I’ve been thinking recently about how we can tell the difference between God Actual and all the other varied voices that occupy our interior lives. I periodically take people through an exercise I call “The Many Varied Voices.” It’s an interesting exercise because if we’ll slow down and quiet ourselves enough, what comes rushing into our consciousness is a lot of noise, and that noise has a lot of different origins. There are any number of voices going on inside of us at any given point. The key is discerning what those voices are, where they come from, and then paying attention to the right ones.
This is a vital aspect of discipleship. So many of us listen to the varied voices in our heads and without examination ascribe a source and a power to them as if they were God. But only one of those multitude of voices is actually God, and he has a certain kind of voice. I’m reminded of Jesus’ saying in John’s Gospel, “My sheep hear my voice, and they know me.”
I have a friend who told me of a predicament he was in where he had to discern quickly what God was asking him to do. He was in a very dangerous situation that could have gone any number of ways, but he stopped to pray, and when he stopped to pray, he heard God’s voice. What God asked him to do in that moment did not make much sense to him at all. He recalled, “At first I was like, Really? You want me to do that?”
But what he said next was really profound: “But I recognized that voice.” The voice he has learned over the years to pay attention to. Recognizing God’s voice, he was able to respond in faith and the outcome proved to be the pivotal turning point for good in that situation.
I’ve been privileged recently to watch a handful of people I’m close with encounter God Actual in very real and tangible ways. The similarities between these unrelated experiences are obvious and definitely ring true in my own experience of God Actual. Here are a few of those similarities:
- The first thing is clarity. One of the ways you know you’re hearing from God is that an extreme clarity comes and washes over you. Like Isaiah, when he was transported to the throne room of God immediately cried out, “I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.” When he encountered God Actual, the reality of his situation became extremely clear. The lights turned on, so to speak. In the instances I’m thinking of with my friends, all of them experienced this in their encounter with God, but this extreme clarity did not leave them in shame, which brings me to the second flavor in an encounter with God.
- There is always an invitation. An invitation into greater intimacy. An invitation out of sin into freedom. An invitation out of the false self into the beautiful reality of who you are as an image of God. While God can and does get angry, his anger is never at you, but for you. And in that healthy anger, he moves toward us to rescue and save and invite us into more.
- God’s voice is never harsh and is rarely loud. One of the surefire ways you can know that a voice in your interior life is not God is when it screams at or condemns you. I have found that the voice of the Lord, although sometimes firm, always has a kindness, a gentleness even, a tone that draws you in. C. S. Lewis once wrote: “the harshness of God is kinder than the softness of men,” and I have found that to be true.
- Community confirms God’s voice. A really beautiful aspect of the community of Jesus followers is the fact that they are able and delighted to confirm the voice of God. With the instances I am thinking of, it was a gift for these guys to share their experience of God Actual with me and I was privileged to affirm the legitimacy of their experience. My affirmation became a blessing to them. When people encounter God Actual they will naturally want to share their experience with others and the community is built up. Love begets love.
- Finally, when you encounter God Actual, the definitive experience of God is that you are loved. Again, I’m thinking of my friends who have had recent experiences like this and it was clear that while all of them reported on the points mentioned, the emphasis was always on their experience of being overwhelmed by God’s acceptance, his delight, his love. As the Apostle John said millennia ago: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
When we learn to listen to the voice of God instead of other voices that originate in the pains of our past, the unmet expectations of the present, and the wounds we carry with us still, we will come to realize that God Actual’s posture toward us is strong, persistent, and positive.
If we do the work to discern and differentiate the many varied voices in our heads, then we’ll have the awareness to turn the volume down on the ones rooted in the false narratives of our lives and turn up the one that’s actually real. Then you will discover this stunning reality: God is better than you believed him to be.
– Nathan Wagnon
