Discerning the Voice of God

Through His long-suffering and steadfastness, He has invited me in to know Him better. And the more intimate I've become with Him, the more acquainted I've become with His voice. He has proven Himself to me, because He loves proving His Word true, to all His children, to you. Therefore, with all the confidence one person can possess, I can assure you today that God does speak. I'm learning that if my spiritual ears are open, the same voice that called me into His marvelous light will speak into my daily life. The Bible declares that God is the same yesterday and today and forever, Hebrews 13.8, meaning the same God who spoke with the prophets of old also speaks with His saints today. The Old Testament says that what distinguished the faith of the Israelites from all others was that they heard the voice of God, Deuteronomy 4.33. The Apostle Paul, writing in the New Testament, reminds us that the difference between the relationship we have with the one true God and the relationship pagans have with their idols is that their gods are silent. See 1 Corinthians 12.2. This conversational nature of our relationship with the Almighty makes our faith unique. It isn't based on rules or regulations, on rugged pilgrimages to make, or sacred rivers to bathe in. The foundation of our faith is on sweet fellowship with God, who clearly, biblically, wants our relationship with Him to be both intimate and interactive. I mean, come on, do you really think He loved you enough to die for you but not enough to talk to you? When Jesus walked the earth, He willingly revealed Himself to everyone around Him, knowing full well that many, if not most, would reject Him. Why then would He not desire deeply to speak to us, we who have received Him by faith through His mercy and grace? He desires to speak to us. In fact, He places a high priority on this because it's so crucial to the kind of relationship He wants to have with us. And so, knowing this, we can't help but ask, then why don't we hear Him? What keeps us from recognizing Him? How can we know when He is speaking? That's what discerning the voice of God is all about. My goal in this book is to come alongside you, just as others have and continue to come alongside me, sharing what I've learned and what each of us can grow to experience in seeking to hear from the Lord. But I want to be sure you hear me when I use the word grow, because that's what we're doing here. We're growing. Nobody has all of this figured out, no matter how 100% foolproof people claim their knowledge to be. Even by the time we get all the way through this book together, we will still be more than capable of getting our fallen selves in the way of what we truly want from our walk with the Lord. But because He loves us so much, He will allow even our errors and flaws to be good teachers for the future as we keep practicing and developing under His master instruction. As we grow. When I first started jogging, for example, I couldn't make it halfway around the block without heaving and sputtering and finally running out of pep. Yet as discouraging as this was to my goals for better fitness, I couldn't help noticing that the attempt itself was doing something positive in me. My body was responding to the workouts. Even though I was still doing more walking than running as I tried to complete the circuit back home, I was starting to see little by little improvement each day. Pitiful though it may have looked to anyone snickering at me from the neighborhood windows, and slow as it may have been while I waited for my running ability to kick in, something was happening. My body was changing and my endurance was increasing even while I was learning. The growing process is not a waste. There are benefits every small step of the way. And thank the Lord for that. This is precisely why I've included so many personal stories in this work. I want you to see what a journey this has been for me. A journey that I've neither begun nor finished.