His voice
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
SUMMARY: To recognize the voice of the Lord, we must have an intimate and unalterable relationship with Jesus. We need to merge with Him, live in Him, and walk with Him. Only then will we renew our spiritual ears and be able to hear His voice. Just being in a religious setting is not enough. We must know Him personally to respond to His call.
God continues to walk through the garden of every heart. And keep calling. Not every call gets a response. A heart without ears cannot hear. It was not for pleasure that the Lord said to the religious of his time: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." So He took it for granted that you can have ears and still suffer from spiritual deafness. The ears of the heart are supernatural in size because they know when the Lord is calling. But the heart must be connected to the Lord, along with the soul and the mind.
It is sad to think that once He called us and we did not know how to recognize His voice. Most of the time the believer's ears are more hardened to better listen to any other voice than His. The good news is that we do not need to pass a theological seminary, or get a Thomson bible to learn to listen to Him. We collect many Bibles, but we keep scant little of what God tells us, we retain a modicum of his teachings, and we reluctantly obey. However, the Lord says that his sheep know his voice and follow him (John 10:27). No more burning bush, no fire, no more luminous cloud to know that He is speaking to us. There are other times to see his glory and majesty and absorb the language of his grace. Jesus is that glory because he is the word and the word is the voice of God in action. The day the voice became a word, the hope of the world was born.
Allow me to paraphrase Cuban theologian Dr. G. Junco when commenting on the passage about Samuel's calling (1 S 3: 1-21). Young Samuel grew up in the temple in a religious environment. His mother had consecrated him to the Lord since before he was born, however, the Lord called him three times and he could not recognize his voice. This means that the religious settings in which we work and serve the Lord are not enough to recognize the call. We can remember the times that we have tried to communicate with God in prayer, but we are unable to identify the times that He has tried to communicate with us. We mistake his voice for another voice. Samuel confused the voice of God with that of the priest Eli. Eli was in sin before God and yet he knew how to discern that the one who called Samuel could not be other than God himself. Why was Samuel unable to clearly identify the voice of the Lord? Verse 7 of this passage gives us the answer: "Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had his word been revealed to him" (1S 3: 7).
Therein lies the heart of the matter: to recognize the voice of the Lord we have to know him personally, be one with him, merge with him, live in him, walk with him. Only an intimate and unalterable relationship with Jesus will allow us to renew our hearing (the spiritual ears) and we will walk attentive and awake, with our eyes open to the light and the mere reading of his Word will become revelation for our lives.
Jesus is not going to give up his efforts to walk through the garden of your heart and call you. Get to know him well, from the inside. He has the floor, you have the heart. You will be ready to respond to their voice. - Here I am, Lord! - You will see that when you ask for a star, He will offer you the entire sky.
God bless you!
It is sad to think that once He called us and we did not know how to recognize His voice. Most of the time the believer's ears are more hardened to better listen to any other voice than His. The good news is that we do not need to pass a theological seminary, or get a Thomson bible to learn to listen to Him. We collect many Bibles, but we keep scant little of what God tells us, we retain a modicum of his teachings, and we reluctantly obey. However, the Lord says that his sheep know his voice and follow him (John 10:27). No more burning bush, no fire, no more luminous cloud to know that He is speaking to us. There are other times to see his glory and majesty and absorb the language of his grace. Jesus is that glory because he is the word and the word is the voice of God in action. The day the voice became a word, the hope of the world was born.
Allow me to paraphrase Cuban theologian Dr. G. Junco when commenting on the passage about Samuel's calling (1 S 3: 1-21). Young Samuel grew up in the temple in a religious environment. His mother had consecrated him to the Lord since before he was born, however, the Lord called him three times and he could not recognize his voice. This means that the religious settings in which we work and serve the Lord are not enough to recognize the call. We can remember the times that we have tried to communicate with God in prayer, but we are unable to identify the times that He has tried to communicate with us. We mistake his voice for another voice. Samuel confused the voice of God with that of the priest Eli. Eli was in sin before God and yet he knew how to discern that the one who called Samuel could not be other than God himself. Why was Samuel unable to clearly identify the voice of the Lord? Verse 7 of this passage gives us the answer: "Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had his word been revealed to him" (1S 3: 7).
Therein lies the heart of the matter: to recognize the voice of the Lord we have to know him personally, be one with him, merge with him, live in him, walk with him. Only an intimate and unalterable relationship with Jesus will allow us to renew our hearing (the spiritual ears) and we will walk attentive and awake, with our eyes open to the light and the mere reading of his Word will become revelation for our lives.
Jesus is not going to give up his efforts to walk through the garden of your heart and call you. Get to know him well, from the inside. He has the floor, you have the heart. You will be ready to respond to their voice. - Here I am, Lord! - You will see that when you ask for a star, He will offer you the entire sky.
God bless you!
