Hear His Voice

 DEVOTION

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

HEAR HIS VOICE

Acts 7:23-34

23 "When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?' 27 "But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'   29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. 30 "After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord's voice: 32'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.' Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. 33 "Then the Lord said to him, 'Take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.'  

NIV

We are still in Stephen's response as he stood before the Sanhedrin. As he recorded the life of Moses, he included the moment of the burning bush. It is amazing how God drew Moses' attention, and when he took a closer look, he heard the Lord's voice. When the Lord spoke, we are told that Moses trembled and that he dared not look. We know this story well, but the truth we should focus on is hearing the Lord's voice. Moses must have heard the voice of God more times than are recorded for us, as we know he met with God in the tent of meeting many times, and even before that, when he gave all the instructions about the plagues and the exodus. We should learn the fact that God does speak to his people. Perhaps not everyone or all the time, but it is possible God could talk, and we could hear his voice. We believe the reason God spoke to Moses is that he had a special plan for Moses, a calling, a directive to lead the children of Israel out of slavery into a place he had prepared for them, the land he had made a covenant with Abraham that he would give to his descendants. God spoke to Abraham, another opportunity for us to learn that God speaks to his people when he has a plan for them to do something. How else are we going to know what to do unless the Lord tells us? What do people mean when they say they have a call? Did God call them? Did they hear the voice of God? Did he do something to draw their attention, as he did with Moses? We, Christians, say that we are a people who pray, but is most of our prayer time spent talking to God, with little, if any, time listening for the voice of God? How are we supposed to know what God desires for us to do, our vocation, where we are to live, what church we are supposed to engage with, and specifically what we should be doing for the kingdom, or in our vernacular, our calling? Perhaps the Lord may not speak to us in long, drawn-out paragraphs of instructions, as he did with Moses. He may speak only a few words, but they would be direct. Sometimes, he might use something like that burning bush to draw our attention so we would know he wants to tell us something or direct us in a certain way. However, if the Lord decides to inform us of his intended purpose for us, we need to listen and watch so that we are within his plan. Let us always be more attentive to the voice of the Lord than our own. Let us hear his plan rather than devise our own plan. Let us listen, rather than talk. Let us hear his voice.