When People Pray: Ears to Hear and a Heart to RespondSýnishorn

Expect God to Speak to You

“Your expectations frame your experience.” - Brian Alarid

In other words, your expectations of God to speak and your own ability to hear will likely prove true.  

God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.  He has been speaking for generations, why would He stop with you? The answer is He wouldn’t.

In the mid-1960s, there was a man who went hunting in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. He was so confident in his ability to go in, camp for a couple of days, and get back out to his vehicle that he did not take a map or a compass. When the days of his trip had come to a completion, he began to make the trek back to his car. He walked and walked for hours on end. It was only when he found his own tracks that he realized that he was walking in circles.

He was a man of God, a husband, a father of five, a pastor and a denominational leader for nearly 50 years; but in that moment a fear rose up in him that caused him to cry out to God into the trees. “Oh God, I need your help. I have to get home… I have a beautiful wife, five wonderful children, and a growing church.”

Following his cry for help into the thickness of the forrest all around him, he heard a voice come out of the trees. The voice called him by name and answered assertively, “You wouldn’t believe me, even if I told you.”

Hearing the response may have startled him slightly, but it didn’t deter him or keep him from continuing the conversation.

He had felt God’s voice before, experienced the power of God’s voice through the Scripture, but never heard God audibly. That is until that day. Before the moment passed, he responded. “Yes God, I will believe you.”

God quickly spoke one more time, “Go 50 paces that way, and turn left.”

But before God could even finish, the man interrupted, “I’ve already been that way a hundred times already…”

Realizing the error of his way, he quickly relented & repented… then he turned his steps toward the way God had indicated that he take them.  Then he began to move.  50 paces and he turned left, as soon as he did so he broke through the clearing and there was sign directly in front of him.  It said, ‘Logging Road Exit That Way’.  He had parked his vehicle at the exit of the same logging road.

When we expect God to speak to us, our experience will be God speaking to us.