I sat purposefully on my bed with opened Bible in an upstairs bedroom of the spacious vintage house I shared with other Christian brothers off-campus at university in the 1970s.  If you have seen the movie, Jesus Revolution, then you would recognize us, and you would realize the Spirit of Jesus was moving during those years on college campuses in the Midwest as well as the beaches of southern California.  This postgraduate student was on a mission that day to hear from God.

The brothers of this collegiate household devoted the wee hours of each day in solitude to Bible study and prayer, each one in his own private nook of the house.  I was usually nestled on the floor near a hallway window, but on this particular afternoon I sat squarely on my bed with a firm objective in mind.  I had been offered a night clerk job at a nearby hotel on the business loop, and I was uncertain what to do.  Is this the job for me?  I was learning to seek the Lord in all things, but not yet familiar with the freedom I would later know in Christ to make mature decisions that honor and reflect Him.

Randomly flipping from book to chapter to passage and back again, in both Testaments, I hoped a relevant verse would pop off the page and catch my eye. This approach seemed to work before in my youthful innocence, and I needed it to work again that day.  (Do not laugh, admit it, you have done the same thing.)  In retrospect, I was unwittingly using the Scriptures like a divining tool to discover God’s will, but the Lord was about to teach me a better way.

Feeling foolish and flustered after a few hours, I abandoned the project, closed my Bible, and meandered downstairs.  At the bottom of the long staircase was a room off the foyer that served as our library, expansive shelves lined with classic books, and a few cozy chairs and writing table.  As I walked into the room, immediately I heard words so pronounced that I turned my head in reaction to the person who just spoke them. “The prudent man sees evil and hides himself; the naïve proceeds and pays a penalty.”  Huh?!  What does that mean?  I looked around and there was no other person in the room.  What does that verse have to do with any…?  And suddenly, I knew.

When I interviewed for the graveyard shift at the hotel a few days earlier, I noticed a magazine rack across the lobby from the front desk where I would be nightly stationed if I accepted the job.  I thought nothing of the two adult magazines in the rack because I had no compelling problem with such things.  So, I had completely forgotten about them until the moment I entered the library.  Instantly, I realized I would face temptation as a young man in that setting, hour after hour, night after night, and the Lord was answering my prayers for direction with His wisdom.  Imagine my stunned expression standing alone in the middle of that room when these spot-on words were spoken!

This was not my first encounter with Holy Spirit, of course, but it was by far the most clear and instructive to date. The Lord immediately revealed key lessons, the most precious being another reminder that my Father does respond to me when I call out to Him, according to His sovereign timing and in His way.  It was also evident He had not blessed my scavenger hunt through the Bible this time.  I sensed His mandate for me to spiritually grow up.  What He had done was to speak to me directly from the scriptures I had stored up in my heart as I sat daily on that floor near a hallway window month after month.  On this day, he pulled out from that treasury a relevant pearl of wisdom from Proverbs, and He spoke it to me at the right time (Proverbs 27:12, New American Standard).

The epilogue of this story serves to encourage all of us that the Lord honors and rewards those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6, Luke 11:28).  In this case, I turned down that job, but exactly seven days later I was offered a similar position in a nearby hotel with no tempting magazine rack in the lobby, for more money! 

Lest we come to rely too heavily on personal experience to form our beliefs and theology on any spiritual matter, it is important to establish a biblical basis for our faith in it.  The first lesson in learning to hear God’s voice in the present time is to realize that He has already shown His nature and power in what He has made (Romans 1:19-20), and His will and purposes in what He has already spoken.  The voice of God is most prominently heard by what He already inspired others to write in the past for our benefit today:

To this day, I insist that young believers develop a daily practice of abiding in God’s recorded words in their own private nook because every nugget discovered there is a precious jewel.  As David declared, “I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” (Psalm 119:11, NIV)

We can also live with expectation knowing the Lord has promised to continue speaking to us personally by His Spirit:

I cherish these promises, for by them I know it was Holy Spirit who reminded me in the library that day of a warning the Lord had spoken in the past that I had deposited in my heart, and He has done so many times since.  And by these promises, I know He will similarly speak to you.

Another lesson in learning to hear God’s voice is to understand that there are two Greek words in the Bible that refer to God’s word, logos and rhema.  There is not a consensus in the Church about the doctrinal implications of these two words, partly because there is not a perfect consistency of their use throughout the New Testament.  Nonetheless, there is a general understanding of their definitions that is informative. 

Logos refers to the totality of the Word of God (i.e., our Bible, the written Scriptures recorded as a revelation of God’s message to the world for people to hear and read), as well to as the person of Jesus Christ who is the living Logos. 

Rhema generally refers to a word spoken by a living voice, and it was used in the New Testament to describe messages given to individuals for personal application.  This first type of rhema is the means by which an informative message from the logos of God is inspired by Holy Spirit and transformed into a message that fills the hearer with faith and power to live it out.   

Rhema can occur both at the precise moment you read a scripture (“Why have I never seen this before?!”), as well as in a spontaneous moment, seemingly out of the blue, as in my library story.  Every word of God is inspired, and Holy Spirit illuminates the scriptures for application in our daily life as we direct our hearts and minds to seek Him.  The exciting point of knowing the difference between these two words is the personal nature of hearing from God by rhema.  Not just words written on a page, but a personal word spoken to you.  When it happens, you will know.  You will henceforth read Scripture curious to know which passage with a “word” is talking about rhema, that intimate Spirit-inspired revelation of God’s message.

There are other ways God communicates and His people recognize His voice, but the principles described here are foundational to everything else.  We grow spiritually by putting aside childish things and grounding every spiritual pursuit in the Word of God.  Future postings in this series will include other instructive stories, more ways to recognize God’s voice, some practical steps for posturing yourself to listen, and important guardrails to examine and test what you believe you have heard from God.  Meanwhile, retreat to your own private nook, continue to build up your treasury, come to Jesus in faith with everything important in life, and begin to listen.