hearing God’s voice

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Hearing God’s Voice – Part 2

In the last post I wrote about our need to hear from God. In this post I want to address the issue of what keeps us from hearing God’s voice.

The Scripture teaches us that the normal practice of every believer is to be able to hear from God. When Scripture tells us to be “led by the Spirit” in Ephesians 5 it’s our mandate to watch and wait on God’s leading in all things.

Therefore, it is abundantly clear that the normal Christian life is one that is taught, led and directed by the Holy Spirit. We exist to commune with God and get our direction for life from a heavenly source.

Every believer should be hearing from God, but it is evident by the decisions we make, that our communication with God is somewhat lacking. There are several reasons that many believers are not hearing from God on a regular basis. Here are three of the more obvious reasons.

The busyness of life dominates our attention

When we let our busy life control our lack of fellowship with God, it is an indication that we have lost our sense of urgency to hear from God. It happens to all of us, we get busy making a living, running the kids all over town, even doing the work of the ministry. But if our life is to be truly God-centered then we must be intentional about setting aside a time to hear from God. Jesus thought it was so important that he said in Matthew 6:6, “When you pray, go into a private room, close the door, and pray unseen to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees in secret will reward you.”

Our lifestyle screams “hurry up”

Part of the mentality of our culture is we are always in a hurry. We get upset when we have to wait 5 minutes in the checkout lane, or have to wait 15 seconds for a web page to load. Our whole lifestyle is about speed and convenience.

Unfortunately, many of us approach our quiet time the same way. We rush through the Scripture reading and our devotional material, and then we say our usual 2 minute prayer, and then get on with our daily schedule. We have given little thought to our overall purpose and need to hear from God.

I recently heard a testimony from a woman in Iran who was seeking God. She became so frustrated in her search to find God that she prayed, “God I am going to give you 7 days to reveal yourself to me and then I am going to give up trying to find you. “ We often do the same thing, “OK God, I am giving you 15 minutes this morning, then I’m out the door.”

The Scripture says in many places to value waiting on God, “Yet those who wait on the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles…” (Isaiah 40:31) The Lord is telling us in this passage that when we learn to wait on Him, then our perspective will be like an eagle. An eagle flies higher than any bird and has a grand panoramic perspective.

We haven’t developed our spiritual listening ears

Developing listening skills is one of the most important skills a follower of Jesus can obtain. When we spend quality time waiting and listening before God, then we develop spiritual listening ears. These are ears that eventually learn to hear God in every event of life.

A good listener knows what is happening beyond the words spoken. A husband who has become a good listener knows that a statement by his wife many times has a deeper meaning than just the words she says. In a similar manner, when an event occurs that is hard to understand, because we have developed our spiritual ears, we know God may have a greater purpose in mind.

Bottom Line

You can rest assured that God wants to speak to you. He wants to share His love by increasing your intimacy with Him. But you must take the first step to slow down and listen, because God is seldom in a hurry. As you develop your spiritual listening ears then He will do the rest by speaking to you. He may speak in a passage of Scripture, a devotional, or even through a sermon. He could speak in the middle of difficult circumstances, or He may speak in a still small voice. But however He speaks it’s important that you are ready, willing and prepared to listen.

“Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, yes, wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14)

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Hearing God’s Voice

During my many years as a Pastor and a Counselor, I have had a number of people tell me about conversations they had with God. Some of the stories were as bizarre as a Twilight Zone movie. Others were less dramatic but included some sort of verbal conversation with God.

Early on in my Christian life I would have thought “what’s wrong with me, why don’t I hear those voices”? But as I matured in my walk with God,and my knowledge of Scripture, I came to realize that probably most of those stories were not really an encounter with God, but were more than likely some desperate, and failed attempt to hear from God.

Could God verbally speak to us, absolutely? But more often than not, God uses our natural senses and our daily lifestyle to speak to us. He normally communicates to us quietly in our spirit. Throughout scripture we see a pattern of the “still small voice” as His primary means of speaking to His children.

This principle is illustrated in the story of Elijah when he was running from Jezebel. He had fled to the mountains of Mount Horeb and was hiding in a cave. God wanted to get Elijah’s attention so He sent a great wind that caused the rocks to fall and bust. He then sent an earthquake and fire. But the scripture tells us that none of those elements were instruments of His revelation. In contrast to all that noise, God then sent a still small voice to speak to Elijah. (2 Kings 19)

God was making a point to Elijah. the lesson is that he shouldn’t depend on miraculous signs for revelation, but he should be still and listen for God’s still, small voice.

Learning to hear God’s voice is key to a successful walk with God. He wants to continually speak to and through us, but we must learn to take time to stop, be quiet and listen. He wants us to learn to recognize His voice and to distinguish His voice from the many other voices around us.

