May 18, How can I hear God?
Let’s approach the question again:
“how can I know when it is God speaking or when it is simply my own voice and thoughts?”
This may not as difficult as once imagined, as proven in the following story from pastor and author, Erwin McManus, concerning his son.
“My son, Aaron, was five or six when he began asking me, "What does God's voice sound like?" I didn't know how to answer. A few years later, Aaron went off to his first junior high camp. In the middle of the week, I went up with another pastor to see our kids. Aaron, I learned, had started to assault another kid but had been held back by his friends. He was unrepentant, wanted to leave camp, pulled together his stuff, and shoved it into the car. I asked him for a last talk with me before we drove away. We sat on two large rocks in the middle of the woods.
"Aaron," I asked, "is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?" "Yes," he nodded. "What's the voice telling you?"
"That I should stay and work it out."
"Can you identify that voice?"
"Yes," he said immediately, "It's God."
It was the moment I'd waited for. "Aaron," I said, "do you realize what just happened? You heard God's voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that's happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize Him." I will never forget Aaron's dug-in response: "Well, I'm still not doing what God said."
I explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey God's guidance, his heart could become hardened, and his ears could become dull . . . but if he treasured God's voice and responded to Him with obedience, then his heart would be softened, and his ears would always be able to hear even the whisper of God into his soul.[1]
According to John Wesley, the distinction between God’s way and our own should be very clear to us (even as it was in the above story). In one of Wesley’s sermons, he offered the following thoughts:
“How do you distinguish light from darkness; or the light of the star, or a glimmering taper from the light of the noonday sun? Is there not an inherent, essential, obvious difference between the one and the other? And do you not immediately and directly perceive that difference, provided your physical senses are rightly disposed. In like manner there is an essential difference between spiritual light and spiritual darkness; and between the light wherein the Sun of righteousness shines upon our heart, and that glimmering light which arises only from ‘sparks of our own kindling.’ And this difference also is immediately and directly perceived if our spiritual senses are rightly disposed.”[2]
Having considered that even the youngest of us can recognize God’s way, and having considered Wesley’s reminder of the blatant difference between God’s thoughts and our own, the greater challenge is not discerning the difference, but rather preferring God’s voice over our own voice.
Innate within us is the obstinance to hold on to our will rather than relinquishing all matters completely to God’s will and way. So, hearing from God and receiving divine guidance comes as we decide to surrender all things to God’s thoughts and God’s way for our life. This necessitates our consideration of the truth of Isaiah 55:8,
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.”
Notice the two statements with their distinct emphases. First, “My thoughts are not your thoughts”, indicates the exaltedness of God’s divine “word” over our own personally conceived thoughts. Second, “neither are your ways my ways”, has reversed the previous order of the pronouns to signify that the second statement represents the outcome of the first. Because God’s thoughts are far above our own, then consequently our ways (meaning actions) are nothing like God’s ways. When left to us, we always fall woefully short of God’s ways. Therefore, if our desire is to have a word from God, we must make two simple applications from the above truth. First, we must have a heart of repentance when we fall to our own ways, for we know when our actions do not equal that which God desires. Second, we must take hope in God’s thoughts, for we can fully trust and should constantly desire His thoughts over our own.
Therefore, the distinction is clear: God’s thoughts are not our own. God’s voice sounds nothing like ours. We can certainly know the difference. We must keep our spiritual senses consistently nurtured through daily walking by faith in Jesus Christ so that when God speaks our hearts are prepared to listen and follow.
Daily prepare the senses of your soul, for God desires to guide your heart. Let’s learn to live under His guidance!
Blessings.
READ
Read Isaiah 55:1-13 and be prepared to trust God as He speaks to you.
[1] Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way (Thomas Nelson, 2005), pp. 87-89.
[2] John Wesley, Sermon on Several Occasions (New York: B. Waugh and T. Mason, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 91-92.