Rhema | We Will Know His Voice

How do I know that what I am hearing is the voice of God? If you have been a christian for more than a week, you have probably asked yourself or someone else that question.

If I were to answer that question today, I could have more than one response and they have been about 40 years in the making, with me as an active participant. I know God has been talking to me my whole life, but I didn’t always know how to participate.

I believe it is God’s voice when it sounds like the God I have come to know in the bible. Maybe it is something I have read in the bible that suddenly “makes sense” or I see something in a passage that I hadn’t seen before. Or maybe it just sounds like something God would say.

Faith is definitely a factor.

John 10:3-4 NKJV
To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. (emphasis added)

God said in His word that we will know His voice. If He tells us that we will, I believe He is able to reveal Himself to us in such a way that we will recognize Him when we hear Him. I have faith that He is a big enough God to make me see and hear Him. Sometimes that looks like just “knowing” in my heart, in my being.

Can we misunderstand or misread what God is saying? Of course we can. Each of us are fallible and we each have our own “filter” through which God’s voice passes. Often emotions can really wreak havoc on my ability to hear. So yeah, sometimes we will get it wrong. But if we never take a chance and trust what we hear, God won’t be able to tell us anything or help us to get better at recognizing His voice. Here again I lean on faith to believe that God’s ability to make Himself heard is greater than my ability to hear. And I hope that I am not so arrogant that I can’t be corrected if proven wrong.

Sometimes I don’t know and I just go with what seems right in my heart. I might have to make an agonizing choice or decision and trust that God will honor my faith and help me out.

Two scriptures help me here:

Romans 8:28 NKJV
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

So I believe God has my back.

And Proverbs 9:9 NKJV
Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;
Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.

So number one, I believe you are only as wise as you are convinced that there is more for God to teach you. Two, I believe this verse applies to a wise woman as well as a man.

Another contributing factor to hearing God’s voice is the fact that God is really in favor of community. There are probably hundreds of reasons for this, but I believe one reason is to challenge each other and our convictions. Basically to ”keep us honest.” This can be very messy. What was God thinking?! But it is an effective tool. I believe we hear God’s voice better in community. And I believe it is by design.

Finally I will share a verse that literally changed my life.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 NKJV
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. (emphasis added)

This epiphany, if you will, struck me one night after a church service, probably at least 25 years ago. It has never left me and I have made it a life commitment. “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

It seems like most of the church is stuck on memorizing verse 11. But I find verse 13 equally provocative. God’s promise to me, and everyone else who receives it, is that if I search for Him with all my heart, I will find Him.

So I commit myself to give Him room, to give Him time, to give Him space to talk to me. I fellowship with the body of Christ, I read the bible, I spend time praying, I shut up and listen. I do all these things imperfectly, but I am committed to do them, because I want to seek Him with all my heart. I believe He talks to me when I make room for Him.

One time, in the midst of very imperfect behavior on my part, I heard God’s voice in my heart as clear as I have ever heard anything, “You see Darla, I don’t need perfect people, I just need faithful ones.”

I have counted my use of the word “believe” 10 times. This is what I believe that God has spoken to me about hearing His voice over the last 40 years. It has taken time, faith and practice. My confidence is in Him, wanting me to know Him. God did say that I would know His voice. And if you are a sheep, you will too.

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About the Author

Darla loves God and is the Digital Media & Communications Director for CitySalt Church. She is a graphic designer and an entrepreneur. Always learning. Eternally grateful for her wonderful and supporting husband Mark and faithful friends who are are pillars of encouragement in all her endeavors.

Mark and Darla have no children but have the privilege of loving a gaggle of ever expanding nieces and nephews.

Tension | Between Two Worlds

It was near the end of our senior year, and it had been a fun night out with my high school friends, staying up late, watching movies, laughing over inside jokes. Still, a feeling of melancholy washed over me as I dropped my friend Giselle off at her house. “Do you ever just feel like something is wrong?” I asked her.

I didn’t have the language or emotional maturity to articulate myself clearly at that moment. But what I meant was that in spite of my insulated middle class life, my weekly church attendance, my close group of friends, and my college plans, I still felt the brokenness of our world seeping in through the cracks around me. And it was scary.

Maybe it was the fact that the Twin Towers fell that year, or that my dad was struggling with a secret addiction, or that I was sensing the impending loss of these friendships. I’m sure I was feeling all of that, and this too — creation was broken in the fall. We are living in the ruins of Eden.

I know so much more of the world’s (and my own) brokenness now than I did during that car ride home at age eighteen.

My response to brokenness has generally been to try to fix it. So, I spent a year as an AmeriCorps volunteer, recruiting mentors for children of incarcerated parents. I’ve spent Christmases serving meals to the unhoused in downtown Portland. I’ve handed out hygiene kits to prostitutes. I let my cognitively disabled, low-income neighbor borrow my vacuum, only to have it returned with fleas. I tutored a Somali refugee girl in math and reading. I became an elementary school teacher, praying with my students every morning to begin our day, about things both big and small.

In all my efforts to improve the world, I’ve learned an important lesson: I can’t fix it. I can’t, in fact, fix anything.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

But this I can do. I can choose my response to the circumstances around me.

I still get sad sometimes about the world’s brokenness, but I see so much more of God in it now. That’s the miracle of Jesus, that He would come down into our messed up, broken world and live among us; that He would love and forgive us, pay the price for our sins and offer us the keys to his kingdom.

We may be living among ruins, but God’s kingdom is present here too at the same time, a sort of alternate reality. As Christ-followers we are dual citizens of this world and of God’s kingdom. We live in the tension between these two worlds.

Since my life centers around work with children, perhaps it’s not surprising that C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books play a strong role in my understanding of theology. When we become Christians, we too enter through a secret door hidden in the back of a wardrobe where we can encounter the living God.

“I am [in your world].’ said Aslan. ‘But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” - C.S. Lewis

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About the Author

Ursula and her husband Spencer have two young children, and their family enjoys playing hide-and-seek and dancing in the living room. She works as a communications and events coordinator with the University of Oregon. Ursula is also CitySalt’s Children’s Ministry Director. 

You can read more from Ursula at motherbearblog.com.