One of the “life hacks” I want to leave behind has to do with hearing God’s voice.  Is it possible that God still speaks to us, and how can we know it if He does?  Psychotic patients firmly believe He speaks to them and hearing such a voice is a hallmark of some diseases. Are Christians psychotic if they believe God has communicated with them? It is my belief that God does on occasion speak to us in some way or fashion, though we do need to be careful about what conclusions we draw.  I believe that God communicates with His children more often perhaps than some Christians think and less often than other Christians believe.

Life as a symphony

I like to think of life as a symphonic orchestra.  As opposed to the much small chamber orchestra with perhaps twenty-five musicians, symphonic orchestras have four times as many instruments.  These instruments can be sorted into five different groups; woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings, and in modern orchestras, keyboards as well.  I asked a music professor at my college which of all of the instruments in an orchestra is the most difficult to hear and after a moment to reflect, he replied “the violas.”  When I asked him why he chose that instrument, he replied that many instruments play high notes and people are immediately drawn to those instruments while those instruments playing bass notes are also clearly heard.  The violas, he said, were warm, midrange type instruments, and while essential to the composition that the listener hears, they can be more difficult for the audience to discriminate from the other instruments.  Difficult, that is, for the untrained ear.

Can it be that God’s voice is like the vibrating strings of a viola? The high notes and the low notes of the orchestra are like the everyday noises we hear on a street corner—car horns honking, fire sirens sounding, car engines, jets flying overhear, music blaring, and dozens of conversations around us.  Can anyone calmly, patiently, calling out a name like “Hannah” or “Samuel” be easily heard if heard at all?

I want to share several ways that I’ve learned God speaks today, and I’ll provide personal examples of each.  However, before I begin, I need to strongly emphasize that the ways that I’ll mention are all more or less subjective, and difficult to validate (unless heard in equally distinct measures by others present).  Before we act on some inner urge or follow the directions of some perceived voice or message, we need to test the spirits (I John 4:1-6.)  The apostle John speaks of spirits in the plural and suggests that they provide the inspiration for contemporary (but often false) prophets, some who even lead churches.

Hearing God’s voice: God sometimes speaks audibly

At times (rare times in my experience), God speaks to us audibly.  A textbook example comes from the life of young Samuel (I Samuel 3:1-17.)  I’m including the passage word for word:

“The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.

One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place.

The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, ‘Here I am.’

And he ran to Eli and said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’

But Eli said, ‘I did not call; go back and lie down.’ So he went and lay down.

Again the Lord called, ‘Samuel!’ And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

‘My son,’ Eli said, ‘I did not call; go back and lie down.’

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

A third time the Lord called, ‘Samuel!’ And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’

Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy.

So, Eli told Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ So, Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’

Then Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’

And the Lord said to Samuel: ‘See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.

At that time, I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end.

For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them.

Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”

Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, but Eli called him and said, “Samuel, my son.”

Samuel answered, “Here I am.”

‘What was it he said to you?’ Eli asked. ‘Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.’

So, Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, ‘He is the Lord; let him do what is good in his eyes.’”

Now, many might say that God certainly did miracles and spoke to His people in Biblical times, but He no longer does provides supernatural gifts nor speaks today.  They would say “He talked to Samuel, but today He is silent.”  I disagree.  We pray for the sick.  The majority of seriously or terminally ill patients die, but not all do; some are healed and others enter remission.  If God no longer heals the sick, then why do we pray for them in that case?  Why ask God for guidance if He is silent or distant?  One of the purposes of angels is to “minister to the heirs of salvation” (Hebrews 1:14.)”  Is that no longer in their job description?  Who showed up in Cokeville Elementary School on May 16,1986 in that case, and shielded over 150 children from the blast of a huge bomb.  Many of the children saw angels appear, a number of whom appeared to be encircling the explosive device, while others reportedly pushed children under their desks.  The children were so shaken, that more than a few came to faith in the presence of what has been described as a modern day miracle. I, myself have felt pushed rudely and abruptly to the ground in Vietnam just a second before I heard shrapnel from a mortar or exploding rocket zing past my head. I didn’t see any angels, but if there was one there, he made a friend that night because he saved my life. Like other campfire stories, urban legends abound (even among Christians,) such as the disappearing hitch hiker. Your may have heard of him, and so did I fifty years ago. So, if someone mentions they just got back from a vacation in heaven, witnessed someone who was blind from birth receive her sight, or another person said he was visited by angels, I’d urge a fair amount of healthy skepticism.

