Turn Your Radio On

The previous two prayer posts highlighted:
1. How privileged we are to live in the Age of the Spirit when, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, God is able to take residence within us by His Spirit, and…
2. As a result, the normal experience of God’s people is that they can have intimate communication with their Lord:

And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest… - Jeremiah 31:34 (see also Hebrews 8:11) 

“Wonderful!” you say, “So how do I go about doing this?”

I know people who keep a notebook by their bed to record their dreams. Others who take long hikes in nature away from the busyness of life. Some fast from food or certain practices to clear their hearts. And then some spend hours singing worship songs, waiting prayerfully.

All of these I have done and can recommend. But by far the most powerful and sure way to hear God’s voice is to prayerfully open a Bible and ask God to speak.

I was listening to the Ken Burns documentary on Country Music. In the early 1900s, life in the United States revolved much around the radio, and various cities were competing with stronger broadcast signals to reach more people. One entrepreneur opened a radio tower in Mexico, just over the Texas border. Not limited by U.S. standards, the tower had a signal that could reach from the east to the west coast. Farmers close to the broadcast tower said, at times they could hear the station playing off their wire cattle fences. 

I wonder if sometimes we do the same, searching for the voice of God. Listening to pieces of a radio program fade in and out off wire cattle fences is novel, unusual, and pretty cool. But if cattle fences are my primary intake of wireless programs, and I spurn the working radio grandly positioned in the center of my house, maybe I should ask myself why.

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. And about Moses God said:

If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles… - Numbers 12:6-8 

For those who have studied the later prophets, what becomes evident is these men studied the Law of Moses. Their warnings and exhortations were most often references back to what God had already spoken through his servant Moses. And then we have the second Moses:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son... - Hebrews 1:1-2 

And before Jesus left this earth, he promised his disciples that he would send the Spirit so they could recall all he spoke, which they then committed to print. (John 14:25-26) 

A few months back I related a cool story about a man in a dirt hut with no electricity who was visited nightly by a man in white. A church worker visited the man and read what had been shared with him. It was the gospel of John! The speaker’s comment was: “I wish I had a relationship with the Lord like that!”

I have since thought about that statement. No, Jesus does not need to come to me by night and share with me the book of John. It’s on my iPhone, in my bookshelves, at my church. The miraculous manna ceased the day the Israelites came into the land of Canaan (Joshua 5:12).

So yes, may we grow in knowing the voice of our God who speaks. And may we do so first and foremost by systematically reading our Bible day after day. Our God is speaking. Let’s turn our radio on and listen.