The Sound of God
The Voice of God: Part 3
This is the third article in a series. See the first post here.
For some, the most challenging thing in all the world is to just hear the voice of God. If this is a longing you have, I pray your journey is quickened.
But for others who think they may have heard from the Lord, or know they have before, the challenge becomes one of discerning if this totally-not-me voice is God’s. How do we know, after all, that the voice inside is God’s and not the voice of the Satan, or of our childhood traumas, or of our own desires? How do we know it’s actually God?
This answer is both terribly difficult and incredibly simple: read the Bible (don’t stop reading! I promise I have more to offer, just hang for a moment).
Perhaps “read” is too light a word. You are “reading” this post (thanks!), but Scripture should be more than read: it should be studied, dwelt upon, soaked in, and absorbed in the most full way possible. For it is there, more than anywhere else, in which you can learn the character of God.
Quick analogy.
Imagine one of my four boys comes into the kitchen as I’m making dinner. He walks over to the pantry and pulls out the pack of Oreos. I raise an eyebrow and ask, “uh, watcha doin’?”
Insert wide eyes and a marginally guilty look. “Mom said I could,” he mutters
Mom said I could.
The thing is, my wife wouldn’t tell my son to go on an Oreo-fest while I’m making dinner. It isn’t going to happen. I know the character of my wife, and that isn’t like her. But what if my son pulled out a phone and played a recording of my wife saying “Go ahead and grab some Oreos before dinner.” Would I believe it was her then, hearing the words spoken in her own voice?
In the world of generative AI, probably not. I know what my wife sounds like, and I don’t just mean the frequency of the soundwaves her vocal cords make. I know the way she talks, the kinds of things that she says, and the rationale behind her decisions.
Hearing God isn’t about knowing the feeling of His voice, but about understanding the pattern of His character.
The inner not-from-me voice that says to give my gloves to the homeless man I’m walking past is absolutely in alignment with the character of God. Sacrificing for others is essentially discipleship to Jesus 101. A voice pushing me to forgive someone who hurt me? Also Jesus, for sure.
But what about when we hear voices that tell us of a looming tragedy, tell us of someone else’s sin, or something else that falls into the “plausible but less cut-and-dry”?
This is where rolling up our sleeves and doing hard work comes in. While praying and fasting, we will need to investigate instances in Scripture in which someone is given a word similar to what we have been. Then we will need to compare those circumstances, those moments in God’s story, with the voice we’re hearing now.
I’ll use my own story for a moment.
An Example
I had been working a steady job at an organization for just shy of seven years when I found out my position would be cut in the coming months due to changes in the companies Return to Office (RTO) policy. My immediate instinct was to, of course, begin applying for other jobs.
My wife and I are single-income and I have four children, so this should be a “no-brainer”.
Except, I heard the Lord tell me not to. Specifically, He said He would “provide for my family financially” when this job was over. So, here we are, at the crossroads of life that hinges upon whether or not I’ve really heard from God. So what did I do?
Well first, I told my wife. Through prayer and fasting, we came to a unity that this was a word from the Lord. Then we went to our mentor, to get her wisdom. She agreed, this seemed from the Lord.
All the while, I was meditating on Scriptures and similar stories in which God calls His people out of perceived safety into a calling and promise that He has for them. The examples are numerous, but the story of Abraham has been the one I’ve drawn the most parallels with. The connections I’ve made are too numerous to recount here, but what is important is that I saw a clear connection between God’s calling of Abraham and his circumstances to His calling of me and my circumstances.
Listen, that doesn’t mean I certainly “right”, it just means that if I’m wrong, then I am wrong with a pure heart.
And it is this sort of heart the Lord desires.
Paul’s Framework
Paul the Apostle, in his second letter to the church at Corinth, is concerned that this church is being deceived by false teachers. While chiding the church for its willingness to listen to those who have been teaching “another Jesus”1, he makes an interesting comment about the Satan who “disguises himself as an angel of light”2. Isn’t that an interesting phrasing? Angels are spiritual beings who speak to humans with messages from the Lord. And the Satan comes disguised as one.
Paul makes two logical arguments throughout this portion of the letter to prove that he is a true apostle and these others teachers are false.3 First, he says that his teachings are consistent with the other “most eminent apostles”4. In other words, his Gospel is in alignment with the founding leaders of their faith.
But second, and this one is really interesting to us at this moment, his next argument is that he preached the gospel to them “without charge”5. This is actually an idea Paul hit on in his first letter to the same church: he denied financial gain (even though he had the right to take a wage) because he would not hinder the gospel by doing so6. He’s saying, “you can know my teaching is true because I valued the Gospel of Jesus above myself.” This was, evidently, something these false apostles did not do, and yet an action very much in alignment with the character and ministry of Jesus.
Paul’s teaching could be trusted that it was from God for it was both:
Consistent with the teaching of the apostles and
consistent with the character of Jesus.
If you are someone who hears and listens to this totally-not-from-you voice, you will likely have to wrestle with words spoken by the one who “disguises himself as an angel of light”.
But you aren’t helpless in that wrestling.
Satan cannot tell you to do something that’s in alignment with both the ministry of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles. It' just can’t happen.
However, that does mean that you and I need to study the Scriptures, deeply and with passion. We must learn the character of Jesus as intimately as we can and pursue conforming our own characters into his image. .
When we do that, surely we will learn to discern His voice, and say to all other voices, “Get behind me.”
Stay tuned for our 4th (and final) part in this series. .
2 Corinthians 11:4 NASB
2 Corinthians 11:14 NASB
See 2 Corinthians chapters 10 and 11.
2 Corinthians 11:5 NASB
2 Corinthians 11:7 NASB
Evidently, Paul had reason to believe this church didn’t have the maturity to pay him a wage and learn from him. See 1 Corinthians 9.