What's God sound like?

Soccer has been a huge part of my life for a long time. It was at my last club soccer tournament ever when I realized the teams that play best are the teams that trust each other. If they trust each other, they can be receiving the ball with their back to the opponent, and when their teammates tell them to turn, they can. If they didn’t trust each other, they wouldn’t turn for fear of getting whacked. Without faith in our teammates a soccer team can just not function.

There is one fall back though. Sometimes there will be jerks on the other team that tell you what to do and in the heat of the moment, you listen to that voice cuz it’s the first you hear. You leave the ball and it goes straight to the other team, just cuz you confused the opponents voice with your own teammates.

Our lives are the exact same way. God is our team, he’s always trying to talk to us and we can’t get anywhere if we don’t have faith and trust in what he speaks to us. Except, just like in the real game, Satan is the opposing team trying to trick you into doing the wrong thing.

Do you know God’s voice? Do you know Satan’s voice? I can pretty much guarantee you that you don’t. So we have a problem, how can we tell the difference between the two voices inside our head? We can’t, and the only solution I have for you is to study God’s voice. Now you think I’m a psycho.

Voice can be defined as an expressed wish, so an expressed wish that’s in your mind. So the voices of God and Satan are the battling wishes or desires within your head. Now that sounds a bit easier, distinguishing the desires of God and Satan. Sometimes it’s just not that easy.

Let me give you an example. You’re the judge in this situation. There’s a 16 year old pregnant woman asking for an abortion. You’re extremely pro-life so of course you’re against it, but wait a second. She was raped. Now what? Do you force her to give birth to a baby that she didn't ask for, or do you allow her to kill a human life?

Can you tell me which voice is God and which is Satan? I’ll tell you one thing, I sure can’t. The only way we can truly distinguish between the voices, is to truly know our God. That means spending time with Him, a lot of time. How long does it take you to truly know someone that’s been alive for 50 years? It takes a while. Now multiply that by infinity, that’s how long God’s been around.

We will never know Him as well as we should, but hopefully if we put enough time and effort into knowing Him, we can know Him well enough to distinguish His voice within our head. Sure, we may never know Him well enough here on earth to choose which voice He is in sticky situations like abortion, but hopefully we can distinguish it well enough for smaller situations like how to react to anger directed at us.

So just like I did yesterday, I challenge you to spend five minutes with God. I read somewhere that it takes 21 days to make something a habit. Do it. Make it a habit.