Distinguishing Between God’s Voice and Your Own Thoughts

Our feelings are important to God. He created them as a channel to communicate; however, there is also a potential for this avenue to become a channel by which the enemy draws us into sin and disobedience. The Bible makes it very clear that we can be deceived by our feelings (Deut. 4:19). So, how do we differentiate between God’s voice and our thoughts? Here are key distinctions to guide you.…..CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLES HERE

The Key Differences

1. The Holy Spirit aligns with Scripture while emotions can contradict it.
The Holy Spirit always aligns with the entirety of Scripture, while our emotions might misinterpret or take Scriptures out of context. The Holy Spirit will never contradict the Word of God, whereas emotions can often lead us astray.

The Holy Spirit won’t just fix your eyes on one portion of Scripture while disregarding the entirety of the context. That is actually something that Satan did in the wilderness.

2. The Holy Spirit’s voice is divine, while emotions arise from biology and experiences.

The second way to identify when it’s God’s voice vs our thoughts is that the Holy Spirit’s guidance has a divine origin rooted in eternal truths and God’s will. In contrast, our emotions stem from biology, past experiences, and current circumstances. As a result, they can be influenced by various factors. The origin of God’s voice and guidance is not based on human circumstances. It has a divine origin. It’s based on eternal truths and God’s will.

3. The Holy Spirit’s voice is consistent, whereas emotions fluctuate.

Our emotions are not consistent. Sometimes, we feel God, and other times, we sense that He’s far. Sometimes, we feel like praying, while on other days, we can’t. The difference is that the Holy Spirit is consistent.

The way you can know whether it is just your emotions is to test it. I like to write down the impression I feel is on my heart and pray about it, asking the Lord for confirmation. Sometimes, the next day, I wake up and realize that it was just me.