The Voice of God or Another Voice?

Question: Pastor Mike, when I listened to your sermons a few weeks back, you told us that we should not always consider what we think as a word of God, because it could be what Satan is telling us OR what our "instincts" or something is telling us. So, my question is this: "How is this 'instincts' different from word of God or that of Satan and how can we differentiate between those three?" Come to think of it, I think the second part is covered in the sermon (that those thoughts should be compared with the Bible), but refreshers won't hurt.

I think there are few things that give a pastor more joy than when someone asks a follow up question to a sermon. It shows you’re paying attention. Thank you!

To lay out a bit of context, we’ve been looking at Revelation chapters 1-3 over the past several Sundays. In chapters 2 and 3, Christ addresses 7 specific churches. The overall story of Revelation is the story of Christ winning the battle over evil, and of how the Church, as God’s people, shares in that victory. In Chapter 21, we see a picture of the triumphant Church, the New Jerusalem. This city is perfect; there is not trace of evil or suffering or struggle in it. God’s people and God are living in perfect, harmonious fellowship. In chapters 2 and 3, however, Christ is addressing the struggling Church on earth. This Church is still fighting in the battle between good and evil. In our day, we still live in the Church of Revelation 2 and 3, and so the struggles they faced then are still prevalent today. Even as God speaks to the Church, there are other, evil, voices also trying to tell us what to do and believe. Looking at these chapters, and the rest of Scripture, we can identify four voices that speak to us today. One is good, and the other three are evil.

The good voice, as you might expect, is the voice of God. We might break down how God speaks to us in two ways, and our inquirer who asked this question hinted at both of them. Firstly, God communicates to us by Scripture. Scripture provides us with God’s own self-revelation, and reveals to us the type of life we are called to live. God gave us Scripture by means of the Holy Spirit inspiring human authors, namely the prophets and apostles. The second way in which God speaks to us today is by this same Holy Spirit. It’s tempting when we speak of this to think in terms of supernatural phenomena, but most often the Holy Spirit speaks in much more subtle ways. The phrase many like to use to describe this is “the still small voice.” Sometimes when we pray, for example, we might later get this “hunch” (for want of a better term) that God answered us. It’s not that we necessarily hear a voice speak to us out of a burning bush, but we simply come to a peace that we didn’t have before regarding our concern, or we simply feel prompted to take a certain course of action. In both cases, when God speaks in Scripture and to us directly, it is in both cases by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in both cases for the sake of pointing us to Jesus Christ and His will for us.

The three evil voices are commonly referred to as the world, the flesh (what our questioner and I in my sermon referred to as “instincts), and the Devil. We’ll consider each of these briefly. We see in Revelation 2-3 how the Church struggled with the world around them. The world tried to tell them to worships idols and Caesar, and to indulge in sexual immorality. Even today, the world tries to tell us what to do, what we should look like, how we should dress, act, believe and so on. We also see in Revelation 2-3 how the Church struggled with it’s own flesh or instinct. Some of the churches we read of had people within them who taught that it was ok to be sexually promiscuous, other churches had, even as they opposed the “world,” still on their own forgotten their first love, Jesus Christ. Even today, we still struggle with our own sinful desires and actions, even as people saved by Christ. Our own natural instincts are sinful, and tempt us turn away from Jesus Christ. Lastly, we see in Revelation 2-3 the Church attacked by the Devil. Again, it’s tempting to think about the Devil and demons and such in terms of supernatural things. While I don’t want to discount such phenomena, the Devil most often works and speaks to us in more subtle manners. Anything that takes our attention away from Jesus Christ, the Devil uses. (If you have a chance, I recommend reading C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Even if you only read a chapter or two, it will give you a good idea of what I’m talking about.) Frankly, these three “voices” are often very difficult to distinguish from one another, and what’s more frustrating is that they’re all very good at sounding like the voice of the Holy Spirit. This is why we need to be careful when we’re discerning God’s will for our lives, or when others in the church claim to have had a “special revelation from God.” The Devil, and even the world and our own flesh, are capable of producing such revelations.

So, the next question is: How do we tell the difference? How do we know if our decisions and actions are God’s will, or the will of one of the three “other voices?” As the questioner reminded us, we first need to know Scripture, God’s Word to us. The Holy Spirit is not a schizophrenic, anything the Holy Spirit calls us to will be in conformity the principles of God’s working in Scripture. If we think God has told us something or called us to something and it turns out to be in opposition to Scripture, then the call wasn’t from God. Secondly, the purpose of God working by the Holy Spirit in our lives is always to point us to Jesus Christ. So, when we try to determine whether a particular call or course of action is of God, we should ask ourselves, “will this course of action bring honor to Jesus Christ?” Answering that question will help us to see which voice we’re hearing from.