Hearing God's Voice by Heidebrecht Vern

Author:Heidebrecht, Vern [Heidebrecht, Vern]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2009-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

6

God Speaks to Us through People

So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing

the Good News about Christ.

—Romans 10:17

I also learned to expect his speaking to come through me to others.

—Dallas Willard1

GOD USES HUMAN TONGUES TO COMMUNICATE HIS MESSAGE TO others. We Christians are equipped with the gift of the Holy Spirit to do this in power and clarity. At times, the messenger may share God’s message in a formal teaching situation. On other occasions, however, the Holy Spirit may speak the Word of the Lord through us in spontaneous and surprising ways. If the truth were known, we would be surprised and affirmed by how often God actually speaks through us.

The story of Jacob and his sons illustrates how uniquely God’s message can be delivered. Because Joseph, the son of Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, was his father’s favorite, his brothers were jealous of him. One day Jacob sent Joseph to visit his brothers and see how everything was going with them. The brothers apparently were some distance away, tending their flocks at Shechem. When Joseph got there, the brothers were not to be found. But he met a certain man in the field who asked him, “What are you looking for?” (Gen. 37:15). When Joseph told him that he was looking for his brothers, the man said, “They are no longer here. I heard your brothers say they were going to Dothan” (Gen. 37:17). So, eventually he was able to find his brothers, and they, in a fit of rage, sold him to a passing caravan as a slave. Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he was elevated to be Pharaoh’s chief minister, guiding Egypt through a famine and becoming a Bible hero. Eventually his brothers came to Egypt for food and discovered the brother they had mistreated so badly.

But there is more to the story. Where did that certain man in the field come from? The Bible does not waste words. It is obvious that God used him to be a vital communication link to help Joseph find his brothers. The man was a minor character in the drama—but he was not superfluous. If Joseph had not encountered that man, the whole story would have ended differently. Pharaoh would never have had Joseph’s advice, advice that made Egypt the only place in the Near East with abundant grain during the famine. Jacob’s family would never have migrated to Egypt. The Israelite people would never have been enslaved. There would have been no Moses, no exodus, no Ten Commandments. The history of the world would have been radically different.

Did the man in the field even remember meeting the teenager who couldn’t find his brothers? Did he recall being part of a five-sentence conversation? And if he did remember the conversation, could he possibly imagine that that brief communication would change history?

There’s no question that God sends messages through us and to us. Yet many times we fail to fully recognize and appreciate the critical messages that God wants to send through us.

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