The First Voice

Beware!  When you enter the silence to listen for the voice of God, the first voice you are likely to hear is your own.  This is one reason why it is necessary to practice this spiritual discipline of listening.  It is not something that we are likely to get the first time.  Actually, we may find ourselves hearing many different voices, but the one most likely to deceive us is our own.  It is most likely to deceive us because it is saying the thing we want to hear.  We do not enter into this discipline without expectations of what God might say to us and so it is easy to hear what we want to hear Him saying to us.

 

Discernment is important as we begin to learn how to listen for the voice that Elijah heard long ago as he clung to his despair.  If what we perceive as voice of God sounds like a repeat of something we have thought, it is likely we have not really moved deep enough into the silence.  One of the hardest things to silence is our own voice which quietly speaks the needs and wants of our own ego.  It is only as we begin to spend time in the silence that we will learn to recognize how our own voice is expressed.

And, of course, the same thing can be said about the voice of God.  The way it is expressed and the way we hear it may not be what we expected.  It may even surprise us.  The voice of God can surely be heard by those who are intent on listening, but instead of a monologue it may simply be a single word.  It may not even be experienced as a word, but it will be experienced as the way He has chosen to make Himself and His will known to us.