Guest Post by James Warrick
A guy I’m coaching asked a great question, “How do I know that what I am hearing is God and not me? How can I discern between God’s voice and my own voice? I don’t want to tell people ‘God told me this…’ and it not be right.”
Most people think it’s difficult to know the voice of God because we can’t hear Him with our ears or see Him with our eyes. It’s hard to know if it’s Him or not, because He feels far away. But it’s actually the opposite. It’s because God is so close to us that it’s difficult to know if it is Him or not.
Scripture says: “But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6) You, who trust God, are one with Him. Where He starts and you stop, where you start and He stops, I can’t tell. He has literally wrapped Himself around you so tightly that He’s closer to you than you are to yourself. Your spirit and His Spirit are interwoven together, they are one spirit. His voice sounds like your voice… He’s that close.
The world says confidence is about us and how much we have. Scripture says confidence is about God and how much He has. That’s a huge shift. And when you make this shift, it affects everything. You can have confidence in God speaking, not in your hearing. The confidence is not in your ability to hear, it’s in His ability to speak. What the Almighty God says does not hinge on what you hear. He is powerful to speak.
Why do we do this? Why do we make hearing God dependent on us? Isn’t He bigger than you? Why do we make our relationship with God dependent on us? Is that how you got here? Did you initiate your own creation? Did you come up with the plan for your salvation? Did you accomplish anything in the area of your redemption? Justification Glorification? Then why do we make our sanctification dependent on us?
Your connectedness with God is not dependent on your connectedness with God.
What would your relationship with God look like if it wasn’t dependent on you?
God is a God who is speaking. Even though many have stopped listening, many aren’t sure what He is saying, God has not stopped speaking. To think of a God who’s not presently speaking is to think of the Trinity without the Second Person. All that is coming out of God the Father, seen and heard, is so incredible that it’s actually a Person, the Person of Jesus (Hebrews 1; John 1). Much to say here, but let’s get back to hearing God. You can trust that Jesus’ is speaking in your life. Faith happens… without certainty.
God is right. We call this the righteousness of God. By faith, His rightness is now your rightness. And His righteousness is enough for you. You don’t have to try to get it right because He already has. Trust is to depend on something without trying to add to it.
He’s right. He’s here. He’s speaking.
With God’s voice, you can trust what He is saying. You don’t have to try to hear correctly, He is speaking and He’s not going to stop. You can stop trying to trust what you’re hearing. Trust God. And even if you don’t get it right…He is bigger than you. His faithfulness, the fact that God doesn’t stop, is certain in His voice.
