How Do We Know if God Speaks to Us?

If I had to pinpoint what I miss most about my life before my daughter was born and where I have ended up since, it wouldn’t be the usual gripe of parenthood and missing the ability to be irresponsible. Sure, I miss the old fun, but I would consider parenthood a trade-up to a different kind of fun.

What I miss most is feeling connected to the world around me, feeling guided, and simply having faith that wherever I was headed, I was headed in the right direction.

I miss being able to trust a gentle voice I had often heard inside my head…the voice that urged me to when I first attended Lifeline Church; to not bail inside the first ten minutes.

I miss trusting that that voice wasn’t my own random thought, my own voice guiding and misguiding me.

Missing that voice, and that connection to the world about me…it is the difference between merely watching a sunrise and feeling a sunrise as the sky warms from dark blue through orange and yellow hues. It’s the difference between witnessing a flock of birds sail past, and hearing their music as they orchestrate themselves around one another, twisting and turning about the sky like some dancing dark cloud.

Oh, I do miss that connection.

Pastor Dave offers an analogy that God is always talking to us, but we often aren’t tuned to the right frequency. My problem for much of the last decade was that the radio was on, the transmission had been clear, but it seemed my subconscious had been broadcasting like some punk kid with a ham radio. So now whenever I heard that voice again, I didn’t trust it.

One night, after a long and frustrating work week, I was praying and just wishing for no doubt…that I would see a burning bush, the heavens open up, or witness some other small miracle or vision of God. A simple message came back: “Then close your eyes and see me.”

I chuckled in the cliché, as well as in the simplicity, and then I chuckled at myself as immediately I questioned the source of the message. That ham radio was probably on. I closed my eyes and instantly fell asleep to a dream on God—the details of which I can’t remember. I love a good irony.

But that was my problem…even when the voice was clear it may as well have just been silent.

Nonetheless, I did my best to keep my heart and mind open and to be receptive. The next time I felt that voice was speaking to me was at a family dinner as I hovered over a nacho platter in my parents’ kitchen.

Word got out that I had started attending church and a freakish excitement about the news brought tons of questions. Where are you going? What kind of church is it? You meet in a bar? Why isn’t it Catholic? Etc.

I answered the questions between bites of chips and cheese, and I casually confessed that I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to continue attending.

I heard that old voice. “Pay attention,” it said, and I wondered just what Mom had put into the bean dip. Pay attention to what?

My brother-in-law surprised me. “Be patient,” he advised. “It takes time for church to start having an effect.” Again, I was hearing the message to be patient, and from my brother-in-law of all people.

Why was that a surprise? I had never imagined him to be particularly religious or spiritual, or patient for that matter, and yet here he was, offering me this simple advice.

Immediately, doubts about the message stirred when my dad stepped in. “Going to church? That’s good.” He nodded. “People need that.” This was even more surprising for me as I had always imagined my dad as a bit agnostic, if not an atheist. I remember clearly when I was very young, all the people at church who turned to look at us when he expressed his own spiritual frustration by exclaiming, “This is such bullsh-t.”

Yet here we were, the men of the family, talking about something we had never before discussed together.

I was paying attention.

Even if my heart was on the fence about church and God, my dad was right. Church was doing good things for me. I decided to trust in my brother-in-law’s message to be patient and give it time.

Maybe that voice I sometimes hear is my own and nothing more.  Maybe sometimes it is just the bean dip talking.

Maybe sometimes when God speaks, the trick isn’t so much about trying so hard to tune to the right frequency. Maybe it’s more about being patient and to simply pay attention.

Maybe it’s like that psalm that says Be still, and know that I am God.