My Sheep Hear My Voice

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. JOHN 10:27

If faith is a heart responding to the moving of God, then the believer must learn to recognise when God is moving. Evans gives a whole chapter of He Holds My Tomorrows to hearing God’s voice, and the theme runs through his sermons. His teaching here is a careful balance. On one side he insists that God does speak and that His sheep should expect to hear Him. On the other he is openly sceptical of much that passes for hearing God, and he warns against the damage it does.

Would it be easier with a voice from the bush?

He begins with Moses at the burning bush and asks the question most of us have asked. Would it not be easy to walk in God’s will if He spoke to us in an audible voice, as He spoke to Moses? Evans’s answer is surprising. Perhaps not. If we heard God as clearly as that, we would have no excuse at all for disobedience, and our obedience might be the obedience of fear rather than of love. God, he says, has never compelled or manipulated His people. He looks for people in whom obedience has become second nature, who obey because they love Him and want to.

And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 1 KINGS 19:12

That is why He usually speaks, not in wind, earthquake or fire, but in a still small voice that can be heard only by a soul in tune with Him. Elijah, exhausted and afraid, was not restored by a display of power but by that quiet voice. Evans adds a gentle twist to Jesus’ words to Thomas. Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who believe without seeing; the same blessing, Evans suggests, rests on those who obey without ever hearing God aloud.

Why we do not hear

If God is speaking, why do so many of His sheep not hear? Evans’s answer is that His voice is drowned by the noise of other voices. He admits that this is true of himself. He believes God speaks to him every day, but the din of his own thoughts, the world’s demands and the church’s busyness often crowd Him out.

He draws, unusually for an evangelical of his background, on the Desert Fathers, who withdrew from a newly respectable Christendom to seek God in the silence of the desert. He does not think we must become monks. But he thinks we must recover what they knew: that stillness, inner silence and time are needed if we are to recognise God’s voice. God speaks, he says, not chiefly to the intellect but to the spirit, where His Spirit communicates with ours. No degree is required, only a heart that is listening.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. PSALM 46:10

In He Holds My Tomorrows he lists five things he believes we need if we are to hear God: a hunger for His will; a heart set on obeying whatever He asks; time in His Word; a quiet place for meditation; and inner silence and solitude. None of them is exotic. All of them are costly in a busy life.

The Lord told me

Yet Evans is no enthusiast for every claim to divine guidance. He confesses that few things disconcert a pastor more than a conversation that begins with someone announcing that the Lord has told them something, as though that closes the matter before counsel can begin. When he gently asks how the Lord spoke, the answer, he says, is often no more than a thought, perhaps stirred by the emotion of a meeting or the suggestion of a friend.

He has seen real harm done this way. He tells of volunteers who came to serve on the Mercy Ship because the Lord had told them to, and who discovered within weeks that it was not where they wanted to be. More seriously, he knew women who left faithful husbands because they believed the Lord had told them to, in plain contradiction of Scripture. God never tells anyone to do what His Word forbids.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1 JOHN 4:1

His practical counsel is simple and wise. God genuinely leads through many means: through Scripture, the counsel of friends, dreams, circumstances, a verse that becomes prominent, or a growing inner desire. These are best taken together rather than singly. And it is far better to say, humbly, that we believe the Lord would have us do something than to announce that the Lord told us. The first invites testing; the second flatters the speaker and can badly harm the credibility of the gospel.

A word in the bottom drawer

Evans is equally careful about prophecy. He values the gift and believes it belongs in the church today, but he has seen many believers confused and hurt by personal prophecies spoken over them from platforms, with little accountability when they failed to come to pass. He passes on, with approval, advice he once heard from a leader in Youth With A Mission: that a personal word of prophecy should be put away, as it were, in a locked drawer. It is not given for present direction. If it is from God, a day will come, perhaps in a hard place, when you will remember it and take courage that God foresaw where He would bring you. What the church most needs, he adds, is the gift of discernment.

Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:19–21

Rare moments

Evans does not pretend that God never speaks in unusual ways. He tells of a few rare occasions when he heard what he can only describe as an audible voice, always at a time of heaviness rather than spiritual achievement. Once, on a hill on Vancouver Island, he was told he would pastor the church in Victoria; he and Anne told no one and did nothing to bring it about, and months later the invitation came unprompted.

He is careful to add that such experiences are rare, that they did not make him more spiritual, and that his trust in God is not built on them. It is built on the daily confidence that God leads him as he keeps hold of His hand.

Listening together

The most distinctive part of Evans’s teaching on this subject concerns listening as a church. He tells of prayer meetings in which a group would read a psalm, wait in silence for a set time, and then share any thoughts, pictures or scriptures that had come to mind, without trying to interpret them. He watched patterns emerge that none of the individuals had seen, and learned to pray accordingly. In one story he tells in several places, a small class found their thoughts converging on government, First Nations people and a white ship, and discovered minutes later, from a visitor in the room, that a vessel was about to be purchased for exactly such a ministry. They prayed it into being.

Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 18:19

The lesson Evans draws is not that every group will receive such striking confirmation, but that God delights to make His heart known to a people who wait on Him together, and that there is safety in the many. Guidance that is tested among humble believers is far less likely to go astray than guidance claimed in isolation.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Set aside fifteen minutes this week to sit in silence with a psalm, asking the Lord to speak. Write down anything that comes to mind, and test it by Scripture.

2. Review Evans’s five needs: hunger for God’s will, a heart set on obedience, time in the Word, a quiet place, and inner silence. Which is weakest in your life? Make one change.

3. If you have ever claimed that the Lord told you something that turned out to be mistaken, bring it to Him without shame and learn from it.

4. The next time you sense God’s leading, speak of it humbly and invite a mature believer to weigh it with you.

5. Suggest to your small group or prayer meeting a time of silent waiting on God, followed by sharing and prayer.

A PRAYER

Good Shepherd, You have said that Your sheep hear Your voice. Forgive me for letting so many other voices drown Yours.

Teach me to be still, to wait, and to listen. Give me a heart that wants Your will more than its own, and a spirit tuned to Yours.

Guard me from mistaking my own thoughts for Your word, and from ever using Your name to justify what Your Word forbids.

Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening, and give me grace to obey. Amen.