God speaks. He says "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (John 10:27). If you don't hear the voice of God you have to ask yourself some hard questions. The first and most obvious question is: Am I one of God's sheep? Why do you call yourself a Christian (a God sheep)? Throwing out the modern sense of the name, which has become an adjective rather than a noun, and embracing the original meaning, to be a Christian means to be a 'little Christ' , a person who resembles Christ. A family often exhibits common characteristics. If you were to see my son or daughter you might say "he's or she's the spitting image of you (or my wife)." We resemble one another physically. A Christian has a family resemblance to Jesus Christ; a spiritual resemblance. Children come to life through a physical process. When you see a child you see the result of physical communication. Father and mother touch each other in the correct way at the correct time and life begins. No one has suggested a child came to be without this physical communication for over 2000 years. Jesus Himself is the sole exception. In the case of Christ there is the impossible combination of physical and spiritual communication which produces a unique type of life. Jesus has the physical life common to all humans (biological) and the spiritual life found only in God (eternal).
"Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. "And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. "For nothing will be impossible with God." (Luke 1:34-37)
When you see a Christian you see the result of this impossible spiritual-physical communication in a human being. Without 'hearing' the communication of God there has never been nor will there ever be a person who becomes a Christian. There is nothing inside a human being which spontaneously springs into eternal life. The Spirit of God must speak to us in a way we can receive. If you are a Christian it is because you've heard and accepted God's spiritual communication. It was a personal message from a personal God. It involved Jesus, sin, forgiveness, repentance, hope, fear, joy, love and more. It involved some kind of admission of helplessness to produce the kind of life you were looking for on your own. You heard Him. The organ of hearing was faith. Perhaps the reason we most often use auditory terms to understand how to receive the God communication is because it is a passive experience. Our ears don't generate sound, they receive it. The old question 'if a tree fell in the woods with no one around would it make any sound?' is answered no! Sound is a received thing, while sound waves are active things. No ears = no sound. The message of God has fallen on the universe. Everything reverberates with power of His voice:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Ps 19:1-4)
We bring ears into the woods. We can hear what God is saying if we unstop our ears. Faith begins at the edge of the world. Echos of eternity resonate inside us. Tilting our heads away from the seen toward the unseeable, from the noise toward the sound. There at the jagged edge the faint words of God whisper the simplest of all messages, what every person desires to hear. "I love you," says God. This is what faith hears when it is listening. It is an invitation to come into the woods and to hear the rest of the story.
Biological life is filled with white noise. Eternal life is full of symphonic sound. They exist, for now, side by side, like a radio dial. A good way to tune your ear are the scriptures. This is what God sounds like. This is what He says. Don't confuse the tuner and the broadcast. God is still speaking. He won't contradict Himself because He doesn't make errors, but everything God has to say to you hasn't been written down in a book. Tune in and listen. Let other Christians help you too, but hear for yourself. Could there be another voice more important than His? If you heard Him once why would you believe He stopped speaking to you? The improbable truth is this: Christians are people who have heard and can hear the very voice of God. A second improbable truth is this: most Christians have been convinced they cannot hear God for themselves. Think about it; how hard would it be to convince someone who had heard a symphony that music did not exist? Even if a person went deaf and could no longer hear his own voice he would still retain the memory of music. Yet here we are. People who have heard God's voice for themselves no longer say they can hear Him. They are reduced to reading transcripts of His true words and trying to fit them into the fragments of their own lives. When they need a loving voice on the other end of the phone they read a telephone book instead. The most feared thing in all the biological universe is someone who says they can hear the voice of God for themselves. Once a person begins to listen to God all hell trembles. One Christian listening to the voice of God brought hope and life to the entire Roman empire.
God speaks. This section is a record of His words to me. It isn't inspired or infallible, but it is what I've heard Him say as I tune in and listen. I write this as an affirmation of Him, His ability to speak to even me, and His desire to speak to you.
