how do I know God is talking to me?

Hearing God’s Voice

/ hhooks / 2 Comments

Did you know that Almighty God wants to have a relationship with you? It’s true. He wants to walk with you and talk with you. Actually, He already does, but if you aren’t familiar with His voice and how He reaches out to His children, you might miss His still, small voice.

Image Credit: pinimg.com

I’m not an expert, but I know He reaches out to me. I am much more familiar with His voice than I was a decade ago. I can point to specific experiences in my life when I know He led me in a certain direction toward something or away from something.

The first time I know for sure God was reaching out to me was when our older child was just a few months old. It happened over several months, so it wasn’t just one “conversation” if you will, but a series of little nudges from God. At that point, I wasn’t familiar with His voice, so although I knew something was going on, I didn’t know what it was or what to do about it. I only knew I had this wild idea to leave my full time job and be a work-from-home mom so I could be with my child. It took time and wise counsel to realize God was speaking to me.

As I gained more experience hearing from God and recognizing His voice, I realized sometimes He tells us no. Yes, you can go your own way and continue to do what you want, but that doesn’t mean God changes His mind. When God says no, He means no, and eventually, we have to learn to submit our lives. But life in His will is better than living in our own. I am definitely coming to understand and accept that.

If you are unfamiliar with God’s voice, I pray that some of the posts I’ve linked here will help you start to learn different ways you can experience God. These aren’t the only ways – I’ve had other types of encounters as well, but these are some of the most memorable ones for me.

As you learn God’s voice, you also learn to differentiate the enemy’s voice as well. I found this graphic that clearly illustrates some of the differences between God’s and Satan’s voices.

Image Credit: FortifyMyLife Blog

I pray you will seek Him. I pray you will listen to Him and talk to Him as well.

I pray you will learn to recognize and respond to His voice and submit to His will for your life.

Have you experienced a time when God reached out to you? What was it like? How did you know it was God? What was His message? What was your response? I would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment on the blog, on the Facebook thread, or email me at heather@heatherhooks.com

Should My Children go to School This Year?

/ hhooks / Leave a comment
When Ethan reads, he won’t let Emery get near him, look over his shoulder, nothing! Yet, here he is, practically sitting on top of her to read over her shoulder!

Where I live, a big question for a lot of people right now is – should I send my children to school inside the classroom this year? Should they go 100% virtual? Should I take them out of school and homeschool them?

Lots of people are also asking, “How can I choose any of these options and keep my job? Who will keep my kids during the day when they aren’t at school? What is the best option for my children? For our family”?

I can’t answer these questions for you, but God knows the path He has for your family. He will reveal that to you (if He hasn’t already), all you have to do is ask. Then wait for His response.

You may wonder, “how will I know God is speaking to me?” Well…that’s a good question 🙂

I will never forget the first time I asked that question, and in response, I left my full-time job to be a work-from-home-mom.

Since taking that leap of faith with my family, I’ve become very interested in understanding how to hear God’s voice. So, I’ve studied the Bible for examples of how God interacted with people, and I’ve read books and articles written by people on the topic.

Although I still have a lot to learn, I can tell you what it feels like when you obey God from my personal experience. I also know what can happen when you choose to disobey God.

On the other hand, experience has taught me what Satan’s voice is like as well as some of the tricks he’ll try to use to distract you from hearing from God.

So, while I can’t tell you exactly what you should do in terms of your children’s school situation for the 2020/2021 school year, I can tell you this: Pray about it. Specifically ask God to show you what to do. Then, wait to hear His voice.

When you think you’ve heard from Him, ask yourself if what you think He said is consistent with scripture. Ask yourself if what you think you heard is persistent – you keep getting the same message over and over. Also, ask yourself if you feel at peace with what you think you’ve heard Him say. All these are pretty good indications that you have heard from God. Now all you have to do is do what He says!

Back in the last winter/early spring during our quarantine school days 🙂

The Time God Told Me to Leave My Full-Time Job (Repost)

/ hhooks / 10 Comments

Author’s Note: Ethan and Emery are in school, and this has been my first week at my new job (will blog about that soon since I addressed it in an earlier post). So, I am taking a short break from writing new posts this month so I can focus on time with the kids and getting used to the new job.  In the meantime, I am reposting pieces of my testimony that were published when I started the blog in October 2017). 

“The most miserable person in the world is a Christian who isn’t living for God.”

