In the 10th chapter of John, we hear Jesus telling his disciples that “my sheep know my voice.” Just as in our relationships with the people in our life, we learn to recognize God’s voice speaking to us through familiarity. The more we actively listen for God’s voice, the more we recognize it when He speaks to us and the more opportunities we have to learn directly from Him. In this church, God has blessed us with two incredibly gifted teachers in Rob and Neil. In addition, many of us have been blessed by the teaching of Beth Moore in the bible studies we have done. However, we would be wise to not let any human teacher be our only source of knowledge about Who God is. When we begin to be taught directly by God, we start to learn about God’s character not only through gifted teaching, but by God revealing Himself to us in our day to day lives.
When I think of being taught by God, I think about the times that I have come across a scripture that I have read many times before. However, on this occasion when I read it, it suddenly makes sense…becomes meaningful to me…in a way that it never has before. Another example of being taught by God would be the times that I have listened to a sermon or a bible study video and I look around the room to see if anyone else is listening because this sermon or this lesson was clearly written just for me!! I believe it is often God’s voice that speaks to me to say “hold your tongue” in those situations where I would normally have run my mouth (or is that one just me?) Or how about the times when a friend offers words of encouragement at exactly the right moment without knowing how much we needed to hear it. Or maybe it is us God nudges to offer a similar word of encouragement and we then find out God has used our words to build up our struggling friend. Perhaps, like me, you have experienced seeing something so beautiful, so breathtaking, that you feel like God sent that flower or that sunset as a present just for you. These are all examples of God revealing Himself to us and teaching us more about who He is and Whose we are.
The warning here is this: once God starts teaching us directly, once we start noticing that God is speaking to us all of the time and we just weren’t listening before, we can no longer remain the same. We are changed by His presence and by His teaching. That leads us to the second point.
Check in tomorrow for Part 3–Being Moved by God!
