How to Hear & Follow God (practically)

I’ve had so many people tell me that they don’t know how to hear God or how to follow him. So I thought I would share my personal experience of how I see and hear God in my own life.

At the end of the year, I participated in Pastor Michael Todd’s Crazy faith offering. You put your offering in church along with a note about what you’re having crazy faith for. One of the things that I wrote on there is that I wanted a house. Now to be clear, I have been “thinking” about buying one for years but for some reason, I just hadn’t pulled the trigger. Anyway, I wrote it on there and honestly forgot I wrote it. It wasn’t until recently during the pandemic that it came up and I started thinking about it again. 

I was praying to God telling him that I knew he was working in my life and that I didn’t want to miss him. Well, things started happening. I ended up with some extra money from helping out a family member. Then on my birthday, my mentor gifted me with free design hours to use on my house when I bought one (I had been talking to her about buying one for years but never did it). For some reason, this was the year she felt moved to give me a house-related gift. Then I realized a few days ago that because of the national forbearance put into place by the government due to COVID, I didn’t have to pay my student loans from March – October. However, I would still get credit toward my repayment plan. Are you kidding me? Here again, I have a few thousand dollars that I didn’t expect to have and I’m grateful. At this point, it became clear to me that God was giving me resources. He was setting me up to buy a home.

Now, why did I share that? So you would have a real-life example. Here are the takeaways from this story on how to follow/hear God practically (Of course it goes without saying that you should read your word).

1.     Pray. It seems simple, but pray about what is on your heart, but most importantly seek God to determine his will for you. Write those prayers down so you can visually see where God is moving.

2.     Watch to see where God is at work and join him. Evaluate where God is moving in your life. In this situation, I could see he was literally moving money. I had to look closer to see for what purpose ( the house). Whenever we get money that we didn’t expect, we should inquire of God to see what he would have us do with it.

3.     Look for the green lights. The green lights are the things that line up in the direction that we think God is moving in. Being gifted the design hours, + the money+ not having to pay my student loans. Things just kept lining up and nothing gave me pause. Thus, the green light to keep moving forward on the path that I’m on.

4.     Look for peace. New adventures with God shouldn’t give you anxiety when you know he is in it. What God is doing should stretch your faith, It shouldn’t stretch you. If you have no peace, you are either ahead of God when you need to walk in step beside him; you’re behind him and you need to catch up or you’re not with him at all.