The discovery of God's voice—and thus His heart and will—rarely comes to us the way we expect, or even in the way we wish it would. Too often we think we need God to tell us something—give us some bit of information to help us in making a choice—when what we really need is for God to do something within us. And that is a much deeper and more vulnerable level of communication.
We are often just like the Israelites, in that we don't want God to come close and speak to us directly, because we don't want to die to our own ways. We know inherently that once we allow God close enough to speak, we must deal with Him at the point of obedience. Imagine living a life that has fully turned over all control of everything to God's Spirit and committed to follow His voice in the depths of our heart.
In the story of the woman at the well, did you ever notice that Jesus never really answers the woman's questions?
That's because they are the wrong questions.
Her questions are born out of human reasoning and not from faith. And God rarely answers us along the line of our human reasoning, because He knows that human reason almost always leads us to a dead end in matters of the heart.
Many times when it seems God doesn't answer us, it's because we're asking Him the wrong question. Our questions typically stem from our human reasoning, our desire to make something happen, or to be in control—they are not usually borne from faith.
If the woman at the well had clung to her question, she would have never heard the more important truth that Jesus was sharing—living water. And when she finally relinquished her reasoning and opened her heart to the mystery and the miracle of what Jesus was saying, she was transformed and able to move forward in all that God had for her.
When we do open our hearts to the voice of God, we immediately find ourselves stepping into a journey that is far larger than our own… a journey so large we cannot usually see its beginning or its end, or even fully comprehend our place in its unfolding.
It is God's journey, not ours.
But we have become a part of it, and we have an integral part to play.
The discovery of God's voice is not an event but an ongoing journey. It's a journey of wonder and struggle, fear and desire. And it will always take us to a place where we must decide we no longer need to know all the answers to all our questions. All we need is to stay close to Him; listen to what He is saying to our hearts; and follow without hesitation wherever He leads. Once we make that choice, we will soon find our lives saturated with the voice of God and discover that we wouldn't want to follow Him in any less practical way.
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