While I believe God has “communicated” with me perhaps two or three times in my life, it has never been truly audible as far as I know.  Once was through another person who God used to convey a very unambiguous message to me.  Once was definitely a detailed thought that crossed my mind (directions on someone to meet who needed help, including where and when to meet them.)  The last, dealing with my dying wife, which I relate below was a combination of a three-or four-sentence thought out-of-the-blue which “flashed” in my mind and which was reinforced with an image of something resembling a white board with the sentences written on the board in brilliant lettering.

I know some people claim that God talks to them daily.  I’m not sure what they mean when they say “God told me this…or God said I should speak this.  But, if I were flying and such a person was in the seat next to me, I might ask the stewardess if I could have a different seat. It’s one thing to admit that God speaks every twenty years or so and during a crisis.  It’s another to claim to have long conversations routinely with him.

Hearing God’s voice: Working within our mind or bringing something to mind

As we pour over a problem, sometimes a solution to the problem rises from the depths of our memories.  I worked once at a small USAF hospital and our hospital commander was a surgeon, a full colonel, and a Christian who I’ll refer to as Colonel C.  He was a wonderful, warmhearted person who would be called a Catholic charismatic today.  We knew each other fairly well, without becoming overly familiar because of the rank differences, but he set the tone of the hospital during his tour.  When working his occasional shift in the Emergency Room as Medical Officer of the Day (MOD), a patient on death’s doorstep would sometimes be brought in.  A car wreck.  A gunshot wound.  A near drowning.  A case of SIDS.  The civilian ambulance personnel, the lab and x-ray techs, the nurse charging the defibrillator, ER medics preparing an IV or catheter and others would quickly start their assignments and Colonel “C” would say a short prayer aloud while we began.  A prayer like “God, please help us to save this person if it be your will.”  Some patients would recover, while some would not, in which case he would announce “Let’s have a quick prayer before we leave” and he’d pray “God, please have mercy on this person’s soul.  May he rest in peace. Amen.”  There we were circling the gurney in the treatment room;  military and civilians, officers and enlisted members, doctors and nurses, some with tears in their eyes.

From time-to-time he and I would share thoughts or experiences.  He spoke to me once about a patient of his who I was familiar with.  She was a lady with a peri-renal mass (tumor on her kidney) who was admitted on a Thursday for early morning surgery the following Monday.  That Friday, Colonel C drove to another city a hundred miles or so away for some sort of meeting or administrative business.  He told me afterwards that he felt very uneasy about the whole situation with the patient.  The patient’s lesion appeared on the films to resemble a malignant mass, and at least exploratory surgery if not a nephrectomy was indicated, but he had no peace about the procedure.  As he prayed and asked God for insight, he said he remembered a lecture or workshop once where he was told that a certain type of antibiotic could in rare cases cause benign masses that resembled cancer.  He quickly pulled off the road at the next gas station–there were no cell phones back then—and located the pay phone.  He called our surgical floor’s nurses’ station and asked the charge nurse to visit the patient and ask her if she was taking such and such a drug.  A few minutes later, the nurse returned and told Colonel “C” that the patient was indeed taking that medication, but had forgotten to list it on her preop paperwork.  The doctor was convinced that God had brought that fact to his mind, and therefore had spared the woman from unnecessary surgery. 

