I was watching a youtube short today from a church that I follow in Columbia and the pastor used an amazing illustration about hearing God’s voice that I would like to share and add to on today’s post.

Throughout my years of being in church one the things I have heard repeated many times is how people have struggled to hear God’s voice. That has led some to conclude that He doesn’t speak at all, some to think that there is something wrong with them precluding them from hearing God, or others to think that only certain people receive that privilege. I understand their questions because there have been many occasions where I have felt the same thing. However, we know from the Scriptures that these conclusions can’t be correct and this illustration will hopefully help if you are asking similar questions.

Sitting comfortably? Then I will begin………

One day a busker set up to play his violin in a Washington DC metro station just like we might see in any big city. The busker played as thousands of people rushed about their day to day business. Out of the thousands that passed by him that day only 7 people stopped to listen and in total he collected $32.17 from 27 people who decided to throw some change in his case.

So what you might ask.

Well one important piece of information I left out is the busker was the world famous violinist Joshua Bell. Joshua is arguably one of the most talented violinists the world has known. From the age of 14 he played with the Philadelphia orchestra, he first played in Carnegie Hall when he was 17 years old, released his first EP when he was 18, has won multiple Grammys and has performed on countless movie scores. He plays a 300 year old violin worth millions of dollars and the week before his subway busking he sold out a nearby theatre where fans payed around $100 a ticket.

One week hundreds packed out a theatre paying big money to hear him and the next week thousands passed him by and gave up a measly $32.17.

If we were to ask the thousands of people who passed Joshua by that day whether they had ever seen or heard the world famous Joshua Bell perform all but 7 people (and out of that 7 only 1 person recognised him) might say yes. The rest would most likely say “no, I have never seen or heard him play.”

The reality is that they all saw or heard him play, it’s just that they didn’t pay enough attention to realise that they could listen to Him.

You can see where this is going when it comes to hearing God speak right? If I was to go into my local community and ask 1000 people whether or not they could hear God’s voice or if they had ever heard speak I wonder what their answer would be? I think many would respond with a big NO.

Does that mean that He hasn’t been speaking?

Or is the issue that we haven’t been listening?

The people who turned up to the Joshua Bell concert would all say that they heard him play very clearly. The reason is they knew he could play, they invested money to be ready to hear him and turned up with the expectation and desire to listen.

I believe if we want to hear God’s voice we need to turn up our attention level. He is always speaking through so many different ways and if we would only tune in our minds and ears to hear Him we would realise this so much. This tuning in is a challenge in our ‘always on’ distracted world but it is not impossible.

It is a choice that we must make, we must be proactive in our pursuit to hear His voice.