How Does God Speak?

In a recent post, Michael Halcomb expressed his skepticism about claims to have heard a personal message from God:

The thing is, people can rarely ever prove that God spoke, it's like, well, you just have to take their word for it.... But then, I really think that there are legitimate instances where God speaks to people. So, I guess I'm wondering, are there any bloggers out there to whom God has spoken or speaks? If so, how does it happen and how do you know?

I responded there:

God's voice has always seemed to me less like a source of information and more like a rather forceful and focused form of conscience, persistently (sometimes even uncomfortably) pointing toward or away from certain specific decisions. It's not always been there (in fact, ignoring it is a pretty sure way to make it disappear!), but when I have experienced it, it's unmistakable.

And Michael responded:

I'm still wondering just how. Your notion of a "source of information" is interesting but still, how did you hear it? Did you "feel" more than "hear"? What?

My answer grew a bit too long for the comment thread, so I’ll post it here:

The first thing I should say is that I think God’s primary means of communication are scripture and the church, but I don’t think those are the only ways he speaks, and unless I am completely nuts, I think I have occasionally heard his voice in other ways. In my own experience, those latter cases always seemed a mix of thoughts, feelings and "coincidence," like everything in my life was pointed towards a particular choice, and usually one that I did want to make (thus, almost every time it has happened I fought God on it for a long while). At such times I always found that, if I obeyed, things turned out for the best but, if I disobeyed, they very much did not. I’ve given a number of examples in other posts, so here I'll give just one more (omitting a few personal details):

When I was a sophomore in college, for several months I strongly felt that I needed to end a certain relationship, but I had no desire to do so. There wasn't anything immoral about the relationship, but every time I prayed--heck—even when I didn’t, this persistent thought/feeling kept intruding. But I kept pushing it back, giving excuses, arguing with God that it would hurt the other person too much. This went on for months, until finally I got so fed up that one night I went out to the "Back 40" of our campus and prayed/yelled (I don't normally pray out loud, let alone at a shout!) that I didn't understand, I didn't think I could do it, and how could I even know it was God I was hearing and not just my own twisted mind? There was no voice from heaven (if that ever happens, I've not experienced it), just that persistent feeling. So finally I said: "I give up, if this is really you, God, if you really want me to do this, you're gonna have to do something drastic. Hit me over the head with a 2x4!"

I know, I know, that's not how you're supposed to talk to God (I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I did at all, but then again, it'd be nice to have that kind of passion again). Well anyway, I stood there for a few minutes, half expecting some crazed student to jump out of the woods and hit me upside the head, but nothing happened. So I sighed and turned around to walk back to campus, and immediately (I kid you not) I smacked my forehead on a big block of wood.

In all the time I was standing there, I had entirely forgotten where I was. Our campus had a raised set of railroad tracks that ran through the back 40, which the path crossed through a low walking tunnel. I happened to be standing just outside the opening of that tunnel, a bit closer than I realized, I suppose. So when I turned around I slammed my head right into the center brace holding up the roof. I think it was actually a 4x8, but I got the message, and a bad headache. ;)

But I didn't listen. After all that, I went back to my dorm intent to break it off, but I didn't follow through. In fact, I stopped arguing with God about it at all. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn’t willing to do it. So I just ignored him until finally the feeling disappeared. As it turned out, the decision (or indecision!) led to one of the most difficult years of my life. Worse, after so blatantly ignoring God, I never again felt that tug in the same way I once did.

I realize it all sounds a bit unbelievable, but there were many times in my life when similar things happened. Moreover, what convinces me that it was not just my subconscious playing tricks on me is that, when God’s voice was there, it was always unmistakably persistent and very specific--something particular I needed to do or stop doing, not a replacement for conscience, free will or critical thinking--but when it was gone, I couldn't manufacture it no matter how much I wanted to.

Ultimately, then, I do think God occasionally speaks in a more personal way, and it should never be taken lightly when he does, but I'm not convinced this is something we should be seeking as Christians (and I remain deeply skeptical of people who claim God gave them a message for someone else). There are much more important things to our relationship with God, and more important means of ascertaining God’s will, which (I think) should always be sought in the community of faith and in consultation with scripture. To center your life on seeking some private manifestation of God’s voice will seriously distort things. After all, Christianity is not supposed to be about us at all, but about loving God and neighbor. So in the end, if you want to know God’s will for your life, don’t hide in your prayer closet; start with Micah 6:8. For if you were to truly live this out, you could hardly go wrong:

He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

How I Became a Christian Part IV

Responding to recent posts, commenter Hugh has been emphasizing the absurdity and danger of uncritically seeking “God’s will” for every detail of one’s life. It may surprise him, but I agree. As I have told my story, I have described a handful of points in my life when God seemed to be guiding me down certain paths, mostly ones that I wouldn’t have chosen on my own. These have only been examples, highlighted because they were significant for the course of my life, but if the impression I have given is that this guidance is only occasional, that is the correct impression. Unlike the conscience, which is pretty much always there if you take the trouble to listen, God’s voice is much more elusive.