After all these years, I am still learning how to hear God’s voice. I must confess, sometimes, I would like to see a little wind, fire and earthquake when I am waiting on an answer to prayer. However, every time I get anxious about waiting on God, I miss what He is saying in that “still small voice”. Often, what He says while I am waiting is more profound than the eventual answer to my prayer. Could it be that our journey of waiting has as much value as the destination?

Bottom Line
Hearing God speak is not something reserved just for the super spiritual, but it’s for every child of God who is willing to learn how God speaks. He wants us to become intentional in our listening, and learn to watch and wait for His voice. Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be to spend as much time quietly waiting and listening as we spend praying?

In the next post I will expand on this subject and write about the practical aspects of hearing God’s voice.

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When God is not Speaking

“And yet it is true that this God, who desires to give Himself to you, will often conceal himself from you – from you the very one who seeks Him.” (Guyon)

If you have been a “God Seeker” very long, you have experienced the above statement on at least a few occasions. Why does a God who loves us so intensely seem to close a deaf ear to our prayers, especially in times of great need? There are at least three reasons.

First, God wants us to be on a track of continually pursuing Him. If you are the typical Christian then you, like me, have a tendency to get spiritually lazy when things are going great. We may have our daily devotions and shoot up a few prayers during the day, but we lack passion in our pursuit of Him. We may not say it, but we sometimes live like, “God I am ok now, but I will be sure to get really serious about prayer if I hit a snag I can’t fix. You will be the first one I call on.”

Every committed follower of Jesus is quick to call upon the Lord when things begin to get out of control, and it should be that way. However, God’s higher desire for us is to pursue Him even when times are good. God created us for fellowship with Him. It is the instinctive nature of a child of God to pursue a deeper and richer fellowship with the Father. So when we sense those times when God seems to turn a deaf ear to our prayers it could be a sign that we need to examine our passion of pursuit.

Secondly, it is a test of our faith. Do you really believe, even when you can’t “feel” His presence? As a faithful follower of Jesus our faith is continually tested in numerous ways. The deeper our walk the greater the test. It’s like the old story about the man who was chased by a bear. In his attempt to outrun the bear he ran over a cliff and on the way down latched onto a limb. While hanging there in midair (hundreds of feet from the valley floor), he called out to God to help him. God said, “Do you trust me? The man quickly declared, “Yes, I believe and fully trust you.” Then God said,” Let go of the limb.”

Sometimes trusting God when we don’t see a logical way out is like the above story. We must trust God and be willing to let go of the limb. We must trust Him because of who He is and because of His proven faithfulness in the past. Each time we come to one of those moments and we trust God, even though our emotions are all over the place, our faith is increased. How does our faith increase? Because in the end God gives us what we really need – even though it is not what we prayed for. Faith must be tested in order to grow and have real value. Now you better understand what Paul said concerning his weakness and suffering. “I thank God for various temptations.” He knew that faith produces faith-building endurance.

Thirdly, during times of dryness we learn something about ourselves. There is a point in my conference presentation when I ask the audience,” Who is the person that gives you the greatest problem in life?” A few may answer the “devil”, and some may say it is their spouse. But the overwhelming majority of people answer, “It’s me”. When we turn toward pursuing God during times of Spiritual dryness, we begin to see ourselves as we really are. We quickly realize how our whole world is revolving around ourselves. We see our unforgiveness, our quickness to set someone straight, our self-protection and all those things that point to a lack of brokenness.

I vividly remember military boot camp. The best way to describe it was they took all my rights away. I couldn’t go and come as I pleased. I couldn’t talk unless spoken to. I had to go to bed and get up when they said, even when it meant getting up in the middle of the night just to march until daybreak. I had to march in the rain, crawl through the mud with my rifle under barbed wire with machine gunfire buzzing above my head. It wasn’t fair; why was I treated so badly, and subjected to such dangerous circumstances? I didn’t sign up for this! I just wanted to join the military. And to top it all off, they wouldn’t let me do things my way.

It wasn’t until the end of boot camp that I realized their overall purpose. They were breaking us down so they could make productive soldiers out of us. They were breaking down my self-sufficient, undisciplined will. Their goal was to make me a good soldier, one who followed orders without question and was ready for conflict in a moment’s notice. Wow, what a proud moment when our barracks came together as a unit.

In a similar manner, that’s what God is doing in our life. He allows us to experience trouble we can’t escape, people we love whom we can’t fix, and failures and disappointments we think we don’t deserve. In addition to all of that, there are bouts of loneliness and despair… all because He wants to break our stubborn self-will. He wants us to give up on our self-sufficiency and fully cast ourselves on Him and Him alone. Life in the Lord’s army is paradoxal. To receive, you must first give. To save your life, you must give it away to others. But the rewards are heavenly; there is rest for the soul, joy (inner peace), and daily fellowship with the Creator of the universe.

