Knowing God’s Voice When He Speaks

If prayer includes as one of its privileges communion with God, it follows that God has a part in this communion, as well as man. If a child of God confidently asks ‘guidance from his Father, the Father may be expected to respond to the child with the special guidance sought. This seems a reasonable expectation on the child’s part, and an expectation that seems justified by God’s explicit teaching to his children, in both the Old Testament and the New. In all the ages God’s most trustful children have felt that they could expect explicit direction in response to prayer, and multitudes of them have been ready to bear witness that they have not been disappointed.

God promised his people by the prophet Isaiah, as they had need and sought his WUlustrative Bnewers to Prayer

help, “Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it; when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isa. 30: 21.) Again God promised by his apostle James, “If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed” (James I: 5, 6).

These promises I, like many another, early recognized as assured of God, and I was encouraged by them. Yet I knew that many had permitted themselves to be misled through not interpreting these. promises aright, and I had to admit that one might fall into grievous error and unjustifiable excesses through fanaticism or folly, even while he supposed he was following God’s literal counsel. I even saw that I was sometimes inclined to follow an

impulse or an unreasonable impression as 20

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to my personal duty, when I really desired to act as God directed. Therefore I questioned in my mind whether I was being misled by an uncertain sound in my spiritual ears, and, if so, how this could be avoided.

While I was speaking of this subject, one day, with a friend known and prized from my boyhood, the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Parsons, then of Springfield, later of Boston and of Buffalo and of Toronto, he said to me suggestively: “Henry, it’s a great thing to know the Lord’s voice when he speaks to us, and not to mistake anything else for it.” That utterance started me on a new train of thought, and I began to consider the limitations within which alone I might properly expect to hear God’s voice directing me. These recognized limits have helped me ever since to exclude what might otherwise have been a cause of my frequent misleading.

In the first place, we have no right to 21

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seek special guidance from God when our plain duty for the hour is already pointed out in the teachings of his Word, or in the circumstances of our position or relations. We need not ask God whether we shall love our parents or our children, or be good citizens, or give help to those who need it, and who apply to us for what we have to give. Nor need we ask God to tell us whether we are to work or to sleep or to eat or to take exercise at proper hours. If escaping gas fouls the atmosphere of a close room, we ought to know that opening a window to the fresh air is our duty, without waiting for any new revelation from God. Only within reasonable limits, and then where we are otherwise unable to know just in what way we are to act, is it proper for us to ask God’s added and special help and guidance in our sphere.

In the next place, it is evident that God will never contradict himself. Having laid down in his Word well-defined principles

for our guidance, God will never call on us 22

Knowing God’s Woice when be Speaks

to act otherwise than in accordance with those principles. “God is not a God of confusion,” but of order and of peace. Where our duty is already clear, we may be sure that nothing is from God that would tempt us to do differently. This shuts out all wrong-doing as possibly directed of God.

Then, again, no call can be from God when it would seemingly summon us to a new duty while we are already in the discharge of a particular duty in God’s providence with which the new task would conflict. Thus, for example, if we had left our home to summon the doctor for a sick member of our family, we might know that God would not call us on the way to turn aside and visit a needy neighbor in order to give sympathy or help. God is never in such extremity that he has to call one child of his to two conflicting duties, — if, indeed, duties ever do conflict.

The limitations indicated by such guarding principles as these practically shut out Ulustrative Answers to Prayer

most of the difficulties which might lead one amiss in supposing that a guiding voice came from God in answer to special prayer. In all the years that followed this decision I have had little hesitation in accepting God’s voice as God’s voice, while I have had frequent occasion to hear and to heed that voice in little matters and in greater. I give a few illustrations out of many that I might give as showing how good it is to know God’s voice and to conform to its teachings.

I was at work at my library table in Hartford one evening. I had just finished a piece of work for a Sunday-school magazine in Chicago. I had definitely promised the article, and it must be mailed that evening in order to be on time. I was, moreover, to leave home on the midnight train for Boston in order to fill an important religious appointment on the next day. As I was folding my finished Chicago manuscript I was startled by hearing a cry

of pain from my wife in the room above 24

Rnowing God’s Woice when be Speaks

me. Starting from my seat, I bounded upstairs to my wife’s assistance. She had burned her hand slightly with a spiritlamp. Having assisted her in its treatment, I returned to my library; but my finished manuscript was not to be found.

After searching the table and the floor for it, I went upstairs again to see if by any possibility I had taken it with me, or dropped it on the way. Then I searched my eight or ten pockets, thinking that I might have slipped it into one of these as I sprang at the cry of pain. But still it was not to be found. The time approached for my start for Boston. The manuscript for Chicago must be mailed before I left. I was in extremity, and I realized it. Sol dropped on my knees at my study table, and called on God for help.

