Experiencing God – Unit 5 I Don’t Recognize Your Voice

This post is intended to be used in conjunction with the 12-week Bible Study of Experiencing God by Henry, Richard, and Mike Blackaby and Claude V. King. References to specific quotes and texts are indicated by ‘EG’ and the corresponding page number and come from the 2022 publication. Experiencing God available through Amazon

Psalm 81:13a “If my people would only listen to me,”

How often do you think God says that? Probably a lot.

“If a Christian does not know when God is speaking, he is in trouble at the heart of his Christian life.” (EG, pg. 90)

If we haven’t said it out loud, we’ve probably thought it: “Why doesn’t God speak to me in a voice I can actually hear as He did in the Old Testament?”

There are nearly 2,000 people specifically named in the Bible.[i] This would not include people such as the woman who reached out to touch the hem of the garment Jesus was wearing. This would not be the woman at the well, or Lot’s wife, or the Egyptian princess who took in Baby Moses. Nearly 2,000 people named, plus many others who are just referenced, and how many of those were granted the privilege of hearing God’s voice? Not that many.

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Noah, Joshua, Samuel, and a handful of others heard the voice of God. But the majority of those named in the Bible never heard the actual voice of God. Instead, “God gave them an inner conviction of His truth, or made His will clear to them through circumstances. Most often, He made His will clear through the written messages He had given in the past- in other words, through the Bible.”ⁱⁱⁱ

We know from Day One’s study that God spoke in many ways in the Old Testament. “He spoke through angels, visions, dreams, the use of the Urim and Thummin, symbolic actions, a gentle whisper, miraculous signs, and other ways.” (EG, pg. 90)

It’s also stated that “How God spoke in the Old Testament is not the most important fact. That He spoke is the crucial point. Those He spoke to knew He was God and they understood what He was saying.”(EG, pg. 90)

Is it difficult hearing God speak to you? If so, why?

Perhaps we have a hard time listening. We’re too busy and too preoccupied to hear Him. Maybe it’s just that there is too much noise in our world.

The 4^th reality is “God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways.” (EG, back cover)

I had a dream the other night that my phone rang and for some reason, it was an old house phone with no display and no caller ID. The person started talking immediately and I just listened to what they were saying, trying to figure out who was speaking. The person talked as if she was very familiar with me and some event in which I was involved. The more she talked, the more desperate I became trying to figure out who she was. She asked questions like, “What do you need me to do?” and “Where can I be of the most help?” She even said things such as “You know me and what I’m best at.” The conversation was awkward and one-sided because I didn’t know who I was talking to!

When I woke up, I thought about that dream and thought of how dependent we are on caller ID. If it’s an unknown number, or if your phone gives you that little “Likely Spam” message, what do you normally do? Not answer, of course! Sometimes, we’ll see who is calling, and we just let it go to voice mail. Right?! But there are some people in our lives for whom we don’t need caller ID because we know their voice. Our relationship with them is such that we don’t need any help identifying them.

Our relationship with God should be so that we don’t need caller ID to know that it is Him who is speaking. Our relationship with God should also be that when we know it’s Him calling, we don’t let it go to voice mail. Are we guilty of doing just that? I still love the statement from Day 5 of last week. “Sometimes God tries to get our attention by revealing where He is at work. We see it, but we do not immediately identify it as His activity. We say to ourselves, I don’t know whether God wants me to get involved here. I had better pray about it.” (EG, pg. 82)

Think about it in everyday life. If a dad says to a child, “Go clean your room” how many children say, “Dad, do you want me to clean my room?”

Or if your boss or supervisor tells you to prepare a report, you might ask for specifics on what needs to be included in the report, what format it needs to be in, or what they’re looking for. Those are reasonable responses. But if you were to respond to your boss or supervisor and say, “Are you sure you want me to prepare a report? I’ll need to think about it”, what would they think? I’d be willing to guess that if you did that a few times, you could expect to see the word “disobedient” on your employee evaluation.

The question in activity #5 is perhaps difficult to answer.

Where do you struggle the most?

Understanding what God said.

Believing what God said.

