When I was about 12, I felt like God was showing me to hang out with one of my friends. So I asked her if she’d want to hang out. We walked around the park near my house, and talked a lot. I shared with her a few things about Jesus. She confided in me that she was considering suicide that day. My calling her and talking to her was just the encouragement she needed to keep going.

Now, you might not think that hanging out with a friend that God puts on your heart is a big deal. It would have been really easy for me to have ignored that leading of God. I could have watched TV instead or done something I wanted to do. However, I just chose to obey the leading of God. It turns out that God wanted to encourage her so she didn’t end her life.

Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. – Psalm 143:10 (NIV)

What is God calling you to do? There might be something that He keeps putting on your heart, but you never seem to move forward on it. I challenge you to step out and do it. It might be that you’re one of many that God has been speaking to, but be willing to do what God is asking of you. You don’t realize the difference it might make in the lives of those around you.

Today’s Truth: Are you willing to do what God is asking you to do?

Whether you know the impact you make for others or not, it’s always good to move forward in the things you feel that God is calling you to do. You might be the one who is able to help someone else.

Have you ever wanted to hear from God? Maybe you need direction on what to do for your future. Perhaps someone or something in your life is really bothering you, and you just need to know what to do. You wish that you just had an angel that would show up in your room and show you what to do.

I know I’ve wished that more times than I can count. It would be so much easier to know what God wants you to do if an angel showed up in your house. Most of the time, however, God doesn’t lead us through something spectacular like all those angels that showed up to the shepherds in the Christmas story. Instead, God will often lead us through His word, through peace, through a dream, or through prayer.

So how do you know for sure what to do?

Well, a lot of the time, it’s like learning anything else, it just takes some practice. Can you think back to when you learned how to ride a bike? More than likely you got on the bike, then fell off it. Then you got on it again, and after a few days of practice, you got good at balancing and riding the bike.

Today’s Truth: Hearing from God is easy – it just takes practice.

The same is true with hearing God’s voice. You’re not going to be perfect at it starting out. It takes some time and some practice to get good at it. The key is to start small. So try this: when you lose your phone this week, and I’m sure it will happen, ask God to help show you where it is. Get quiet and listen. You’ll probably get an idea of where to look. That’s God leading you. As you start to ask for God’s direction and help in the small things, like where you put your phone or your history homework, you’ll begin to see that you do hear God’s voice.

“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. – Luke 16:10 (NLT)

So begin to trust that leading. As you begin in small areas, you’ll see that you can trust God to lead you in the bigger decisions too. Don’t wait. Begin to let God lead you today.

I remember a time I was listening to Spotify on my phone. Then a really loud person walked into the room. I had to keep turning the volume up on my phone to be able to hear. I didn’t want to hear the loud person, I wanted to finish my Podcast.

In the same way, our world is noisy. Distractions are everywhere. However, if we value God’s voice, we will do whatever it takes to turn up the volume on Him in our lives. His voice played at the loudest volume makes the difference in our lives.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. – Matthew 1:20 (NIV)

Joseph had to do this in his life. He had to hear the angel of the Lord. Joseph could have ignored God speaking. It would have probably been easier. Instead, he decided to value God speaking to him and obey what the angel said.

In the same way, you can decide to do whatever it takes to hear from God. Value what He has to say in your life. Sometimes that means turning off the TV or spending less time on your phone to hear His voice.

God wants to speak to you and tell you things about your future. He wants to help you in small things like where you left your missing History project and in large things like where to go to college. It’s just up to you to learn to listen to His voice. You start to do this by valuing what He has to say. As you spend time in prayer and reading your Bible, you’ll become more sensitive to what He has to say.

So decide to make prayer and Bible reading a priority in your life. As you spend time with God, it turns the volume up on His voice in your life.

Money is an interesting thing. It’s essentially paper or numbers on a computer or phone. Of itself, it isn’t really valuable. However, since we’ve chosen collectively to put value on it, it’s something that’s important to us. It’s so important that we choose to work a job to get more of it. We might even do a dumb dare a friend asks us to do simply to gain money from a dare.

As children of God, we should be putting value on His wisdom, maybe a little like the value we put on money. That’s not to say that God’s wisdom is worthless, but in the same way we’ve chosen to put value on pieces of paper and numbers on a phone, we should put value on God’s wisdom.

We should spend our time learning more from it. We should pursue it in the same way we pursue money. God’s wisdom should be something that we value and spend our time getting.

so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. – 1 Corinthians 2:5 (NIV)

God’s wisdom is important because it sees the end from the beginning. God, the creator of our world wishes to share His wisdom with us. His wisdom is greater than anything we could come up with on our own.

Today’s Truth: Value God’s Wisdom

It’s up to us to value that wisdom. So today, spend some time reading your Bible. As you get into God’s word, you begin to see His wisdom in action, and it will change your life, if you’ll let God be a part of the decisions you make each day.