I am accustomed at such a time to state fully the case to my God, as if to convince myself that I am not shirking any duty, but am doing as I am entitled to do in his service. I told God that all this had Ulustrative Answers to Prayer

occurred while I was at work as his child. The manuscript was for him; so was my jumping to my wife’s relief, so also was my purposed trip to Boston. Moreover, I had exhausted my efforts to recover the paper, which must be found at once. He could help me. What should I do? At once there came the familiar voice to me, or the mental impression as if a voice had said:

“Stand up, and throw off your coat and vest.”

No explanation was added. I asked for none, but instantly I did as I was directed. As my vest was turned back I discovered the missing manuscript in a pocket in the inner lining of that vest, which I had not before known was there. Without stopping even to wonder over the incident I dropped again on my knees, and gave God thanks for his goodness; then I hurried on my way to Boston, mailing the paper as I went.

A little subsequent thought made the

probable course of events clear to my 26

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mind, yet without lessening the importance of God’s special ministry in it all. My coat had been buttoned over my vest as I rose from my chair at the call for help in the upper room. I had instinctively attempted to put the paper into the right breast-pocket of my coat. Unintentionally, I had slipped it inside the vest as well as the coat, and it had entered the pocket of which I was not aware. Up to that time I had never known of such a pocket, although I afterwards found that such pockets were common.

While this was all within the realm of the natural, I was none the less helpless to find the missing paper within the time allowed me; and:I needed God’s supernatural oversight of the natural in order to enable me to do my duty for him in my little sphere. And he came to my relief with his guiding voice, as he is ever ready to do for his children, according to their need and their faith.

At another time, I was one day making 27

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arrangements to leave my Hartford home, in the evening, for a long trip to the North and West, in the line of my Sunday-school evangelistic work. I called at the bank, and drew a sum of money sufficient for my expenses while absent. I attended to various other matters at different places. Near the close of the day, at my home, I desired to use a portion of the money I had drawn, but, to my surprise, I could not find it. In vain I tried to recall where I had put it. I remembered taking it from the teller, at his window, but all after that was a blank in my mind with reference to it. I had been at various points in the city, and I had been in different parts of my house; but I knew of no one place more than another where I might hope to find the missing money.

In my extremity I asked, on my knees, for God’s help. I told him that this money was his, and that I had not intentionally been careless with reference to it. I could

not find it, nor did I know where to look. 28

TRnowing God’s Voice when be Speaks

Would he direct me? At once the word came:

“Go down the kitchen stairs, and look on the cellar floor.”

Rising, and doing as directed, I found the roll of bank-notes on the cellar floor, near the foot of the stairs. I thanked God for his goodness, and determined to be more careful the next time in putting any money I drew from the bank in a safe place at the start.

How the roll of notes came to be where I found it, I do not know, nor was it for me to explain; it may be that I put the money loosely in my vest-pocket when I received it from the teller, and that it remained there until it slipped out, as I went down the kitchen stairs in my going about the house. All was, I suppose, in the line of natural laws supernaturally controlled for the good of a trustful child of God. This again is but one instance out of many of God’s loving dealings with me, for which

I am profoundly grateful.
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Nor is it in matters of material things only that we can have God’s guiding voice in our need. In things spiritual, also, we are privileged to commune with God and be helped. God is as ready to give comfort or salvation to a trusting soul as he is to give help and direction to one who looks for lost treasure. And with God there is no such measure as with man as to things great or small, easy or difficult. Of this also I have had rich experience, and to this I bear glad testimony.

For example, at one time I found myself disturbed and worried over a strange temptation in my thoughts. It hindered me in my reading, in my writing, and in my thinking. I could not shut it out from my mind, try I never so earnestly. Yet I could not see how I was directly responsible for its constant presence with me. I wanted to get away from it, or to get it away from me.

In my dilemma, after several days of

struggling, I called on God for special help, 30

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or I communed with him in my perplexity. I asked God why I should have this special trouble, when I wanted my mind free for his assigned work in my sphere. I asked if he would not interpose and give me relief. Could he not take that temptation away? At once there came this unexpected response:

“Of course, I can instantly relieve you from this struggle. But which would you prefer. — to keep on with this fight for victory over the temptation in the strength that I will give you, and be the gainer in true manhood through the struggle, or to be wholly relieved at once from the conflict, and be so much less of a man in consequence?”

When that was the issue before me, I called out to God earnestly: “Let me be no less of a man than I am. If that be the choice, let this fight go on, and I be the gainer, in thy strength, through it all.”

Yet, strange to say, from that moment I

had no more trouble with that temptation. 31

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