Which voice do you hear?

In our world today there are many voices. The voices we actually hear are the ones that have influence in our lives. Whether these are helpful influences or not is left to our own discernment. However, our actions reflect whatever influences us the most.
I often wrestle with discerning the voice of God. How do you know what God is saying? Am I acting in a way that pleases God? Am I making the choices that honour the purpose God has for my life? These are very confronting theological questions for more than one reason. It brings into question how much influence we think God does or should have in our lives. Is there a chosen path that we can only know through intimate relationship with God? What if I can’t hear Gods voice? What if I deviate from the path?
Through a conversation with my spiritual director recently I discovered that I hear God in different ways. The most important thing I discovered is that God is always speaking into my life. The trouble I often have is discerning that voice among the many others. There’s the voice of reason, the voice of temptation, the voice of self-service…and the list goes on. The best way to describe it is sometimes it feels like I’m at a party with music and hundreds of chattering people and I’m sitting next to God in a corner of the room trying to hear what on earth He’s saying. ‘Speak up God!’ I shout. Often when I strain hard enough I hear the voice is saying, ‘just come and step into a quiet space with me Mark.’
Often I find that I have heard God speak, and I have a deep conviction in my heart to respond to that voice through my actions and the decisions I make. However my head at times creates conflict with my heart, as my head is processing all those other rationalizing voices that cause uncertainty and confusion over the voice in my heart. Therefore I can often have a dislocation of head from heart.
Jesus says to the hearers of the famous sermon on the mount, ‘whoever hears these words of mine and acts on them is like a wise man…but anyone who hears and doesn’t but them into practise is like a foolish man…’ To be a true follower of Jesus, you act on what Jesus says, to do any different is a dislocation of the head from the heart. The author of the epistle James is big on the hearing and responding with Godly action. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22).
For the modern day disciple of Jesus our role is not to merely listen to the nice stories of the bible but to allow our heart to hear what Jesus asks of us. The heart is the source of inner transformation that promotes outward response. We need to find spaces to discern the voice of God so we can filter the noise and hear the word of God, the ultimate influence.

Shalom
Mark