Is God Speaking?

 “God has something He wants me to tell you.”

I was in a restaurant with a friend, a college basketball coach. We were talking about working together on a business opportunity involving – what else? – sports and had been hashing through some details and how we could make it happen and so forth.

A man neither of us knew, and who didn’t know us, walked up and said, “I’ve been sitting over there, and I just want you to know God has something He wants me to tell you. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but God has told me that you will be successful in this.”

Now, I must admit, any time someone – particularly someone I don’t know – comes up to me and tells me they have a message from God, my first reaction is, “Uh-oh.”

But also, if I’m honest, down deep I kind of hope he’s right.

Honestly, most of the time I hear people say something like, “God spoke to me” I’m suspicious and can’t help wondering if this person isn’t a bit of a nut, particularly when I don’t know this person and they come up to me out of nowhere.

That’s not to say it can’t be truly a message from God. I am in no position to put parameters on how God works.

I do wonder about “hearing” from God.

I wonder what Jesus means when he says, according to John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

He will show Himself to them.

That concerns me. It would seem we have a legitimate right to say, “God, it says in the Bible that you will show yourself to me. So, show yourself!”

Of course, even as I write that, I’m aware of the times when God did indeed show himself, and the reaction was usually one of terror or utter humility. I think of Job (those of you who know me would say “of course!”), who was so full of indignation over what God has allowed to happen to him that he demanded to speak to God, and then when God showed up, Job was so awed he could only say, “Forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking. Shut my mouth.” (Or words to that effect).

But we also know that God does reveal himself to humanity, in many ways.

One is through His Creation. Psalms 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech; they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” And in Romans, Paul writes, “They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So, they have no excuse for not knowing God” (Romans 1:19-20).

The very fact that you hear people say, “If only God would show up and talk to me’’ indicates a desire to know God – which the Bible says God’s message has been implanted in our hearts -maybe like an innate sense of right and wrong - even before we hear the Gospel message. “Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right” (Romans 2:14–15).

Which leads us to what we call The Bible, what most Christians believe to be the inspired Word of God. God has had a desire to reveal Himself through the written word from the time of Moses, whom He commanded to write down what He was doing in order that these things would be remembered. Jesus said (in John again – 5:39), “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me …” Of course the Scriptures Jesus referred to were what we call the Old Testament, but I believe the New Testament qualifies now as well.

The ultimate communication is through The Word, Jesus - the living, breathing, flesh-and-blood, human presentation of God, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Or as Paul told the Colossians, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation.”

Still, like the prophet Isaiah, sometimes I think, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,” (Isaiah 59:1). You know – “God, I know you’re up there. Show yourself!”

And yet …

I think about the times I’m feeling sorry for myself and someone from church “just happens” to call and say, “I was just thinking we haven’t gotten together in a while. Let’s go to lunch.”

Or the times I have been worried about something, and when I turn on the radio it “just happens” to be to a station playing Christian music and the song is something that “just happens” to cause me to be reminded of God’s care for me.

Or when I was wondering if my life has meant anything to anyone, and I “just happen” to get a note, out of the blue, that “just happens” to say something like, “Just wanted you to know that that thing you said all those years ago I have written down and keep on a card over my desk and read it every day.”

Maybe you meet someone for the first time and they say something totally unexpected that is the exact thing you needed to hear … or you walk outside consumed with thoughts on one thing and hear a laugh or a voice or the wind blowing through trees and it just takes you to another place and suddenly your mood changes.

You know those things that happen, those “just happens” happenings, coincidences.

Recently I was talking to a guy who told me that he was having to make a business decision and wanted some advice and his mind when to an older man whom he had not spoken with in years but was such a mentor to him when he was starting out. His phone rang, and as the conversation went on, the caller said, “Uh, I’m having lunch with so-and-so tomorrow,” and “so-and-so” just happened to be the older man my friend was thinking of. My friend said, “Can you see if he remembers me, and if I could talk to him?” And the next afternoon, he was talking to this man he hadn’t spoken to in over a decade. Exactly what he needed, at exactly the right time. Who would have imagined?

It’s night and you’re bogged down doing something like your taxes and your little girl runs in to throw her arms around you and say, “Daddy, I love you.” It changes everything for you.

I have a sneaky suspicion that God is talking to us all the time, but we’re just not as tuned in as we need to be to hear. It’s like the Old Testament book of Esther, where events just scream “God is working!” yet God is never mentioned, once, throughout the entire story.

And there have been times when something pops into my brain that I have no idea where that thought came from. I don’t want to sound mystical, but I have had moments where I’m thinking something and another thought – sometimes corrective, sometimes just a better way of thinking – comes through so loud and clear it’s as if someone else has spoken to me. There have been times in discussing something with someone, I hear myself saying something that is exactly the right thing and afterward I think, “Where did that come from? How did I come up with that? That’s not what I was thinking at all.” I’ve felt compelled to share a verse of Scripture with someone and not known exactly why (which is as close as I’ve ever come to saying, “God gave me a message for you;” It’s always a verse though, never a direct “message” per se).

There have been unexplainable moments like a voice or, at the very least, a thought that I honestly wonder where it came from.

What if God is showing Himself to us every day, speaking to us, and we just don’t see or hear?

By the way – that man who came up and at that restaurant and told my friend and I that what God had told him that what we were planning was going to be successful? It never happened. It never got past that lunch discussion.

That’s not to say it couldn’t happen.

But what is clear to me is, God is speaking. We just need to learn how to listen.