How Do I Know If I’m Hearing from God or If I’m Just in My Head?

It’s a question we’ve all asked: Is this God’s voice, or just my thoughts talking back to me? In the quiet of prayer or the chaos of life, discerning the difference can feel like trying to tune in to a static-filled radio station.

Sometimes, our minds play tricks on us, and I'll give you a bizarre Deja Vu experience I had yesterday. As a hockey fan, I remember thinking a very random thought: what has been the great NHL game comeback at the end of a game? More specifically, has there ever been a time when a team has scored, gone up by a couple of goals, in the final minute of play, and another team has come back to win? Pretty specific, right?

I couldn't think of any, but the next morning, I woke up to find the Vancouver Canucks “became the first team in NHL history to overcome a three-goal deficit in the final minute of regulation.” Weird right? So why did I have that random thought six hours before the game started? Honestly, I have no idea, and maybe I should spend more time in Vegas.

People like English mentalist, illusionist, and atheist Derron Brown would say our mind is just great at recognizing patterns. He'd say this is what I did with the hockey game, and people do the same thing with God. They pray, and then “answers to prayer” are just patterns their brains were already looking for. God is just a figment of the imagination—a human creation to deal with what can be a miserable existence.

Sunday night, in my small group, one of my friends, Donny, told the story of his time in the Marines in Afghanistan.

He was out on what turned out to be an extremely dangerous mission, disarming an IED that ended up saving thirty soldiers from injury. Only much later, after going back to his log books and speaking to his dad, did he make an astounding discovery. At the exact same time he was out on his mission, a friend of the family called his father and said he had a vision that Donny was about to be blown up on the battlefield and that they needed to immediately call several people and pray for him.

This kind of remarkable story is one I've seen play out over and over and over again, leaving me more confident than ever that God does speak. But this brings us back to the all-important question. How do I recognize his voice?

Here are three filters I'd recommend.

Filter #1: Does This Voice Align with God’s Word?

I think the reason Christians often overlook spending time in the Bible is because they misunderstand the nature of how God speaks through it. 2 Timothy 3:16 says scripture is literally “God-breathed,” and Hebrews 4:12 says it is "living and active." When we read, God is literally speaking to us. God’s Word was written to a specific group of people, but it was written for everyone. So, if you want to hear from God each day, start by reading his Word.

Christians who aren’t grounded in the Word are highly susceptible to “spiritual hallucinations.” Because they haven’t put in the time and trained their minds to recognize God’s voice through what he has written, they compensate by trying to come across as extra spiritual (dramatic pauses in prayer meetings, sensational stories, or out-of-the-box prophetic words) to make up for their lack of discipline.

But when you have the Word as your foundation, you start from a place of clarity. Because God never contradicts himself, he will not nudge you toward something that conflicts with what he has already said. That alone provides a ton of clarity (assuming you know what Scripture says) and is 80% of the battle.

Filter #2: Does This Voice Fit Who I Am?

God knows us better than we know ourselves. Psalm 139 says he knit us together in the womb and knows every thought before we think it. So it stands to reason that when God speaks, he’ll do so in ways that reflect how we’re wired. God may stretch us, challenge us, even call us out—but he seldom speaks in ways that are completely foreign to our God-given identity.

A lot of people struggle with this. They hear a random idea, or feel a strange impulse, and immediately jump to “God told me to…” But it's good to pause and ask: Is this consistent with how God has already worked in my life? Does it resonate with the passions, giftings, or convictions that he’s shaped over time?

For example, if someone who’s never shown interest in international missions suddenly feels called to uproot their life and move to a remote village, that’s not impossible, but it does deserve serious discernment. Is the voice pushing them into an arena they’ve never been called to, or is it the next faithful step in a journey that’s been unfolding for years? God doesn’t usually drop bombshells out of nowhere. More often, he fans the flames of something already stirring.

So ask yourself: Is this voice consistent with what God has already revealed about who I am and how he’s using me? If it’s wildly out of character, that’s not a deal breaker—but it’s a red flag that says, “proceed with prayer and caution.”