Find Your Voice

The word of the LORD came to me.

Jeremiah 1:4

When I was nineteen years old, the Holy Spirit awakened me from my sleep in the middle of the night. It had never happened before, and it has never happened since. I grabbed my Bible and knelt at the foot of my bed. When I flipped the Bible open, it landed on Jeremiah 1. I started reading it, and it started reading me. In the original context, God was speaking to Jeremiah, but it was as though the Holy Spirit was speaking directly to me. Jeremiah’s calling is my calling.

I didn’t fully understand the ramifications or implications of this singular event that took place more than two decades ago. In fact, I still don’t. God’s callings aren’t understood or accomplished in months or years or decades. It usually takes a lifetime. And one verse in particular always confused me.

It’s the last sentence that didn’t make sense: “I appointed you … to the nations.”

It confused me because I’ve never felt called to be a missionary. I didn’t know how that part of the calling would be fulfilled. That’s when a friend sent me an e-mail that opened my eyes and helped me connect the dots.

It was the last phrase that caught my attention: to the nations.

I feel as called to write as I do to pastor, but I never viewed my writing as being prophetic or international. Then it dawned on me that my books are translated into more than a dozen languages. In a moment of revelation, I realized that God had fulfilled His promise, and I didn’t even know it. I was appointed to the nations, but not by moving to a mission field. My books are like messages in a bottle that land on distant shores.

I’ve received countless letters from readers all around the world, but I never connected the dots. I just didn’t know that God would fulfill this part of my calling in this particular way. But that’s how God works, isn’t it? He tricks us. We think we’re going somewhere to do something, but God always has ulterior motives. There is a rhyme and reason to His will that we aren’t even aware of.

Voiceprint

All of us have a unique voiceprint, not just physically but spiritually as well. God wants to speak through you differently than through anyone else. Your life is a unique translation of Scripture. It doesn’t matter what you do — politician, preacher, entertainer, homemaker, teacher, musician, lawyer, or doctor. You are called to be a prophetic voice to the people God places in your life. But the key to discovering your prophetic voice is cultivating a prophetic ear. If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.

During a recent trip to Ethiopia, I met several amazing leaders. A group of about a dozen political, medical, and business leaders meet regularly as part of a Bible study. God is using them to shape a country and a continent. I met a woman who plays a pivotal role in the African Union, a doctor who is building a hospital in a rural region of Ethiopia, and a developer who is designing the first PGA-quality golf course of its kind in East Africa. What I discovered during my visit is that they have one thing in common: all of them spend one day a week in prayer and fasting. Many of them don’t even go into work on that day! We may be tempted to think they’re less productive because they give up a day of work, but maybe they are more productive because they waste far less time on nonproductive pursuits.

We live in a culture in which everybody wants to be heard, but many people have nothing to say. Don’t worry about building a platform. If you listen to God, people will listen to you. Why? Because you’ll have something to say! And God will give you a platform to speak from.

So how do we hear the voice of God?

The first thing to do is open your Bible. When you open your Bible, God opens His mouth. The surest way to get a word from the Lord is by getting into God’s Word. God will speak to you. Then God will speak through you.

In the process, make sure you have no unconfessed sin in your life. Sin doesn’t just harden the heart; it also hardens our hearing. In fact, it makes us turn a deaf ear to God because we don’t want to hear the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit. But if you aren’t willing to listen to the convicting voice of the Spirit, you won’t hear His comforting voice, forgiving voice, or merciful voice either. Sin creates relational distance, and distance makes it harder to hear the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. But if you get close to God, you won’t miss a thing He says. And if you incline your ear to God, God will incline His ear to you.

When too much white noise invades my life and I’m having a hard time hearing the voice of God, I’ll often go into a season of fasting. Fasting is like noise cancellation. It helps me tune out the voices I shouldn’t be listening to and tune into His frequency. It’s still difficult to distinguish between our own thoughts and the inaudible voice of the Holy Spirit, but just like a relationship with a loved one, we begin to discern His voice more accurately. Eventually, it’ll be like the voice of a spouse or child. We’ll be able to interpret even the subtlest intonations.

If you want to find your voice, you need to hear the voice of God.