Obeying what God said. (EG, pg. 91)

Before you beat yourself up, even those who heard the audible voice of God had trouble with these.

1 Samuel 3:1 CSB “The boy Samuel served the Lord in Eli’s presence. In those days the word of the Lord was rare and prophetic visions were not widespread.

²One day Eli, whose eyesight was failing, was lying in his usual place. ³Before the lamp of God had gone out, Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was located.

⁴Then the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, “Here I am.” ⁵He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“I didn’t call,” Eli replied. “Go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

⁶Once again the Lord called, “Samuel!”

Samuel got up, went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“I didn’t call, my son,” he replied. “Go back and lie down.”

⁷Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. ⁸Once again, for the third time, the Lord called Samuel. He got up, went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the boy. ⁹He told Samuel, “Go and lie down. If he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

¹⁰The Lord came, stood there, and called as before, “Samuel, Samuel!”

Samuel responded, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

To be fair to Samuel, he didn’t know the Lord so His voice was not recognized by Samuel. But it took four times and the instructions given by Eli for Samuel to understand that it was God speaking.

Genesis 18:10 NIV “¹⁰Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. ¹¹Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

¹³Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

¹⁵Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

Again, let’s be fair to Sarah. The message that the Lord had sent was preposterous to Sarah! What would our response be if we got the message that this time next year, we’d have a son? We’re in our forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies! Sarah was in her late eighties! It was no wonder that she had difficulty believing what God said.

Then there’s that disobedience.

Jonah 1:1 CEB “The Lord’s word came to Jonah, Amittai’s son: ²“Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my attention.”

³So Jonah got up—to flee to Tarshish from the Lord!”

Before we get too critical of Jonah, how many of us have fled from the Lord when asked to do something we didn’t want to do?

After three attempts, Samuel listened to God and allowed himself to be used by God. “He was a prophet, he anointed the first two kings of Israel, and he was the last in the line of Israel’s judges, considered by many as the greatest judge (Acts 13:20). A key verse in the life of Samuel relates his words to King Saul: “But Samuel replied: ‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams’” (1 Samuel 15:22). Obedience to God’s Word must always be our top priority.”[ii]

Sarah, one year later after her giggling session, watched as her newborn son giggled. God fulfilled what He started.

It took a mighty storm, being thrown overboard and then trapped inside the belly of a giant fish for three days and three nights, but Jonah eventually went where God told him to go in the first place. Job 42:2 ESV “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

These were three individuals who actually heard the voice of God and still had trouble. God may not speak in an audible voice to us today, but it’s because He doesn’t need to do that. “God has already told us everything we need to know — and we find it in the pages of the Bible.”[iii] He speaks through the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:12 NKJV “ ¹²Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

“When God speaks to you by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church, you will know it is God, and you will understand what He is saying. When God speaks to you, that is an encounter with God.” (EG, pg. 92)

Hebrews 1:1 NIV “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son”.

One of the statements on page 94 of EG is “When the disciples heard Jesus, they heard God.” But then Jesus tells his followers in John 16:7 AMP “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him (the Holy Spirit) to you [to be in close fellowship with you].”

If you read on further in John 16, you’ll see that His disciples had a hard time understanding what Jesus was saying. Truthfully, most of us would have had the same reaction. What advantage could there possibly be with Jesus going away? The Holy Spirit that was promised to them and to us is the advantage!

“We fail to realize that an encounter with the Holy Spirit, who lives within us, is an encounter with God.” “Because the Spirit is always present in a believer, He can speak to you at any time.” (EG, pg. 95)

“Because you have the Holy Spirit, He guides you into all truth and teaches you all things. You understand spiritual truth because the Holy Spirit works in your life.” “Truth is never discovered; truth is revealed. When the Holy Spirit reveals truth to you, He is not leading you to an encounter with God. That is an encounter with God.” (EG, pg 96)

“Truth is never discovered; truth is revealed.”

Has God been speaking to you during your study of this course? (EG, pg. 96) More than likely, He has! What may be the appropriate question is: Have you been listening to God during your study of this course?