John’s Gospel compares God’s spirit to the wind, unpredictable and uncontrollable, and this has certainly been my experience. Though it is possible to stifle God’s promptings, just as it is possible to deaden one’s conscience, it is not possible to force God to speak. Most of the time, we are left to think and decide for ourselves, in dialogue with scripture and the community of fellow believers. Though Christians believe God’s providence encompasses the whole of our lives, trusting in God does not mean expecting him to plan out every detail thereof, nor does it mean giving up your responsibility to make wise decisions. As I recently argued concerning the Bible, Christianity does not expect unthinking conformity, but calls us into a dialogue. Above all, it calls us to an outward-focused life, which is the antithesis of obsessing over one’s own needs and desires.

I suspect that one important reason for this, as for why God doesn’t always answer prayer, is because he intends us to grow into spiritual adulthood. He intends us to be the kind of people who choose rightly on our own, who can be genuine partners with God in the world, and not remain spiritual and moral children indefinitely. I think this is also why new converts tend to see even their foolish prayers answered more directly. At the least, I can say that the promptings I have described have steadily decreased in frequency the longer I have been a Christian, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. As a parent, I can understand the principle very well: I will do many things for my one-month-old son that I expect my two-year-old daughter to do for herself. Though God may make his presence especially known at first, he doesn’t intend to take over our decision-making process for us, nor does trust in “God’s will” excuse you from critical thinking, though it does mean stepping out in trust without knowing how things will turn out.

But if this is how God works, then like immature children, we can sometimes react badly to God’s refusal to coddle us. For instance, while God expects us to grow into responsible, decision-making adults, it is possible to take this take this too far and convince yourself of God’s sanction and approval of your own self-serving and destructive plans. Oppositely, it is possible to become so obsessed with knowing “God’s will” for every detail of your life that you become utterly indecisive. Over the years, I’ve at times been guilty of both extremes.

For example, one summer in high school I felt like God was calling me to fast. Now if done right, fasting can be a very healthy practice, both spiritually and physically, but I didn’t take any trouble to learn about how to do it right; I just stopped eating, thinking God would tell me when it was OK to eat again. Well after a few days and no such signs from God, I gave up and ate a meal. I then felt guilty about it and started the fast over, this time obsessing over every meal, whether it was “God’s will” for me to eat. As you might expect, after a few days I broke down and ate again, felt guilty again and started over. This very destructive cycle of eating and not eating, obsessing over God’s will, but really just inconsistently following my own desire, continued for several weeks.

Eventually, my pastor discovered what I was doing and advised me to stop, emphasizing that this was not the proper way to do a fast, and I took his advice and gave up on it. In truth, the affair did me no good, but it does provide a helpful illustration of the danger of treating what we think is God’s will as a license to stop thinking. Perhaps if I had approached it critically from the beginning, and stuck with it, it would have done me good (after all, I've known plenty of people, that pastor among them, who have found fasting to be a very helpful discipline), but my immature and inconsistent approach had no such positive effects. Indeed, to this day the very thought of fasting makes me uncomfortable, and I've never tried it again, which is a shame, really.

In any case, a more significant example involves my decision on where to attend college. I mentioned that I met the woman who I would eventually marry just two days after my family moved. We hit it off right away, and it wasn’t long before we became very close (though I told myself that we were “just friends”). She was a year ahead of me and the next fall she went off to the local liberal arts college while I started my senior year, fully intending to go to the same school the next year. So when the time came, I applied, was offered a scholarship, and accepted.

By that point, however, I couldn’t shake the fact that I was breaking my commitment not to date in high school, and that we needed to take a step back from our relationship. Like with the fasting incident though, I wasn’t very thoughtful about it, nor did I seek out anyone's advice or guidance. I didn't even discuss the matter with her; I simply informed her that we shouldn’t see or talk to each other for a while. And from March through May of my senior year, we didn’t.

It was a very difficult time, particularly for her, but despite my foolish and insensitive approach, it wasn’t for nothing. Not long after the break up that old feeling came back (for the first time in a long while), and quickly it became clear that I had chosen where to go to college based on her, and this was not where I should be going. This was extremely hard for me to accept, but I trusted God and went looking for other options, eventually settling on a school in Canada, and withdrawing my application from the first school. I was extremely disappointed that I would be leaving the woman I loved, but the new school looked to be a good fit and I felt comfortable with the decision, though I dreaded telling her about it.

Little did I know that over those two months she had been going through much the same process, and when I finally told her what I had decided, I was shocked to discover that she too had come to the very same decision. Soon after, I graduated high school and we began dating (“again”). But that was when I started to second-guess myself. Though the decision to attend the school in Canada had been made for good reasons which had not changed, and I didn’t even feel any prompting that it was a mistake, I wanted certainty about “God’s will” in the matter, and kept asking for some kind of sign to confirm or condemn my decision. None came, and by July I had no choice but to make the decision for myself, and went ahead and confirmed my registration.

Perhaps God wanted me to grow up and be decisive, or perhaps he just didn’t feel like repeating himself. Who knows, but despite all the subsequent obsessing, the decision turned out to be the right one. That fall we headed off for the new school, which (thanks to an excellent exchange rate) ended up being cheaper without a scholarship than the first would have been with one. In the end, the program I majored in (Biblical Studies) was not even available at the first school, and the new school ended up being just what I needed. But I had also learned an important lesson: Like any relationship, following God requires both trust and decisiveness. Neither obsessive hand-wringing about his wishes, nor uncritical acceptance of one’s own will do. He’s not looking for unthinking drones who expect to be told what to do with every detail of their lives; he’s looking for partners in his work in the world.