"Leadings: Learning to Listen to God's Voice"
(4th message in an 8-part series, "An Ordinary Day With Jesus")
Sermon Transcript for February 24, 2002
By Rev. Mike Beck
Scripture Reading: I Samuel 3:1-10
If we decide to spend our ordinary days with Jesus, and I hope we will, experiencing the reality of God not just when we come here for worship but all day long, then we need to learn to listen to God’s voice. Yes, God does speak to us! Now God can speak audibly to persons. That has never been, however, my experience. But although perhaps not audibly, yet God does speak and wants to guide our lives. God wants to be in relationship with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And part of that relationship involves promptings or leadings from the person of the Holy Spirit. But we have to learn to listen for God’s still small voice to filter out the noise of the world so we can distinguish what God is indeed saying to us.
It’s a rather awesome truth that we’re exploring today and to help us I want you to think of a cell phone. Many of you own one of these. I hope that it’s turned off during the worship service! God throughout the day dials your number and wants you to answer. But the ring on this phone is not deafening. You may be so busy and the background noise so loud that you don’t hear it ring. Now your phone is equipped with caller-id so it’s possible for you, like Jonah in the Old Testament (the kids sang about and have been studying at their kids activities on Wednesday evenings). It’s possible, like Jonah, for us to decide we don’t want to hear from God and turn Him off. And you may decide to hear from God but there’s so much static on the line that you’re having trouble understanding what God’s saying to you.
So that’s what we’re thinking about today. In his excellent book, Hearing God, Dallas Willard talks about how we hear God’s voice. A verse talks about how human communication works. He says, "When one person speaks, the listener is prompted to have new thoughts in their mind." For example, as I’m speaking to you now, you are having thoughts that you wouldn’t be having otherwise. You are allowing me as I preach to influence your thinking. So in its most basic form, communication is simply guiding another person’s thoughts. But now hear this – with their cooperation. For instance, I can pretend to be politely listening and half those words go in one ear and out the other and never connect. So I have to cooperate in that communication process.
But God can guide our thoughts by speaking to what the Bible calls our hearts. Now when the Bible speaks to our hearts, realize the Bible is not talking about this muscle that sustains life. When the Bible uses the term "our hearts" it’s talking about that part of us that deals in the realm of our emotions, of our will. God wants to speak to our mind, our intellect. And the Bible is full of examples of persons like Samuel who we heard that passage in dialogue form to begin the service today. Persons who heard and responded to God’s leading in their lives.
To help stimulate our thinking, I don’t normally use video clips at 9:30 a.m. but when I feel like they really help us get in to what we want to engage in I use it in this service as well as at 11:00 a.m. So to stimulate our thinking direct your attention to the video screen:
VIDEO TAPE - LEADINGS
When I was in college, I had a really strong impression about a friend. She just stayed on my mind continuously. For me I just wondered why am I thinking of her and I just went on with my life. When I came back to school that weekend and I realized that her father had a heart attack. And I went back to my mom and I talked to her and I said, "Mom, I kept thinking about her the entire weekend. What was that?"
A leading for me is when I sense a prompting or a voice within that’s asking or suggesting that I would do something that I normally wouldn’t do or that is out of the ordinary.
Not every time that I get something that seems like a prompting that I should do something, turns out to be. But I would rather take the risk and step out on a limb like that than wonder later, "Did I miss an opportunity?"
We were traveling down a very busy highway when we passed a large billboard and in the shadow of that light I saw a man. Immediately after we passed him I just felt this incredible urge to move to go back there. And Keith obligingly turned around and starts heading back and all the time he’s asking me questions like, "Well, was he thumbing?" And I said, "No." "Well, did he look like he was in some sort of trouble?" And I said, "I couldn’t tell." We get back to the fellow, he had taken a razor blade and he had cut both of his wrists. I had no clue what this overwhelming sense needing to go back meant. It made no sense to me. I was shocked that I did that. It’s really out of character for me.
All of a sudden I sensed a prompting or leading to say hello to this woman.
Oh, that’s silly, I’m not going to do that.
Why would God use me?
And at first I said no. I resisted it.
How would God use me?
I don’t want to go in to that area.
That’s a crazy thought. There’s no way I would do it.
She’s going to think I’m kind of a weird stranger to speak to her like that. And yet it’s persistent!
How do you know in your hear if it’s God or just me?
When God is leading me to something, it is something that really stays there. At first I may just think it is mine and I will just believe that to God. And then it will just stick with me and then I take a step towards it to see if God affirms it or opens the opportunities for that thought or whatever action it is to be continued.
I don’t want to be the kind of person that hears a leading and blows right by it!
