Hearing God, Part I: God’s Plan, Our Privilege

Copyright © 2006, 2015

by
Jim Kerwin

Jesus put it very simply but very pow­er­ful­ly—“My sheep hear My voice” (John 10:27). It has been God’s plan from the very outset that men and women should have the privilege of communing with God, that is, that they should have the pleasure of knowing God and being known by Him, of speaking to God and hearing Him.

“My sheep hear My voice.” Yet as with many straightforward teachings of Jesus, countless of His “sheep” tend to miss the impact of such truth in their lives. Whether they spiritualize it away or have never considered that there is a practical application to their own lives, these believers are missing out on the blessing of this inheritance for the saints. Not a few Christians react in strange ways when preachers start talking about hearing God’s voice.

There is also the group of active believers who experience some encouraging leading from God. They have experienced being led by Him. Maybe it is as they are strongly impressed with a particular Scripture passage that is clearly apropos to a particular situation about which they have been praying. Or they may have a feeling (like a hunch or intuition, only stronger and more focused) that they should do a certain thing, and when they follow through, they find that God has blessed in a particular way. They sense Divine guidance and are glad for it, as well they can be. But it seems like only a minor percentage of this group hears God’s voice.

I believe the average born-again Christian hasn’t really considered the matter very much, hasn’t realized the privilege of hearing from God, and doesn’t understand that being able to hear God’s voice is part of our inheritance in Christ. And in order to feel assured that such an experience is from God, not to speak of receiving motivation to seek such an experience, they would like to know that the matter is Scriptural.

God’s Plan: From Genesis to Revelation

The Bible teaches us that God has meant for us to hear His voice from the very beginning. Mankind was created to have fellowship with God. The first thing the Creator does after creating Adam and Eve is to speak to them. After speaking Creation into existence, God speaks and takes counsel with Himself (Genesis 1:26) to create mankind, a counsel He carries out immediately (v.27). And as they stand before Him, the first Man and Woman, God speaks blessing to them and says to them, “Be fruitful… multiply… replenish… subdue… have dominion!” (v.28) God blesses them by telling them their purpose, their life’s work—all while speaking to them and fellowshipping with them.

God goes on fellowshipping and speaking with them, He speaks to them of their inheritance, “Behold, I have given to you…!” and He enumerates their blessings in great detail (Genesis 1:29). God even speaks about how they can walk in His will (2:16-17).

So we can see in the beginning, in the Book of Genesis where we find the seed-plot for God’s revelation throughout the rest of the Bible, God’s purpose was to speak to these creatures made in His own image and likeness.

If we fast-forward to the Book of Revelation, we see that God still wants believers to hear Him: “he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith…” (Revelation 2:7;3:6).

God Continues Speaking—to Sinners

Even when Man turned his back on God (ultimately, this was because Man refused to heed what God had spoken to him—“Yea, hath God said…?”), God, in His love (even while administering justice), continued to speak to Man and Woman. Yes, even when they were sinners, it was possible for them to speak to and hear from God. The way the story of The Fall is presented, part of the great tragedy is that, in being expelled from the Garden, they gave up personal, intimate fellowship with God. In the delightful way the King James Version and the ASV render the passage: “They heard the Voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8, where the Hebrew word qol is rendered “voice” as it is in verse 10 and in the majority of times it appears in the Old Testament). Though Adam and Eve hide, the Voice of God still comes to them. God exposes their sin, yet in the midst of their conversation and the delivery of the Divine sentence, God still speaks a prophetic blessing over them (Genesis 3:15).

Although the ability to hear God’s voice seems to wane during the early chapters of Genesis, we see God taking a personal, speaking interest even with Cain (who, John says, “was of that wicked one”—1 John 3:12). He counseled Cain, warning him of what was in his heart and future if he didn’t repent of his attitude (Genesis 4:6-7). After Cain’s murder of Abel, God speaks with him again, exposing his sin and meting out his punishment (vv.9-12). Even then, there is a two-way conversation, with Cain pleading for a mitigation of the sentence, and God responding (vv.13-15).

If God spoke with Cain, I do not think that it is far-fetched to believe that He also spoke with other men and women at that time. In fact this seems implied, if the First Couple’s expulsion from Eden is contrasted with Cain’s banishment. Although Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden, it never says of them what it says of Cain—“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 4:16).

God Speaks—to Unbelievers!

Thank goodness that God speaks to sinners, or none of us would ever hear His voice! But in passing on to some better-known Scriptural examples of believers who could and did hear God’s voice, I would like to point out that God spoke to people besides those who were His own. (This comes, no doubt, from the fact that the blessing of hearing God comes down to fallen mankind through the original inheritance received by Adam and Eve.) Consider, as a few examples from the Old Testament and New Testament, that God spoke to:

(Nota Bene: A wonderful book that focuses on how God has spoken to unbelievers in order to prepare them for the Gospel is Don Richardson’s classic Eternity in Their Hearts. It is one of the most spiritually profitable books I have ever read, and I recommend it to all my readers.)

God Keeps Speaking to Great and Small

If God spoke with unbelievers, how much more should He speak with believers? Bear with me, patient readers, as I “stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance” (2 Peter 3:1) to show you how often God spoke to various of His people in the Old and New Testaments. Although we look at them now as “giants of the Faith,” in their own time and place many were fairly obscure. The difference in their lives seems to have been that when God spoke to them, they recognized the Voice and acted in obedience. Consider how God communicated directly with:

And that just touches on the Old Testament. Consider these examples from the New Testament:

Exceptions or Examples?

