Hearing God speak

A while ago I heard a talk from Havilah Cunnington which I found really helpful about how different people hear God speak to them. If you want to listen to the full talk here is a link: https://vimeo.com/76469920

She sets out four main ways that people tend to hear from God – knowing, hearing, seeing and feeling. People will typically favour one of these four ways but many people will hear God through multiple or all of these ways, sometimes you may hear God in a particular way for a particular season. It’s important not to be limited and only seek to hear God in your favoured way but being open to God speaking through all of them.

I have found that having an awareness of them has really helped me grow in confidence that what I am hearing is from God. I think traditionally when we think of hearing from God we expect that to be some sort of voice and I think it’s really releasing to recognise the knowing/seeing/feeling aspects as being equally real and valid ways of God speaking to us.

Here is a quick summary of what each could look like in practice:

Knowers – knowers tend to hear God through just knowing something, they’re often not able to explain how they know; they just know it.

Hearers – hearers tend to hear God speak to them, they hear him speak sometimes audibly, often in their spirit but they recognise hearing God’s voice.

Seers – seers tend to see prophetic pictures from God, they are often visionary people who see things in the natural or the supernatural.

Feelers – feelers tend to feel things from God, have a feeling in a particular part of the body if God wants to bring healing or feel a particular emotion or the heart of God in a particular situation, they may have a feeling when they walk into a room.

I tend to favour knowing as one of the main ways I hear from God, I’ve had situations where I’ve not been able to explain, I’ve just known and had total peace about the situation.

One particular example was when my Pop called us around to his house to tell us that he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. It seemed quite desperate but as we prayed with him, I just knew in my spirit that this wasn’t the end. Having heard the talk I had the confidence to speak it out and that gave others in my family confidence too to believe and trust God for his wellbeing. Half of his lung was removed but he is doing well and there is no sign of the cancer now praise God! Previously I probably would have lacked the confidence to speak this out but increasingly I am tuning in and hearing God speak to me more now I recognise clearly that it’s from God and declare what he is saying to me.