The world is full of voices trying to get our attention. How can we distinguish God’s voice from all the others? Jesus tells us in John 10, “The shepherd of the sheep calls his own sheep by name and leads them out–his sheep follow him because they know his voice–I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”
Is there a way we can truly experience the peace of God? There is, and Bible explains it in several ways. For example, in James 1:21–22, we are told, “Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the Word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Most of us, when faced with a big decision, find it difficult to hear God counsel. We pray and ask God’s blessings but hear nothing. Perhaps we can’t hear God because we suffer from the spiritual equivalent of ear wax–primarily because we have ignored God’s counsel to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (James 1:19). Thankfully the passage in James tells us how we can hear God: we are to “get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:21-22).
I sometimes tell myself I am becoming spiritually deaf, but I suspect that my ears work perfectly and my trouble hearing God is due to the spiritual equivalent of ear wax. All the noise and demands of the world around me seem to produce a kind of sludge that clogs my mind and dulls my ability to hear God’s will. For that, there is only one solution: I need to get clean, and it starts with allowing Jesus to wash the dirt from my soul. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that Christ loves the church (his apprentices) and gave himself to make us holy, cleansing us with God’s Word.