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a leading or not. If I have I’ve probably missed it.
Sometimes, leadings come and I’m allowed to go to Scripture, align with the Scripture. Sometimes it is a split second leading that I have to act right now. I just know that if the end result will bring glory to God that it is a leading from the Holy Spirit.
There was one morning that I was at the grocery store and I had this really strong sense to pick up these like bath soaps and fancy bath wheels etcetera for a neighbor of mine. So I bought a little basket and dropped the things I had in the basket, wrote a note, put it on her doorway. The next morning I received a phone call from her. She was in tears. Her father was dying of cancer. She had just been at his home. Was making her hour long drive about 10:00 p.m. and she said, "Lord, the only thing I can even imagining doing right now is going home and taking a really nice bath." She drove up her drive way and saw this basket on her front porch and it blew her away. That God would care ahead of time and know what she needed. And that was one of those times I was so glad that I didn’t disregard it. Because that was a real omen for her and it was really an omen for me to think that I helped set her up for something she needed.
When I have the confirmation in my Spirit that the Lord has used me, it gives greater purpose to my life – why I’m here, why the Lord doesn’t take us on to heaven. He leaves us here to do His work.
My wife has Type 1 diabetes. She will often experience hypoglycemia during the night and it can be a very dangerous thing because she can, you know, she can go unconscious to the point where you’ve got to call 911 to revive her. And it’s just a very serious thing. And so, anyway, what happened after we got married I would wake up during the night and it would just so happen that her blood sugar would be low to the point that she was incoherent or whatever. It just became apparent that I was being woken up when she was having hypoglycemia during the night. So it’s a thing that now I don’t even think about it that much really because it feels so normal. That when she has a low blood sugar episode during the night, I will wake up. I mean it can not happen for weeks and then it can happen three times in one week. And I just know that it’s God just waking me up. What is really cool about it is that I feel that I was put in her life for a reason and God had all of this worked out ahead of time and knew what her need was and put me in that slot. And so I feel that I’m being used directly and I just feel that there is a direct link there with God.
Personally, just knowing that God is giving the leadings and that He is speaking to me makes me feel very significant and important. To know that the creator of the universe who is watching over all the different things is using me and giving me a word to speak in to someone else’s life.
One of my favorite parts of walking with God truly is knowing at the end of the day that He used me in a tangible way. And it could mean that I heard something or stopped to pick up something for some one or to write a note, make that phone call, or to simply be with somebody in a specific way and then realize later that that is what God had wanted me to do.
It shows me how important I am to God--that He trusts me with those words and trusts me with that action and that my act of obedience can have eternal significance.
The fact that God can and will speak to us is a reality that we find over and over in Scripture. But before we proceed any further I think I need to say this can be a dangerous reality that we must approach with great care and caution. Remember who these men were and are: James Jones that grew up here in Indiana, Charles Mansion? Both of those men believed they were hearing from God when they committed those horrendous acts. So it’s a reality, a truth that we handle with great care and caution. And on a lighter note, comedian Lilly Tomlin once said, "Why is it that when we’re speaking to God we call it prayer, but if we talk about God speaking to us somebody else refers to it as schizophrenia?" We’ve got to approach it carefully.
To return to our analogy of the cell phone, let me make this foundational point before talking about how we distinguish God’s leadings in our lives. You are not going to get any calls if you don’t have a phone or if you don’t have it on. I don’t yet own one of these. This is one I owned for about three weeks. And I’m not saying that I won’t at some point in the future own one. There’s just times when I’m out I don’t want anybody to get a hold of me. It drives me crazy if I’m playing golf on the golf course with somebody who has got the cell phone on. And my boys, now they’ve both got one. They wouldn’t be without one. My oldest son, Aaron, if I call him, he’s going to answer. He’s always got it on unless he’s in an environment like this where he has to turn it off. Then I’ll get his voice mail. Now, if I call my youngest son, Adam, who knows when he might turn it on. I say that to say this, purchasing the phone is like entering in to a relationship with Jesus Christ. And then having the phone on is like nurturing that relationship through prayer and Bible study and worship and quiet times alone with God.
Persons often wonder how can I know if it’s God speaking to me or if it’s just my imagination? That’s a really important question. How do I know if it’s God or if it’s just a thought that I am having? I want to answer that with two quick answers. Number one, we are finite human beings and we will never do it perfectly. There are going to be times in which you just feel clearly you’re hearing from God and then as time passes you realize, "No, it was just a nice thought." That was that. But then, secondly, though the more we practice, the more we engage in spiritual disciplines, the better we’ll get at hearing from God. The Bible teaches that there are at least four distinguishing characteristics of God’s leading in our lives. It’s important that we know them. We’re going to cover them very quickly.
