Hearing God 12 – Drowning?
Ps 29:3
The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
The God of glory thunders;
The LORD is over many waters.
Ps 29:10
The LORD sat enthroned at the Flood,
And the LORD sits as King forever.
I think the powerful imagery contained in these verses is sometimes lost on us modern westerners. In the culture within which this psalm was written oceans, seas, waters, and floods all represented something very significant. In the Mediterranean region of the world, the sea was seen as a source of evil. Even in the Bible you see sea monsters like Leviathan and Rahab. God’s power and authority are expressed in terms of God ruling over the waters.
Perhaps seeing the sea as the place evil comes from was residual within the culture because of the flood, or from actual sea monsters they had to contend with, or both. Irregardless, the sea is seen as a source of evil in the Old Testament. In Daniel 7 the four beasts arise out of the sea. Perhaps this is why Revelation says that in the new heavens and earth there will be no more sea. This could be a metaphorical statement regarding the final defeat of evil more than a literal prediction that we won’t be able to go to the beach.
My point is that the voice of the Lord is over the waters. Whatever evil you are facing; whatever opposition you are encountering from the enemy of your soul; whatever spiritual battle you find yourself in today – I want to tell you that the voice of the Lord is over the waters. The voice of the Lord exercises power and authority over all evil and over every source of evil.
This is why hearing God is so important. Spiritual warfare is primarily an exercise in choosing which voice you will listen to. Victory comes from choosing to hear the Lord’s voice. His voice is over the waters.
Hearing God 11 – Running from his voice
Gen 3:10
So he said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” NKJV
When I was a kid I used to love to play Hide and Seek. What great fun to find just the right hiding place; to be the last one found. I vaguely remember being quite little and playing Hide and Seek with my mom. While she would count I would run to find my hiding place. I always hid in exactly the same spot. It wasn’t a very good spot. In an attempt to make it fun, all the while knowing exactly where I was hiding, my mom would look in various places while calling out “Ready or not, here I come!”
I couldn’t stand the tension or the idea of mom not being able to find me, so I would prematurely emerge from my clandestine location with a loud cry of “Here I am mom!”
I’ve gotten better at hiding through the years though. I’m best at hiding from God. I evaluate my performance. Have I prayed enough, read the word enough, believed enough, behaved adequately? If I deem myself to have failed to measure up, I’ve become quite good at hiding. I keep my distance during worship. I pray from a distance.
We have been hiding from God because of shame for a long time haven’t we? Could shame be one of the reasons we struggle to hear God’s voice? Are our hearts hiding from God?
God is still calling.
Maybe we should become as little children again and burst out from our hiding places with a loud cry of “Here I am!”
Hearing God 10 – To live on every word
“But he answered, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” – Matthew 4:4
This verse takes place within the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. After 40 days of fasting Jesus is hungry (it wouldn’t have taken me that long!) and the devil attempts to entice Jesus to turn stones into bread. This verse is Jesus’ response.
The Greek here is interesting to me.
“…by every word…”
This is the noun rema. It means spoken word. Jesus is quoting the written word of God in order to talk about living by the spoken word of God. Grammatically, “word” here functions as a direct object of the verb “live”. We live by the spoken word.
“…live…”
This is the verb Zao. It means “to live.” It’s related to the concept of breathing and is related to the noun Zoe (Life). Grammatically it functions as singular future middle indicative. Here’s what that means. I had to look it up myself of course.
singular: matches the singular subject “Man”
future: this action will take place in the future after the statement.
middle: this action will be performed by the subject; the subject may be impacted by this action.
indicative: “it is”, as opposed to subjunctive “it may be” or an imperative command.
How am I to live? I am to live by every spoken word that comes out of God’s mouth. I am not passive in this. Because the verb “live” is in the middle voice, man is the “doer” of the action though still a beneficiary of the action.
The implication here is strong. The assumption is that God is speaking and that his spoken words contain what I need to truly live. I must exercise my will in order to benefit from the power of his words. The comparison to bread is telling. Instead of receiving life from eating bread, I receive life from eating the spoken words of God. The bread of God’s word is available. I must choose to eat.
