I
KNOW THAT VOICE!
Bishop
Randy Barnett, Oklahoma
I remember as a child asking my Mom how men could hear God speak to them.
I really don’t recall her answer; however, like most of us, she probably did
not have a really good answer to that question. One day I learned at least a
bit of knowledge about the subject through a painful accident. I want to share
that with you.
The
mistake I made was in trying to be a handyman (which I am not). I was laying tile in the kitchen of
one of our rental properties. I was cutting the floor tiles with a box knife.
Just I was about to make another cut along the straightedge I had a thought –
just a fleeting thought – that I was about to cut off the end of my finger with
the knife. I ignored the thought. I shortly wished I had not ignored the
thought! The knife slipped off the
straightedge and the end of my finger was no more!
Once I stopped the bleeding and was sitting there on the kitchen floor,
I asked God how this could happen. I was surprised at His response to me. He
said, “I tried to tell you but you did
not heed my voice; you thought it was just your thought about cutting off the
end of your finger, but it was the voice of my Spirit speaking to you.”
Hearing the voice of God is not all that hard, as I learned that day.
Often He speaks to us with that still, small voice that can seem as just
another fleeting thought until we are taught how to discern it from our own
thoughts. When I pondered what happened in those minutes after the mishap, I
really was able to understand that the thought I had seemed to be “different”
to me. It had a different sense to it that should have warned me of the
accident, but in my haste to complete the job I did not heed the voice of God.
There are numerous ways God will speak to His children; special
thoughts are just one of them. Another way is
what I call the peace factor. You have the Holy Spirit in you (if you have been
born again) and He is
always looking out for your well-being, just as He was that day for me laying
tile in the kitchen. I have learned to detect His peace or the lack of it. So
can you. His peace is what the Spirit uses to lead us. When there is peace
about whatever it is that lays before you, that is His
green light to move forward. On the other hand, He will “show you things to
come” or give you wisdom to stop or to go another way rather than unnecessarily
suffer by removing His peace temporarily. This inner unrest is a divine signal that should be heeded.
Each of these methods of hearing the voice of God is developed as you
mature spiritually. You will make mistakes along the way in hearing God, just
as I did. We are earthly creatures being changed by God and it is process of
transformation and growth. Our ability to hear God is a developed thing, so do
not be discouraged if you fail to discern His voice a time or two. Stay in
there. Learn from those mistakes. I surely learned from the incident of cutting
off the end of my finger. Many times after that, some thought would cross my
mind and I knew that it was not my own thought because it “felt” like the
thought that day on the kitchen floor. I have missed God many times since then,
of course, but my batting average of hearing God is a lot higher because I have
learned these methods that God uses to speak to me.
The truth is this: Jesus says, “My sheep know My
voice.” You know His voice.
