4. The Still Small Voice

The medium and the message

The teaching of the Scripture is plain - the less dramatic the form the message comes, the fuller is the content and the more advanced is the condition of the person receiving the message.

“Still small voice” (I Kings 19:13)

Signs can be useful, but are secondary to the word/thought

Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God 4 Our Communicating Cosmos

Our preexisting ideas and assumptions are what actually determine what we can see, hear or otherwise observe.

The Three Lights

Circumstances (alone, these can be insufficient)

Impressions of the Spirit (alone, these can be misleading/confusing)

Passages from the Bible (alone, this is inadequate)

Refer to F.B. Meyer - When the three lights line up, you’ll know that is God’s will.

>> None of these lights can replace the conversational relationship with God. The role of experience in learning to know God’s voice is irreplaceable.

Three Factors in “the voice”

1. Tone - quality or weight to the voice; it impresses you; comes with confidence; possibly even surprising to us; the ‘inner voice of self’ often argues with you - but, the voice of God ‘just speaks’

2. Spirit - peace; joy; reason; warm but firm; goodwill; not going to run you over.

3. Content - of course, the voice of God will not contradict the Word. The Word (as we have seen manifest in Jesus Christ) will not speak differently today - though His Spirit will continue His speaking.

— Cf. the discernment of Ignatius etc. as another formulation of hearing God.

Experience

Again, the voice of God calls us into action and experience (thus, making us persons sharing in communion with the Trinity).

There are a great many things that the Scriptures do not address

A great many ways that the voice/word remains incomplete without incarnation

Our cooperation/conversation with God is what brings about clarity and fulfillment to the word of God (cf. the life of Jesus as the epitome of conversation with God)

There is such a need to engage with the voice of God in the practices of solitude, silence, service and so on.

This brings us out of a feverishness of trying to put together a word of God

Applying the principle...

Begin by simply asking for clarity - make yourself open.

Consider, is there something in me that prevents hearing?

Perhaps we ought to decide on our own.

>> You must take this all seriously in order to discern when people are laying harmful things onto you or your community/family.