Listening to the Voice of God

My dear friends, I would like to share with you something that the Lord has taught me the hard way. I say the hard way because I didn’t go about it the way God wanted me to so it took a lot longer and was much more frustrating for me than it need to be.

In 2004 I had been a born again believer for about 2 years. It had been an exciting time, learning a lot and seeing God meet a lot of our needs, and all the while I was trying to figure out what it was that God wanted me to do. I wanted to have a call on my life so I was looking around at anything and everything to do with ministry. At first I thought that if I was going in to ministry it would be stand up in front of a congregation every Sunday speaking and teaching like the pastor of our church. I tried sharing some testimony a couple of times but found it really hard, I was so nervous that I wanted God to open up the ground and swallow me up. I realised that this was not for me.

Then, as I grew in knowledge of God and His word I realised there was so much more to ministry than speaking at church on Sunday. I tried other things but it was always the same, it never worked out as I had thought it would. Then one Sunday evening, during the worship at church, I prayed to the Lord which went something like this. “Lord, I have tried and tried to figure out what it is you want me to do and I have got no place. Lord, tell me what your call is for me. Tell me in some way that I will know beyond doubt that it is you telling me and not me deluding myself.” Straight away the Lord answered me, speaking straight into my mind. It was like hearing a voice without using your ears, it seemed so real and not at all like my own voice. It is probably the closest I have come to hearing the audible voice of God, and even though I didn’t hear it with my ears I knew instantly that it was the voice of the Lord. So what was His call, what was the words the Lord spoke to me? “Write My words of encouragement.” Is what I heard in my mind. I knew it was the Lord because this was something I would never have thought of myself.

I had been so caught up trying to figure out what God wanted me to do that I forgot the most simple way of finding out, ask the Lord and listen to what He tells you!!!!! I was convinced that if I tried enough things I would find what God wanted me to do. However the only true way of knowing what the Lord wants you to do is to listen to what He is saying to you, and then doing it, it really is that simple.

Think of it like this, if you wanted to know what someone wanted you to do how would you find out? Would you start running around doing everything you can think of in the hope that you will find it on your own? Or would it make more sense to simple ask them, then you can focus all your time and energy in to doing the what they want instead of wasting it all on all the wrong things?

Proverbs: 16:9

A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.

Proverbs 19:21

There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel - that will stand.

I was so busy planning my own way of doing God’s will that I forgot that He is the One who would direct my steps and His will alone will stand. I also forgot that it was not about me trying to please God by doing the things I thought He wanted me to do. So what is it about then?

I should have been listening to the voice of God, waiting on Him for instruction and direction before doing anything. The only way to please the Lord is to listen to His word and to be obedient, it is that simple and easy. John 14:21 tell us that if we have have His commandments and do them we love Him, and He will love those who love Him and reveal Himself to them.

I still hadn’t learned my lesson from this, because once I heard from the Lord about what He wanted me to do I then rushed in to it and though I knew how to go about it. I started planning how I was going to do things, writing books and amazing articles that would really inspire people. Well, it got me nowhere fast, because I was not listening to God again but trying to do it my way. I though that I could now sit down and write the most deeply theological, inspiring, encouraging, and amazing books ever. Again I found myself being frustrated when nothing was coming and I seemed to be getting nowhere. I now know that I still had a lot of learning to do, hearing God’s call for me was only the start point of a journey of learning.

When a child first learns to walk and run can they immediately run a marathon, or win Olympic gold in the 100 metre sprint? Of course not! They have a life time of growing, training, learning and developing ahead of them before they can do any of that. It is the same with our call from God, we have learn the basic first step but then there is a period of growing, developing, learning and training that we must go through before we can begin to operate in the calling effectively.

The one thing that I have learned through this is that when we receive a call from the Lord to minister in some way we still have to remain dependant on Him as to how to do it. God will tell us what He wants us to do and He will tell us how to do it. There may be times when it seems that God is teaching you things that are totally unrelated to what He has called you to do, you might start to think, ‘What has this got to do with my ministry?’ But whatever the Lord is saying to you is for your benefit and will impact on your ministry in some way. One of the things God started to talk to me about after He told me my calling was in relation to motivations. I was thinking that He wanted me to write about it so I tried many times to write an article on it but I never could get past the first few paragraphs. I started questioning God, ‘Why are you telling me this if you don’t want me to write about it?’ ‘What are you trying to say to me and who is it for?’

What the Lord was wanting me to do was deal with my motivations for writing first. Before I could move further into this ministry I had to look at the things in my heart that were motivating me and let the Lord deal with all of it. It was then that I realised most of my motivations were wrong. I was trying to write in order to win the praise of people, to hear them say that is brilliant, I imagined getting all the credit and glory for it, I wanted to take the credit for what I was writing. Straight away my motivations had brought me out of line with the will of God, He ha said write MY words of encouragement not write your words of encouragement. You see, I was trying to write encouraging things without listening to God because I wanted it to be all my work and people would praise me. These motivations were a barrier to me operating in this ministry, until these were removed and the proper motivations established I would continue to be frustrated and achieve nothing.

So I urge you to open your heart and look at your true motives for what you are doing, it may be that this is the very thing that is blocking your development and growth in your ministry. Do not let your own desire stop you achieving what the Lord desires you to do. To understand a little more about motivations please read Looking Under The Skin on this site.

What it comes down to is listening to the Lord all the time, not just when you think you need a word from Him but all the time and obediently doing all that He tells you to do.

James 1:22 - 25

22. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

23. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;

24. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

25. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

If we only listen to the word of God and do not act on it we are deceiving ourselves. We can sit in church an listen to every word the pastor speaks, nodding and agreeing with all that is said, however this is not enough. This is only head knowledge, there is a big difference between knowing what the bible says and living what the bible says. When God speaks to us through His word it is not just so we will have something interesting to listen to and talk about, He is revealing His word to us so that we can incorporate it in to our lives and live as He wants us to live.

Imagine that you have employed a person to do something for you. The first thing that you would to is explain to them what it is you want them to do, then you would go off to where you need to go with the expectation that when you get back the person to employed would have do what to asked of them. How would you feel if, when you came back to find that they had not done what you had asked of them? Would you feel like rewarding them? Would you feel that they deserved any wages? No, even if you promised them a sum of money it would have been on the condition of them completing the work.

If you are sitting around waiting for God to bless you, only listening to what He is saying but not doing any of it will He bless you? If you want the blessing of God to be on everything you do then you have to be a doer and not just a listener. Yes, we need to listen to the Lord everyday for direction, guidance, etc. However, we must always act on all that we hear from the Lord, looking to implement it in to our own lives first before telling others to do it. Only when we live as obedient servants to the Lord can we walk in His full blessings.

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