1 Kings 19:8-12
John 4:7-8
I want to try a little experiment this morning. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, and keep them closed. I've asked three people to come forward and I'm going to have them talk, and I want to see if you can recognize their voices. So close your eyes, and keep them closed, and would those three people come forward now.
(Have the three people talk, each in turn, and have people call out who they think it is.)
I've been thinking this week about voice recognition, and how we can recognize people just by their voices. I got to thinking about this at our Optimist meeting. We meet in a small room off the PCC cafeteria. We were getting ready to start, but we heard a voice out in the cafeteria line. It was definitely Duane DeWees, one of our members. So we waited a couple of minutes for him to get his food, and get in the meeting.
I thought, "How interesting that we can recognize voices without seeing the person speaking." We all know about how our fingerprints are unique, and no one else has fingerprints like we do. That, in itself, is amazing. But I think it's equally amazing that each of our voices are unique. Infants have already gotten to the point where they recognize the voices of their mothers, even when they can't see their mothers.
There were times when I'd be with Ryan and Kristin in a large crowd. Maybe we'd be separated from each other, and one of them would call out, "Hey, Dad!" A bunch of men would turn their heads, which I thought was odd, because clearly I knew it was one of my kids, just by their voices.
People who study this phenomenon have been trying to figure out how it is that we can recognize voices without seeing faces that go with that voice. To me, the answer is fairly clear: relationship and experience. We have a certain amount of experience with the people whose voices we recognize. We have an ongoing relationship with them. I read one report this week about the only known case of a person who doesn't have this ability to recognize people's voices. She has a brain lesion in the part of her brain where hearing is processed. That would be tough to not have the ability to recognize voices.
We do this all the time, even before we had caller ID on our phones. Someone would call and just start talking, assuming you would know who it was. You can call your spouse and just start talking, and hopefully, they will recognize whom it is they are talking to without having to ask. Hopefully they don't say something like, "Who is this?”
Some might call this selective hearing, like this cartoon demonstrates. It's not a matter of voice recognition. It's more about where the switch is set.
The question then is, "Do we have a setting for God on our selective hearing aid?" Do we listen for God? Since we can become so good at recognizing other's voices, are we just as good as recognizing God's voice? That's the big question that this chapter in Experiencing God asks: How do we recognize God's Voice?
The answer has to be the same as how we do this with everyone else--experience and relationship. The main way we are able to hear God's Voice, and know it is God is by having an ongoing relationship with God that is nurtured and grown through conversation.
That's the way we build any relationship. We talk to each other. We converse. Some have said, "Talk is cheap," but talk is one of the main ways we explore each other, deciding if we want to know more. Listening to and using our voices to communicate is the primary way we bond.
The author and playwright Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name, George Eliot, once said, "Voices--I think they must go deeper into us than other things. I have often fancied heaven might be made of voices." If that were true, then it is vitally important to get to know God's Voice, to develop relationship with God through sharing of our voices.
So I'm going to take you in a different direction than Blackaby has in this chapter about how God speaks. I want you to imagine a different way that God communicates with you, with a different style of voice.
One of the assumptions in this chapter of the book is that if God is going to talk to you, it will be this momentous, earthmoving, life-changing message. That God's got a message for you. Or instructions you are to follow to the T.
But what if God just wants to talk--have a simple conversation? An ordinary, everyday, shoot-the-breeze conversation. Have you ever thought about God speaking in that way? I hadn't either, until I ran across this book. It's titled, The Little Notebook by Nicole Gausseron. The subtitle of the book is, The Journal of a Contemporary Woman's Encounters with Jesus. Gausseron is a devout woman from France who has recorded some of her everyday conversations with Jesus in this journal. Kind of blew me away, the first time I read it. These exchanges with Jesus were so ordinary. So chatty. Was such a thing even possible with the one, high God, I wondered?
