The Voice of God
Part 1
Years ago I realized I couldn’t describe prayer. Oh, I could define it, but I couldn’t explain it. Nick O’Brien and I were a few dozen episodes into recording our hit podcast1 The Living Room Disciple, and I wanted to talk about hearing God. Like, you know, hearing Him.
Like… His actual voice.
The thing is, I’m not certain most Christians here in the West2 have heard God’s voice. Most times when someone in my social circles refers to “hearing” from God, they’re more talking about looking at circumstances and determining God’s will based on those. No voice from Heaven, rather a sort of interpreting the signs and reading between the metaphorical lines.
Except, that wasn’t my experience.
Seats
My grandmother had light blue placemats at each seat around her table for four. Her apartment was so small that one side of the table was forced up against the wall leaving only three open spaces. She lived alone, my grandfather having died before I was born, but she never seemed lonely.
At supper she’d beckon to the door of her apartment and say, “Come in, Lord” and gesture to the empty seat beside her. When she prayed, she talked to Jesus as though He were right beside her.
This was how I learned to pray.
When I was eighteen and had generally wrecked what little life I had, I chose to follow Jesus. I grew up watching Veggie Tales, but not actually going to Church, so I had no real concept of what prayer should and shouldn’t be.
So, I did what my grandmother did.
Before my hour-long commute to and from college, I cleared the passenger seat of my Dad’s Dodge Caravan and invited Jesus in. Legit, I would make sure nothing was in the seat or on the floorboard other than crumbs and the occasional fast food trash, then I would say something like, “Hey, c’mon in, God.”
And then I would talk.
At first it really was just that: me talking. But at some point I can’t recall, God spoke back. Like… really spoke.
And here we are, at the impossible chasm I can neither avoid nor figure out how to cross. How to describe God’s voice? I don’t even know how to describe my wife’s voice in any way that would be helpful or practical.
For those who’ve heard her speak, I don’t have to describe it at all. For those who haven’t heard her speak, what could I possibly say?
But that isn’t fair. Saying I can’t describe God’s voice is avoidance, a way of punting on a crucial element of spiritual discipleship.
This is where Nick and I landed as we tried to record a podcast episode on hearing God’s voice. In the end, we never released it. It was too unhelpful and vague. I couldn’t find the right words, and I was growing concerned that I was more prone to heaping guilt or self-doubt on people whose experiences weren’t like mine. What if someone listened to my story and walked away with, “whoa, God doesn’t speak to me like that. Am I actually a Christian? Do I know God? Does He love me if He doesn’t speak to me that way?” I wasn’t ready for that.
Talking to God? That’s as simple as clearing off the seat beside you and having something to say. But how do you describe that voice that both is and yet is not? That moment when you hear a voice in the depths of you and know beyond doubt that it came from somewhere else.
From someone else.
Voices
It’s not audible, at least not for me3. It’s not something I hear with my ears, as though I could shove cotton in those side orifices of mine and expect God to be silenced. And yet, the voice is audible in all the ways that matter, as if sound waves have skipped the slow trod of bouncing off the world to reach me, and have instead beamed themselves into my brain.
It’s sort of like the voice we all have in our heads. The one that is, more or less, your self-narration? That voice you have when you open the pantry and ponder chips or cookies, then criticize yourself for buying those chips and cookies to begin with.
It’s kinda like that, except not like that at all.
But sort of.
It’s that inner-dialogue voice, but one that speaks things to you that you would never say to yourself. Things that seem… upside down. Foolish even, depending on whose standards you judge “wise” and “foolish”.
Years ago, when I was twenty-one and still new to this whole Jesus-thing, I was driving past Burger King and saw a homeless man asleep on a bus bench. I had been hearing God speak to me with this inner, but-totally-not-Phil, voice, so I knew it was Him when He said, “Go, and buy him food.”
I was newly married and hadn’t yet begun to take life seriously: I wanted only to play videogames and skateboard. Brittany (my wife) and I were hella4 broke and didn’t have the extra cash to buy some stranger a burger. Plus, I don’t think I’d ever spoken with someone homeless in my life, let alone bought them food.
So obviously, I kept driving.
I knew I’d screwed up before I even got to the next block, and by God’s grace my still-not-fully-developed-brain had enough common sense to turn the Corolla around. I still remember putting the bag of food beside the man and watching his blank stare looking back at me. Maybe I mumbled something about praying for him, maybe I didn’t.
Honestly, and I know this isn’t the point, it didn’t feel good.
I felt like I’d wasted money and I was nervous to tell my wife what I’d done. The guy didn’t seem to give a rip, and we didn’t have extra money lying around. I didn’t leave feeling elated and patting myself on my back. I left confused, wondering why God had told me to do that.
But He had told me.
It was a voice, almost like what we call a “thought”, but a thought that originated from outside of me. A totally not-from-Phil-thought. A thought that wasn’t consistent with the pattern of my thoughts or my behavior. Rather, it was consistent with the teaching and behavior of Jesus.
And in that moment, I had ears to hear. May that never change, and may that same grace be upon you.
Stay tuned for part 2.
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I say “the West” to refer to the culture I grew up in. I can’t comment on forms of Christianity outside of what’s generally considered the “Western world”, which is defined less by geography and more by a sense of Greek/post-Enlightenment thought. However, I have much to say about the “Western Church”, so stick around.
Not yet, anyway.
I was cool enough to say “hella”.