Whose Voice Are You Hearing

I often get asked how I know that I hear from God each week when I am writing my sermons out. And I am always usually quick to say that it must come from God because I am not that creative nor am I that well organized. I know when something comes from me and when something comes from God - because that which comes from God flows naturally and easily and that which I attempt on my own is hard fought, difficult, and nearly impossible to preach or write.

When I am writing sermons, it's easy for me to know that I am hearing from God. However, it's when I step out of that arena that it is usually much more difficult for me. And, I am assuming, much more difficult for all of us. How do we know that what we are hearing is from God and not just from our imaginations reaffirming to us what WE really want?

I think the answer lies in that we must be trained to hear the voice of God. We go through training for so many other things in our lives, and I believe that to be good at hearing from God we must train ourselves to recognize his voice. In John, Jesus talks to us about sheep who instinctively know their master's voice and know who to follow and who not to follow. For the sheep - the decision on whose voice to follow is a life or death situation. One voice brings protection and abundance of life and the other brings harm and most likely death.

So as the sheep - how do we know to listen to God's voice? How do we train ourselves? The answer lies in the need for two things, silence and solitude. Jesus, who was God in the flesh, found it necessary to go off by himself to pray. Why didn't he just stick around with the disciples! He's God after all, shouldn't hearing God's voice be easy for him? And yet he still found it important to be off by himself to pray and commune with God. I think there is a deep importance for solitude in the Christian life. To get away from the noise of life and begin to hear him and not the influence of the world.

The second way that we train ourselves is in silence. We must still ourselves and be quiet before him. We often get so busy talking that we never really take the time to listen to him. God often speaks in the still small silence of the wind like he did for Elijah. How often do we miss his voice because we have life, and our technologies, so turned up around us that we can't hear him even if we wanted to?

And so I ask, whose voice are we hearing from every day? Are we hearing from God's? Are we taking the time to be quiet and alone with him and to simply allow him to speak into our lives? And if not, can we truly expect to hear from him if we don't?