Listen (verb): to hear something with thoughtful attention; to make an effort to hear something; take notice of AND act on what someone says; respond to advice or a request
The following post is an excerpt from a sermon I delivered during the Christmas season. This message, titled “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, explored the different ways God speaks to us today. It seemed only natural to extract pieces of the script into a blog post on the word “LISTEN”.
You might remember this very popular advertisement from 70s and 80s: When EF Hutton talks, people listen.
I remember there were many different EF Hutton advertisements in a variety of social settings, in uncommon places where it looked completely wrong for everyone to stop what they were doing and LISTEN. This is how God wants us to react when he speaks!
When you sense God is speaking: stop, lean in, and listen intently.
While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Matthew 17:5
Perhaps some of us struggle with how to hear God. We are looking for burning bushes or waiting for an announcement over an intercom, but we might be missing the most common ways God is communicating with us, subtler, yet quite obvious ways.
God speaks to us with His voice, His whispers.
The words “the Lord said to Moses” appears 138 times in the Old Testament. I think this is the way many of us want to hear God, but then we have an underlying fear that we’re “crazy” if we hear voices. Before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples:
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. John 14:26
Think about his… if we’ve invited the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, and part of His work is to “remind” us, wouldn’t that likely come in the form of a voice or a whisper inside of us? The whispers are likely happening more often that we realize, it’s just that we are too distracted to listen.
God speaks to us through other people.
In Acts 21:10-11, another person is used by God to guide Paul: After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”
Many of us have heard of Desmond Tutu, a South African social rights activist and Anglican priest who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
Asked by the BBC to identify the defining moment in his life Desmond Tutu spoke of the day he and his mother were walking down the street. Tutu was nine years old. A tall white man dressed in a black suit came towards them. In the days of apartheid, when a black person and a white person met while walking on a footpath, the black person was expected to step into the gutter to allow the white person to pass and nod their head as a gesture of respect. But this day, before a young Tutu and his mother could step off the sidewalk the white man stepped off the sidewalk and tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to her!
The white man was Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican priest who was bitterly opposed to apartheid. It changed Tutu’s life. When his mother told him that Trevor Huddleston had stepped off the sidewalk because he was a man of God, Tutu found his calling. “When she told me that he was an Anglican priest I decided there and then that I wanted to be an Anglican priest too. And what is more, I wanted to be a man of God” said Tutu. God certainly used Trevor Huddleston to speak to Desmond Tutu!
God speaks to us through visions and dreams.
In Acts 10:9-23, God taught Peter a lesson through a vision – using symbolism of clean and unclean food, God leads Peter to preach to the Gentiles.
St. Patrick of Ireland is one of the world’s most popular saints. He was born in Roman Britain and when he was fourteen or so, he was captured by Irish pirates during a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave to herd and tend sheep. At the time, Ireland was a land of pagans, but Patrick turned to God in fervent prayer.
Patrick’s captivity lasted until he was twenty, when he escaped after having a dream from God in which he was told to leave Ireland by going to the coast. There he found some sailors who took him back to Britain and was reunited with his family. A few years after returning home, he had a vision from God. The vision prompted his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained a bishop and sent to take the Gospel to Ireland, where he preached and converted all throughout the country for 40 years.
God speaks to us through our circumstances.
A perfect example of God using circumstances to communicate is in the book of Esther – a Jewish woman put into a circumstance of royalty, allowing her the opportunity to save her people.
“And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14
Jimmy Carter was a former President of the United States. He was also a committed Christian. Every year Carter’s home church of Plains Baptist Church would have a week of mission in which congregation members would go out into the community inviting unchurched people to attend the church’s revival meetings.
Once Carter was asked to speak at another church in Georgia on the topic of “Christian Witnessing”. In his preparation he decided he would share about his involvement in his home church’s mission week. He began to note down that in 14 years he had managed to visit over 140 homes in the local community. Carter felt quite proud of his achievement, until he compared his witness for Christ with his witness for political office. Carter realized that in his 1966 campaign for Governor of Georgia he had gone out and met at least 300,000 people in an attempt to convince them to vote for him.
“The comparison struck me – 300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God in fourteen years!”
God used Jimmy Carter’s circumstances to communicate – through his political campaign and his involvement in evangelism.
God speaks to through thoughts, ideas, and plans He puts in our mind.
Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement. He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind.1 Chronicles 28:11-12
An example of this is a true story that is depicted in a movie called “All Saints”. A recently ordained pastor Michael Spurlock is assigned to a tiny Episcopal (Anglican) church in Smyrna, Tennessee and ordered to shut it down by his Bishop. But God gives the pastor different plans, thoughts and ideas about saving the church, as well as a group of refugees from Karen of Southeast Asia.
God speaks to us through His Word.
For the word of God is alive and active. Hebrews 4:12
We don’t need to just wait for God to speak to us through dreams, circumstances, other people…because He has already recorded His words for us in the Bible. God is not silent; He has told us everything we need to know about Him—and it’s been written down in the pages of the Bible. In other words, we don’t need to wait around, hoping God may decide to speak to us some day. All we need to do is open the Bible and discover the message He has for us.
The Bible is a letter in the mail, a ringing phone, a buzzing text, a snapchat notification – direct communication waiting at our fingertips. If we aren’t regularly spending time in the Bible, it’s the same as leaving the letter unopened, the phone unanswered, the text unread, the Snap not viewed. What a tragedy! What a missed opportunity to listen to God!
The Bible is most powerful and effective tool for God’s communication.
The more time spent in study of scripture, the more you will see this become true. God trains us to recognize His voice through His written Word. To live in confidence that you are hearing from Him, you need to have a knowledge of His Word continually in your heart.
I will listen to what God the Lord says; he promises peace to his people, his faithful servants. Psalm 85:8
Will you pray with me?
Father,
We thank You that You desire to speak to us every day—guiding us in spirit and in truth to obey Your Word and to enjoy an abundant life.
Lord, Your Word says that when we draw near to You, You will draw near to us. So, help us to draw near to You today. We seek Your face, Your truth and Your word for our lives. We want to know You more, hear You more and obey You more.
Your Word says Your sheep know Your voice and we will not follow the voice of a stranger. Help us to know Your voice, to not be deceived by any other voice, and to view all thoughts and decisions through the lens of righteousness.
As we seek to hear You better, help us to confirm Your voice through Your Word. You said if we ask for wisdom, You will give it to us liberally, so we ask for wisdom to hear You clearly and consistently today and every day.
Help us to feel confident in knowing that we hear Your voice.
Amen.