Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the

word, prayers, in our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. I've had a good number of people say to me,

I want to hear from the Lord, or I wish God would speak to me, or I would know if God was speaking to me.

I think all of us want God to speak to us, and I can tell you this.

I want God to not only speak to me, but when he does, I want him to tell me exactly what to do.

That's fair, right?

I can follow directions, but I want to talk about what I believe we need for God to speak to us in just a minute.

When I think of God speaking, I automatically think of the story of Samuel in the Bible from 1st Samuel 3. Remember, he's a young man ministering under Eli the priest, and one night

the Lord's calling to him, and Samuel continues to think it's Eli, and Eli keeps telling him, go back to bed, it's not me. And one night the Lord's calling to him and Samuel continues to think it's Eli and Eli

keeps telling him, go back to bed. It's not me. And finally he realizes it's God who's doing the

speaking. And so he says to Samuel, okay, this time when your name is called, say, speak Lord for your

servant is listening because he knew it was the Lord. And that's what Samuel did. And the Lord

spoke to him and told him

some crucial information that actually wasn't great information for Eli, but very important.

It strikes me because so many of us, I think, long for God to speak to us. And here Samuel was,

he wasn't really looking for God to speak. He just did. But I think we can learn some things

from God speaking to Samuel to apply to our life today.

And so here's what I believe hearing from God sort of requires. First of all, right positioning.

If we want to hear from God, we need to be positioned well. Now, I'm not saying God hasn't or won't speak to us when we're away from him. He has certainly

spoken to me at times to call me out when I wasn't in a good place or I needed to come back to him.

Obviously, there's a calling that happens there. But I think in order to gain the wisdom from God we

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