“He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:47, NIV)
Abiding establishes our relationship with God; our belonging. It is the total surrender of our heart to God’s control and leading, a dying of selfish me so that I can be transformed into genuine God- intended me. When we know who our shepherd is, his deep love and tender care, we will know his voice.
My Sheep Hear My Voice and They Know Me
We’ve all heard that sheep are dumb and need a shepherd to lead them, but Jesus himself is referred to as a lamb, and he wasn’t dumb. There’s more to consider concerning sheep; they trust, they obey, they do as the shepherd commands because they’ve abandoned their lives in totality to the one they adore. (John 10) They trust and know the nuances of the voice of their beloved shepherd, they don’t need sight (or foresight) to follow. This characterizes a large part of Jesus’s life. He never acted (judged, healed, spoke) apart from the voice, command, and instruction of the Father; his shepherd, his branch, the one who completely loved him. All his decisions, actions and words came through abiding in the love of his Father in total adoration and obedience to his will; even when he struggled to accept it. For Jesus, this was enough, this was more than enough. He relinquished all rights of choosing his own path over to his shepherd’s good plan.
The Voices We Follow
Where our devotion lies is where we are directed. These devotions motivate us and are where we discern our truths. The voices we attend to speak of whom/what we adore. Before considering discernment further, we must ask ourselves, “Who do we love/adore? Is it ourselves? Another person? A job? A thing? A dream? What voice (s) do we follow?” If the answer isn’t Christ then knowing the will of God, wanting to hear from him, expecting answers or directions, begging for help when life gets hard, or wanting wisdom will come back empty every time.
This may be the point where you need to stop and wrestle with God, surrender to his love and find yourself resting in grace. I’d like to recommend a book for you: Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, by David G. Benner.
Before we can hear the voice of God, like sheep, we must entrust ourselves to his unfailing love and guidance. We must believe that wherever he leads we will be safe, even if it is the shadowed valley. Sheep are devoted even unto their demise (thankfully God doesn’t desire our destruction). Jesus embraced the cross with the same willingness. A death did need to occur, as it does in us, but it is not a fatal death, it is a life-freeing death for our good. Abandoning us, his beloved creation, to eternal death was never an option for God. If you don’t believe that, if you are struggling to relax into God’s loving arms, search your heart as to why you believe that—consider what is holding you back?
However, if you’ve fallen in a free for all with Jesus, then let’s keep digging toward a heart of discernment.
Key Number Two: Listening
The Bible shares numerous ways in which God spoke to his beloved—through fire, wind, rocks, clouds, angels, messengers, prophets, judges, plagues, commandments, dreams, light, visions, priests, servants, his son, the Bible. It is by his voice that creation was set in motion. In our day-to-day life, we may feel God is distant and doesn’t speak, but Richard Rohr reminds us, “We cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.” If we widen our scope to view his interaction with creation across the span of history, we find a very present God eager to engage with his beloved.
Yet, alongside a present God, we also find endless stories of his beloved refusing or unable to listen.
Your eyes have seen all that the Lord did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land. With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those signs and great wonders. But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear…
And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord…
Deuteronomy 29: 2-4, 25
And as in John 8:47, Christ makes it even clearer to us that our hearing damage is a result of not knowing the one who speaks– a non-existent or half-hearted relationship with God. These are powerful accusations that we must honestly evaluate.
Since the fall, we’ve been a people crying out to God, yet in the same measure of pleading living with an unwillingness to listen. This boils down to the reality that at the end of the day we choose our own will over God’s every time. Our human will proves stronger than our longing for an abandoned heart to God. Our truest plea is ultimately this–I want what I want when I want it, and exactly how I demand it. God, now answer my prayer. And if he doesn’t, we create our own will, make our own way. Until we look at this truth in the face and let it go, we will rarely hear the voice of God. We are quick to rebuke God for supposedly not hearing us, but when do we point the finger at ourselves and wonder why we can’t hear.
Not My Will, But Yours
This is exactly why Jesus had to teach us to pray. He knows most of our prayers revolve around our will, our desires; the art of asking for ourselves. So he taught us to pray in a way that would open a way for a heart transplant, a new way of looking at prayer, a reprogramming of our hearing to receive a message. He taught us to pray as he prayed.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
The beauty of prayer is that it involves three persons (outside of ourselves)–God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That means all we have to do is show up in prayer and let them take over. When we pray this way, we pray to God, with Christ indwelling us and the Holy Spirit then speaking, discerning, and opening our understanding. In this triune relationship, we are given a voice and then we know what we ought to pray. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves in prayer to say the right thing, ask for the right thing and we do it all through our will, but if we open our prayer with a hardy “I’m here!” and sit in quiet, stillness we can entrust the “how-to” of praying over to them. They will direct us, they will speak and we will hear and know which way to go. This is the abandonment in which Christ prayed that infused his life, work, and purpose.
The center of prayer and discernment always points to the redemptive power of God’s Kingdom; in the big and the small. God’s Kingdom on earth includes your personal heart surgery as well as all people hearing the Good News. Each of these movements happens in small, incremental ways.
No detail of our lives is too insignificant in this redemptive story. Imagine each choice, act or aspect of your life as a puzzle piece. Imagine each of these pieces relinquished to God’s care and leading–redefined into his will. He then takes your redeemed pieces and others’ redeemed pieces and connects them. This continues in an ongoing flow until a kingdom-sized puzzle comes together. This is God’s kingdom being built on earth as it is in heaven. However, this puzzle isn’t fully complete if a piece is missing. So he waits. He continues to pursue creation until all people hear and redemption is fulfilled. As long as our willful choices and control keep us deaf, God will continue to say, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” That means he continues to search the earth for this lost sheep.
He’s not waiting for a huge display of our “good” works. He’s waiting for surrendered hearts living faithfully in the little areas of life so the Kingdom of God can continue to be formed, connected on earth. It starts inside our hearts with baby steps, tiny abiding surrenders, day-by-day showing up to prayer meetings with the Triune God and actively listening so we can know and follow his voice.
David G. Benner calls this the surrendering of the Kingdom of Self over to the Kingdom of God and it is in this relinquishing that we can begin to have ears to hear.
Giving up our control is scary. It’s out of our hands, but that is the trust God desires. He loves us intimately because he formed us in his hands, he searches our hearts and knows our deepest longings. My hope is for us all to know his transformative will that meets our true needs that in turn meets the needs of others. If you haven’t joined the Wandering Way Community, start by subscribing at the bottom of the website.
