For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

Jesus Jn 18:37

Christians believe in absolute truth and that Jesus came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We want to be people of the truth, and the way to know and live by the truth is to listen to Jesus. This fuels the desire to learn to hear the voice of the Lord and get His direction for our lives. I have a series of blog posts about this.

A question that always comes up is “How can I know, for certain, that I am hearing the Lord?” More than once, I have heard this question addressed with a story about a person with prophetic gifting in a situation when they were very sure that they were hearing from the Lord to share a significant word with a person. But when they shared, it fell completely flat. The lesson presented from these stories is that you need to be willing to risk failure and step out in faith and have experiences like this. Over time, from these experiences, you will develop your ability to discern God’s voice and become more confident or certain of what you are hearing from the Lord.

But is the idea that you will become more certain of the Lord’s voice over time the lesson of these experiences? These are experiences in which the person was reluctant to share the word precisely because of the awkwardness if it were to fall flat. They took the risk of sharing because the impression that they were supposed to share was so strong. It was not clear that there was anything wrong with their discernment or that they learned a better technique for determining when they were hearing from the Lord. A lesson that better fits the story is that even when you are really sure you have heard from the Lord, when all the signs and impressions are there, it might not turn out like you thought it would. So the lesson could be that you are not going to have the certainty that you have heard the voice of the Lord that you desire to have.

Perhaps the Lord does not want us to have that kind of self-sufficient certainty. Maybe it is better that you will always have to wait to see how people receive a word or how things turn out before you can be certain that you have heard from the Lord. The kind of self-sufficient certainty where a person is convinced they have heard from the Lord solely on the basis of their own discernment can actually be very harmful. In my experience, it is not characteristic of a spiritually mature person who has developed his or her ability to discern the Lord’s voice. Rather, the spiritually mature person is much more humble with regard to the voice of the Lord and certainty.

The Lord is perfectly capable of providing absolute certainty in hearing His voice by how He communicates. Moses, for example, did not need a developed ability to discern God’s voice when he encountered the burning bush to be certain that he was hearing from God. Taking into account our sinful nature, and the constant temptation to self aggrandizement, does it make sense that God would choose to communicate in subtle and enigmatic ways so that our certainty in hearing His voice is dependent on how we have matured in discernment? Wouldn’t that just promote a self confidence that feeds our egos? To me it makes more sense that God deliberately does not provide certainty in how He communicates because that certainty would not be good for us.

For next week. Why might the certainty we desire not be a good thing for us?

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.