Stuck?

We all get stuck in our lives, uncertain about the directions in which we should move. This is especially frustrating for Christians who want to express gratitude through lives honoring God for the free gifts of forgiveness and new life which come from Jesus.

That grace should lighten our anxiety over discerning the right directions for our lives, the directions for which God designed us. We should know that even when we get things wrong, if our motivation is to live loving and useful lives, God will still be pleased with us.

Nonetheless, our unease can be understandable. The Bible witnesses to a personal God Who cares about us personally. He gives all human beings certain abilities and more deeply blesses Christians with spiritual gifts meant for us to use in making the church and the world better. God wants to imbue our lives with purpose and direction.

But sometimes, overwhelmed by the condition of alienation from God that all humans are born with, we get stuck.

My friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, recently presented a wonderful piece by Crosswalk.com contributing writer Whitney Hopler on how believers in Christ can hear God's voice and find direction for their lives. Hopler's article distills a book called Speak Lord, I'm Listening: How to Hear God's Voice Above the Noise by Larry Kreider.

The first method for hearing God's voice commended by Kreider and Hopler is one with which Lutheran Christians like me are sure to resonate, given our emphasis on the central role of God's Word in the lives of Christians:

The Bible: God may cause a portion of Scripture to jump off the page for you while you’re reading it. He may make you aware of how it applies to your life right then and use it to lead you in a particular way. The Bible is your final authority – the standard by which you should check everything else you think God may be saying to you. Remember that nothing God says in any other way will ever contradict what He says in the Bible. Get to know the Bible well by reading and studying it often. Be sure to keep the context and original intent of Scripture passages in mind. [italics added by me]

The Bible, which we Lutherans confess to be the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice, should be the filter through which we view all things, including our lives, motives, and places in the world.

I like the rest of the list of ways to hear God's voice as enumerated by Hopler, too.

For some, the idea that God can speak to us will be foreign. We're like the people of eleventh-century BC Israel. Of that time, the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel observes, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" (1 Samuel 3:1). The observation seems to be made with a kind of incredulity. "Can you believe it?" the passage seems to ask. "People were so far away from God that they didn't hear His voice."

I'm convinced that the God Who made the universe and Who became one of us in Jesus Christ is still speaking to us, if we will only listen. I say that as someone who, I admit, crowds God's voice out of my life way too often, doing that through my activities, some of them which, on their face, appear commendable or holy. But whenever we prevent God from speaking to us, we can bet that we're not about anything commendable or holy!

To be clear, in talking about "hearing God's voice," I don't mean an audible-"If you build it, he will come"-in-the-cornfield hearing, although I discount no possibility. God is sovereign. Therefore, God can choose to speak to us in any way God wants to speak to us. God even used an ass to speak once. (Some people say that God does that in the pulpits of many churches every week.)



[Above, Balaam, his ass, and the angel blocking their way. Balaam was so consumed with doing what he wanted to do that he couldn't see the angel God sent to turn him back. The ass could. When the ass refused to go on, God spoke to Balaam through the ass. I'll leave it to you to apply this to your own life. Click on the image to see all of it.]

Go to Hopler's article. If you're feeling stuck, maybe her words of wisdom will help you hear God's voice and get you unstuck.