How To Pick God’s Voice Out Of The Noise

So you think you can hear from God? What makes you so sure? We live in a world crammed with noise and competing voices, all urging us to believe what they are saying and do what they are telling us. Our response is to tune most of them out, and mostly we do, but, despite our best efforts, we are still affected by those that get past our shutters. And it’s not just voices we deal with; it’s our need to please others, our need for approval and respect, that drives us try to balance the competing choices for life.

Faith puts us in the position of needing to hear from God and we realize that the obligation and desire to do his will is paramount. The question is, “How?” How do I hear from God and how do I know it is God I am hearing?

We also have to battle in our minds with the thought that a God who is big enough to deal with the universe is unlikely to care what I think or what I do. If he is so great and powerful, then he doesn’t need my help to run his universe, so I have trouble seeing why he’d bother with telling me anything or what impact my actions could possible have on his plans. (If the universe is so delicate it needs my help then we are all in a precarious state!)

 

Hearing takes more than an impressive set of ears. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Our minds tell us it is illogical that God should have any need for us whatsoever. We are staring at one of those paradox things that faith presents us with: there is no reason why God would need us nor why he would place any value on what we can do, he just does. We can’t explain it. We can accept it.

“The Lord did not set his affection on you or choose you 

because you were more numerous than other people . . . 

But it was because the Lord loved you and  . . .”        Deuteronomy 7:7

Don’t think too hard about these words, they’ll give you a headache as you try to follow the argument. Essentially it says, “The reason God loves you and chooses you is because he did.” Period. No debate, no reasons, no earning his attention, it is just a statement of a fact. Period. With no more reasons, Moses moves to the conclusion: we need to be careful to do what he wants us to do. (All we have to work out is what that is.)

This is the point of the book of Genesis – the beginnings of faith are found in, and only in, relationship with God. The account of the Garden of Eden involves God relating to humans, alerting us to the fact that a life of faith must inevitably be a life of relating to God. There were remarkably few restrictions placed on the humans and the account stresses the personal nature of relationship with God. Humans had a defined role to play in managing the created world and their frequent contact with God was designed to keep them in harmony with his wishes. It was a good plan which ultimately failed.

The weakness that lead to the failure was the willingness of the humans to hear what he said and do it without question. The test came when one of the humans was asked, “Did God really say . . .?”  Her answer was essentially correct but she had already begun to add things to what God said: “You must not touch the tree.” To be fair, what she was repeating had not been said directly to her, it had been passed on. We tend to do that, we add to what God says; with the best of intention, we add our interpretations and embellishments. Sometimes they are helpful, often they are not.

The failure itself found its strength from mistrust. There had been no indications recorded for us of cases where God had acted selfishly or taken advantage of the humans, yet, once the suggestion was made that God was holding out on them, their trust in him as a person was undermined and doing what he wanted was no longer an option.

So where does this get us?

The foundation for hearing from God is that God has chosen to love us and relate to us.

God wants to relate to us, it’s his deliberate choice.

He has a task and purpose  for us – we do not relate to him simply because it is  good for us, but because we realize that we will never find fulfillment apart from doing the things he gives us to do. Relationship with God leads us to our purpose in life.

Our faith response does not allow us to assign motives to God for what he does and whenever we try to do that we collapse into mistrust and self-promotion which destroys our ability to relate to God and to do what he tells us.

If I want to say I have heard anything from God I have to begin with relationship with him. Without that relationship I can be sure that I am unlikely to be hearing from God and my inspiration is coming from myself or from what others say. It might be good, but it won’t transform us. There’s no substitute for personally hearing from God.

Related articles

• “I Need A Word From God…” Part 1 (endtimeebooklibrary.com)
• Listen to learn to obey (evanlaar2012.wordpress.com)