Let’s face it. If someone told us that God spoke to them, most of us would roll our eyes and take a step back. In our age of science, logic, and doubt, we don’t easily believe there is a God who speaks to us. Blame Hollywood, if you will. We have been conditioned to expect the voice of God to be some thundering bass, probably accompanied by flashes of lightning and rolling thunder.
Surely the God who created the universe, the God of unimaginable power and majesty, doesn’t speak in whispers.
Or does He?
Like so many aspects of our efforts to understand the spiritual realm, we are handicapped by our own human restrictions. If we are to hear from God, we expect to hear God’s message in the form of a sound, a voice that we can detect with our ears. We expect Him to speak in a language that we understand. We expect a clear directive or warning.
In our blindness, we do not see the possibility or even the probability that God’s voice may take another form. We are so accustomed to communicating via our five senses, that we struggle to accept that there may be other forms of communication.
Perhaps God’s voice is a whisper of conscience, perhaps it is a moment of inspiration. God’s voice might come as an awareness or an insight. Perhaps His voice is a pang of guilt or regret.
Could it be that God speaks to each of us in the form appropriate for the message? Could it be that we have already heard the voice of God speaking through a friend or neighbor, or through the message in a Sunday sermon?
Finally, you might ask, “why me?” Why would God choose to communicate with you? The answer is twofold. If we research the stories in the Bible, we might find that God chose ordinary people to use to deliver His messages. Those people may have ultimately become influential in their time, but they didn’t necessarily start out that way. So, why not you?
Secondly, maybe He communicates with each of us, all the time, but we aren’t tuned in. The static of our existence interferes. And one of the strongest signals that blocks our ability to receive His messages is the belief that God couldn’t possibly engage with all of humanity – there are just too many of us. Somehow, while we might believe that God created the billions of stars and planets in the universe, we can’t believe that He could keep track of the billions of souls on the earth. Just as the limits of our five senses restricts what we can comprehend, our ability to visualize large numbers makes it difficult for us to imagine any entity being able to manage such vast numbers of interactions.
Finally, is it truly the voice of God? No matter what form it takes, the test is to verify against the documented history of God’s nature. If the message is cloaked in love and caring, that speaks for itself.
Our challenge is to silence the static of our existence and focus on that small, whispering voice that is the true voice of God.