Learning how God speaks so we can hear HimI believe the single most important thing I have to do is to encourage people to believe that God will speak to them and that they can come to understand and recognize his voice. There are many beautiful stories in the Bible about this. Read the story in Genesis 24, about Abraham's sending his eldest servant back to his relatives to find a wife for his son Isaac. It's an important task, and the servant is clearly worried about it; he asks Abraham what to do if he can't get a woman to come back with him. Abraham tells him that the Lord will "send his angel before" him (v. 7). The man doesn't believe a word of it. Yet when he gets there, he asks the "God of [his] master Abraham" (v. 12) for success in his mission, and "before he had finished speaking, there was Rebekah . . ." (v. 15). It's a wonderful story about the process through which the servant learns about coming to God for guidance. God speaks constantly to people, but most of them don't know what's happening. They are like the prophet Samuel, who as a child was staying with the priest Eli. The Lord came to Samuel's bed and called to him, "Samuel! Samuel!" Thinking it must be Eli, Samuel got up and went to Eli, who said he hadn't called him and sent him back to bed. This happened a few more times until finally Eli realized what was happening. In that beautiful story in 1 Samuel 3, Eli told Samuel that if he was called again, he was to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" (v. 9). There are all kinds of explanations for why people do not hear the voice of God, or why they hear it, but don't know what it is. But you must learn how God speaks; not doing so will constantly undermine your confidence in your personal relationship to him. From The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus. Copyright © 2015 by Dallas Willard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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