Recognizing the Right Voice

      By Fern Horst

"And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." (Isaiah 30:20-21)

"No one ever said life would be a rose garden." I'm sure you've heard that before, or something similar. And it's true. There WILL be times of adversity, difficulty and uncertainty in this life. Perhaps the uncertainty is the worst part when adverse circumstances strike. When the way is difficult, but still clear, at least we know what we need to do and keep trudging forward.

God has given us a wonderful promise that along with adversity, He will also provide a Guide for us. That Guide, who is His Holy Spirit, will tell us which way to go through those difficult spots in life so that we won't veer off the straight and narrow path. We singles aren't alone without help, as we are sometimes tempted to think. What we do need to recognize, though, is that along with God's promise is our responsibility to keep our spiritual ears tuned to hear His Voice, and our hearts ready to respond in obedience.

Unfortunately we have an enemy who likes to imitate our Guide's voice. He would like to cause us to slip and fall, or to get off on a side path that leads to our destruction. How can we be sure we are hearing the right voice?

Jesus gave a little parable, referring to Himself as the Shepherd and His followers as the sheep: "And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers" (John 10:4-5).

I've been told that when bank tellers are trained, they are only given authentic money to handle so that they learn to know what it feels like. When they do encounter counterfeit money, they immediately sense its strangeness in their hands.

We need to do something similar to train ourselves to hear the Holy Spirit's voice. We learn what sorts of things He would and would not say by reading and studying His Word in depth. When we saturate ourselves with His Words they become very familiar to us. When we listen more to the words of television and radio, or read the newspaper and other books more often than we do our Bibles, we soon become confused as to what is Truth and what is error.

We can be sure we are hearing our Lord's voice when we are well-trained in the Words He has already given us in the Bible. When His Word saturates our hearts, the voice of our enemy will sound strange to us even though he is a liar and does his best to deceive us.

If you haven't already joined us in reading through the Bible, or if you started and got behind and discouraged, we'd like to encourage you to jump in at this week's readings. These devotionals are based on a few verses from the previous week's readings. The references for the coming week's readings are included at the bottom of each week's devotional email. We also have the full text for each day's readings on the Purposeful Singleness website (http://singleness.org/bible/index.shtml). Another alternative is to subscribe to our Bible Reading list and have the day's reading delivered right to your Inbox every day. I personally find this very helpful since it reminds me to read when I download my email each morning. You can subscribe for this daily email here: http://singleness.org/maillist.shtml.

© 2002 Fern Horst

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