Thinking It Through: Do You Really Want to Hear God's Voice?
By Phil Barnes
Isn’t it amazing how gentle the Lord is? How He always leaves room for us to ignore Him if we really want to? How He often whispers when He could shout? We must understand that’s the way it’s going to be most of the time if we want to hear what the Lord is saying.
When Moses found himself far from what God made him for, he saw a bush on fire that never burned up. Hmm, something supernatural. Did he want to know? It was out of his way, but he decided to “turn aside and see.” (Exodus 3:3) That action changed the course of history. “When the Lord saw that he [Moses] turned aside to look,” God called to him and set in motion His plan (Exodus 3:4). But note that God gave Moses room to carry on his way if that’s what he wanted to do. He had a choice, as we do: Do I really want to know what I will be expected to do?
The disciples were helpless in a storm when Jesus came toward them, walking on the water, and seemed about to pass by them (Mark 6:48). “It could be a ghost,” the disciples may have whispered. “Do we really want to know who this is?”
In Luke 24, two disciples on the Emmaus road were prevented from recognizing Jesus while He explained everything about Himself from the Scriptures. He acted as if He were going to walk farther, and they, too, were forced to a crisis point: Do we want deeper fellowship, a more intimate relationship? Do we want to know?
Remember when, in 1 Kings 19, Elijah was in a funk and the Lord offered to show Himself? A wind rose up so strongly it shattered the rocks, then an earthquake, then a fire—that’s more like it, lots of flash, noise, mighty power. But the Lord was not in those. And then came the still, small voice so easily ignored.
You may wonder, What about Saul on the road to Damascus? Yes, he witnessed a revelation he could not dismiss or ignore. However, he was the church’s archenemy and Christ’s chief persecutor. We may expect it would take more to get Saul’s attention than ours. The Lord comes near, whispers, and catches our eye but gives us room to ignore Him if we want to. Why is that, do you suppose?
In Luke 8, when the disciples asked Jesus why He spoke in a parable, Jesus replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’” (v. 10, NIV) Jesus used parables to hide the truth from those who didn’t want to know. Do we want to know?
Sadly, today, many professing believers are consumed with conspiracy theories, the many secrets they don’t want us to know. Yes, an evil mastermind works behind the scenes, wickedly manipulating every aspect of the kingdom of this world, but why have Christians started to behave as though Satan’s work is new? It began in Genesis 3. The Lord grants us knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God, but we don’t want to know. We become consumed with trying to discover and expose the secrets of the kingdom of this world when they were exposed long ago in the Bible.
Peeling the lid off global conspiracies will not get you where the Lord wants you. Listening for the still, small voice; turning aside to that bush you see burning out of the corner of your eye; pursuing the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God—that will radically alter the course of your life. You will join the ranks of those who defy pharaohs, walk on water, and dine with the risen Christ.
But we can easily ignore the bush and the whisper, and He will let us. We cry out, “If only God would speak to me loudly and clearly.” In so doing, we pander to our willful determination to ignore God by blaming it on Him for not shouting. ■
Phil Barnes is the executive director of MSC Canada
