How God Speaks

By / / Christian Living, Discipleship, The Post

How Does God Speak to Us?

“If God exists, why doesn’t He make Himself known?”

He has. He does, in three distinct ways.

The natural, created world — the entire universe — proclaims the existence of a Creator. Not Mother Nature, but the Father of all. All day and all night, God’s voice reverberates throughout creation to everyone on earth.

Creation reminds us daily of God’s ever-present sovereign existence, and the truth of His Word guides our consciences and helps soften our hearts toward God’s Spirit.

God’s existence and voice can also be heard within each person. First, our conscience — our inner sense of right and wrong; and then in our inner being where we have a longing for a relationship with God. What Blaise Pascal described as a “God-shaped” hole within us.

The question is — Are we listening? Do we hear His voice and acknowledge Him?

When people reduce the beautiful intricacy of creation to a set of accidental or coincidental events, it deafens them to God’s Voice. Even when we personalize the natural world as Mother Nature, this doesn’t acknowledge the Creator—it ignores Him.

And yet… God continues to speak to us in the three ways described above. He wants us to hear Him. We just need to listen.

Psalm 19 expresses how God speaks to us in these three distinct ways if we’re open to hearing Him—through Creation, God’s Word, and by His Spirit to our spirit, our inner person.

For the choir director; a psalm by David.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky displays what his hands have made. One day tells a story to the next. One night shares knowledge with the next without talking, without words, without their voices being heard. Yet, their sound has gone out into the entire world, their message to the ends of the earth….

The teachings of the Lord are perfect. They renew the soul. The testimony of the Lord is dependable. It makes gullible people wise. The instructions of the Lord are correct. They make the heart rejoice. The command of the Lord is radiant. It makes the eyes shine.

The fear of the Lord is pure. It endures forever. The decisions of the Lord are true. They are completely fair. They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even the drippings from a honeycomb. As your servant I am warned by them. There is a great reward in following them….

May the words from my mouth and the thoughts from my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my defender. (Psalm 19:1–3, 7–11, 14 GW)

The reasons why we don’t hear God

If God can be known through the natural world and within, why doesn’t everyone accept His existence? Built into every human being is a capacity to resist God. It’s called free will. God created all humans with the capacity to reason, and to make choices.

But because we exert our free will in defiance of God, there is a vacuum in our souls. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, wrote of a “God-shaped” vacuum or hole in all of us that is only fillable by God.

Insistence upon our way, regardless of its impact on others, hardens our hearts along with our conscience. It deafens us to “hear” God’s voice through creation.

So we need to strengthen our conscience — the immaterial part of our soul that knows right from wrong. This is where God’s Law is important. Not the Levitical Law of Moses, but the moral law of God, as CS Lewis clarified it.

We need to know and keep this moral law of God to strengthen our conscience. We can do this through reading, processing, and meditating on God’s Word — the Bible.

The Scriptures are God’s written revelation of Himself, as we see in Psalm 19:7–11. As David declares —

They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even the drippings from a honeycomb. As your servant I am warned by them. There is a great reward in following them. (Psalms 19:10–11 GW)

If God’s Word isn’t more precious than gold or sweeter than honey to us, we become prone to wander from God and go our own way. As David says in another psalm, “Who can understand his errors?” (Psalms 19:12a NKJV).

And so, as with David, we need to acknowledge our need for the Lord to forgive us and deliver us from our pride and selfish ways. We need to turn to God in repentance when wandering on our own and trust in His goodness and love to keep us from wandering.

You’ll know the voice of God is resonating in your heart when David’s words echo in you in response to God.

May the words from my mouth and the thoughts from my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my defender. (Psalms 19:14 GW)

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