People sometimes ask about teaching kids how to hear God’s voice. Grace K, a participant in one of the Listening to God cohorts, shared the following story.

Benji hears from God

One of my main goals in taking the Listening to God class was to be better equipped to teach my three sons. Even though I had grown up always believing that God both hears me and shows me things, I wanted to make sure I had as much help as possible for passing this truth down to my boys. What if their listening style is different? I wondered. The group dynamic of the class has been so helpful in expanding my view of the many ways to “listen” to God.

During my second week of class, I posed this question to the group, “Do you see any correlation between the various ways God speaks to us in relation to our own personal love languages, or personalities?” For example, does God have more to say to someone who naturally receives love as “words of affirmation” and perhaps less to say but more to show physically to someone whose personality is practical and pragmatic? (The love languages and personality types are not part of scripture, but it does seem God uses such a variety of ways to communication with us and that there could be some common themes.)

Later that day, I got an answer to my question.

My second son, Benji, is an excellent 6th grade student. He is always thoughtfully on time and prepared. He often reminds me to get my shoes on and take him and his little brother to school (even though I consider myself quite punctual!) This day, upon unpacking his backpack in class, he realized a whole stack of very important papers was missing from his binder. He later told me, “Mom I was so stressed for a second, but then I took a deep breath and asked God for help. I asked God where my papers were.” 

We have always explained to him that God is a GREAT father and just like his own dad—if you ask him where something is—he will be glad to tell you! Benji said, “I got an immediate peaceful feeling and then the thought locker popped into my head.” Sure enough, he went back to check his locker later in the day and the papers had fallen behind some other stuff out of sight.

I was so excited to find out how he knew he heard from God, wondering if it was like my own experiences. “Did you SEE a mental picture of the papers in the locker? Did you HEAR the word ‘locker’ or see the word like SUBTITLES?!” He looked at me sort of funny and paused.

“Mom…” He said, in that way that 12-year-olds say “Mom”, “I just…knew. And since I had just prayed about it and had peace. I knew it was from God.”

I was beaming, and so thankful the Lord had answered him so simply and so completely regarding something he really cared about. 

In retrospect, the other funny part of this story was knowing that if my first or third son had lost their papers, they would not have cared two bits! So, the answer to my question was a definite YES! The Lord knows the hairs on our head and cares deeply and personally about the issues of our heart. He also knows the best way to communicate with us in a personal way.

Thank you, Grace!

Student photo by Gemini

Locker photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash