God is a God who speaks. He spoke in the Bible, and He still speaks today. God’s primary way of speaking to us is through His Word, and everything you hear must be filtered through and tested by the Word. However, God uses many different avenues to communicate with His children. Here are some unfamiliar avenues by which He chooses to speak:
OBJECT LESSONS
God may sometimes use a physical object to teach a spiritual lesson. Jesus used a lot of object lessons when He taught. In Mark 4:30-32, Jesus used the mustard seed, an object familiar to His audience, to explain faith.
A friend shared that the Lord often uses to speak to her is her children. Some time ago, she was worried about the coming year and how her family was going to make it. However, she noticed their kids could care less about another year approaching. They were confident that mom and dad would provide for them. God used this to speak to her about His love and care for her as her heavenly Father and that she was to trust Him completely for the coming year.
REPETITION
Have you ever experienced a time in your life when you kept encountering the same thing over and over again? Sometimes you may run into the exact thing repeatedly, or they could be related. What you may think is coincidence just might be God's way to trying to get your attention.
Perhaps one day, you're struggling with believing that God will answer your prayer. That day you pick up your Bible and open it to find a piece of paper with the following words written on it: “God is a prayer-answering God.” You grab your devotional and the entry for the day is titled “God hears and answers the prayers of his children.” In this instance, God is likely using the method of repetition to encourage you that he has heard your prayer and will answer.
INTERNAL PROMPTINGS:
God often communicates through internal promptings - a sudden strong urge to do or not do something. Very often you cannot explain why you feel that way, but the urge is strong and sudden. You may be driving your car and you feel a sudden urge to pray for someone you have not spoken to in months. You decide to pray right there only to find out later, that person was going through a difficult time. God "urged" you to pray for them at the time when they really needed it.
HESITATION OR “CHECK” IN YOUR SPIRIT
This presents itself like an internal alarm. You don’t know why, but you just feel leery about something, someone, or proceeding with a certain course of action. You may not have any known reason to feel that way, but you do. A check in your spirit is God’s way of saying “proceed with caution,” slow things down, delay making a decision, look into things a little more carefully.
Now that you have learned about some unfamiliar ways that God may speak, do you recognize any in your life? Be sure to record them in your prayer journal.