Know My Voice

Scripture: John 10.1-10; Acts 2.42-47


God’s grace speaks to us in sibilants. Fred Buechner explains that sibilants are sounds that can’t be shouted but only whispered: the sounds of bumblebees and wind and lovers in the dark. . .cars on wet roads, the sound of your own breathing. In sibilants, life is trying to tell us something. In fact, Buechner suggests that living a life of faith is a matter of listening to your life.

That makes sense. Doctors tell us that pain is the body’s way of telling us something’s wrong. Something’s been injured. Something’s not working correctly. Life has its own whisperings that we should heed. The believer learns to recognize the voice of Jesus in the many whisperings that our lives speak to us.

The Good Shepherd is the good shepherd because his sheep follow out of trust born of a long and deep relationship. Deep calls to deep in whisperings of mind and heart that almost don’t need to be put into words. “They know my voice.”

In a crowded room of children talking, laughing, crying, I can distinguish my son’s cries because I know his voice. Any parent can do that. Because parents have spent so much time listening to the subtle and not so subtle sounds and pitches and inflections of their child’s voice. It becomes second nature.

Athletes and musicians describe their most successful moments as “being in the Zone.” What is the Zone? It is where time slows down for them. They can see their movements and others movements as if they’re happening in slow motion. The ball gets bigger for them. The strike zone is huge. The notes come from out of nowhere and play themselves. They no longer have to think about what they are doing. They just do it. It is an effortless present.

I have experienced this sometimes when I’m writing. The words just flow. More talented writers than me describe whole books coming to them and finding them, not the other way around. There is a mystery to it. There seems to be a wholly Other.

And there is that quality, as well, to being in the presence of God. There are times when He just comes. The Holy Spirit alights upon our shoulders like a dove. The voice is clear, the peace is palpable, and present is effortless.

But just like an athlete or a writer or a musician, believers don’t get to those moments without effort, without practice, and without a long, deep relationship.

Knowing the voice of Jesus only happens as we learn to live with Him in the community of faith. Sheep follow the Shepherd together. Sheep hear His voice together. The early church as described in Acts chapter 2 devoted themselves to hearing God’s voice and being in His presence by being in the Word, in prayer, in life together. They got to the point where they were so good at it, that major decisions of leadership where revealed to them and they described it like this: “It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit.” They were actually making decisions with God. They were in a Zone.

Being immersed in the life of the church will strengthen your walk and bring you closer to intimacy with the Savior. In church you learn to listen, you learn to pray, you learn to see Jesus in others. At the same time, if you would know the voice of Jesus then you must begin to listen for yourself, and you must pray for yourself. I can’t pray for you. Your Sunday School teacher can’t pray for you. Your spouse can’t pray for you the prayers of your heart that only you can pray.

I am convinced that when we learn to pray for ourselves then we become better listeners of God’s voice speaking to us. When I am praying more, then I hear more of God’s direction in my life – simple things like “Go see that person today,” or bigger things like, “It’s time to move the church more in this direction.”

The more we pray, the more we are able to hear things that we haven’t wanted to hear, the hard truth about ourselves. There are many examples of this in the Bible. David always comes to my mind. David has lied, cheated, stolen, committed adultery, and murdered. In other words, he’s had a few moral lapses. And you don’t get that far in sin without a singularity of purpose, that is, to ignore your conscience and ignore the voice of God wherever and through whomever God speaks. But here comes Nathan the priest; and Nathan catches David unawares. He does this by telling David a story. By the time Nathan is done with the story, David has heard God telling him some hard truths about himself.

Nathan’s job is my job too. I am supposed to preach hard stuff to you on occasion – things you may not want to hear. Any preacher that has been doing this for a while knows the risk involved. You say hard things and people might leave the church or make you leave the church. There’s a cartoon in which a preacher says to his wife, “I told them the truth, and they set me free.”

It’s like the story Gordon MacDonald tells about the three little girls who are playing school. The oldest of the three, Lisa, plays the teacher and says to her class, “Now children, there is no such thing as the Easter bunny. Do you hear me?” Upon which one of her students protests, “Lisa, Lisa, stop teaching us things we do not want to hear.”

Listening to the voice of God requires a commitment to reality as God defines it. Are we willing to look into the mirror that God through His Word and Spirit holds up before our lives?

Know this. If you submit to the discipline and effort of praying and listening to the voice of God, you will hear and know His voice. You will.