The deleted post:

There's a scripture verse that's perhaps one of the shortest, yet for me, one of the most powerful: "Be still and know that I am God". It would seem that God speaks to people in many ways, through many venues...it seems that He finds whatever way best suits the ears and eyes of the person He's trying to reach...music, books, scripture, other people...virtually everything is at His beck and call to use to woo us into His presence and into deeper relationship. In our busy lives, we just often don't take the time to truly "be still", but even more problematic, IMO, we often cannot fathom that God Almighty would even WANT to speak with us, so we tend to not believe that that teeny tiny "voice" in the back of our minds is His.

My rule of thumb, and it's not everyone's, but it works for me, is that anything that speaks love, edification, peace and abundant life is God trying to get through to me. Sometimes it comes through other people, sometimes it comes from nature, sometimes it comes in the form of that very quiet voice in the back of my mind...I do listen to it. Sometimes it's my own voice speaking stuff to me, sometimes it's the voices from the past - whenever the message is one of guilt, judgement, demoralization or diminishing in any way, I know it's not God's voice. God's voice ALWAYS speaks love, and always furthers my understanding of mercy, love and compassion. That's been my experience. I've learned to shoo away anything else, no matter who it comes from, no matter how "big" or renowned the preacher might be. The more I listen, the more time I spend "being still and KNOWING that He is God", the more I grow in my understanding and acceptance that God loves me, and that He only wants to speak love to my heart. Anything else that disturbs my spirit or demeans me in any way is (IMO) not from Him. It works for me.

Being open to being surprised helps. We tend to box God into the Scriptures and think that He can't say anything new. He's the Master Creator...anyone who is creative knows that creativity is evolutionary and urges you to constantly find new ways to express what it is you want to say. Why not the same with God. Why wouldn't He want to find new and creative ways to speak Love to our hearts - He has a lot of background noise to wade through to get to our ears, He has to find creative ways to reach us these days.

He has a sense of humour. Once you tap into that, and believe that He might actually love you enough to want to be in delightful dialogue with you, everything becomes possible.