Those words, spoken by the teacher subbing for our regular life group teacher, were the words God used to start an awakening in my soul.  They moved me.  They disturbed me.  They were FOR me!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Bill and I had been attending First Baptist Church of Indian Trail for a year or two at this point.  I had started singing in the choir.  I was still going to life group, and I had started going to Bible studies led by our life group teacher’s wife.  I had even gone to my life group teacher and his wife a time or two to talk about this worldview I had created.

I was still actively fighting against God’s convictions though.  Four years passed, and I put up a valiant fight against His whispers and tugs.  He’s persistent though, so He kept chiseling.

Photo Credits: Pinterest

Then, in early 2009, our son, Ethan, was born.  I went back to work after 8 weeks because that’s what you’re “supposed to do,”  but by the fall of 2009, I started having the strangest notion: I wanted to be at home with my baby.

That was TOTALLY foreign to me.  It had never occurred to me to stay home with my child.  Honestly, I always thought people who did that were…well, crazy, quite frankly.  Why in the world would anyone want to be at home all day with a whiny, screaming, snotty-nosed kid?!

Even so, God had been placing me into different situations and was using various things to soften my heart and convict me in that direction since our son was born.

I was scared!  This was crazy!  What would my poor parents think after helping pay for me to earn a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree?  What would my poor husband think?  We’d bought a house two years prior to our son’s birth and just bought a new car since Ethan was born.  I was crazy confused.

Then, I started to realize that this must be something God was calling me to do.  I had no idea if that was true or not though because I had no idea what it was like to have God tell me to do something.

I had to figure it out, so I started asking people – trusted women I had met at church.  One of the women I talked to was the wife of our current Sunday school teacher (we’d gotten a new teacher in the past 4 years).  I explained what I was feeling and that I was starting to think this was something God was telling me to do.

“How do I know the difference between something God is directing me to do and something that’s just my own idea?”  I asked her.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

She explained that, first and most importantly, God would never tell anyone to do something that wasn’t biblical.  If what you think God is telling you to do goes against something written in His Word, then it isn’t God telling you to do it.

This trusted lady also told me that, if this thing is actually a conviction from God, it won’t go away.  God will gently but consistently keep convicting you of what He wants you to do.  Sometimes, when we think up things on our own, they come and go easily, especially if it takes a while to achieve it or we meet lots of opposition while trying to do it.  However, a conviction from God doesn’t just shrink away at the first sign of difficulty.  He won’t let it.  I’ve heard it said that God is a gentleman.  He won’t ever force Himself on us, but He will continue to woo us and encourage us in the direction He wants us to go until we choose to go that way on our own.

Finally, my confidante asked me if I felt peace about this – leaving my job and staying at home with my child.  I remember a smile quickly spreading across my face as I confidently told her that I did feel peace!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

It was insane!  I had been afraid of it at first, but the more I thought about it and all the details that led me to believe it was God prodding me in that direction, I had indeed experienced a peace and calmness.  Our life group teacher’s wife told me that peace was one of the best ways to judge whether God is telling you to do something or not.  If you feel conflicted, it probably isn’t from God.  If you feel peace, it is most likely from God.

I felt TOTAL peace about this.  I was confident that this was a “God-thing,” as people say.  It just wasn’t anything I would have cooked up on my own!  But, as I was learning how to hear God’s voice, I began to trust that this was in fact what He had in mind for me.

Bill, on the other hand, was definitely NOT at peace with this crazy idea.  (That is a blog post all its own that I’ll share another time).  So, we prayed about it a great deal over weeks and months it seemed.  Finally, he just shook his head.  “The numbers don’t add up,” he said, referring to the many times he’d calculated our bills versus his salary to find out that his salary alone wouldn’t cover what we’d need to pay out each month.

“But,” he went on, “if you’re saying God is telling you to do this, I can’t go against it.  We have to do it.  We’ll just have to trust that He’ll take care of us.”

In May 2010, I worked my last full-time semester at the community college where I had been teaching for 6 years.

I couldn’t have known, but this was another crucial turning point in my journey back to God.  It was the first time in my life since I accepted Christ as a 12-year-old, that I stepped out in faith and completely submitted to His will.  (I was 31 when I left my full-time job.)

I experienced God’s provision during this time in my life, and that was a big deal for me.  Obviously, there were plenty of other times in my life that He provided, but I never acknowledged that it was Him until He told me to leave my job and go home…and I did it…and He provided for us.