Hearing God’s voice: Out of the blue

Consider Augustine’s conversion experience one summer day in August 386 while sitting in a quiet garden, commiserating over his sins. He was living with his girlfriend since he turned 17 or 18 as so many today do, and at the age of 31, he felt something was missing in his life.  He could not marry his partner even though he confesses that he was totally crushed on her as she was with him. The reason they could not marry was most likely because she was a member of a different social class than he.

“So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; Take up and read.” Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken to him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.‘ No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.” Confessions

Notice that God does not address Augustine directly. It is also possible that Augustine was mistaken and the voice was not audible, but it need not have spoken aloud, if Augustine nevertheless perceived it, because the effect was the same.  It could have been a child saying one thing but Augustine misunderstood the words with the result above. John Wesley, who founded the Methodist Church, overheard a conversation, himself, that led to his own conversion experience (also involving the book of Romans.)

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading [Martin] Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.“

Note that Wesley was not hearing the Word read, but rather Martin Luther’s account or explanation of what Paul wrote in Romans.  The combustible material was already in Wesley’s heart because Wesley knew very well what Paul had written.  It was the Holy Spirit using the persuasion of Luther’s argument that provided the spark, and like Augustine’s life, Wesley’s life was changed.  Note also that space and time had to be perfectly aligned for both Augustine and Wesley.  But this I mean if Augustine or Wesley had been a mile from where they actually were, or present an hour or a day earlier or later, they might have missed what God was planning for them.  Take Elijah in the wilderness.  God instructed Elijah to go to a certain spot in the desert.  There may have been more comfortable or convenient places for Elijah to camp out, but had he done so, the ravens which were given instructions by God to take food to predetermined coordinates would never have found Elijah and the prophet might well have perished.

During the last year of my wife’s life, I was very bitter and angry with God.  My wife was juggling three different terminal illnesses at once, fighting heroically for her life.  She was 68 when she died.  None of these diseases or disorders were the consequence of something she had done in her life that was ill advised.  She never smoked and while she did have several bouts with cancer, the cancer was not related to any variable she could control.  Nor did she die from the diseases that alcoholics suffer, because she never drank.  So, I could not blame her for her circumstances, anymore than I could blame myself. Instead, I blamed God.  I thought He was jerking her around and there were more than a few times when I looked to heaven to ask Him in anger whether He was amused or entertained over the latest crisis.  I had a standard “complaint” that I would say regularly without varying it (psychologists call this “playing a tape.”)  In early 2018, on Epiphany Day no less, I had a personal epiphany from God.  I was complaining to Him as usual when all of a sudden I became aware of something extraordinary occurring.  I don’t think I heard an audible voice as much as a message that burst onto my consciousness.  It was a very specific message, and it went like this: “I (He) had intended for Cathy to only live to only until the age of 64” (or maybe it was 65—I was so shocked I don’t recall which of the two numbers I “heard.”)  The message continued to say that because of her prayers and the prayers of our family and friends, God had allowed her to live to the age of 68.  And, those extra four years were enough for additional diseases to emerge, including kidney failure affecting her remaining kidney, pulmonary hypertension, and right-sided heart failure.  But I understood immediately that during the last few years, God was not robbing her of her life, He was extending it instead, according to our expressed wishes, and in a second, what Germans would call an augenblick ~*poof*~ my anger left me completely and permanently.  The whole incident lasted less than ten seconds. For some time afterwards, I was confused over what the personal pronouns in that message were. I wrote down the message while it was still fresh in my memory. My initial recollection was that the message was in the first person, though that really doesn’t matter to me now. Either way, I believe the message came from God.

It’s doubtful that there was a Bible verse (or passage) that could have provided the answer that I needed, so I believe that this was a special (personal) revelation to me.  And, over the past half century there have been two other times when I believe that God spoke to me (in some sense.) This message on my wife’s health status was effective because I was open to it.  If I discounted it as my imagination, I would still have my anger towards–and estrangement from—God.  

For a while I was reticent to mention this because I perceived that some people resented hearing my testimony.  Why did God seem to give my wife extra time and not their late spouse or child?  Why did I receive such a visitation and not them?  A person like me is no more special to God than anyone else, and someone who has been a Christian and who loves the Lord but who has never had a personal “Word” is loved just as much by God and one who has.

