Why is hearing the voice of God so very important? Without intimacy with God, Christianity turns stagnant. To put it in common language, “It’s no fun!”

Everyone knows, or so I think, that our lives today are very busy and they are filled with all kinds of stuff. Many of us, in the workplace, are forced to work longer and harder than ever before to make ends meet. Roughly 80% of women today work outside of the home, which means juggling home life, will be a challenge, especially with children to care for.

So how does one carve out time to be with God?

When the hunger for God becomes stronger than all of the other things you do in your life, then and perhaps only then will you re-prioritise your life to spend time with him. Many times, we find God only when we are in trouble, when we desperately need Him. Some people never find Him, because their life is one long struggle to survive. When they reach the end of their life they find they have no real relationship with Him. He is distant, a kind of mystery. They have never felt close to Him and they have never heard His voice.

My life took a dramatic turn on October 1st of my senior year in high school. By the world’s standards, I had it all. I had lettered in both football and basketball in my sophomore years, which earned me a letterman’s jacket. The jacket drew the girls. In addition to that, I was the bass player and one of the lead singers in a Rock and Roll group and we were very popular in the area.

But despite having succeeded at a high level in my world, inside I was empty and miserable. In my junior year, a classmate invited me to her church choir practice. She was persistent, inviting me week after week, until I agreed to come just to get her off my back.

There, a peculiar thing happened. I felt God’s presence and a connection. I knew the only thing that would fill the terrible vacuum inside was a relationship with God. We argued for six months, God and I. I didn’t want to give up my Rock and Roll group, which was the god of my life.

God is jealous, you know. He wants to be the object of our love and affection. The first commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Why? Why should you do that?

Because God made you for Himself, with a God-shaped vacuum inside. The only one who can fill that vacuum is God, Himself. When God is first in your life, then and only then will you find true happiness.

So, six months down the road from that God encounter at choir practice, the Rock and Roll group was having its biggest dance to date. We were enterprising young men. We rented the town hall in the town where I went to school and held our own dances. We actually made pretty good money.

That night the place was full. About 300 kids came through our dance that night. The population of the town was only 300!

There on the stage, blasting out rock music and watching hundreds of kids gyrating to the music on the dance floor below, God arrested my attention. In my head it was perfectly quiet, as if someone had turned off the music. In the complete silence inside my head, God spoke to me, “George, you know you’ll never be happy this way, but you have to make the decision. I can’t make it for you.”

On the following Monday I met our lead player in the hall of the school right outside study hall. I told him I was quitting the group because I was giving my life to Christ. It was a short one-sided conversation, and then I walked away down the hall. As I walked down that hall, it was as if a fifty pound rock rolled off of my back. I felt really free, like I never had before in my life, because I had given my life to Christ.

That night in the big dance I heard God’s voice. It is the first time I can remember that I had ever heard it, but how life changing and liberating it was. God always has good things to say to us because he loves us so much.

That’s the whole idea of hearing His voice. Though it might seem trite, God has a plan for your life. He has  always had, even before you were born. Psalm 139:16 says ” . . . all the stages of my life were spread out before You, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day (Message Bible).”

That’s incredible! He planned the days of our lives before we were ever born?

Well, if He did that, then He has a plan for my life and yours, does He not?

Yes, He does and that’s why it is so important to learn to hear His voice. How will we know what He wants us to do unless we learn to hear His voice?

In the next days and weeks, I will be expanding on this topic, “Learning to Hear the Voice of God.“

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