Experiencing God's call

I'm preaching this week on how we experience God's calling in our lives. How do we know when God is calling us? The Bible text is Samuel's call. He heard God's voice so clearly that he thought it was Eli, but it was God calling his name.
What would it be like to hear God's call as clear as Samuel did? I wonder why we don't hear God like that very often. In the scripture it says that, " In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions." It also says that Samuel didn't recognize the Lord's voice because " Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him."

I wonder if the reason we don't hear from God is because the word of the Lord and visions are rare in these days or because we don't know God very well and so we don't recognize his voice?