to know His voice

We interviewed a young woman yesterday who has been a Christian most of her life.

When asked why she wants to be a student at Emmaus Biblical Seminary, she shared that she has felt like God's been telling her to go to seminary to study His Word for many years now.

"But I didn't want to.  I wanted to be a nurse instead, so I started nursing school a few years ago.  But I kept feeling like I was being disobedient and not doing what God had asked me to do.  But I continued to do nursing school anyway."

"So," someone asked, "Did you graduate?"

"No," she explained.  "I was three months away from graduation this past spring when I had a vision, and in that vision, God told me I had to go to Seminary, and He wrapped His hands around my neck and started choking me and choking me, and I knew that if I didn't obey, He was going to kill me right then and there, so...here I am!"

Sounds crazy, right?

Living in a country where spiritual warfare is a lot easier to see, we hear about things like this frequently.  While I've never heard this said about God, I've heard lots about demons choking and strangling people in visions, or about people having dreams in which evil and darkness and Satan tries to kill them.  (And by the way, he is.)

Matt, who rarely speaks up in interviews anymore, couldn't let that testimony go by.

"Sister, you know that THAT was not God?  GOD doesn't do that.  Our God doesn't choke us and twist us and force us to obey Him.  Our God doesn't threaten obedience, or even threaten for our Love. He will direct us, but it is for us to obey and follow.  I'm not saying you didn't have a dream...but THAT wasn't our God."

Now of course, most North Americans would say that it is totally outside of His character to strangle us to death if we disobey.

But the whole thing got me wondering: is it possible that there are a lot of other lies that we're believing about who He is (Can He be trusted with MY life?), what He wants (I know God just wants me to be happy!), and what it means to follow Him (Since I am saved by grace, I know my works don't matter!)?  Things that might sound totally normal culturally, but has God mourning that we know Him not?

I heard from a dear friend recently who has every right in the world to be entirely angry and even to be bordering on hatred.  By ANY human perspective, the situation is infuriating.  Injustice is obvious.  Pain is intense and personal.

But instead of writing to vent, I was asked to pray...pray that instead of taking on this obvious, natural perspective, that my friend might put on His love.  His crazy, painful, selfless, forgiving, generous, endless love for the enemy.

When I read that testimony, I thought, "My friend knows who God is.  Didn't have to pray about what He would want.  Didn't have to pray about His desire for this situation.  She KNOWs God and His character, and therefore is asking me to pray for His character in her life!"

It's a lot of work and TIME to get to know someone so well that you KNOW what they would say, what they would want, before they even express it.  It takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of maintenance.

And God's not the only force speaking into our lives.  There's a loud world, loud peers, a loud enemy, loud pasts, and a loud natural man inside us each.

It's a lot of work to know God so well, that all the loudness of the world is drowned out by His still small voice.  It's takes a lot of time to know His voice so well that we know what He would say before He has to say it.

But His sheep?  They know His voice.

And as we talk to Him and listen to Him, read His letter and ask Him to change our hearts...as we get to know Him, those voices of the world and others are easily identified as just that: the voices of the world and others.  That which once seemed a normal truth can now take us aback as a lie:  "Wait, I KNOW Him, and THAT doesn't sound like My God."

This woman says she's been following Christ her whole life...yet I wonder if she truly knows Him?

Her testimony has me coming back to Him again and again...Lord, show me the lies I'm believing, BE the only voice speaking into my daily reality, BE the only opinion that matters.  Help me to Know You and to listen to your voice over the voice of the world, the voice of others, and the voice even in my own head.  I want to know you...

And as always--when we are seeking Him, He is found.