God’s Voice is Not Tangible, and Not in Space and Time

The second feature of hearing the Lord’s voice that I mentioned is this: It’s intangible. It can’t be touched. We can’t apprehend it with our sight. We can’t apprehend it with our feeling. There’s only one sense that apprehends a voice and that is the sense of hearing. You see, most of our religious associations relate us to something tangible. When we talk about religion, we think about something in space and in time; a building, a church, certain kinds of furniture, pews, pulpits, maybe stained-glass windows, organs, certain kinds of clothing. In some churches they wear special vestments. In most churches people dress up a little bit different to go to church. Certain kinds of books, prayer books, hymn books, books with stiff covers and (in the days when I was a regular church-goer) they were usually black. There was a certain kind of a field of associations which was tangible. It was in space and time. It was associated with a place and with things. But hearing God’s voice has got none of those features. It’s not restricted to any particular place. It doesn’t have any kind of uniform or clothing or furniture or building. It’s just out there. It’s very, in a way, tricky. It’s almost dangerous. You’ve got nothing to cling onto. All the old associations, all the crutches, as Luther called them, have been taken away, and you’re just in that intimate personal relationship with the Lord, an intangible relationship.

The third feature that I wish to point out about hearing the Lord’s voice is that it is always present in the sense of time. Hearing God’s voice is never in the past and never in the future. It’s always now. Only now can we hear a voice. A book we can pick up and read and put down and say it’s over there. Or we can say, “I’ll look at it again tomorrow.” But a voice is only now. A voice has no past. A voice has no future. It shuts us up to the present. You see, what I’ve noticed about religious people is, much of their thinking is always about the past or the future. Christians talk about what happened in the days of Moses, or what happened in the days of Jesus, or in the days of Peter. That’s all in the past. Or, they talk about what will happen when we go to heaven; how beautiful that will be. Well, I agree with that but we’re not living in the past. We’re not living in the future. We’re living in the present. And a lot of religious people really hardly live because everything to them is either past or future. But when you realize that you’ve got to relate to God through hearing His voice, then that forces you into a present relationship, a present experience. It was interesting when the Lord appeared to Moses in the desert and sent him back to deliver his people out of Egypt. Moses had a very practical question. This is recorded in Exodus, chapter 3, verses 13 and 14:

“Suppose I go to the Israelites, and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’’

You see, 'I am' is present. It’s not past; it’s not future. God’s name is present. God is living now. Our relationship with God needs to be now, and as we learn to hear God’s voice, we have that present, personal relationship with the Lord.