and dreams. By inward witnessing, that is number three. Number four, by prophecies or word of knowledge. And number five, by the written word.
But there might be more of other ways because God can use anything to speak to us. You know, so He uses various ways and means to communicate to us. Like the backslidden prophet, Balaam, that He used the donkey to speak to him after warning him not to go to curse the children of Israel. He insisted on going and God told him to go ahead under a permissive will scenario. You can read that story in Number 22:21-39.
And on the way, his donkey began to speak to him when he began to flog the donkey. The donkey received the human voice and began to speak to him. And there was an angel that was right there in front of them with a sword ️ drawn to strike Balaam, the backslidden prophet.
And so we don't want to put God in a box, but there are these five ways that God speaks most of the time. And so we want to look at them one after the other, so the five of them. Now, before I go on, you understand that as you go through scripture, you see even in the garden of Eden, God coming down in the cool of the day and discussing with the humans, that is Adam and Eve, and taking a walking with them, spirit to spirit. And so we see that. We see how he came down to warn Cain, he should be careful because evil was planned against him and he must master it. So he doesn't go ahead and kill his brother, he was warned ahead of time. And then when he carried out that the intent of his heart, driven by hatred, God came and discussed with him, ""Where is your brother?"" and cain responded, ""Am I my brother's keeper?"" that is God talking to man and man talking back to God. That account is in Genesis 4.
And we go on and on where Enoch walk with God and was not for God took him.
Then we go down to Noah, the first flood that filled the earth. We see there that Noah got specific instruction and the design of the ark. And so there was an ongoing back-to-back communication with specifics on what needs to be done, the measurement, the dimensions, the heights, the width, and all of that, the number of animals that should go in and all of that.
And he continued and continued. We go to Abraham where God called Abraham to leave his country. He spoke to him. It wasn't a foreign thing. It wasn't something that is rare for God not to speak to human. God spoke to one of the kings that wanted to take over Abraham's wife and dealt with them in Egypt. That was Pharaoh. They were able to tell who spoke to them. In Egypt, that happened. And then in Philistines, the king of the Philistines, Abimelech, God also spoke to him in a dream. And there was an engagement going in the dream. Can you beat that? This is somebody who doesn't have any relationship with God and God was speaking to him. So we go on and on and on and on.
We have scenarios where He spoke to Paul. Paul was on his way to arrest Christians, to imprison, to kill. He was a sinner, essentially with godly zeal. But God interrupted that trip and was able to stop him and make him blind. He heard everything.
And in our day and age, God is still speaking. And so I want to look at the audible voice.
Ambassador Monday O. Ogbe
