Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - 4:10 pm

This past Sunday, Pastor Kip continued the series 'Here I Am', speaking from 1 Samuel 3, and focused on hearing God's voice. Kip and his wife Shanni, an audiologist, spoke about the process of hearing, and then Kip broke the process down into 3 steps: receiving, sensing and translating. Samuel heard God's voice, firstly, because he was in the right place to receive - the starting place for hearing God's voice is always to get in God's presence. How do we do that? We can prepare our spirit with a mindset of worship, a mindset that is focused on God and His presence; by consistently coming to church ad hearing God's Word preached, and expecting to hear from Him; by reading God's Word and meditating on it. We need to be ready to receive His words, sense His presence and what He's telling us, and then translate that into action. Sometimes we can sense that something is happening, as Samuel did, but due to inexperience or some other reason we are unable to translate it. One way that God can speak to us (and help us translate what He's told us) is through spiritual mentors who can give us wise, godly counsel. We need people in our lives who know God well, and know us well, and who are further down the road we are traveling with God. When Samuel's mentor sends him back, what does he encourage him to do? To listen, to be still and wait for God to speak. Hurry and noise are the enemies of hearing God's voice, we often keep ourselves too busy and too distracted to hear Him. Then, to truly hear God, we need to come to Him with the heart of a servant, a heart that is willing to listen, and to say yes before He speaks. The problem isn't that God is unwilling to communicate, it's that we are unwilling to hear what we don't want to hear, or follow through with what He tells us. We can't expect to hear God's voice of guidance if we're ignoring His voice of conviction. We don't get to make deals with God as to what part of His will we want to follow. When God speaks, He assumes our participation, our action, our obedience. Surrender and obedience to what we do know of God's will is what enables us to discover what we don't yet know. The discovery of God's will, and His voice, is meant to bring about the true point, and that's not the information we receive, that's just a by-product, although a helpful one. The real point of discovering God's voice is so that we can discover Him. God wants a relationship with us, and that's why He is speaking, and why He will speak to us as we listen and make ourselves available.