Now Can You Hear Me?

So that’s what it’s like to hear God’s voice! I was driving down the road in my van one afternoon totally discouraged. I was putting in hours and hours of time ministering to a high school gal, with the help of my wife and a few others. Her needs were proving bigger than our knowledge, and beyond our experience and expertise. And each step we took proved more and more controversial. But I couldn’t just quit and leave her in the condition she was in. I knew deep in my heart God was at work in her life. But all the other pastors and the deacons were making it quite clear that they felt I was looney tunes. I really, really felt all alone, out on a limb, about to snap off and go tumbling.

Counselor after counselor, seven in all, were consulted and none could help her. The police had been involved. The newspaper had written a story. The church wanted to keep its respectability and reputation intact, I was told. But I didn’t feel God telling me to quit. So I was torn. Miserably. Desperately.

At each turning point, each new outburst, I would choose again to keep helping. But the support grew thinner and thinner, the criticism more and more pointed. That’s when it happened. The statement was so clear in my head that I could not have missed it. Nor could I have mistaken it for my own thought. It was clear. God said to me, “ I called you to help, and you alone. Don’t expect anyone else to understand.”

I had to pull off the road. I cried and cried. Tears and emotions poured out me. It wasn’t just what He said to me, it was the fact that he knew and understood fully what I was in the midst of. And He wanted me to know that my gut feeling was correct. He was indeed leading me, wanting me to continue to help this gal. He even said he “called” me to this very task, this unique and extended ministry. Furthermore, the misunderstanding and criticism was also part of the calling.

Netzero had an ad on television for awhile. The guy would walk around and say, “Now can you hear me?” He would take a few steps and say again, “Now can you hear me?” That first recognition of God’s voice was like that, a response to that question and that yearning in my heart.. I had worked with others who heard the voice of the Holy Spirit clearly, and I knew and trusted that God was actually really talking to them. But now I could say, “Yes Lord, I hear you! Thank you so very much for being so very real to me.”

If you talk to God you are considered spiritual. But if God talks back you are considered crazy.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8,9)

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)