A Sermon
Delivered on Wednesday Evening, November 19th, 2025, by
Evangelist PAUL ACQUAH,
Live on MZ Radio London, London UK.
Have you ever had a moment where you were sure God was speaking to you… and then five minutes later you started to wonder, “Was that really God, or was that just me?” Many believers live in that tension every day – wanting to obey God, wanting to follow His leading, but secretly asking, “How do I know I actually heard from Him and not from my own thoughts or emotions?” All through Scripture, we see a God who speaks to His people. The same God who spoke then, still speaks today. The real issue for us is not whether God is speaking, but whether we can recognise His voice when He does. If you can learn to discern God’s voice, you can stop living in constant confusion and start living with a different kind of boldness. Join us as we unlock the biblical keys to discernment in today’s message by Evangelist Paul Acquah titled “Recognising God’s voice”.
Be blessed as you listen!
Learning to clearly hear God’s voice is precious. Instead of going through life blindly, we can have the wisdom of God’s guidance and protection. How do I recognise the voice of God? Let me start by saying that recognising the voice of God is so much easier than we think. Many times we read in the Old Testament about God speaking to his people. There’s a recurring text of scripture in the OT that says, “the word of the Lord came to” and is a common way to describe direct communication from God to His people in the Old Testament.
For example: “the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah” is a recurring introductory verse in the Book of Jeremiah, indicating that God was speaking to the prophet, “The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign” (Jeremiah 1:1-2)
“Moreover the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still shut up in the court of the prison, saying, 2 “Thus says the Lord who made it, the Lord who formed it to establish it (the[a] Lord is His name): 3 ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and [b]mighty things, which you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:1-3)
“Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, 27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me? 28 Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it”. (Jeremiah 32:26-28)
Samuel heard the voice of God three times and thought it was a priest and then ran to him and found out later actually it’s the Lord speaking to him. So how can you hear God? How do you know God has spoken to you? John 10 in the New Testament has many verses on hearing God’s voice. The question is, how do you know if you’ve heard from God? Romans 10 17 is one of the best ways to understand that. Romans 10 17 says. “so, then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”. When you’ve heard God, or when something has been quickened to you, faith will spring into action, faith will come alive or be activated.
So, that’s the best way to know that you’re hearing from God. Suddenly there will be faith, or we could say there will be a vision and faith for that vision or there will be a revelation or there will be understanding or there will be wisdom.
You need to understand that faith comes by “hearing,” not by “having heard.” People cannot rest on revelation they received from God years ago, unless they are still hearing the Lord speak those same truths to them now. When we hear God or when the spirit quickens something to us, there’s going to be understanding, there’s going to be wisdom, there’s going to be vision, there’s going to be faith springing forth. All of those things are indications we could say of having heard from God or having something quickened to us. So, we should be expecting God to speak to us. The Lord doesn’t fail to speak; we fail to hear. Therefore, we can keep our faith in the present tense if we will open our spiritual ears to hear what God’s Word is saying (Proverbs 4:20-22, Mark 6:52 and Mark 8:17).
Are you longing to hear from the Lord, but don’t know where to start? What are some practical steps to listening? How can you become more attuned in your relationship and listen to God? Reading the word obviously, we’ve got to be in the word. If you want to hear God, read the Bible: Reading, meditating, thinking on the things of God all the time, praising him, living a life of thanksgiving, being grateful for the roof over your head, the food you eat, the car you drive, and whatever it is you have in life. Be grateful, be thankful, be a blessing to other people, look for ways to bless people, look for ways to speak words of life, words that edify, words that lift people up. Don’t be a judge, and don’t be a critic. How can I get more in tune with hearing God? Stay in his word, stay in the spirit, be grateful, be thankful, live to give, live to bless people, think of others, all of these things are tuning you to the spirit of God. When you live in the spirit, you will be in tune with the spirit, but if you’re a judge, or a critic, or a complainer, if you have a victim mentality, you are out of tune with the spirit, and it will be very hard for you to hear the things of God. So that’s how we do it.
We can get in tune with the spirit of God just like you tune a piano or a guitar. You can tune your spirit by being in the word of God, being thankful, being in the spirit, praising God, living by the fruit of the spirit, living to bless people, looking for ways to help others, and then don’t judge, don’t criticise, don’t complain. Those are good things to do so you can be hearing from God. A lot of people are busy all the time and they’re getting nowhere. They’ve not set hearing the Lord as their top priority. Jesus spoke about this when he visited Mary and Martha with his disciples. Martha was busy about many things and was getting offended that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus. But Jesus said Martha, Martha, you’re worried about a lot of stuff, but this one thing is needful that you hear the word of God. Mary chose to prioritise her relationship with Jesus by sitting and listening, over the many other tasks Martha was focused on. We have a choice to prioritise spiritual connection and being in God’s presence as the “one thing needful” over other distractions and busyness. A lot of people are performing, working, doing, filling every minute of the day with activity because they don’t want to be alone with their own thoughts. They don’t want to be alone and have to give time to that which will give them life and so we fill our lives with activities so that we don’t have to hear our heart cry out with hunger. Your heart is hungry for God but you’re trying to feed it with other things. You’re trying to satisfy that with performance, with work, and duty.
Yes, we all need to work. I’m not saying don’t work but I’m just saying where’s your heart.
Are you allowing your heart to feed on the things of God? That’s the issue. Are you going to be a Martha, are you going to be a Mary and I believe God has called us to sit at his feet. Not that we’re not doing things, but that which is most important is to feed on the word of God. Jesus said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. 42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Jesus is teaching us a lesson in priorities. While responsibilities are part of life, they should not take precedence over a deep connection with God. Choosing “the good part” is a reminder to keep spiritual priorities as our focus.
One of the great ways to hear God is to spend time with him in prayer. Praying is conversing with God. You talk to God and he talks to you, but you’re not limited to that. God talks to me when I least expect it many times. I can be doing housework or taking a shower, driving the car, doing a job and God speaks but it’s because I’ve been spending time with him. It’s because I’ve been tuning myself to be hearing him by being spiritually minded. So hearing God can be in prayer or in the word, but it can be any other time. There’re no set parameters to this, we walk and talk with God all the time and so we should be expecting things to be quickened to us as we go through the day. The expectation of the righteous cannot be cut off. Expect God to speak to you every day.