But someone might say, “Yes, that’s all well and good, but don’t those examples just prove that God only speaks to certain individuals whom He has chosen, men and women who have a special calling or purpose in His divine plan?” To this I would reply that we should always be mindful of the words of the Apostle Paul: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

Furthermore, all of God’s people under the New Covenant are chosen and have a special place in His economy. Jesus said so: “…I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain… I have chosen you out of the world…” (John 15:16,18). What is the uniqueness of New Life in the New Covenant if it isn’t the fact that God dwells in each born-again believer? What is the oft-repeated testimony of the New Testament if it isn’t this:

Our Privilege:
Indwelling, Communion, and Communication

It is at this point that we begin to see the very wonderful and personal nature of the privilege God grants us. Perhaps giving thought to a question would help us see it more clearly: Why would God, in all three Persons of the Trinity, want to come and dwell in you, precious Believer? You could, I suppose, supply a Scriptural answer and say something like, “So that we could be “partakers of the divine nature.’” [2 Peter 1:4—this is Peter’s way of explaining the same glorious phenomenon that are declared in the list of verses above.] Yes, true—but what does it mean in your present, day-to-day reality? Why does God dwell within (if He really does, that is, if you have really experienced the fullness of the New Birth) if it isn’t to have an intimate relationship with you?

Too many Christians get “the blessings of God” confused with The Blessing of God—that is, God Himself, the Blessed One. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, dwell within each believer because His great desire and our great need is for constant communion with Him. This is the whole secret of 1 John 1, the key to the rest of the epistle. What does this have to do with God speaking to us? Simply this—communion and communication share the same root linguistically and conceptually. The famed Christian poet Frances Jane (“Fanny”) Crosby had her finger on the truth of this when she penned these words:

Beloved, it is my observation from almost fifty years of Christian life and ministry that prayer is not a “pure delight” for most Christians. But the why of this problem is clear—prayer for so many is often laborious, mechanical, and unsatisfying because it is not communion, not communication. All the talking flows one way. Where is the communion, the excitement, the joy, the mystery in that?

It Definitely Affects the Taste of the Food!

May I draw an analogy from my own life? For seven years, I was “out of the ministry’” and involved in a highly demanding secular job. As the responsibilities of the position grew, they required more and more business travel. I stayed in nice hotels and could eat in nice restaurants, all at the company’s expense. When I was “in the ministry,” money was fairly tight (most pastors will know what I mean) and meals in restaurants were few and far between. Suddenly, any night of the week when I was traveling, I could eat almost anywhere and order anything I wanted—steak, lobster, crab, lamb, sushi—and any cuisine I could imagine—Italian, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, German, African, American.

If that causes some envy in you (or if your stomach is growling at the moment), hear the rest of the story. After the first two weeks of travel, I quickly found the novelty and appeal of the “restaurant experience” wearing thin. I remember being in a restaurant (a Bennigan’s in the Blue Ash area of Cincinnati, as I recall). I had looked over the menu three times and could find absolutely nothing interesting. The perky waitress finally bounced back to my table, and chirped, “Well, what are you going to order tonight?” And I said (much to her confusion, as it turned out), “Um, have you got any cold, leftover meatloaf?”

I asked that because, being a Wednesday night, it’s a good chance that we might have been having that very thing at home. I would much rather have been eating at home with my family, whatever they were having. But more to the point, it was an epiphany—my memories of “good meals” had hardly any association with restaurants and little to do with the food tasted. The remembered joy of past repasts had everything to with the fellowship with friends or family at the table. Those meals were times of celebration, enjoying each other’s company, sharing intimate thoughts, relating the personal experiences of our lives, testifying to God’s working in our lives.

And yet there I was, night after night, eating alone. (You can always spot the businessperson away from home. Just look around the next time you eat dinner in a restaurant. He or she will be at a table all alone.) I would have traded any meal and dessert on the menu for a slightly stale or soggy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, if only I could have eaten with my wife, one of my daughters, or a Christian friend. The food was immaterial; what I really wanted was the fellowship, the communion, the intimacy that comes with a shared meal, an interesting two-way conversation. In a sense, I wanted to eat or imbibe something of my dinner companions’ lives, and be the richer for it.

Are You Eating Alone?

So, how are your “meals” when you pray? Do you seem to be the only one at the table? (I’m picturing this as a “sit-down” restaurant, but my fear is that a drive-through fast-food meal might better describe the prayer time of many North American believers.) Is God the “Waiter” to Whom you give your order from your “prayer menu”? When you get what you ordered, it’s probably nutritious, but is it satisfying? Instead of a lonely vigil, what if your prayer time were a meal at which God was the loving Host, not just sharing of His “stuff” but sharing Himself? What if you finished each meal full of what He had shared?!

This is the way God means prayer to be—two-way communication. Are you led by the Spirit of God? If you are a true child of God, you can and should be, because the inspired apostle declares, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

Are you really a sheep of Jesus’ flock? Jesus provided a simple test so that we might be sure: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). Take that word of the Lord as an assurance of something wonderful God has for you. Take it as a challenge—you can come to a place where you can hear His voice if you believe you can and you are willing to do so. You believe God’s plan, and you would like to live in the reality of the privilege.

Ah, but maybe you don’t yet hear God’s voice and wonder why you don’t. We’ll consider the possible reasons for that in the next article, Hearing God: Part 2: Why Many Christians Don’t Hear God.

 

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