Hearing God: How God Speaks Today

Hearing God: How God Speaks Today

(1 Kings 19:11-13)

10:30 am, Sun, Sept 22, 2013 Windsor UBC, J G White

Thirty years ago, Guideposts magazine told the story of an ordinary housewife, Virginia Lively, who started to weep, and continued to weep for four days.

On the morning of the fourth day, alone in her living room, there was a sudden hum and crackle in the air.  She saw a ball of white light through a window, spraying showers of multicolored light in its wake and approaching her with amazing speed.  Then it was right there, beside her, and as she looked at it she saw a face.

‘He is perfect,’ was her first thought.  His forehead was high.  His eyes were large, but she could not fix their colour any more than she could the colour of the sea.  His features were lost in the overwhelming impression of life brimming over with power and freedom.  

Instantly she knew this was Jesus.  She saw his utter lack of condemnation, that nothing she had ever done or ever would do could alter the absolute caring or the unconditional love in his eyes.

According to Virginia’s testimony, Jesus was present with her in this way for three months, and then His presence began to fade.  When she last saw Him, He said to her, “I will always be with you.”  (December 1982)  Invisible, quiet, but still with her.

Amid our experience and the stories we know, it is important to have a handle on how God speaks with us now.  We just remembered the famed moment with Elijah the Hebrew Prophet, in the mountains, hearing from God not in the great wind, or earthquake, or fire, but in a still small voice.  

It is the ways humans conversed with the Lord in the past that still go on today.  We have no reason to doubt this.  It is often the extraordinary, miraculous stories that stay with us, eh?  Yet there is also a lot of ‘ordinary’ hearing from God: in scripture, and in our Christian lives.

A survey of events in the Old and New Testaments illustrates the many ways people experience God speaking.  Like the experience of Ms. Lively, there can be a phenomenon and a voice.  Abraham with the fire that consumed his sacrifices in Genesis 15, while making a covenant together.  Moses hearing instruction when he stopped long enough to investigate a bush that was on fire but not burning up, Exodus 3.  Ezekiel’s vision of the wheels and things in the sky.  Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3, with the Spirit descending like a bird, a dove.  Later, in Acts 9, Saul the persecutor of believers seeing a bright light and hearing from Jesus.  

Akin to this are the times an angel or other supernatural messenger visits someone.  Aside from all the Old Testament events, we might think in the New of the angel visits to the parents of John the Baptizer, and Jesus, and then the shepherds when Christ was born.  

Then, there are dreams and visions.  Dreams we think of happening in sleep, and often needing explanation.  They are like those the patriarch Joseph interpreted for the Pharaoh and others in Egypt, or that Daniel interpreted for Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, or such as Paul saw in Acts 16, leading him to travel to Macedonia.  

Visions usually seem more direct, and happen in our waking moments, such as with Peter in Acts 10 when he saw the collection of non-kosher food and was told to eat.  

A simple, audible voice, is a communication from the Lord many people long for, at special moments, to make the way certain.  We read in scripture of things like young Samuel learning to answer the Lord, calling him in the night; 1 Samuel 3.  The boy thought it was simply the voice of his master in the Temple, not the Lord God almighty.  

All these voices from the Lord are the more special, rare moments.  From day to day, there can be much more hearing from God in other ways.  One is the human voice.  Some other person speaks, and you detect that it is also a message direct from the Lord.  Moses had been told by his Lord, “Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.”  The children of Israel heard many a time the Lord’s word from Moses’ mouth, and his Brother Aaron’s.  

A flood was on its way, forcing everyone to evacuate. The police rowed up to the most pious woman in town and said, "Ma'am, you have to leave this house! People are dying out here!"

     The woman replied, "No, I'm not leaving. God has always helped me before, and He will do it again."

     So as the water started to rise, she went to the second story of her house. Another boat came by, and the captain yelled, "Ma'am, you have to get on this boat or you're going to drown!"

