The Voice of God
When I looked at this weekend’s
weather report and saw a forecast of possible snow Saturday night, my first
thought was, “Come on God, seriously?” I mean, God knows it’s the night before we – His Church – worships. Why wouldn’t God
do a little divine intervention and hold the snow off a bit, so there’s no possibility
of missing church?
Yes, that was my first thought. No, I don’t think God micromanages the
weather. I think God created the world and
the universe in such a way that there are systems. The weather is part of a larger system, a
system not at all concerned about whether or not snow will cancel school or
church, or rain will cancel a big baseball game. Do I believe God intervenes within natural
order of things, within the natural functioning of weather and waves and
animals and plants? Yes, I do believe
God steps into the physical world.
Here’s the maddening thing. God does it on God’s timetable for God’s
purposes. We may have reasons that we
want God to act in this way or that way.
And God loves us. But, God trusts
his own thinking more than ours. So, God
will allow it to snow or not, but whatever God does, intervene or not, God acts
according to God’s own counsel. We can’t
predict God’s actions and often we don’t know the reason for them.
It is one aspect of the mystery of
God. God will speak to us, but we can’t
predict or control when or how God will do this. My own belief is that God speaks far more
often than we realize, but we miss God’s voice because don’t listen
closely. It is crucial to shut out the
noise that fills our heads and blocks our hearts and our perception. But even doing that, praying consistently and
listening earnestly, still we do not have one iota of control over when and how
God will act.
The novelist and ordained
Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner writes of a time in his own life that
he expected a miracle. He was laying on
a grassy hillside on a sunny day. He
writes, “Because of a variety of circumstance, I had a very real, strong
feeling that the time was ripe for a miracle, my life was ripe for a miracle.”[i] He lay there a while and watched the wind
blow the leaves of the nearby apple tree.
No miracle happened. Was God in
the wind?
Last week (1/1/17) in the sermon, I
talked about the way modern day western culture, generally speaking, ignores
God. That’s a serious spiritual
condition that warrants attention. Just
as interesting is the phenomenon of Christians, like Buechner, earnestly
seeking a sign from God, only to hear wind in the tree branches and nothing more. Why does the world around the church ignore
the voice of God even when that voice shouts?
Why does it appear that God ignores those in his church, individual
Christians, who strain to hear Him?
How do we hear the voice of God?
There is no secret answer. There is no technique. There is nothing we can do to compel God to
speak. I have a friend who literally
fasted from all food for the 40 days of Lent one year. In the middle of his fast, he was hungry and
getting impatient. On a prayer walk, he
insisted that God speak to him, and he actually did hear the voice of God. God said to him, clearly and audibly, “Just
because you fast doesn’t compel me to speak.”
My friend was humbled, but when he told me the story, I was
furious. Come on God, what’s up with that?
How do we hear the voice of God?
We listen. We cultivate a prayer life in which we spend
our lives attentively listening. This
comes in a context of worship and participation in ministry. Those things must be constants in our
lives. We must live as disciples in our
thoughts and the perfect, selfless love of God must drive our actions. We may never hear God audibly, but if we live
this way, I believe God will speak and we’ll feel the blessing and presence
even if we don’t know it is God who is at work in us.
I’ll address this further in a blog
post coming early next week.
[i]
Buechner is quoted by Philip Yancey in his book Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan Books: Grand Rapids,
2000), p.32.
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