Hearing the Lord

A young girl timidly walked into the tiny studio for her second guitar lesson.  Her spry energy made her blonde pigtails bounce with each bounding step, and made me grin.  She pulled her guitar out of its case and sat down expectantly, smiling with the innocent joy of an nine-year-old.  The girl had brought some of her favorite songs and we were going to listen to them to start our lessons and to get a better understanding of what she liked about music and guitar.

I played the first song and pointed out the guitar line.  I asked her if she heard it and, with a confused look, she assured me that she could.  We played the second song, I repeated my previous extrapolations, asked her if she could hear it and, like before, she nodded, this time more confused than confident.  After a few more times of this, it was clear that the young girl was becoming increasingly frustrated.  Her joy had turned to bewilderment as the tears started to well her precious eyes and she looked up at me and, with sincerity, she quivered: "I don't know what you mean.  All I hear is music, I can't hear the guitar.  I don't know what it sounds like!"

In a spiritual sense, we are all like the bright-eyed, pigtailed nine-year-old girl.  We assume that we can hear the voice of God through the noise of this world.  However, when pressed, only when God gives us ears that can hear His voice are we able to hear Him speak.  Consider Jesus' consistent qualifier, "He who has ears, let him hear."

As for music, in order to pick apart the various tones and timbres of the different instruments, the listener must be trained to hear through the polyphony.  For instance, one would never be able to aurally deconstruct the assorted instruments of an orchestra without knowing already what the various instruments sound like.  In truth, one could never pull out the sound of the guitar if he/she had never heard what a guitar sounded like.

Similarly, we can never hear the piercing of God's voice through the cacophony of this world, if we have never known His voice.  In order for us to hear Him, we must know what He sounds like.  If we do not have that knowledge neither will we be able to hear Him nor be able to discern whether it is His voice or a counterfeit.

Consider the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9).  Saul had been zealous for God, persecuting Christians because he felt that he was called by God to do it (as recounted in Acts 22:3-8).  Yet when Saul heard a thundering voice speak to him by name, he cried out, "Who are You, Lord?"  The point is that, though he thought he had been devoted and called by God, when the Lord actually spoke to Paul he did not recognize who it was.  

Often times we, like Paul, assume that we hear the voice of the Lord but when we are confronted with the truth we, like my frustrated guitar student, are humbled and saddened by our own prideful deficiencies.  Fortunately, we need not be wholly disillusioned that we do not hear His voice.  We have an advocate with the Holy Lord who indwells our hearts with His Holy Spirit so that we would hear the true voice of God.  

It is as if our hearts are radio receivers that, unless they are tuned into the correct frequency (His Son) we will not be able to receive the transmission.  In truth, though, God is the not only station trying to transmit to our hearts, however, He is the only True One!  As Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me (John 10:27)."  Let us then seek after Him fully in order that we might tune into His voice with the utmost clarity!