Can you hear me now?

Allen: Have you ever thought about our relationship with God and how our communication seems to be so one sided? It seems like so many of us that actually do make the time to pray, we just pray and don’t spend extra time waiting to hear from God. That would be like calling someone on the phone, talking for 30 minutes without ever giving them a chance to respond, and then you hang up. You’ve had a one-sided conversation and they didn’t have any input. You can’t call that communication. I feel like God must be so frustrated with us not being more willing to listen to him.

Clay: I think sometimes it is hard for people to understand how God does talk to us. If we haven’t been brought up in church or an environment where we were in constant communication with God, it is hard to learn. It takes time and a process of maturing our walk with God before we can effectively communicate with him.  It took me a long time to know God well enough to know that he wants to be in each and every part of my life, in the little things as well as the big things.

Allen: I think that is part of it – people are looking to hear from God in some BIG way. They are looking for some big sign, some life changing event before they will know that is God talking to them. But God wants to be in our life constantly, and by looking for the big things, we miss the little moments that happen every day. If you spend any time at all with your kids, you know that your relationship with them is not developed around the big moments in their life, but rather the every day things that happen just by being around them. When you spend time with them, sometimes a look can mean so much, or something they say, or something they do. It might all happen in 30 seconds, but it means the world that you were there to see it. That’s the way God is – he can reveal himself to us all day long if we let him. We put him in a box if we are just waiting for him to perform in some major way.

Clay: When I first became a Christian, I didn’t know what it meant when people said, “God spoke to me.” God’s voice doesn’t come down from the clouds and literally speak to us, so I didn’t know what they meant. But the more I heard people talk about how God had given them direction in their life, the more I started to realize how much he was already a part of mine. We are spirit beings – we are unique from all other creatures on earth in that we have a spirit. God speaks to us through our spirit. Some people call it “intuition” or a “gut feeling” – but that is God’s way of contacting us, not so much through our mind, but rather our heart.  I learned that God had been speaking to me all along; I just had to learn to know the voice.

Allen: I think so many of us go around with ear muffs on. We aren’t really hearing from God and we can’t figure out why. But then when we dig deep in our hearts, we find out maybe we are afraid to hear from God. God is such a gentleman. He isn’t going to snap the ear muffs off your head; he is going to wait for you to come to him, to earnestly seek him. And there are all kinds of ways to hear God speak to you – through a quiet time during the day, through Christian music, through a network for Christian friends, through a good church, through teaching tapes, through a Bible Study and most of all – through the Bible.

Clay: I was reading in “A Purpose Driven Life” the other day, and the author says when you pray, you are speaking to God, but when you read his word, he is speaking to you. When we feel God is speaking to us through a friend or our pastor or however we are hearing him, his Word will always confirm what he says. He will never lead you in any way that is not confirmed by his Word. His Word says that every GOOD thing comes from God. When we start to realize that inward voice on the inside of us is his Holy Spirit acting in us, then we can recognize that voice and act on it with confidence.

Allen: I really believe we need to look at our motives and intentions of our heart and then wait to hear from God. We can’t just go on our own decision – we need to have it confirmed by his Word. Sometimes we have such superficial attempts to contact the Lord, like, “Okay, God, I’m going to give you 30 seconds to respond here and then I’ve got to go.”  Have you ever determined in your heart to seek out God and pray, and you weren’t going to quit until you got an answer. God knows how determined you are, if you are going to give up half way through or see it to the end. Have you ever talked to someone and you can tell they are in a hurry? Their eyes are wandering, they aren’t really listening and they just can’t wait to get on their way. We do that to God ALL the time. That just isn’t a respectful way to have a relationship with someone. It’s the people that are genuine in their approach that can expect to hear from God. The word of God, the Bible, is the greatest, most clear way to hear from him.

Clay: It takes reading God’s word and being intimate with his Word to learn God’s voice. And then you start to understand God is speaking to you all the time, he communicates to you in all your surroundings. We know that God is real because of everything we see – he tells us how he made the stars, the sun, the moon (Genesis, Chapter 1). He made this place (earth) for us to enjoy, and when we start acknowledging that, we start communicating back to him in all the ways he is speaking to us.

Allen: Sometimes I think it must be so sad for God to try to communicate with us and we just aren’t listening. He has made it possible to communicate with us through so many avenues – the Bible, our Christian friends, our surroundings, on and on. And we just refuse to listen. Let’s make it a New Year’s resolution to listen to the voice of God better. When he says, “Can you hear me now?” – I want to be able to able to answer back, “Loud and clear.”