How Do You Hear God's Voice?

​How Do You Hear God's Voice?
How often do you recognize God speaking to you?
When most people think of hearing the voice of God, it's easy to picture Moses standing before a burning bush or the Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai while the entire mountain trembled. For a long time, I thought hearing God had to look like that too. Big, unmistakable, impossible to miss.
As I sit here writing tonight, I'm laughing at myself for believing that for so long.
Only recently have I begun to understand that God is a God who meets us exactly where we are. He speaks in ways that are deeply personal, using things only we would recognize because He knows us that intimately.
I've been studying the book of Amos, and the more I read, the more I realized that this has always been God's way.

​Amos wasn't a priest or a king. He was a shepherd and a fig farmer who lived near the border between northern Israel and southern Judah. At the time, Israel was experiencing incredible prosperity under King Jeroboam II. Military victories had brought wealth, influence, and success. From the outside, everything looked blessed.
But beneath the surface, the nation was rotting.
The wealthy exploited the poor. Justice was bought and sold. Idolatry had become normal, and God's people had slowly traded obedience for comfort.
Amos couldn't ignore it any longer. He sensed God calling him to travel north to Bethel, where Israel's largest temple stood, to deliver a message no one wanted to hear.
Unlike Jonah, Amos went.
Which naturally leads me to wonder...how did he know it was God?
The book of Amos is a collection of sermons, poems, and visions that reveal God's heart. Though He confronts humanity's sin, His ultimate purpose is restoration. Amos reminds us that genuine worship is inseparable from justice, righteousness, and loving our neighbor.
One verse has become the heartbeat of the entire book:
"Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream." (Amos 5:24)
Throughout Amos, God exposes empty religion. Israel still attended worship services. They still offered sacrifices. They looked faithful on the outside while neglecting the poor, embracing idols, and ignoring injustice.
God wasn't after religious performance.
He was after transformed hearts.
As I studied, one particular vision kept stopping me.
Amos sees Israel devastated by locusts, consumed by fire, and finally compared to overripe fruit.
When I first read it, I thought, that's an odd image.
Why fruit?
I couldn't move past it, so I started reading commentaries to better understand the passage.
Then it clicked.
Amos was a fig farmer.
He knew fruit.
He knew exactly when it was ready for harvest. He knew when it was too green. He knew when it had been left too long and had become overripe, past the point of usefulness.
God wasn't choosing random imagery.
He was speaking to Amos in a language Amos already understood.
That realization stopped me in my tracks.
Maybe hearing God's voice isn't always about dramatic moments.
Maybe it's about recognizing that God knows us so personally that He speaks through the very things that have shaped our lives.
If He spoke to a fig farmer through fruit...
How might He be speaking to you?
Or to me?
Because the truth is, I've been going through it.
I ended a relationship with someone I never wanted to lose. I believed there was something beautiful waiting on the other side of surrender, and walking away meant laying down not just the relationship, but the future I had quietly hoped God might write for us.
My home life is changing, and I don't know whether I'll be moving or staying.
I'm trying to become an author again while balancing work, leading a team I often feel unqualified to lead, training a dog who seems to have developed an entirely new personality, and loving two wonderful parents who are getting older with every passing year as an only child.
All of that while desperately trying to understand what God wants me to do without walking in disobedience.
But if I'm being completely honest...
I did walk in disobedience.
And I've been lying to myself about it for far too long.
I thought I was stronger than I really was.
I thought I could stand close to temptation without getting burned.
Turns out, you can't play with fire and expect not to smell like smoke.
The consequences humbled me in ways I didn't expect but desperately needed.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn't just acknowledging that I'm a sinner because it's good theology.
I was grieving my own choices.
I actively chose my flesh over obedience.
Not because I had to.
Because I chose to.
Do I regret it?
Oddly enough...no.
Not because sin is ever worth celebrating, but because God has used my failure to expose places in my heart that I didn't even realize needed healing.
He already knew I would fail.
He already knew I would chase comfort instead of holiness.
He already knew I would wrestle with shame afterward.
And yet He never stopped pursuing me.
So I prayed.
And prayed.
And prayed some more.
I cried.
I journaled.
I opened my Bible.
I hit my knees more times than I can count.
But I couldn't hear Him.
I knew He was there, but I felt a lot like Hagar in the wilderness—forgotten.
Then, less than an hour after reading about Amos and the basket of fruit, God answered me.
As many of you know, there's construction happening near my house because of the TerraFab project. It's the same project that may eventually force me to move.
The place where deer used to graze every morning has become piles of dirt.
The trees are gone.
Everything familiar feels like it's disappearing.
Something else you should know about me...
I love flowers.
They've always made me smile.
That morning, as I pulled out of my driveway, I looked toward our mailbox sitting in the middle of all that construction.
Surrounded by dirt...
Surrounded by destruction...
Growing from the smallest patch of green were the most beautiful little pink flowers directly beneath the mailbox. 
I immediately thought about Amos.
God used fruit because Amos would understand.
God used flowers because I would.
In that quiet moment, I didn't hear an audible voice.
I didn't see a burning bush.
But I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to my heart,
"I see you.
I hear you.
I have you."
Nothing about my circumstances changed.
The relationship was still over.
The future is still uncertain.
The construction is still happening.
But I was different.
Because I remembered something Amos teaches us from beginning to end:
God's heart is never destruction.
It's restoration.
Sometimes God allows the things we've built to crumble so He can rebuild something stronger.
Sometimes He humbles us so we'll finally depend on Him instead of ourselves.
Sometimes He speaks through fruit.
Sometimes He speaks through flowers.
The question isn't whether God is speaking.
The question is...
Are we paying attention?
How does God speak to you?
Maybe that's the beauty of walking with God. We spend so much of our lives waiting for Him to shout from heaven that we miss the quiet ways He's already speaking. He's in the Scripture that won't leave your mind, the conversation you didn't know you needed, the flower blooming in the middle of a construction site, and the people He places in your path at just the right moment.
Yesterday, one of my residents asked me about the special boy I had been seeing. When I told her it had ended and I was sad, she didn't rush past the conversation or offer cliché advice. She simply wrapped her arms around me and prayed over me right then and there. It was another reminder that God often answers our prayers through the people willing to be His hands and feet. Between the flowers at my mailbox and the unexpected prayer of someone who cared enough to stop, I realized God had been speaking all along.
He is always pursuing us, always reminding us that His mercy is greater than our failures and His plans are bigger than our disappointments. So if you're in a season where God feels silent, don't lose heart. Keep opening your Bible. Keep praying. Keep looking. The same God who spoke to a shepherd through fruit, comforted a broken-hearted woman through flowers, and wrapped His arms around her through the prayer of another believer is still speaking today. The question isn't whether He's near. The question is whether we'll slow down long enough to recognize Him.
Again I ask, how is God speaking to you?