Hearing God’s voice: Communicating through His Word

This by far seems to be the most common way God communicates with us.  We read (or hear read aloud) a verse in Scripture that ministers to a particular problem or question in our hearts.  But again, we need to test the spirits.  If someone approached me about being sorry for his behavior in the past and he said he opened the Bible for guidance and saw Matthew 27:5 where Judas hung himself and wondered whether that was God’s message for him, I would encourage him to look at other verses instead.  Most of life’s questions can be found in the Bible.  Why would we pray over and over asking God to speak to us about if it’s okay to steal or covert when He already tells us in the Bible that it’s not okay?

Hearing God’s Voice: God can speak to us though others

I had a dream once when I was in graduate school.  In my dream I was supposed to call this man I knew using a pay phone, and I remember phone numbers by repeating them over and over to myself.  I woke up from the dream and it was about 2:15 a.m.  I groggily got up and went to the bathroom, and them came back to bed and crawled between the sheets.  As I was about to fall asleep, I became aware that I was repeating a sequence of numbers over and over.  Without thinking, I picked up a pencil and pad that was on the nightstand and scribbled down the numbers.  I then went back to sleep and in the morning I had forgotten about it.

Three week later I was sitting on my bed and I noticed the pad with the number on my nightstand.  I picked up the pad.  Hmmm.  The number had ten digits.  I wondered if it was a real telephone number?  I checked the first three digits, which was an area code in the Midwest.  Iowa or Missouri, or some state like that.  My wife and I prayed and I decided I was going for it.  I dialed the number.  Some woman who sounded like she was in her late twenties or early thirties answered. I told her my name, where I was calling from, and asked her if I could have just five minutes of her time after which she’d never hear from me again.  She sounded upset, either afraid or angry and demanded to know how I got her unlisted phone number.  I told her I had a dream, and that (as far as I knew) I was not crazy. I told her that I was a Christian, and if, indeed, I was purposely given the number in a dream, then perhaps God wanted me to contact her. I told her the only possible message I could offer was to tell her that she wasn’t alone, that God loved her, had wonderful plan for her-she should not give up hope, and that she should find a good Bible-believing Christian church where ever she lived (and I told her I didn’t even want to know.)   I could tell from her voice that she completely dropped her shields and was on the verge of sobbing.  I said best wishes, goodbye and I hung up.  But I believe that dream was from God for a person I never met.  It only cost me a dollar or two for a three-minute call, but it could have made a big difference in that woman’s life.  And what if it wasn’t “God calling?” My subconscious mind might have generated ten random numbers that happened to match one of the hundreds of millions of phone numbers in North America. That works too. Somebody learned that God loves them (true) and that God has a wonderful plan for her life (true) and she should seek out other believers. I’m not sure how many Christians would have called as I did, but I think more of us should think outside of the box.  In Isaiah 55:8, God says: “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.”

So, why didn’t God just send an angel to appear in my bedroom and say “God wants you to dial this number and ask for Doris?” I don’t know.  I don’t know why I suffered for years from migraines.  I don’t know why my first wife got so sick (instead of me.)  I don’t know why Jesus had to spit in someone’s eyes for the person to receive his sight back (Mark 8:23.)  I don’t know why children in this world starve to death.  I do know there is sin in the world, and that many people suffer because of the decisions we make ourselves.  A pregnant mother does crack (Photo credit left Thinkstock.) A father abandons his family.  A drunk driver kills a child.

 I believe that if we think that God is no longer involved in human history, that He is not interested in our lives, then we won’t see Him at work in our lives and if we do, we’ll think it is just plain dumb luck or coincidence.  If we give Him a chance though, wonderful things are likely to happen.  I’ve married (twice) to virtual strangers because I thought it was God’s will, as did they. My first wife died after forty-six years of a generally happy relationship and now I’ve been married for two-and-one-half years to another wonderful woman.