If you are like me, you detest answering a phone call when the person on the line asks for you by your formal, given name. For instance, my name is Edward, but I go by Edd. So when a caller asks for Edward, that tells me they do not know me personally. I find those calls annoying and a waste of time because I do not need an extended car warranty or more life insurance. By the same token, when I answer the phone and hear “Hey Sweetie,” I know the heartwarming sound of my wife’s voice is a welcomed conversation and not an inconvenient waste of time.
Growing up, I knew my mother’s voice in a crowded room, and I could tell the back of her head across a department store full of mothers. What about you? How did you distinguish your parent’s speech or the shape of their profile? You lived with them and heard them daily. Even when we were apart from our parents, you could still hear their inner voices when making choices or decisions. It should be the same way as Christ-followers; we should know and find comfort in the voice of our Shepherd as we would with close family members. So, how do we learn to listen and discern the voice of God and His direction in our lives?
Discerning God and His voice come from being aligned with our Heavenly Father. For most, spiritual discernment is a mystery because they lack understanding of what Jesus promised his disciples (and us as followers today) when He left this earth.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.”
John 14:16-17
Disciples, followers of Christ, are called to make other disciples. We can only accomplish this with help from the Holy Spirit. It is important to note that when we make our faith decision, we are invited into the triune relationship of God the Father and God the Son by the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit speaks only the truth. Living every day aligned with Jesus brings about knowing His voice and learning His ways, the same as being raised by our parents, except the Holy Spirit will be with us forever (John 14:17).
The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Bible as well. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself that we may know Him and His purposes. Living with our family, we understand their moods, mannerisms, and motives because we are accustomed to them daily. The same is true of God. We will see the why of the Gospel and God’s promises as we study His Word. We begin to recognize the voice of God and its prompting because of the Holy Spirit. I have a pastor friend that calls this a nudge from God.
When God nudges us, we can be sure of these three things:
First, it will be for His glory. When we speak of glorifying Himself, it is not vanity or vainness of self, but it’s of God’s goodness and works. The Holy Spirit constantly draws attention to God’s goodness toward sinful humanity. The Helper shows us God’s ways are perfect and can be trusted. Like in the example of parenthood, parents often stop, redirect, or aid their children in the daily little things. That helps us learn, grow, and understand we can trust them to do what is best for us. Even though our parents’ ways weren’t perfect, we still learned to trust them. Likewise, God does the little things for us every day. He redirects us, corrects us, blesses us, and helps us that we might build that trusting relationship through His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. God’s way is perfect, and we can trust His promptings.
Second, when the Holy Spirit nudges us, we can be sure He will never ask us to do anything against His nature. For example, God will not ask you to kill, judge others, or do nothing for Him. How do we know God’s nature? God reveals it to us through the Holy Spirit and reading His Word daily. The Holy Spirit then nudges us to live by the example of Jesus.
And the third thing we can be sure of is that Satan is a liar. Unfortunately, we will hear from him as well, but the good news is that the Spirit of Truth abides in us. We have the power to discern the truth (that which God speaks to us) from the lies (the only language Satan knows). The Bible says that Jesus came to bear witness to the truth. For example, I love the exchange between Jesus and Pilate:
“So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this purpose, I have been born, and for this, I have come into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?”
John 18:37-38
Pilate’s age-old question is the same one the world is asking today: “What is truth?” We know the truth because we have listened to the Holy Spirit’s testimony proclaiming Jesus is the Son of God. We have submitted to Jesus as Lord of our lives and received the Helper, the Spirit of Truth. We hear the Holy Spirit’s voice and feel His nudging to share the truth of God’s goodness toward sinful humanity that we might make disciples, and the process starts over again. The voice of Jesus is saying, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men?”
God is nudging; who will you disciple?
This post originally appeared at: https://thebonhoefferproject.com/weeklycolumn/discerning