It seems like many people view themselves as being passive in the experience of hearing God. If God speaks, I will hear him. If I’m not hearing him, he must not be speaking. This is an incorrect way to think about hearing God. Just because you are not eating bread doesn’t mean there’s no bread. Just because you are not hearing God’s spoken word doesn’t mean that he’s not speaking.
Are you choosing to hear today? Are you listening?
Hearing God Part 9 – Timing is Everything
I was a contractor at a large company in Irving. It was a good job with good people and I was grateful to have it. It didn’t exactly fit my personality though. I spent most days wrestling with spreadsheets and documents and very little time interacting with people. My friend Tom owned a midsize company in Carrollton and I had always thought I would love an opportunity to work for him.
At one point I heard about an openning, so I sent him my resume. Even though the job required more experience than I had, Tom agreed to recommend me for an interview with the relevant department manager. It was a long interview process, but I didn’t mind too much. You see, I had heard from God. Early in the process I felt I had heard the Lord say to me “I am going to open the door for you to get this job.”
Confident I would be offered the job, I eagerly approached the final interview. I was very disappointed when informed they had decided to offer the position to another candidate.
Ever been there? Thought you had heard from God but then circumstances prove you haven’t?
One year later I was sitting at my desk at the same unsatisfying job, wrestling with spreadsheets and documents. I suddenly got a strong impression urging me to send Tom my resume “right now.” So I did. Five minutes later the phone rang at my desk. The VP of Human Resources for Tom’s company was on the phone. She was astounded.
“Alan, how in the world did you see our post so quickly?”
“What post?”
“The position you interviewed for last year – it’s open again. We just posted the position on Monster five minutes ago. The moment we clicked “submit” we received your resume via email!”
Turns out I really had heard God the previous year. I got the job, just as I had sensed God encourage me that I would. I just had the timing wrong.
Hearing God Part 8 – The Complete Multimedia Experience
There’s a story I often tell when I’m teaching about how to hear God or about prophetic ministry. It’s about an experience I had early in my own journey as I’ve learned to recognize the voice of God.
In a midweek service at a church I previously attended, the pastor gave us an excellent and very basic teaching on prophetic ministry, then he split us up into groups to do an exercise together which involved asking God to speak to you about one person in the group and then sharing with that person what you felt you heard.
I was immediately drawn to a woman in the group. I knew her name but little else about her. As I focused my attention on her I immediately heard God’s voice. He said “Blue Couch”.
I was as confused as I’m sure you are.
I assured the Lord that there was no way I was going to tell her that unless he gave me a bit more to go along with it, preferably something that made sense. I felt him add “tell her I’m going to heal her.” So I shared the word. Turns out it really made a difference in her life. “Blue Couch” didn’t mean anything to me, but it spoke to a specific event in her past in a way I could never have predicted. It was pretty cool.
When you read above that I “heard God’s voice” and that “He said ‘Blue Couch’”, what did you picture? Do you picture sound waves hitting my ear drums, being converted into digital format and traveling via an auditory nerve to my brain? Do you think of exactly that experience in my brain, just bypassing the sound wave, ear drum, auditory nerve steps – as if I heard it audibly, but without external physical stimulus? Do you picture the words emerging in my mind? In my heart? Do they arrive all at once like a download or do they emerge consecutively like a ticker tape, first “Blue” followed by “Couch”? The answer is none of the above. In that instant, I actually “saw” a blue couch. The image of a blue couch appeared in my mind within my imagination.
What about the next part? “Tell her I want to heal her?” That didn’t come as a picture, but rather as a sentence. Not so much like an audible sound without the external physical stimulus, but more like a thought, an idea.
My point is this – don’t make assumptions about what exactly the experience of hearing God has to be like. God talks in images, in ideas, thoughts, words, nudges, impressions and all of the above. Sometimes he speaks in a very intuitive manner – things just “smell good” so to speak. God speaks through the internal multimedia faculties of your inward thoughts and imagination.
Next time you hear someone say they “heard” God speak, ask them to be more specific. See if you can get them to articulate exactly what is was like for them to “hear” God. I often find that people struggle because they have very narrow assumptions regarding what to expect and once those assumptions broaden, they discover they’ve been hearing God all along and just didn’t recognize his voice for what it was.
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