Hearing God's voice
I’ve joked for years that I’m waiting for God to send me an email with details on His will. I am happy to do what He wants if I only know for certain what that is. People always laugh when I say it, but, deep down, I think most of us would be happy with that. While an email would be nice, that isn’t how God works. He is interested more in a relationships than answers. He’s a guide that chooses the best path, not a GPS where I can peek ahead at the next five turns. I have started to learn how to hear God’s voice and discern direction, but it’s rarely in the way I expected nor does He answer the questions I ask. Instead He teaches me to ask different questions.
There have been three times in the past few months that I’ve been attempting to hear from God about something specific. Of course, I want to recognize His voice and His leading every day but I’m talking about asking God a “what am I supposed to do about this______?” type of question and then waiting and looking for an answer.
The first time? I was watching someone’s Instagram stories and knew as suddenly as if I had received that email from God what the specific thing I was supposed to pursue was. I did it and I am glad I did.
The second time? I read a portion of Scripture, making notes on that topic. I had conversations with friends. I read a related book from an unexpected recommendation. I came away with a sentence answer to a question. It was not the question I was asking. But it was a question that needed asked first.
The third time? The third time I pursued something, was rejected, started looking around at other ideas. You must know that when I have an idea, I think I should have done that idea last week. So you can imagine what this process was for me: chaotic, hurried, frenetic. All of a sudden it was as if God said “This is not an emergency.” No, I didn’t hear an audible voice. But I still knew it was God. “This is not an emergency.” It didn’t answer my question. It didn’t reveal my next step. It did change how I was in the situation. I pulled other people into this discernment process with me and slowed down.
God seems much more interested in who I am in my questions and my learning who He is than in answering all my questions. This is probably because I’m still asking the wrong questions. I want to skip the discernment stage and that’s where God is asking me to linger.
We seek the face of God and He meets us. But often He is having a different conversation. And He stays there until we come to meet Him.
Always,
Lisa
Links I Love:
I listened to these two podcasts (one and two) about social media.
Lore Wilbert has talked about it here.
I talked about it here.
I wanted to send this reel to every teacher at my kids’ school.