Listen! Can You Hear Him?

The cedars of Lebanon--can you hear them skip?

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

Psalm 29:2,4

I have never heard God speak to me in an audible voice.  I have never seen a vision or dreamed a dream that I was confident was God speaking to me.  I guess some would say that I have not heard from the Lord, that I am missing something in my Christian experience.

I have been impressed though by the Holy Spirit to give a sum of money to someone.  There have been a few times when we would give, and the recipient would write or call and say that he had been praying for a specific amount for an intended use, and our gift was the exact amount.  I have been led to fast and pray for someone's healing, and that person became well, or another specific thing, and God answered.  I believe that all of that was direction from the Lord, Him speaking to me, if you will, through His Spirit.

This psalm gives another aspect of God's voice, one which we all--Christians and unbelievers alike--hear. 

• Have you ever heard the roar of a cyclone over the water?
• Have you ever listened to the crack of a mighty thunderstorm?
• Have you been in a hurricane or a tornado and heard the powerful winds and seen trees uprooted, houses torn apart?  
• What about an earthquake, where the land trembles beneath you and you hear bridges and roads crack open and see what was on them swallowed up?  
• Have you been close enough to smell the acrid smoke or see and hear the licking flames of a forest fire? 
• And the rushing waters of a mighty flood--have you heard them?

Psalm 29 tells us that God is over them, the Lord breaks...the Lord makes...the Lord makes to skip...the Lord flashes...the Lord shakes.  God is in the midst of nature, speaking to us with a loud voice, making Himself heard by mankind.  Verse 4 tells us, "The voice of the Lord is powerful;  the voice of the Lord is full of majesty."  Romans 1:20 tells us, "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse."  We are without excuse; God has spoken.

But the way I most often and most definitely hear His voice is by His Word that He has so graciously spoken to us through holy men of God who wrote what He commanded.  "And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:19-21)  No one can rightfully say that God does not speak.  Some just refuse to listen.  

As we attend to the duties of our day, let's keep our ears open to the voice of God as He speaks to us through the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, the grand voice of His nature around us, and through His Holy Word that gives us direction for life.

Listening,

Gloria