“How do I hear God’s voice?” is a common question I get from the students I teach. Take this journey with me through God’s Word on what he says concerning his voice.
God Speaks
One of the innumerable beauties about the One and Only True God of the Bible is he communicates. He brought everything into existence through communication. He speaks because he is personal. He is personal because he exists as three distinct persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) in one essence. He has always existed in perfect, loving community within himself, and out of the truth of who he is, he created. God spoke the heavens and earth into existence (Gen. 1-2 and every law, prophetic, poetic, and New Testament book of the Bible). Then as the first, greatest, and eternal artist, God formed man from the dust of the earth. After molding mankind in his image, he breathed his very breath into the nostrils of man.1 Once God had breathed his breath into man, he spoke to him.
Why Does God Speak?
God does not need anything from his creation. God is perfectly content within himself, and creation is for his glory (Ps. 19, Rom. 1). Yet, there is more to him being Creator. He is the Creator who speaks. His communication with his creation means he is intimate with his design. He talks with his children as a good parent does because his mission from the beginning was to dwell with his people. The Father created a world as his Son’s footstool (Is. 66:1, Matt. 5:35, Acts 7:49), and he has called out of his creation a Bride of redeemed people for his Son. God has been wanting to dwell with his people since he designed mankind. From the beginning, God (as an already complete, fulfilled, and content being) longed to be in relationship with his people, and what better way to do relationship than communicate.
How Do I Hear God’s Voice?
So, how do we hear the voice of the One who longs to be in an intimate, personal relationship with his people?Simply, God’s people hear his voice through his Son and his Spirit. How does that work? God speaks to his people by his Son (Heb. 1:2), and his Son is the Word of God (John 1). What Jesus says is the voice of God. Since all of Scripture is “red letter” because it is all the person and work of Christ, God’s people are called to be in it. We are to learn the voice of God through the Bible, and the Holy Spirit reminds us of the Scripture we read, learn, and memorize (John 14:26).
Because Jesus is part of the Triune God, he has been speaking from the beginning (Gen. 1 and Prov. 8). But the God of the Bible, the Christian God is so glorious he did not stop there. Before a day came into existence by God’s voice, God determined a time he would enter into redemptive history through his Son (John 17). God the Son took on human flesh and became a person to dwell among his creation and to bring his kingdom to earth. In the person of Christ, God now walked among his footstool. He now spoke through the perfect man who was fully human and also fully God.
When God Did Not Speak
As if all of this truth about God speaking couldn’t get better, it does. God is eternal. He has always spoken and will always speak, but there was one time in history God did not speak. The prophet Isaiah prophesied the suffering servant would be pierced, oppressed, and afflicted for our transgressions, yet he would not open his mouth (Is. 53:5, 7). Then about 700 years later, Jesus stood before Pontus Pilate being accused of many things by the Jewish chief priests. Pilate asked Jesus if he had anything to say about the charges being made against him, and Jesus said . . . nothing (Matt. 27:12-14). Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t. Not only was it prophesied about him that he would not open his mouth, but he was the author of all life now in human form. Galaxies and great lights came into existence when he spoke. People rose from the dead when he spoke. Sickness ceased and demons fled when he spoke. But at this moment in redemptive history, he allowed darkness to prevail by not speaking. Because he was obedient in not speaking, which led to his obedience on the cross, his people have complete and full access to all of him. We have access to his voice at any time.
Tuning Our Ears to His Voice
What is God’s voice like? Job 37, Psalm 29, and Proverbs 8 are just a few of the passages in Scripture that describe God’s voice. In Job 37:2-12, we learn that God’s voice thunders, rumbles, lightnings, roars, and commands the snow, the downpour, the ice, and the clouds. In Psalm 29, we’re told God’s voice is over the waters, powerful, full of majesty, breaks cedars, makes Lebanon skip, flashes forth flames of fire, shakes the wilderness, makes the deer give birth, and strips the forests bare. In Proverbs 8:4-9, we hear God’s voice calls and cries out to his children. He speaks noble things. What is right and true comes from his mouth. His words are righteous and straight, not twisted or crooked.
How good is God to communicate truth with his creation, to use words that are right and straight! In him is nothing twisted or perverse. His truth is not only right and straight, but powerful. It rumbles and roars. His voice is over his creation. His voice is powerful and strips us bare because his words are noble and true. So, our response should be to take in and absorb his words – making our ears attentive to his words, inclining our hearts to his voice, raising our voices to his voice for understanding (Prov. 2:2-3).
Raise Your Voice to His Voice
One day the Son will come back for his Bride, and believers will hear the voice of their Lord with no distractions and no sin. God will again walk in the cool of the day in the perfected garden of the new heavens and new earth, and this time there will be no hiding from him. Until that glorious day, may we practice raising our voices to his voice by running to his voice over and over again.
1CPR works because it is an image bearer of God, who holds God’s breath, sharing the breath of God with the person in need, also an image bearer.