Next time you feel God has withdrawn from you remember these three things: (1) God is testing your faith: (2) He is showing you your self-sufficiency and; (3) it is His cue for you to readjust your priorities and pursue Him like never before. As we gaze on Him we are transformed.

“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” (2 Cor. 4:18)

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Learning to Rest

Like many virtues in life, the most valuable and beneficial things come at a cost. We mess up, make mistakes and through the school of hard knocks we finally learn the lessons we wished we had learned years earlier.

One such lesson in the Christian life is the lesson of learning to rest.  God intends that the first step of every new believer is to learn to rest.  I know, that is opposite of what most of us experienced.  Most of us jumped in with both feet, with eyes wide open attempting to “do all we can do for God”.  It didn’t take long for us to experience burnout.  When we couple a little weariness with church problems we come to the point where we say, “There has got to be more to the Christian life?”  At this point, the result is sometimes church burnout.

Why does this burnout stage occur? Some would say that we took on too much too quickly.  Others would say there were spiritual maturity issues; we needed to grow more before we attempted to do church work.  Those may have been contributing factors, but I think the main problem is we neglected the resting stage.

It is instinctive to human nature to begin the process of “doing” as soon as we have a meaningful spiritual experience such as salvation.  We have heard the good news of the gospel, it has impacted our life, now we must get busy and tell someone else.  We are correct that we should tell others, that is a mandate for all committed followers of Christ. However, the first step in the Christian walk is not doing but rather learning to rest.

The principles of Scripture teach that our degree of success in ministry is directly connected to how much we learn to rest. The Apostle Paul so eloquently portrays that truth in Ephesians:

“…He(God) raised Him(Jesus) from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in heavenly places far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion…(1:17-21)

“And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus… (2:6-9)

Notice that God first made Jesus to sit, then his made us to sit with Him. As Watchmen Nee writes in his book Sit, Walk and Stand, “Christianity does not begin with walking but with sitting.”
Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father because his work was finished. He paid the debt for our sin once and for all.  No more sacrifices, no more burnt incenses, no more entering in the Holy of Holies once a year to apply the blood to atone for sin.  Man’s futile attempt to keep the law was now fulfilled in Jesus.

We first see the principle of resting in creation.  God made everything in six days. At the end of the sixth day He made man.  On the seventh day God rested. That means that man’s first full day on earth was a day of rest.

Why is our first duty as a believer to learn to rest? Why is resting so important to God? Listed below are five key reasons that resting is important to every committed follower of Jesus.

  1. Resting is an indication that we understand that our salvation is a work of God’s grace and not our self-effort. Our good deeds, learning the catechism or being baptized will not get us to heaven. Salvation is only received as a free gift, we can’t earn it. It is only through accepting by faith Jesus’ finished work on the cross, in our behalf, can we receive this free gift of salvation.
  2. Resting is the acknowledgment of our absolute dependence upon Him.  Apart from the living Christ within us, we can do nothing. (John 15:5) Our ability and power to be fruitful is directly related to being connected to the true vine, which is Christ.
  3. In resting we realize that our power to bear spiritual fruit comes from a higher source. Our talent and ability is practically useless unless it has been empowered by the Holy Spirit. The scripture teaches us that we are to be filled with the Spirit of God for effective and fruitful ministry. (Ephesians 5:18)
  4. Resting is a time to realize that the same Holy Spirit that drew us to Christ has formed a union with us. He is our companion 24/7. He leads and guides us toward truth, He goes before us and prepares our daily path, and He opens the hearts and minds of those we come in contact with. He prepares their heart for what He will lead us to say to them.
  5. Resting prepares our heart to have fellowship with the God of the universe. It is in those quiet moments of resting that we hear His tender voice and we receive those gems of wisdom and sense His overwhelming love.

As you can see, resting is an important step in preparing us for effective ministry. If we “hit the ground running” we can get so busy doing good that we may miss God. Make no mistake about it, the Lord wants us to be proactive in the kingdom, but not before we learn to rest. You can be more productive in five minutes with the power of God on your life, because you have spent time resting, than you can in five years of working in your own strength.

“Let us therefore be diligent to enter into that rest…”(Hebrews 4)

For more on this subject of resting, I suggest you purchase a copy of the little booklet by Watchman Nee entitled, “Sit, Walk and Stand.” You can find copy at most Christian bookstores or you can order from Amazon. It is available in Kindle format.