TAK Article: God is a good communicator!
A couple of days ago I was up late at night and I just couldn’t fall asleep. My mind was wandering all over the place.
Well, as it wandered around I found myself thinking about church and then how important it is for us to hear God’s voice – both privately and together with others. I realize that hearing God’s voice may sound odd at first, as it was for me, but it has become the most important practice in my life for completely following Jesus.
I hope that this article will help you do that too!
Hearing God’s Voice in Nature
It is incredible to realize what God has done in order to speak with us. That’s the heart of what I say when I talk about God speaking to us through nature.
Rod Wilson, a teacher for my Discipleship Training School, quoted this to us during his week on God’s character and spiritual warfare (the verse is from Mathew 6:28-29).
‘ “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil or spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” The Greek word to “consider” means to diligently study – Jesus commands His disciples to study nature!’
Rod continued to teach us a lot about hearing God’s voice and other challenging topics for which I am much indebted to him for.
One of the stories he used to describe this was from when his family was serving in New Zealand.
They were in a tough financial spot and were trusting God for provision. After praying as a family he walked outside and saw a seagull fly overhead with a piece of bread in his mouth. Right then, Rod went back into the house and shared what God had told him when he saw the seagull. God had told Rod that He was their provider just like the seagull’s.
And then, in a short time, God came through just like He said He would!
Likewise, there was a time when my friends and I were camping in the White Cloud mountains of Idaho. It was just a few hours before we would leave and I really wanted to take some pictures of the rock pika that lived nearby our camp.
As I watched them scurry over and under the rocks I noticed that they always had one or two pika standing guard. They would also whistle to each other to communicate danger, when one would stop standing guard, or just to let everyone else know that it was safe. It was interesting to me for some odd reason, though, I quickly realized why.
I had been trying to understand how it is that God can find pleasure in what we do. Not just the “holy” things, but in everyday things and the things that really get us excited.
That’s when it started to make sense!
God has given each of us a unique identity and He enjoys seeing us walk out that very identity! The rock pika that I watched were doing just that – being rock pika!
By living out the identity that God has given us we are worshiping God!
About half a year later, I was able to share that same principle with a youth group that was serving the Nez Perce community in Lapwai, Idaho. Nobody else could have done the things that God had given them to do there because God had created them for this time and this purpose.
He has given the same honor of a uniquely created identity to each of us too!
The Psalms of the bible have a lot more to say about hearing God’s voice through nature as well. King David describes in Psalm 19 that “the heavens declare the glory of God” and in Psalm 97 that “the heavens declare His righteousness.”
Psalm 104 is another excellent example of nature reflecting to us the greatness of who God is. Have you, like King David, ever looked at creation and been amazed at the one who created it all?
God’s Voice is Effective
The very first time I came across the idea of hearing God’s voice was at a winter retreat with my youth group at church. A lot of my friends were there, especially, one friend that came back from a DTS who would teach about this very topic.
It sounded a little odd at first, but I figured that I should at least listen to her and try.
I don’t remember whether it worked right then or not, but it certainly did later that night. As I would be reading through my Bible I would run into a question and then, quite innocently, ask God a yes or no question about it. He actually answered! I didn’t hear it with my ears, so to say, but I could feel it inside of me. I remember later holding out my hands and asking God to press down the “yes hand” or the “no hand” – it still works, but I have learned since then that God can communicate in even better ways than that!
At the end of the week we had an altar call of sorts; our Youth Pastor laid down a small wooden cross on the floor and gave us some nails. He told us to nail down our commitment to Jesus. And asked us, is our faith only tacked in, nailed half way, or driven in all the way?
I really wanted to nail down my faith all the way! However, I thought in that moment, “Maybe I should try to ask God first?”
Firmly in my heart I felt God say one word – “paintball.”
My heart sank!
No, what? How could God mention that? There’s nothing wrong with paintball! I thought that my commitment to God was sure, completely given to God, but with one word God pointed out something in my heart that I was not willing to give to Him.
I had given paintball a place in my heart (or rather the pride it created in me) and placed it above God’s place in my heart.
That day, I thought that I had placed God above paintball in my heart, but that wasn’t the case. I only did so long enough to nail my nail into the cross. I was too prideful to admit where my heart was at in that moment because I wanted to show myself very committed to God in front of my friends.
For the next several months my life was very empty because I felt too ashamed to ask God for forgiveness and was too afraid of what others would think of me if I gave up paintball claiming God told me to.
Fast forwarding to my DTS, which was later that year, on the first evening of lectures, we were doing an exercise on hearing God’s voice and, again, I was going along with it because I didn’t want to look like an unspiritual person. My motivations were out of fear for my own pride, not out of love for Jesus.
We were supposed to draw whatever picture came to our mind.
The first thing I saw was a merry-go-round, ‘What is this? God wants me to draw a merry-go-round?’ It didn’t seem very spiritual to me, but I did it.
