Three Features Of God's Voice

First of all, hearing God’s voice is very personal. Every voice is individual and unique. No two voices are exactly alike. Voices are one of the most individual features of human personality. That’s why Jesus said about His sheep, they won’t follow a stranger, because a stranger’s voice is different. You see, our protection is hearing the Lord’s voice, relating to Him individually, personally. Not just relating to a historical figure, not just relating to some movement or some doctrine, but relating to the Lord Himself through His voice.

I heard a rather remarkable statement made. I have never really checked on it, but I hear that there is a way of designing a safe, perhaps for use in a bank, in which the thing that opens the safe, that triggers the combination, is a certain voice. Maybe the voice of the bank president or the bank manager, and no other voice can cause that safe to open. That just shows us how absolutely distinctive and individual a person’s voice is. There’s a voice that can open that safe that will not open to any other voice. You know, to me, that’s a parable, because I think that’s what the heart of the believer should be like.

I think our heart should be like a safe, something that treasures the most valuable things we have. And I think that there should be only one voice that opens up that safe: the voice of the Lord Himself. We come into terrible grief and problems if we open the safe door of our heart to the wrong person. That’s what causes most of the tragedies and problems in the world today, is people open their hearts to the wrong person. Think of your heart from now on as a safe with a combination in the door, and that combination will respond only to one voice: the voice of the Lord. You know, when you open to the Lord, you’ll never be harmed, you’ll never be deceived, you’ll never be disappointed. But many of you have learned from experience, if you open the door to the wrong person, if you respond to the wrong voice, many harmful troubles and problems can result. You see, that’s the shepherd-sheep relationship.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”

Out of that personal relationship, every need of David was assured that it would be supplied. But Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice.” How can the Lord be our shepherd? Only if we hear His voice. But if we hear His voice, then He’s our shepherd, and all our needs are supplied. Isn’t that beautiful? Cultivate hearing the Lord’s voice. I’m going to speak more about that in later messages.

The second feature of hearing the Lord’s voice that I mentioned is this: it’s intangible. You know what I mean by intangible? It can’t be touched. We can’t apprehend it with our sight, we can’t apprehend it with our feeling. There’s only one sense that apprehends a voice, and that is the sense of hearing. You see, most of our religious associations relate us to something tangible. When we talk about religion, we think about something in space and in time: a building, a church, certain kinds of furniture, pews, pulpits, maybe stained glass windows, organs, certain kinds of clothing. In some churches, they wear special vestments. In most churches, people dress up a little bit different to go to church. Certain kinds of books, prayer books, hymn books, books with stiff covers usually. And in the days when I was a regular churchgoer, they were usually black. There was a certain kind of field of associations which was tangible. It was in space and time. It was associated with a place and with things.

But hearing God’s voice has got none of those features. It’s not restricted to any particular place. It doesn’t have any kind of uniform or clothing or furniture or building. It’s just out there. It’s very, in a way, tricky. It’s almost dangerous. You’ve got nothing to cling on to. All the old associations, all the crutches, as Luther called them, have been taken away, and you’re just in that intimate, personal relationship with the Lord, an intangible relationship.

The third feature that I wish to point out about hearing God’s voice is that it is always present, in the sense of time. Hearing God’s voice is never in the past and never in the future. It’s always now. Only now can we hear a voice. A book we can pick up and read and put down and say it’s over there, or we can say, ‘I’ll look at it again tomorrow.’ But a voice is only now. A voice has no past, a voice has no future. It shuts us up to the present. You see, what I’ve noticed about religious people is much of their thinking is always about the past or the future. Christians talk about what happened in the days of Moses, or what happened in the days of Jesus, or in the days of Peter. That’s all in the past. Or they talk about what will happen when we go to heaven, how beautiful that will be. Well, I agree with that, but we’re not living in the past, we’re not living in the future, we’re living in the present. And a lot of religious people really hardly live, because everything for them is either past or future. But when you realize that you’ve got to relate to God through hearing His voice, then that forces you into a present relationship, a present experience.

“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. That is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

You see, I AM is present. It’s not past, it’s not future. God’s name is present. God’s living now. Our relationship with God needs to be now. And as we learn to hear God’s voice, we have that present, personal relationship with the Lord.