MY SHEPHERD'S VOICE

This past weekend I went on a women’s retreat.  It was held in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a place with many happy memories for me from vacations with my husband and children.  For two days I enjoyed good food, a wonderful speaker, sweet fellowship with my sisters in Christ, seeing the ocean from my hotel room, and all of the special delights of a beach town.

On Saturday afternoon during our free time my friend and I went back to our hotel room and spent some time talking.  I was talking about my recent experience donating a kidney to my friend from church and how I knew that it was the Lord leading me to take the first step of being tested.  My friend asked, “But how did you KNOW it was GOD telling you to do it?”  The question took me aback a bit because I had never given it any thought.  And then I said, “I knew it was God because I recognized the sound of His “voice”. 

Now if you are not a believer in Jesus, or you have not known Him by faith for very long, this might sound weird, so let me clear something up right at the outset.  I did NOT hear an audible voice.  There were times in the Bible when God spoke and His voice may have been audible, like when He called out to the boy Samuel in I Samuel, chapter 3, or when He met Moses at the burning bush.

But now that we have the written word of God in the Bible, God doesn’t need to speak in an audible voice.  He speaks through His Word, through the prompting of His Holy Spirit who indwells believers in Jesus, and sometimes He speaks through circumstances and the godly counsel of other believers.  So, I didn’t hear an audible voice, but nevertheless, I knew that it was the Lord who laid it on my heart that I should pursue the testing to see if I was a match for my friend.

After that conversation, I began to think about how I came to know my Lord’s voice, and I realized that like all relationships, the better you get to know someone, the more easily you recognize his voice. 

When I was first married I was living and working in New Jersey while my husband was serving in the Army in Viet Nam.  Mostly we corresponded by letter but every now and then I would be awakened during the night with a phone call.  The call was picked up and forwarded to me by a MARS ham radio operator.  Though my husband and I had been separated by time and miles, and there was always another operator on the line reminding each of us to say, “over” when we had finished speaking, I still immediately knew HIS voice. 

The Lord has been speaking to me through His Word since the Holy Spirit took up residence in my heart and life the moment I first believed in Jesus.  Each time I responded with obedience, I grew to know Him better, to recognize His voice.  God’s Word has been so central to me in my walk with the Lord.

Over the nearly 35 years that I've walked with the Lord I 've read the Bible on my own, studied with devotionals, attended Sunday school classes where the Bible was taught, taught the Bible to other women and children, and studied God’s Word in depth for 18 years through the ministry of Bible Study Fellowship International – all the while getting to know the Lord and the sound of His voice. 

In addition, the Lord invited me to join Him in some faith adventures that had a huge impact on my faith in His faithfulness, so that His voice became more and more familiar to me – especially through the difficult journeys of faith.  Someone has said that God whispers to us through the quiet times in our lives, but shouts to us in our pain.  I found that was true.

The first time was in 1982.  I was a young mom with two daughters, just 2 and 4 years old, when a lump was discovered in my neck.  After some testing it was diagnosed as a tumor on my thyroid and the doctor recommended I have it out.  I had never had surgery before, so I was scared to DEATH.  In that day, they didn’t do biopsies before the surgery, they did them while you were still on the operating table.  That way, if the tumor was cancerous, they could go ahead and do more drastic surgery while you were still under anesthesia. 

So I went into the hospital not knowing what the outcome of the surgery would be – and without the internet to check for myself – I had no idea of the possibilities either, which was a good thing! 

Looking ahead to the surgery I was not only thinking about myself, I was thinking about my husband and my little girls, wondering what would happen to us all if it turned out to be a cancerous tumor.  FEAR was my default, but by God’s grace, I didn’t STAY afraid.  Instead my hospital room felt like a sanctuary.  I read my Bible and prayed and I knew the Lord was right there with me. I was “hearing” the sound of His voice bringing to me His comfort and peace.

When it was time to go to the OR, I was wheeled there by a man I had never seen before.  On the elevator he chatted with someone while I hummed a hymn, but when he left me in the hallway outside the OR, he leaned over and said in my ear, “You are in good hands with the Lord”.  Wow!  That was exactly the assurance I needed!  I never saw that man again.  His was a human voice I “heard” speaking to me, but I knew it was the Lord who inspired the words. 

Many other faith adventures followed:  more surgeries, one cancer diagnosis, difficulty raising a child, ministry opportunities that took me WAY outside my comfort zone, moving to a new place at the same time all my close relatives moved far away – all of these things grew my faith and made me more attuned to my Lord’s “voice”. 

I remember saying after that first surgery when my girls were so young – I’d gladly go through another experience like this anytime if it causes me to experience the reality of the Lord the way this did.  And the Lord has taken me at my word!

In chapter 10 of the Gospel of John, when Jesus spoke of Himself as the Good Shepherd, He said this:

“The sheep listen to (the Shepherd’s) voice.  He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out, He goes on ahead of them, and His sheep follow Him because they know his voice.  I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep”

 If you want to hear the Shepherd’s voice you really have to get to know the Shepherd.