Many Christians want to hear from God, and many have heard someone say, “The Lord told me.” Fewer have ever been told what to listen for. That leaves two problems: sincere believers who think God is silent, and confident people who claim to hear from God with no Bible in them at all.
Jesus did not leave this vague. Hours before His crucifixion, He told His disciples exactly how the Holy Spirit would communicate with them: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
The Bible Is Not Exhaustive
The Bible is inspired, inerrant, infallible and authoritative. But it is not exhaustive. It does not tell you how to change the oil in your car or which job offer to take. That is why believers need the Holy Spirit to teach them.
In the same conversation Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12-13). The Spirit teaches all things, and He teaches them at a pace we can receive.
What Did Jesus Say?
John 14:26 says the Spirit teaches by bringing to remembrance what Jesus said. So what did Jesus say?
John’s Gospel opens, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and a few verses later it names the Word: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Jesus is the Word, and “All things were made through him” (John 1:3). That ties Him to the first line of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). At the other end of the Bible, Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13).
Since “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16), what Jesus said is not limited to the words printed in red. He is the Word behind the whole Bible. So when the Spirit brings to mind what Jesus said, He draws on all of Scripture.
That gives us the key: the Holy Spirit communicates to His people by bringing Scripture out of their memory to the forefront of their mind.
1. While You Read the Bible
The first way the Spirit teaches is while you are in the Word.
Part of this is what theologians call illumination: the Spirit giving you the ability to understand what you read. You can understand some of the Bible with an education, but you will not understand much of it without illumination.
The Spirit also gives specific direction through what you read. Not only general commands, but a word for your situation, your family and your next step. A believer reading about Israel resting at Elim, “where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees” (Exodus 15:27), may sense the Lord saying, “This is an oasis, not your promised land.” That kind of word can carry a person through a hard season, because they already know where they are headed.
2. Phrases and Fragments from Memory
The second way is quieter. The Spirit draws a phrase or fragment of Scripture out of your memory and brings it to the front of your mind. It seems to come out of nowhere, but it is a word from the Bible you have read, and with it comes insight.
Acts 1 shows this. After Judas’s betrayal and death, Peter stood before about 120 believers and quoted two psalms: “May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it” and “Let another take his office” (Acts 1:20). Neither psalm reads as an obvious prophecy about the Messiah. But those fragments kept surfacing, and they gave Peter the insight to restore the twelve. The disciples chose Matthias (Acts 1:26).
This is how ordinary hearing from God often sounds: a verse that will not leave you alone. It may come in the car on the way to the grocery store. It does not have to be dramatic to be real.
3. Association Processing
The third way is what might be called association processing. Your brain can connect a chain of information almost instantly. The Holy Spirit can drop one verse into your mind, and like a pinball set in motion, it strikes other things you know until you see something you had not seen before.
In Acts 10, Peter has a vision of a sheet full of animals forbidden under Jewish food laws and hears, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” He is perplexed, and then messengers from a Gentile named Cornelius knock at the door. Mark’s Gospel, which early church tradition connects to Peter’s own preaching, records that Jesus had already “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). A word of Jesus, a vision and a knock at the door came together, and the gospel opened to the Gentiles. Later Peter said it plainly: “I remembered the word of the Lord” (Acts 11:16).
The Spirit Needs Something to Draw On
Here is the practical point. If the Spirit teaches by bringing Scripture to remembrance, He needs Scripture in your memory to draw on.
That does not mean everyone must start a memorization program. The Spirit carries much of the work of bringing the Word to mind. But He can only bring back what you have taken in. People who say they hear from God while ignoring the Bible have given the Spirit nothing to work with. In a sense, Scripture is the common language between heaven and us. As Paul wrote, “I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations” (Romans 6:19).
So read the Bible a lot. Come to church where the Bible is preached. Join a group where it is studied. The more you engage with Scripture, the more you store up. The more you store up, the more the Holy Spirit can draw out. And the more He has to draw on, the more specifically He can speak to your situation.
This is not a fast process. Nobody fills their memory with Scripture overnight. It happens day by day, in steady time with the Lord.
Available to Every Believer
Here is the encouraging part. When the Spirit brought those psalms to Peter’s mind in Acts 1, it was before the Day of Pentecost. Hearing from God this way is not reserved for spiritual elites. It is available to every believer who has given their life to Jesus Christ.
If you want to hear from God, start where Jesus said He would speak: open the Bible, read it often, and listen for the Spirit to bring it back to you.