Recognizing the Voice of God

day, and the only reason I went was to see if there was a letter from her. If there was no letter, I moped about through the course of the day, but if there was one, my heart was filled with joy. I carefully opened it and read it the same way a man dying of thirst drinks water. Then I would carry it about with me as though it were a rare and precious jewel -- and, to me, it was -- and several times during the day I would open it and read it again, weighing each word. In the Song of Solomon, the beloved says that, even in her sleep, she was on alert for the sound of her lover. ‘I slept but my heart was awake,’ she says’ (Song of Solomon 5:2). If we love God, we will yearn to hear his voice. The first condition for recognizing the voice of God is that we have to want to hear it.

The second condition is that we know we need to hear it. Jesus says, ‘The sheep listen to [the shepherd’s] voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.’ The Lord is our shepherd, and, as our shepherd, he makes us lie down in green pastures, he leads us beside quiet waters, he restores our souls, he guides us in right paths. If we are lost, he leaves the ninety-nine other sheep safe in the fold and comes looking for us, calling to us, and when he finds us, he carries us back to safety. He is the good shepherd, and we are safe only when we follow him. In order to hear his voice, we must know that we need to hear it.

We have to want to hear it -- that’s the first condition. We must know we need to hear it -- that’s the second. And the third is: We know we have to hear it. There is always the stranger’s voice, and it is always alluring and captivating. We easily become mesmerized by the stranger’s voice. But that voice belongs to what Jesus calls ‘a thief and a robber.’ The stranger’s only intent, Jesus says, is ‘to steal and kill and destroy’ (John 10:10). Only Jesus comes that we ‘may have life and have it to the full.’ So, if we are to hear the voice of God, there are these three conditions: we must love God, we must want to follow where God leads us, and we must not listen to the other voices that demand our attention.

So now, with these conditions in place, we are in a position to recognize the voice of God when we hear it? But how do we do that? For me, the best way to hear God is by reading the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the Word of God, and when I read them, I have every reason to believe that God will speak to me through them. So, what I do is, whenever I read a passage from the Bible: I look for what’s behind it, I look for what’s in it, and I look for what’s in front of it. Let me explain what I mean.

When I first look up a passage of Scripture to read it, I want to know what’s behind it. Every text you and I read has its own history. Whether it’s an article in a magazine or a letter from a friend, a message in a bottle or a passage from the Bible, the text itself has a history. Aside from what’s in it -- aside from what it says -- it has a story of its own. Somebody wrote it at some point in time, from some specific place, for someone else’s eyes, for some important