Perceiving God's Speaking

I’ve been through seasons in my life where God was silent and have often taught about it, but recently, God has been teaching me about how we sometimes think He is silent when it is actually us who are failing to perceive His speaking.

In Job 33, Elihu speaks these words to Job: “Why do you complain to him that he answers none of man’s words? For God does speak – now one way, now another – though man may not perceive it” (Job 33:13-14). Elihu says this to Job because earlier Job complained saying: “I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer” (Job 30:20). Job was convinced that God was not paying him any attention, but Elihu helps him understand that God does speak, it is us who sometimes fail to discern that He is speaking. 

Elihu goes on to describe the various ways in which God speaks: through dreams and visions (Job 33:15), through an audible voice (Job 33:16) and also through suffering (Job 33:19). God might not have been communicating to Job through words or visions as we usually find Him doing with many people in Bible times, but He was communicating through Job’s suffering. Problem is, as religious folk we tend to ‘get used to’ God and want to ‘box’ Him - limiting Him to what we know about Him - but God is bigger than any box we might try fit Him into. 

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts” says the Lord. “And my ways far beyond anything you could imagine.”

Isaiah 55:8 (NLT) 

We need to not become accustomed with God, but we need to become more like Elijah. Elijah succeeded in recognizing God even though He came packaged differently. In 1 Kings 18, God had answered Elijah through fire, but when fire appears in the next chapter, we are told “the Lord was not in the fire” (1 Kings 19:12) - instead, God was in a gentle whisper. Elijah was able to perceive that God was not in the strong wind, earthquake or fire, and only moved when he heard the gentle whisper. 

At other times we fail to recognize God’s speaking because we fail to distinguish His voice from the voice of others. When God calls the boy Samuel, Samuel keeps running to Eli, thinking it is Eli who is calling Him. Samuel struggled to recognize God’s voice from Eli’s voice because all he knew at that point was Eli’s voice, “the Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” (1 Samuel 3:7). When we are still in the infancy of our relationship with God, we tend to mistake the voice of God for the voice of man, but as we mature, we not only learn to distinguish between the voice of people and the voice of God, we also learn to distinguish God’s speaking from the enemy’s speaking.

“The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a strangers voice.”

John 10:4-5 (NIV)

So, let us not be quick to assume that God is silent, let us first pray for a sensitive ear and sharp eye, that we may hear and perceive when He speaks to us.