23 May Hearing the voice of God
I was watching The Passion of the Christ again this Easter, when a short poignant moment between Pontus Pilate and his wife, Claudia, stood out to me. He has just had an exchange with Jesus, causing him to question what it means to hear the truth. Alone with his wife, he asks her if she hears the truth. She tells him she does. (Remember that just the night before she had a dream, telling her husband “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered terribly in a dream today because of Him.”) Pilate asks how she hears the truth. With perplexed compassion she asks him if he doesn’t also recognize the truth, because she has no way to explain how she hears it.
“For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” (John 18:37)
It does not matter when we have lived– Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Jeremiah and Elijah, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John–we all have this in common with those who belong to Him. We have received the love of the truth. We belong to the truth. And we listen to His voice. We may be at a loss to describe how we hear it, and each of us recognizes His voice differently, but above the tumult of deception’s crashing waves upon our shore, we hear the truth..
God has worked differently with mankind in each of the dispensations, but in each one, there has been one requirement for relationship with Him. The unvarying requirement throughout time has been that we hear His voice. “Obey my voice and I will be your God” 1
Throughout the Old Testament He builds on our hearing and obeying His voice: “if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people… ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you shall walk entirely in the way which I command you, so that it may go well for you.’ 2
And in the final book of the Bible He makes this promise, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. (Revelation 3::20)
Hearing God’s voice is
Personal: He speaks to us personally, meeting us as an individual, where we are
Intangible : You can’t apprehend it, touch it, grasp it … but it is real.
Present: He who dwells in eternity speaks to us only in the present moment, not in the past, not in the future, but only in the now. 3
Faith springs from hearing the voice of God. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17, NKJV)
I had no faith at all. I was running after reincarnation, looking to ouija boards and my astrological readings for guidance. But one morning, as I was putting on my make-up in front of our bathroom mirror, I heard Him speak my name, “Valerie, it is time for you to begin your life’s work, you have much to catch up on.”
I did not believe in Jesus, I didn’t want or think I needed Him. I curdled in the presence of Christians, ripe with contempt, the thought of them being right about Jesus odious and impossible. . But weeks later as I cried out to understand, I heard Him ask me tenderly, “Valerie, do you want to live your life outside the truth?”
He was counting on the love of the truth, which He had deposited in me before the foundation of the world, to answer for me.
Receiving the love of the truth, belonging to The Truth, and hearing the Voice of God: these three are inseparable and work together. They will launch you into a realm not of this world, where you will find your place praying beside him, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
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1 Derek Prince, Hearing God’s Voice, Pt 1 of 10, God’s Unvarying Requirement, Youtube
2 Exodus 19:5: Jeremiah 7:23; Psalm 81:8; Malachai 2:2; Jeremiah 13:17
3 Hearing the Voice of God (Audio) by Derek Prince
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