“What you do immediately after the Spirit of God speaks to you through His Word is critical. Our problem is that when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, we tend to debate.” (EG, pg. 97)

Day 3 tells us of three things God reveals to us when He speaks. What are those three things?

Himself
His Purposes
His Ways

Why do you think God needs to reveal Himself to us? It’s one thing to know who someone is. It’s an entirely different thing to actually know someone. When we don’t know someone personally, all we know about them is what we hear about them. It’s not until we have experiences with that person that we come to know them. “God reveals Himself to increase faith that leads to action.” (EG, pg. 99)

“God reveals His purposes so you will know what He plans to do.” “If you are to join Him, you need to know what God is doing. What you plan to do for God is not important. What He plans to do where you are is critical.” (EG, pg. 99) Again, this reiterates the point that it’s not about you nor is it about me. It’s about God and we are merely part of His supporting cast!

Take a look at the first 2 lines on page 101. “God’s ways and plans are radically different from people’s. God uses kingdom methods to accomplish kingdom purposes.” (EG, pg. 101) What kind of methods does God use? Kingdom methods! “God’s ways are not our ways! I often say that if a method makes perfect sense to me, it probably didn’t come from God! We will not accomplish God’s work in our own ways.” (EG, pg. 101)

This past week, so many of us were focused on Hurricane Milton. Before its landfall on Wednesday, we were hearing words such as “unusual, fierce, monstrous, catastrophic, deadly, and a nightmare”. During the reporting of the evacuations, and preparations being made, entered a story about Joseph Malinowski, who has now become known as Lt. Dan. He has been homeless for the past 10 years, but now lives on his sailboat in Florida. He got the nickname Lt. Dan (Forrest Gump) because his leg was amputated when he was just 16 years old.

Despite multiple pleas and offers to abandon his sailboat before Milton arrived, and retreating to a safe location, Malinowski politely refused. “’God put on my heart to come here. I came here. I’m not going to run with a little weather. God didn’t send me here to die,’ Malinowski told NBC News.”[iv] His story went viral. His interview had over 1 million views on TikTok.

I don’t know much about Joseph Malinowski’s story. What I do know is that more than 1 million people heard this man declare what he heard God telling him and it made no sense to them. A monstrous, life-threatening hurricane headed right toward a man and he had faith in God. His faith was validated for anyone who had a doubt because Joseph Malinowski survived. After Milton had come and gone, Malinowski was quoted as saying, “Did the wind come through heavy? Yeah. Was it crazy for a little while? Yes, it was. Did it bother me? No, ‘cause I knew what I was doing,” Malinowski said.

“I know I’d be fine,” he said. “God had his finger on me.”[v]

It’s not up to me or anyone else to determine if God really spoke to Malinowski. I have no reason to doubt that He did. I also have no reason to doubt that God can use any person, any platform (TikTok, YouTube, etc.), any situation to draw our attention back to Him. When we are focused on Him, we hear Him so much clearly.

What does God want to do or be in and through your life? What adjustments would you have to make to align your life with this truth? (EG, pg. 105) If you’re still breathing, God is still molding you. He has activities He wants you to be a part of. He still speaks and He has something He wants you to hear.

“Prayer is two-way fellowship and communication with God. You speak to God, and He speaks to you. Prayer is not a monologue in which you merely list everything you want God to do. Your personal prayer life may primarily be one-way communication- you talking to God- but prayer is more than that. Prayer includes listening. In fact, what God says in prayer is far more important than what you say. God already knows what you are going to say. You, however, do not know what God is thinking.” (EG, pg 107)

“What God says in prayer is far more important than what you say. God already knows what you are going to say. You, however, do not know what God is thinking.”
experiencing god, pg. 107

“Has God spoken to you by the Holy Spirit through prayer during this course?” (EG, pg. 110)

Are you being reshaped & molded into who God wants you to become?

Are there changes taking place in your life?

Next week, we will be halfway through this study. Are you experiencing God much more often and much more fully than you were before?

I sincerely hope that you can answer “yes” to at least most of these challenges. If not, please stop right now and pray that God speaks to you and that He equips you to hear Him.