     The woman replied again, "No, God helped me before, and He will do it again."

     The water rose even higher. This time she went to the top of the roof, where a helicopter came and hovered overhead. The pilot called into his loudspeaker, "Please climb aboard, ma'am. You are going to drown!"

     The women sniffed and again replied, "God is going to save me!"

     But the water rose higher, and soon she drowned to death. She went to Heaven, and there she asked God, "Why didn't you save me, O Lord?"

     And God replied, "I did help--I sent you two boats and a helicopter!"

Most of us have more stories of the Spirit speaking thrugh human voices than of spiritual dreams, angels, or supernatural happenings.  And don’t forget that ofttimes God can speak through the written words of another person.  

One of my few dramatic moments was 22 years ago when I was trying to decide upon my calling to be a pastor.  I was on the quest for a while, and the final straw that convinced me, that instantly made me feel sure, was a devotional reading for the day, December 2.  

Many of us have a sort of vision of the kind of person God wants us to be.  We must be true to that vision, whatever it is, and we must try to live up to it, by living the way we believe we should live…  But many a person fails to fulfill that promise and God’s disappointments must be many.

It was in the simple words of that author that I heard God saying to Jeffrey George White: My vision for you is sure; not to take this path would be a disappointment.  

The story of Elijah on mount Horeb, in a time of personal crisis, points us to an even more subtle, and potentially more common, hearing from God.  The so-called Still Small Voice.  The records of the Old Testament bear witness to many a moment of dramatic fire - and the Lord is there.  Or wind and storm - and the Lord is there.  Or an earthquake - and the Lord is in it.  In 1 Kings 19, Elijah responds to the quietness, not the dramatic eruptions - and this is his turning point.  From fear and fleeing, to turning back and returning, anointing new kings, and even taking on a disciple, Elisha, who would follow in his footsteps.

The still small voice, the inner voice, may indeed be the prime way to hear from our Lord.  In our own mind, our inner thoughts, we can learn to hear our God speak.  Knowing what thoughts are from the Lord and what are not - this is the training of the disciple.  This is our spiritual journey, our walk with the Lord; and learning how to recognize His voice we will explore in the next two weeks.  

I believe it really is the way of Jesus, to hear from God every day, moment by moment, in our inner thoughts and awareness. Our prayerful attention to God opens the door.  We do not need miracles to hear from the Master.

E. Stanley Jones wrote

God cannot guide you in any way that is not Christ-like.  Jesus was supreme sanity.  He went off into no visions, no dreams.  He got His guidance through prayer as you and I do.  I do not say that God may not guide through a vision or dream; but if He does, it will be very seldom, and it will because He cannot get hold of our normal processes to guide them.  For God is found most clearly and beneficially in the normal rather than in the abnormal.  And Jesus is the Normal, for He is the Norm.  (p. 283,The Way, 1946)

We can learn the ordinary, daily voice of the Shepherd, the Spirit, our God.  We seek His voice day by day.  We look for it everywhere.  Seek the Lord, while He may be found, says Isaiah 55, call upon Him while He is near.  Walking with Him, more of His thoughts become our thoughts.  Not all, of course; our union with the Lord is incomplete and tiny.  His thoughts are not our thoughts, Isaiah says.  But as Job 26:14 beautifully puts it, while meditating upon God’s Creation: These are indeed but the outskirts of His ways; and how small a whisper do we hear of him!  

How small a whisper do we hear of Him; yet the still small voice will be so often enough. Last week’s hymn could be ours again today.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies;

No sudden rending of the veil of clay;

No angel visitant, no op’ning skies;

But take the dimness of my soul away.

The simple way, the still small voice, the inner thought that comes from your Lord is the daily, usual way to hear from God.  Next time I want us to delve into how we recognize the inner voice, among our own thoughts and feelings and distractions.  How the sheep get to know the Shepherd’s voice.