Breaking Free from Performance: How I Learned God Was Already Speaking

Breaking Free from Performance: How I Learned God Was Already Speaking 

Picture this: me on my prayer room floor for the thousandth time, desperately trying to figure out how to get God to communicate with me. I was reading every book on prayer, spending hours in that room, making sure my heart was pure, making sure I wasn't making anything up. 

I was striving. I was struggling. I was trying to earn His voice. 

Looking back, I realize I was like a dog chasing its tail—frantically pursuing something I already had. The problem wasn't that God wasn't speaking. The problem was that I didn't know how to recognize when it was Him. 

The Striving Trap 

Religious training can create the most well-intentioned barriers to intimacy with God. We're taught that if we just do enough, pray enough, read enough, purify ourselves enough, then maybe—just maybe—God will speak to us. 

But this entire mindset is backwards. It assumes God is withholding His voice until we prove ourselves worthy. It turns communication with our loving Father into a performance-based transaction. 

I spent five years in this trap, completely unaware that God was communicating with me all the time. I was so focused on trying to create the right conditions for Him to speak that I missed the fact He was already speaking in ways I didn't recognize. 

From Slavery to Freedom 

The story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar perfectly illustrates this struggle. Abraham received a promise from God about becoming the father of many nations. But when the promise didn't manifest on their timeline, Sarah came up with a plan to make it happen in their own strength. 

The child born through human effort (Ishmael) represented doing things through the flesh—through striving, working, earning. The child born through promise (Isaac) represented receiving what God freely gives through faith. 

Paul uses this story to show us that we can't follow rules and make things happen in our own strength without creating problems. There's a vast difference between trusting in the Lord and trying to make everything happen through our own effort. 

As Paul writes in Galatians: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not even listen to the law?" The law represents doing all the right things in your own strength. But we're children of the free woman, not the slave. 

The Slave vs. Bride Mentality 

God's whole goal is to set us free. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. But somehow we've developed a slave mentality instead of understanding our identity as His bride. 

You're not intimate with your slave—you're intimate with your bride. 

God doesn't want servitude; He wants intimacy. And from that intimacy, we get to do things—not because we have to, but because we want to. There's no striving in true intimacy. 

When I finally learned that God was already communicating and I just needed to recognize it, everything changed. I went from never hearing God to hearing Him regularly. I was actually in communion and fellowship with the God I professed to serve. 

The Freedom to Hear 

Here's what I discovered: learning to hear God's voice isn't about earning His communication—it's about recognizing what's already happening. It's not about working harder; it's about resting more deeply. 

When you start walking in this freedom, be prepared for some pushback. People who are still operating in the "Ishmael" mindset—trying to make spiritual things happen through human effort—may mock or ridicule your freedom. But as Scripture says, "the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman." 

The question becomes: Are the voices of friends or family who mock your spiritual freedom more important than the voice of the Lord? Are those old ways of doing things idols to you? 

Breaking Free from Performance 

If you're exhausted from trying to earn God's attention, if you're frustrated by the silence that seems to follow your most sincere efforts, consider this: maybe you're already receiving what you're desperately trying to earn. 

God isn't holding back until you get good enough. He's not waiting for you to find the magic formula. He's speaking all the time—through thoughts, through circumstances, through that gentle knowing in your spirit, through countless ways you may not have learned to recognize yet. 

The question isn't "How do I get God to speak?" but "How do I recognize what He's already saying?" 

That shift changes everything. It moves you from striving to receiving, from earning to recognizing, from slavery to freedom. 

If you're ready to move from trying to earn God's voice to learning how to recognize His constant communication, I offer practical training that can help you make this breakthrough. 

Blessings, 
Susan Dewbrew