Seymour Lake United Methodist Church Pastor LuAnn Rourke
Being new in town, I find myself in need of occasional navigational assistance. Pat, my husband, bought me one of those devices that you stick on your windshield to tell you which way to go. As I understand it, you punch in the address of where you want to go and then you just start driving, trusting that this little box knows where you are and how to get you to where you want to be. I know it’s the old-fashioned way, but I prefer to look at a map and get the big picture of where I am and where I need to be and how to get there. Maybe it’s a control issue. Maybe it’s a lack of trust. Maybe it’s a fear of small electronic devices, but I have had this thing in my possession for several days and have yet to take it out of the box.
I know what you’re thinking. As a pastor who encourages folks to trust in an unseen God shouldn’t I be more relaxed about receiving guidance from a strange voice coming out of a black box in my car? Let’s just say I have come to know the voice of my Savior as He guides me and leads me, and that thing doesn’t sound like Him. My sister has one of these things and she loves it. She has even programmed it to speak with the voice of Yoda from the Star Wars movies. I ask you, when I’m lost and confused, do I really need to hear a small green critter with pointy ears tell me, ‘Merge on to the motorway, you must.?
Actually, I do intend to get this gadget out and learn how to use it. I’m sure it will help me find my way around in this new community, as a supplement to the map I will continue to carry in the backseat. And the voice directing me from the box, whoever it sounds like, will not replace the divine instruction which guides my every step in life. God is not a black box that gives instruction and direction without regard for the questions and concerns and hesitations and fears of those who hear His voice.
The late Dr. Francis Shaeffer wrote a book about the God of the Bible called He is There and He is Not Silent. This title reflects the truth about the God Christians worship. Our God speaks and communicates willingly and openly with creation and through creation. Our God has spoken and continues to speak to individual hearts as well as to national and political affairs. God has spoken through prophetic voices who slice through complacency and compromise to call God’s people back to God. God has spoken through the written Word giving us access to all of God’s thoughts. God has spoken most profoundly and poetically by sending His own Son, Jesus Christ who is the Word of God, to live among us and to be the Light of the World.
God is willing and waiting to communicate with you right now. Isaiah 30:21 says ‘Whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it.? We have only to tune our hearts to the God-communication / directional device implanted within each of us: God’s Holy Spirit. Among Jesus? final instructions to His followers as He prepared to leave this world were these words: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever, whom the Father will send in My name, who will guide you in to all truth? (John 14:1, 6, 16, 26, 16:13). God is there and God is not silent. God is waiting to communicate with you. Tune your hearts to hear His voice.