While we are living our lives, we don’t know the future and we often make mistakes. We might find ourselves, asking, if God, who is omnipotent, knew that I was going to make a mistake, why didn’t He warn me? Or we might think, if God foresaw an accident, why didn’t He prevent it by stopping me from going there? We wonder if God speaks to us or not.
The answer might not lie in God’s responsibility, but in ours. Throughout the Bible, God speaks to His people in various ways. Just as God says to one of the prophets,
7 Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing
Amos 3:7
without revealing his plan
to his servants the prophets.
Yet, in the current times that we are living in, there don’t seem to be any prophets to whom God speaks directly. We might consider our pastors as people who know God’s direction, but can they confidently tell us which direction we must go in? Or can our church leaders prevent us from getting into accidents by warning us beforehand?
Sometimes we can rely on them, but the Bible also shows us other ways in which God speaks to people. In this post, let us look at some major ways in which God reveals His will to us. You might find that if you tune into God’s frequency, God has many things to say to each of us.
One of the main ways God speaks to people is through His word. In the Bible, the four gospels all contain Jesus’ words and instruction on how we need to live to be children of God. According to the Bible, God is the word:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
And God’s word was made flesh through the coming of Jesus:
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
Therefore, for the best instruction and wisdom, we can simply read the four gospels. In fact, some historical figures have made important choices that influenced the outcome of nations, based on Jesus’ words. One of the most famous is Abraham Lincoln, who read that,
25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
Matthew 12:25
Based on a revelation from reading this scripture, the US President Lincoln realised that America might enter a civil war if he does not abolish slavery. Lincoln then instituted the Emancipation Act, which eventually led to the ban on slave trade in America.
Another fascinating phenomenon is dreams, which appear over 100 times in the Bible. Perhaps one of the most famous dreamers is Joseph. According to the Bible, Joseph had two significant dreams. After sharing his dreams with his brothers, they sold him to Egypt as a slave:
5 Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7 We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
Genesis 37:5-7
Joseph’s second dream is similar to the first:
9 Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
Genesis 37:9
A few chapters later, while Joseph is in prison after Potiphar’s wife wrongly accuses him of assaulting her, he interprets the dreams of the baker and the King’s cup-bearer:
9 So the chief cupbearer told Joseph his dream. He said to him, “In my dream I saw a vine in front of me, 10 and on the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes. 11 Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup and put the cup in his hand.”
12 “This is what it means,” Joseph said to him. “The three branches are three days. 13 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position, and you will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer.
Genesis 40:9-13
Finally, when Pharaoh, King of Egypt, has a dream that can change the fate of his nation, Joseph interprets it for him and saves Egypt from a severe 7-year famine. Because of his deeds, Pharaoh makes Joseph Prime Minister of Egypt, and 21 years later, his dreams about the grain and the stars are fulfilled.
In this way, if human beings are able to interpret the dreams that God sometimes gives us, it can change the course of our lives. In fact, a meaningful dream could even save our lives, or the lives of our families or nations. Of course, the issue of dreams is interpreting them accurately, like Joseph does.
Finally, the Bible also mentions instances where animals or plants helped central figures realise God’s will. Perhaps one of the strangest events is where Balaam’s donkey speaks to him. The prophet Balaam is on his way to prophesy against Israel, when an Angel with a flaming sword appears and blocks his way. Balaam’s donkey keeps acting out, until it finally opens its mouth and speaks:
27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat it with his staff. 28 Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”
Numbers 22:27-28
This revelation is strange, because, of course, we know that animals do not speak. There are other accounts of animals also speaking to human beings, such as the snake that famously tempts Eve:
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Genesis 3:1
Another interesting story is that of Jonah. Jonah is famous for the whale swallowing him, but something else significant happens in the book of Jonah. Jonah realises God’s love for Nineveh after a worm eats the leaf he uses for shelter. God makes a plant grow and makes it disappear the next day, and then speaks to the prophet:
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Jonah 4:10-11
In this way, throughout the Bible, there are accounts of God (and even the Devil) using creation to speak to people and deliver important messages. But how does this apply to our lives? Our pets do not speak to us with words, but we do understand them by their body language and behaviour.
So does God still speak to people through creation, dreams and the Bible?
What makes many of these Biblical stories difficult to apply to our lives is that they seem very extreme. Most of us are not presidents of nations that need to receive revelations to alter the fate of our countries. Our dreams are hardly significant beyond our immediate lives. And does God still use creation to communicate as He did thousands of years ago?
They key point is not, however, our position or influence in the world. What is important is that God is always broadcasting His love to us and He wants us to respond. As it says in Jeremiah,
3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
Jeremiah 33:3
How can we call to God and respond to Him? We need to know His methods of communication.