THE VOICE OF GOD

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

Chapter 6, The Speaking Voice

(Condensed and customized for contemporary clarity)

It is the nature of God to speak, to communicate his thoughts to others. A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, the application of the term “word” to the eternal Son leads us to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead. God is forever seeking to speak to his creation. God is speaking, is continuously articulate, and fills the world with his speaking voice.

This word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean just the Bible. It is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality.

The Bible is the written word of God. It is written, confined, and limited by the necessities of ink and paper. The voice of God, however, is alive and free, just as the sovereign God is free. God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe. It is the present voice that makes the written word all-powerful.

We take a low and primitive view of things when we conceive of God at the creation as coming into physical contact with things, shaping and fitting and building like a carpenter. The Bible teaches overwise: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth all their host…. For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. And by faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God. (Psalms 33)

Scripture is referring here not to his written word, but to his speaking voice. The word of God is quick and powerful. He spoke to nothing, and it became something. Chaos heard it and it became order; darkness heard it and it became light.

God is here and he is speaking—these truths are the backing for all other Bible truths. The word of God affects the hearts of everyone as a light in the soul. In the hearts of all, the light shines, the word sounds, and there is no escaping them. Even those individuals who have never heard of the Bible have still been spoken to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse from their hearts forever. His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1)

The universal voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often called wisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughout the earth, seeking some response. The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear. Could it be that this voice distilling like a living mist upon the heart has been the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience that craves and seeks immortality?

When God spoke out of heaven to people, self-centered humans who heard it explained it by natural causes: They said, it thundered. This habit of explaining the voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root of modern science. Humans kneel, but not to worship. They kneel to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likely to explain than to adore. The order and life of the world depend upon the voice, but people are too busy or too stubborn to pay attention.

Every one of us has had experiences that we have not been able to explain—a fleeting visitation of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick flash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins are divine. We have not been fair to the facts until we allow at least the possibility that such experiences may arise from the presence of God and his persistent effort to communicate with humans.

Poets and artists create out of common stuff works of pure and lasting beauty and are considered a genius. Could it be that a genius is a person haunted by the speaking voice, laboring and striving like one possessed to achieve ends that they only vaguely understand?

The voice of God is a friendly voice. No one need fear to listen to it unless they have already made up their mind to resist it. The heavens, as well as the earth, are filled with the goodwill of him. Whoever listens will hear the speaking of heaven.

This is not the hour when people take kindly to listen, for listening is not a part of popular religion. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity, and bluster make a person dear to God. To a people caught in the tempest, God says, Be still, and know that I am God. (Psalms 46) Our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. We must get still to wait on God. If we will, we may draw near to him and begin to hear him speak.

The progression is something like this: First the sound of a presence walking in a garden. Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the soul. That which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, the ability to see and rest in the embrace of the Savior.

The Bible will never be a living book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in his universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. Someone may say, “These words are addressed to me,” and yet in their heart they do not feel or know that they are, the victim of a divided mindset—God is mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.

Religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling about the scriptures. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book, and when the book was finished, he lapsed back into silence again. The facts are that God is not silent and has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous speech.

A new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book that was once spoken, but it is also a book that is now speaking. God’s speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken.

To know the Lord, come at once to the God of the Bible, expecting him to speak to you. Scripture is a voice, a word, the very word of God.

Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Help me hear you speaking in my heart. Let me get used to the sound of your voice, that its tones may be familiar when the sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of your speaking voice in heaven. Amen.