Consistent with His Character: Number one, be assured that God’s leadings will be consistent with His nature and His character. The Bible tells us that God is not frantic or anxious. So if we’re having an anxious thought it’s not God’s thought. God is loving and good. Those persons in prison for doing evil things that they said God told them to do needed first of all to check that what they were being told to do was consistent with the nature of God.
Consistent with Scripture: Secondly, God’s leadings will be consistent with Scripture. And that’s why turning in the Word, careful study of the Word, is so important to the believer. And notice that I said, "study the Word". When we study the Word we learn to get the Bible’s big picture. Because, friends, words can be dangerous. If you want to use the Bible for proof, if you just want to take versus or parts of versus out of context, you can justify some horribly bizarre and crazy things. That’s not how God wants us to use His Word. You’ve probably heard me use this illustration of the man who was searching for God’s leading in his life. And so he says, "I’m going to close my eyes, open the Bible, point to a verse and that will be God’s word for me." And so he did that. He looked and the verse said, "Judas went and hung himself." And he said, "Well I don’t think that that’s God’s answer. Let me try it one more time." And so he closed his eyes again, and pointed and opened his eyes and the verse said, "Go and do likewise." That’s dangerous misuse of God’s Word. God’s leadings will be consistent with the big picture of Scripture.
Consistent with the way God has made you to be: Thirdly, God’s leadings will be consistent with the way God has made you to be. I want you to follow me carefully here. In most cases, God is going to call you to do and serve and work in ways that are consistent to how he has wired you together. When I went to Africa for the first time I was walking through a village with a missionary and he casually said, "Did you ever wonder, Mike, if God called you to be a missionary?" I reflected on that. I was wondering, "Well, is God perhaps using his question to cause me to be thinking about something?" And then the longer I spent with missionaries the more I realized if you are going to be a successful missionary you’ve got to be one of the most flexible people in the world. That’s not how God wired me together. God wired me together as a very structured person. And I began to realize he was just asking a question. That wasn’t God’s voice. God didn’t wire me together to be a missionary. Now having said that let me say this, if we get a leading and it persists over and over again and that leading is calling us outside our comfort zone then maybe it is from God. And maybe what God is calling us to do is to claim his promise when God calls God provides even though it seems to be outside our comfort zone. But more often than not God’s leadings in your life will be consistent with how he made you.
Consistent with Love: And then fourthly, His leadings will be consistent with love. If someone says they really don’t want to tell you this but they just feel led to share some juicy bit of gossip with you at the expense of others, watch out. Close your ears. A simple question to ask is, "Is this leading selfish or loving?" For every leading of God will be consistent with love. The one part of the video that spoke most to me was the lady that was shopping and just out of the blue she feels led to pick up things and put them in this basket for a friend and leave them on a doorstep. Now, if that had not fully been God’s voice I’m sure the recipient would still have appreciated the basket because it’s consistent with love. But in this case unbeknownst to the individual involved, it was a leading of God because of what was going on in the thoughts of a friend as she was driving home. Leadings will be consistent with love.
One final thought before we close. And to zero in on it I want to return to the cell phone. Those of you who have cell phones, what is it that you do when there is static on the line and you’re having trouble hearing the voice on the other end? I admit I don’t own one, but I’ve watched people who do. They normally change their location to where the signal comes through more clearly. The same thing is true when we try to listen to God’s leadings. Sometimes it isn’t clear because we’ve got sin in our life and the sin needs to be confessed and dealt with. And then we’ll begin to hear God’s voice more clearly. Sometimes the voice on the other end of the phone isn’t clear because simple fact is we’re paying too much attention to things in the world. We have trouble hearing God’s voice. Some of you need to hear this. Sometimes we can’t hear God because we’re continuing to play in our mind old tapes from the past often coming out of our childhood telling us we’re no good, we’re unworthy of God’s love. I’ve dealt with some persons, it’s often a long healing process, to bring them to the point with God’s grace that they can quit playing the old tapes of the past that tell them they are not worthy of God’s love. Sometimes we never hear God’s leadings because we never take time to be still and to spend quiet time in His presence. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about next week as we talk about the need for quiet time and solitude with God. It will help us hear more clearly His leading.
Let’s close in prayer, "Father, we’re grateful for your Holy Spirit that’s present right here now, right with us. Help us to listen to your leadings with wise minds. To make time in our life to shut out the competing voices and then to respond to all you say to us with obedient hearts. Apply your Word to our hearts and minds this day. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen."
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