Next, God gave me a picture of a slide. ‘A slide? What does a slide have to do with anything?’ I tried to go ahead and draw a slide.
Lastly, God gave me a picture of the last 4-H fair I had been a part of. ‘What? Why would God want me to draw this!’ I dropped, maybe more of threw, the pencil onto the table.
At that moment God gave me two Bible verses, fast, completely clear, I could see them written in red in my mind. One, I believe, was Psalm 41:9, the other one I am not sure about, but it’s message was the same. Our teacher had already said that if we get a Bible verse we should read it, so I did. Psalm 41:9 says this:
“Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread,
hath lifted up his heel against me.”
God came and told me explicitly, in a way that I could not deny that it was Him, that I had been the one betraying him this entire time. Nothing had ever hit me so hard before; I placed my Bible back on the table and sat silently until class was over.
That night God showed me how to repent of betraying Him and my relationship with Him started to heal from that point on. It was hard, but I am very thankful that God spoke to me the way that He did about my pride.
My heart is much more alive having listened to Him!
God’s Voice Will Break the Rules
Even as I have been taking the time to write this article and reflect on God’s relationship with me I can see that this is true – God is willing to break all kinds of “holy”, “spiritual”, and “religious” rules so that He may have intimacy with us.
There is a story in the book of Acts that talks about this.
In chapter 19 we read about a controversy among the followers of Jesus.
Both Peter and Paul had been telling about how God wanted to be known by all people and was making Himself known among all people. However, there were others in the church that couldn’t accept this because the people who were choosing to follow Jesus were not choosing to follow the Jewish law as well.
At this point in the book of Acts there has been many examples of God acting this way. The primary argument of the others had been that these people were breaking the rules of God’s religion.
Then, after everything had been heard, James quotes this from the prophet Amos.
“After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old.” – Acts 15: 16-18
What is King David’s fallen tent?
Well, in the story of King David, told in parts through 1st & 2nd Samuel and 1st Kings, there is a time when the ark of the covenant is lost in battle. This was a great big box covered in gold that contained the ten commandments and several other sacred things. It represented God’s presence to the children of Israel and God did express Himself from the ark. There were also a lot of rules that God had given the children of Israel concerning this ark. If these rules were broken terrible things could happen to the people breaking the rules.
However, this seemed to apply to some people and not others – and there is a strong connection among the people who broke these rules and lived.
Later during King David’s reign, we find him receiving the ark back from his enemies (they really did not want it anymore) and taking the ark back to Jerusalem. He does not follow the rules and take the ark back to the place it is supposed to go. As the ark travels David is also sacrificing cows to God every short while, another thing that only special people were allowed to do. And finally, at the end, he places the ark in a tent where it is accessible to almost anybody, sits there around it by himself, and has a group of people singing to God in front of it as often as possible— all of which are terribly against God’s rules for the ark of the covenant!
And do you know how terrible God’s punishment was?
Well, not very terrible at all; in fact, God calls King David a man after His own heart!
King David cared less about the rules concerning the ark than he did about being close to God. This is the heart attitude that God enjoys! When we do not want to be too close to God we end up with religious rules that hold us away from God!
This was the same way that Jesus acted too – He was holy, God’s presence on earth, and was very much known for hanging out with unholy people.
Jesus called many of these people to become His disciples. As these people were given the Holy Spirit, like Peter and Paul, they went out and spent their time with even more unholy people. Many of these people chose to believe what they were saying and saw the proof in their lives and chose to follow Jesus as they were. And so on and so forth…
In the end, God’s voice will be heard by everyone in the whole world!
His voice will not be heard by only special people, in special places, at special times, but God has chosen to speak in ways that allow everyone hear Him! He wants to have an intimacy with everyone!
How should we hear God’s Voice?
My wife and I were visiting a house church once and the evening’s question for the group was this, “How do you hear God’s voice?”
There wear a lot of good listeners there! Some people heard His voice the most when they were reading the Bible, others while listening to music, others while sitting at the beach or hiking through the forest.
We shouldn’t trick ourselves into thinking that God only speaks in one way, or that the way we’ve always heard God speak is the only way that everyone else should hear God speak.
God is very creative; I’ve mostly included stories from my life, so these are probably tilted towards my ways and ideas of hearing God’s voice. However, I think that there may be some common threads that you will find to be true in your life as well.
The greatest of these, I believe, will be your desire to hear God’s voice and putting in the effort and time to hear His voice. God is speaking to you and He will speak to you, but are willing to listen? Are you willing to put down the things that He says to put down? Are you willing to go through the pain of hearing His voice?
My testimony is a good example of the pain that may occur when you start hearing God’s voice, it is called conviction and it is a good pain! If you feel God’s conviction, take my advice! Repent of it, turn away from whatever God tells you to, run to Him! He is far better than anything of any worth in this world or any to come! In Him is good, true, and perfect love!
I can almost promise that if you start hearing God’s voice that this will happen. It is worth it, though, because intimacy with Him is worth everything.
In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom
The Abiding Kingdom 