HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD
Paying Attention to the Obvious and Responding Sincerely
The Framework for Hearing God’s Voice
1. General Revelation
Hearing God begins with our
acknowledgment that there is God. Everybody who wants to hear God’s voice must
first resolve for himself or herself that there is God, and he basis for such
resolution is creation, through which God reveals His invisible attributes of
immense power. We therefore stand condemned if we resolve in our hearts to
worship any created thing rather than the creator or to put the voice of any
created being above that of the Creator. Knowing God or hearing Him through
creation has been described as general revelation and God the Creator would
hold every creature accountable to the need to acknowledge their source, and it
is the foundation on which the next component of the framework is built.
2. Special Revelation
Paying attention to and living
according to God’s voice or words (revelation) that have been handed down
through generations is next in the framework for hearing God’s voice. Both the
revelation and its application can be traced to time and space, and do not contradict
the gracious nature of the Creator. The test of whether or not a tradition
handed down is from the Creator should be its consistency with His nature. For
example, if there is a Creator, why would he love some of His creation and hate
the others without reason, and why would He not communicate with His creation
at their level. The Bible clearly passes those tests as does none other claim
to Divine revelation: It codifies God’s works in creation, through the fall of
man, and God’s acts to preserve and save humanity without discrimination and
how He Himself has consistently made this knowledge available through a number
of witnesses through the generations that date back to the creation of man.
If you choose the wrong tradition
to pay heed to, you may not hear God more clearly than creation affords, and
especially, if you refuse the overwhelming evidence of the Bible, you are
likely to land into deception, whose proof is usually subservience to creation
rather than the Creator.
3. Personal Revelation
The third in the framework for
hearing God is personal revelation, when God speaks directly to a person. This
is how all communication with God began, as in the Garden of Eden, and it is
the communication that God seeks most. Due to the fall (man’s unwillingness to
remain submitted to God), it became necessary for God to reach us through those
who would hear Him (special revelation) and hold all accountable through
creation (general revelation). But ultimately He seeks and wants each person to
hear Him personally. Because many other voices that include those of Satan and
our own flesh, also seek our attention, it is important that we prove the
Creator’s voice according to already revealed word, without which He does
nothing (according to that same word). God’s ultimate communication choice if
to speak directly to each one of us, and He does that in consistency with His
creation (general) and handed down word (special).
Our Tendency to Refuse to Hear God’s Voice
From the earlier paragraphs, it is clear that no
human being can claim to never have heard the voice of God. Jesus’ conversation
with a Samaritan woman points out the anti-God layers that we tend to plug our
ears with, only to turn around to ask questions we already have answers to.
1. Refusal/Unwillingness to Obey:
The woman rebutted Jesus’ request for water with a reason why she must not give
Him the water basically because she DID NOT WANT to give Him the water. Why
would anyone at a well refuse to give a stranger water (first before asking
questions), if she is not being stingy or unwilling?
2. Placing Experience above
Divine Revelation: By questioning Jesus on whether He thought He was greater
than the fathers who provided water through the well system, the woman reveals
our tendency to hold experience above God’s revelation. Why listen to God’s
revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ, when we are already somehow getting by
without Him? This is a common obstacle to hearing the voice of God.
3. Misunderstanding: The woman
asked for the living water to replace the well water, showing a clear
misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying. She should first have asked what
Jesus meant by the living water. This hints at another obstacle to our hearing
the voice of God – our failure to understand Him when He speaks. However,
indeed this is nothing extraordinary, since He is a higher being than us, and
we cannot always comprehend Him, but we must humbly ask Him in prayer for
meaning when we are at a loss. We should not presume like the woman did, and
proceed from there.
4. Resistance to Divine
Transformation of our Character: The woman offered a ready answer that covers
more than it reveals when Jesus’ questions came close to exposing her true
character. This is consistent with our tendency to shield our personal failings
from the light. When Jesus showed that He (the Divine) knew all hidden things,
the woman was shaken, and that became her confession of the Messiah. God speaks, and often it is about our
failings and His ability to fix us and take us out of the temporary hiding
places that sin thrusts us. If we are willing to have our nature restored to
His image and our character transformed, we would testify that God speaks ever
loudly to us through our conscience every day!
5. Fear of Violating Human
Traditions: the Samaritan woman sought to defend the traditions of her
forefathers concerning the place of worship, and Jesus told her how wrong she
was in assuming that it was authentic worship or that the worship that God
desires is tied to a place. How often do we not choose to defend our traditions
against God’s voice today? Whatever the traditions we have inherited, they
would not substitute for God’s voice today anymore than a father’s instruction
to his child yesterday binds the child from listening to the father today. At
best, yesterday’s instruction was a guide to today’s. God still speaks today,
and what guided us yesterday must submit to His guidance today, otherwise they
become unfruitful human traditions.
How Satan’s Voice Masquerades as God’s
The desert temptation of Jesus
offers us insight into Satan three key methods of getting us to destroy
ourselves by shutting out the voice of God, which alone is able to rightly
guide us.
1. He pretends to care for our
natural needs and urges us to ignore our spiritual needs: When Jesus was hungry
after the 40 days fasting, Satan suggests He goes on a rampage turning stones
into bread, just because He could,
2. He quotes the Scriptures out of
context to give us a false sense of Divine backing for our wrongdoing
3. He tempts us to worship other
things apart from God, pretending to the ownership of creation
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