When was the last time you heard from God? When was the last time you were listening for God's voice? As a tech person, I tend to find myself back in the booth just trying to facilitate what other people have heard from God. Hearing from God is something that happens to other people.
Recently, I have been reading my way through the gospels, and right now in my reading, John the Baptist has just seen Jesus for the first time and says “This is the Son of God.” Throughout this encounter with Jesus, John is saying things that we would consider not normal: doves descending, voices telling someone what to do, God's son showing up. Again, these are all things that happen to other people, whether that's in biblical times or just other people I hear about.
I got to thinking, that I don't expect anything remotely like this to ever happen to me. I live my life, I make choices, I pray, I journal, I go to church…but I don't typically expect to have God speak directly to me.
The sad part, is that I would say that I have had at least five encounters with God that I can't explain, and yet I still assume that God speaks to mainly to other people and I just facilitate that. Of course, I also realize that my life would be very different if I hadn't responded to those promptings.
What would my life look like if I really expected God to speak? Or what if I slowed my life down enough to actually have space to listen for His voice?
It is one thing to hear God's voice, but John the Baptist actually did something about it. He got down to business baptizing people, wearing burlap and eating locust.
Taking this a step further, what about the promptings I get that I don't act upon? What would happen if I followed these promptings and trusted God for the outcome?
I feel like this applies beyond big life decisions to the miniscule stuff every day life. I had a season in my life a few years ago where I felt very unsettled and wanted God to give me the answer to what to do with my life. Instead, every time I asked the question: ”God, what do you want me to do with my life?”, I would put my pen down and wait for an answer, and it was always something like, apologize to this person for what you said yesterday. I would get so frustrated. I'm not doing that! Where's the big answer?
Eventually I realized that if I am unwilling to follow a prompting to apologize to someone, or to give a gift anonymously to a person, or write a blog post about hearing from God; why would I think that God would entrust me with some bigger life altering word.
