Justin Camp

Most of us live in what’s-right-in-front-of-us mode — a presentation at work; a spreadsheet; an email; a child’s sporting event; a meal out; a news report on a mobile device; a social media post, a status update, a shared photo. These things fill our minds and fill our days. We trust them. They’re real. Tangible. Observable.

But just because we can’t see something, or touch it, doesn’t mean it’s not there and not important. Many things are not within reach of our five natural senses. Consider gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force — or love. We can neither see nor touch any of these. But we experience their reality every day. We can trust they’re here, doing their work, holding the cosmos together — binding together atoms and galaxies and us.

Now consider God. With only a relatively few historical, Biblical exceptions, we mortal humans are not given the opportunity to see or touch him either. But we can trust that he’s here, too. And more deeply real than anything else in the universe.

The danger of spending too much time in what’s-right-in-front-of-us mode is that it inhibits our ability to savor and engage and live in that wonderful truth. It prevents us from sensing God’s presence and hearing his voice interiorly, in our minds and hearts, and it causes us to miss and misunderstand the deepest realities about our lives.

We’ll never discover true identities, we’ll never discover his good plans for us, if we get distracted by the world and never stop to listen within. He can’t father us into significance, joy, peace or anything else if we don’t learn to hear him in this way.

So, everything hinges on this. Everything worth anything depends on our ability to perceive and discern the voice of our outrageously loving God.

God speaks in many ways. The Bible tells of him speaking sometimes in ways that are detectable by our physical senses — with an audible voice; through physical phenomena and signs; through messengers, such as angels, prophets, even a donkey. It also shows him, though, speaking beyond our physical senses: through dreams and visions; and directly to our hearts and minds by his Spirit.

This last method has come to be called hearing his “still small voice,” and it’s a seemingly preferred way of communicating. It seems to be a primary method of relationship with him, which is why it’s critical we become adept at recognizing it.

“Still small voice” — the words come from the story of Elijah when the prophet was told to go out from the cave where he was hiding because God was about to pass by:

And a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. (ESV, 1 Kings 19:11-13)

And after the fire, a “still small voice” came to Elijah. (KJV, 1 Kings 19:12) God was teaching Elijah (and us) that his voice doesn’t often come as a blast or boom or blaze but as what we might call an inner voice. He’s teaching that when he speaks, he speaks more to our thoughts and feelings than anything else.

Think of that — the voice of our mighty Maker, coming as an inmost whisper. Forcing us to bend our minds, to humble ourselves to the seeming foolishness of listening inside for a God of impossibly great power.

When God speaks with his still small voice, he originates notions in our minds. But that’s not hard. We can all do that. I can originate one in your mind right now by placing a phrase on this page — steaming cup of coffee. By doing that, I’ve originated a thought, crystallized as a set of words, or a picture perhaps. I’ve directed your thinking. I’ve redirected the stream of ideas flowing through your mind.

But I face limits.

To originate a thought in the mind of another, we humans need media — vibrations of vocal cords; ink on paper; pixels on screens; ones and zeros flowing over cables; waves of electromagnetic radiation. But God does not. He’s already there — dwelling inside us. If we’re followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit occupies our very beings.

And he speaks to us, leading us into understanding of ourselves and him and his work and this world, right from that very place.

“Having learned what he is like and how he sounds, we can go into prayer and listen for his voice there, too — actively and with intentionality.”

Okay, so how do we do it? How do we pick out God’s voice from amongst the noise and other voices in our world? How do we tune in?

Well, just as the electromagnetic waves broadcast by radio transmitters have unique characteristics, so, too, does God’s voice. We tune in, therefore, by learning to identify those characteristics. And we do that by using his written word — Scripture.

You see, not all methods of hearing God are equal. Reading Scripture — the method by which we hear his voice through the Biblical authors, his faithful intermediaries of old — sits above all others in terms of authority. It sits above “because Christ has endorsed its authority,” explained John Stott:

As we look back to the Old Testament, he has endorsed it. As we look forward to the New Testament, we accept it because of the apostolic witness to Christ. He deliberately chose and appointed and prepared the apostles in order that they might have their unique apostolic witness to him.

Reading Scripture sits above all others, said Stott, because our King said so.

Now, this method of hearing God across the ages through Scripture requires good interpretation and the work of the Spirit, of course. But, with those, we have a trustworthy touchstone by which to evaluate anything and everything, including the many ideas and perceptions that inundate our minds every day of our lives. From Scripture, we can learn the timbre of God’s unique voice.

And this is how we tune in. It’s simply this. Having learned what he is like and how he sounds, we can go into prayer and listen for his voice there, too — actively and with intentionality. And if we hear something in the silence, if we sense something, if a thought comes to us and it fits squarely within the principles of Scripture, then we can trust its accuracy. And over time, we can begin to recognize what Dallas Willard calls the “unmistakable stamp of divine quality, spirit, intent and origination.” Over time, we can begin to recognize and revel in God’s still small voice, just as Elijah did.

When you begin to sift your thoughts in this way, you might discover that there are a great many ideas that you’ve had that you wouldn’t have had, things you’ve done that you wouldn’t have done, without first having heard the voice of God and having had your choices influenced by him: when a thought triggered you to help a person in need; when one prompted you to speak up for someone who needed an advocate; when a thought moved you to have a tough, good conversation with a friend; when you felt an impulse to pray for someone who was hurting; when a friend encouraged you to confess something you didn’t want to confess; when an acquaintance asked you to share your faith; when a sermon nudged you back into the Bible.

When we open our eyes to him like this, to who he is and how he sounds, we might discover we’ve actually been hearing his voice our whole lives.