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Ask the Pastor!
What does God sound like?
This evening we continue in our series dealing with your questionsand the question that I have wrestled with this week is: What doesGod sound like?It’s a fascinating question
I mean, have you ever thought aboutit? What God sounds like? When you’re reading your Bibles andyou get to the point where God is speaking and you’re imaginingthe things that are going on Do you change from your readingvoice to some sort of internal actor playing the role? Do you picture a voice in your head?What does it sound like? Like someone you know? Maybe your father or an authority figure…Or like someone you’ve heard thatyou associate with God…or even a Hollywood actor who has played God…Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Morgan Freemanor George Burns.Until I was asked the question like this I’d never really thoughtabout it…what God sounds like…I do know that when I read I tryto give voices to the speakers to make it real so I know somewhereup in my brain I had my own “God” voice but I never connected itto anybody……so I sat down with Scripture and I read from the prophet Haggaiand I figured out what I’d always thought God to sound like…it’skind of silly actually…Do you remember the movie
The Wizard of Oz 
, when Dorothy, the Tin Man, The Scarecrow and the Lion werewalking up that long hallway and the voice boomed out: “I am Oz,the Great and Powerful!”That’s it…that’s the one…and as I think about it I think that as ayoung kid I was frightened by that scene. That somewhere over the
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course of my life I’ve associated that early source of mental traumawith the voice of terrifying authority.But that’s not really what this question is about, is it? Actually thisis a question I get asked a lot of times…in a bunch of differentways…because it stems from a bigger pastoral question…
 How do I know that God is talking to me?
We ask Him a lot of questions in life. What should we do? Whoshould we marry? Should I take this job? Should I buy this house?Why am I sick? Am I going to get better? How long? Why? Justwhy?What we really want is an answer…we want to know what Godsounds like so that we can know whether or not we’ve just beenlistening wrong…maybe he’s been talking the whole time and we just missed his voice…we want some assurance…someguidance…some sort of signal that God is there and listening…Well, to answer these problems we need to start at the most basic piece of information we’re going to need…and that is whether or not…
I. God speaks to people at all.
Basic logic demands that we start here. If we want to answer thequestion about what God sounds like then we have to make surethat the question is valid in the first place. Now to cover this point there are two things that I would like tosay. The first is that God speaks…
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In fact, speaking is a very important element to who God is. Whenwe find ourselves introduced to Him in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible we are introduced to a speaking God.
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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Nowthe earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.And as early as the third verse we find God talking… 
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And God said, “Let there be light.”Hebrew commentators talk about this whole act of speaking beingthe important thrust of creation. That God created everything not by molding it together…but instead by speaking it into existence.We need this to understand John chapter 1 which talks about thiscreative Word and linking Christ to this Creative power – In the beginning was the Word. Forget for a moment that John says in just a few moments that the Christ is God – the mere implicationthat Jesus is the Word is enough to connect him to the creative power in the Genesis story.And throughout the Bible we find many occasions of Godspeaking…which brings us to the second thing I would like to sayabout this point.God speaks to people.Absolutely he does…back in the Garden we find him talking toAdam and to Eve. We find him later talking to the various leaders,and prophets and Kings of the Hebrew people.We find Him talking to individuals like we find in 1 Samuelchapter 3…
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