So I tried it. And have been developing a chatty relationship with God over the years. Here, lately, since the weather is getting a bit warmer, I'll take my lunch and go out to Pratt Lake. I'll just sit there and eat, and read, and chat with God. The other day when it was so windy, I invited God to sit in my truck with me and we talked about the amazing patterns the wind made across the surface of the lake, and how all the patterns were so random--like fingerprints, or voices, none were the same. Does that sound weird to you, to talk to God about stuff like that?
Another time, I was living out in California, when my life had gotten really messy, I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom, leaning up against my bed. I invited God to come sit beside me, and we talked about why life has to get so messed up, and telling God I was sorry for my part in the mess. We had this great conversation about consequences, and how there are some consequences I will never see, that God would take care of for me, because he loved me.
I remember a time I had taken my kids to Seattle to go to Bumbershoot, a huge arts and music festival that goes over the Labor Day weekend. Ryan and Kristin had gone off to explore by themselves, and I was walking around. All of a sudden I sensed God falling in step beside me, and God said, "Look at all these different people! They are amazing, aren't they!? It's just so funny how some people are and choose to turn out. I love it!" God said. I nodded, yes, and we chatted a minute about that, and then God was gone, off to enjoy the diversity.
Does all that sound weird. Wondering about me, now? Or have you wondered about me all along? It might sound weird because you think I'm hearing voices. Or, you might think it sounds weird because it's outside your experience with your talking and listening to God.
The question then might be, do we actually have a conversational God? Do we believe in a God who enjoys times when God doesn't have to be "Godlike", speaking in some reverberating voice? Just chat. Is God not free to do that? Free to be God, however God chooses to be God? Is it somehow unGodlike to just make "medium talk", maybe not small talk?
Who does God have to just talk to? Many have asked me the same question, which is on a much, much lower scale: Who do ministers have to talk to? And for me, not usually about deep stuff. Just chat with. What makes people think that God doesn't like a good chat, not about anything earth-shattering or life-altering. Just talk.
This is what being in a relationship with God involves. The everyday, ordinary encounters of the holy with the human mundane. Maybe a person's reluctance to have conversation with God has more to do with their inability to chat just with a human being, let alone God.
But conversation assumes relationship. One of the common complaints I hear when counseling couples is, "We just don't communicate (anymore)." And it isn't about having big, heady, or heart-to-heart conversations. It's about chatting. Just chatting as if you know each other. Informal conversation that gives each other the simple message that you see and acknowledge each other in a caring, friends, chatty way. Chatting is fun and it makes you feel you matter. What makes us think that God doesn't enjoy the same thing? That God knows God matters to us simply because we enjoy chatting with God?
Is it possible that God doesn't want to speak to us about the huge, the momentous, the tumultuous all the time? I know God is God. And that, "...my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD" (Isaiah 55:8). And if you, like Blakaby does in this chapter, get all your illustrations of God speaking, out of the Old Testament, God becomes a formidable figure who shouts all the time.
But, if you look at Jesus, God in the flesh, you get a very conversational God, who makes jokes, and from time to time teased people--particularly overly serious people. You see in Jesus, a God who just likes to chat people up.
So, God speaks--yes. God speaks and creation happens--yes. God speaks and fire and brimstone comes down out of heaven and destroys cities and armies--yes. But God, in Jesus, speaks in a tender moment and a woman caught in adultery is forgiven. Jesus chats her up, "Hey, where'd everybody go?" God speaks, and the cedars of Lebanon, huge trees, are shattered--yes. But Jesus speaks and children run to him. What do you think Jesus talked about with children? Eschatology? Theology? God speaks and whole armies die--yes. But Jesus speaks to 10 guys with leprosy, touches them even, while having a simple conversation with them, and they all find their way to healing.
Yes, God's Voice can be fearsome and powerful. But power isn't just exhibited in loudness. Power of voice can come in tenderness and simple conversation. Try it, with God. Start chatting God up. See if God chats back. Begin to recognize the chatty Voice of God.
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