“God Still Speaks Today” (1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 10:22-30)

My Story

Do you believe God still speaks today? Do you believe God speaks to you? I don’t know about you. But as for me, God was something more abstract concept. I was born into a pastor’s family. My dad is a Methodist pastor in South Korea. One of my uncles is a pastor, and my maternal grandfather is also retired pastor. I was surrounded by pastors and Christians. They were all good and real Christians, but for some reason I didn’t have a personal relationship with God. I didn’t feel close to God. Like I shared, God was something abstract. But then, I went to the army. I found out that army life was very tough. In order to survive in the army, I began to read the Bible every night right after my night-watch duty. I read the psalms one chapter per day. For the first time, I experienced the Word became alive and personally meaningful to me. Then, New Year’s Eve of year 1999 came. I attended New Year’s Eve service. It was during the pastor’s benediction, for the first time, I experienced God did speak to me. It was not an audible voice. It was an inner voice – gentle but clear. It was Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” I was so thrilled and amazed.

About a month later, God sent me to the place I had never heard before. I was sent to East Timor, tiny island nation next to Indonesia and Australia, as UN Peace Keeping Forces. East Timor was a spiritual barren land. Most of the time, I stayed with Korean, Philippine and Thai soldiers. There was no church, no mentor, or Christian club. Instead, sexual temptation and debauchery were lurking all around. God gave me the burden to set up a Christian Club for regular Sunday service in barracks. But, I didn’t want to stand out. So I ran away from the mission like Jonah when God told him to go to Nineveh. Then, I fell seriously ill with an endemic disease, called ‘Dengue Fever.’ At that time I was in a very remote area for special operations for three weeks. There was no way to be properly treated. I went to medical center. The military medical officer gave me some aspirin. But it didn’t work. I had a high fever and red rashes all over my body. My condition seriously got worse. On that night I could not eat or sleep. I even could not lie down. I became delirious from a high fever. Intuitively, I knew that I was walking through the valley of death. I knelt down on a camp bed and repented my sins before I died, and at the end of my prayer I said something like this: “God, if you save my life, I will humbly serve you with all my heart for life.” After that, I could fall asleep in peace. Early next morning I woke up. The fever was gone. The red rashes were complete gone. I went out and literally leaped for joy. That was my spiritual turning point. I was healed spiritually as well as physically. Because of that healing experience, I became curious about God, and for the first time I read through the Bible carefully from cover to cover. And I encountered the person Jesus Christ who speaks through the Bible. Since then, he has spoken to me for 17 years.

Samuel’s Story

In today’s passage we meet a man of God, Samuel. He was raised as God’s servant by the priest Eli since he was very young. He was taught and trained very well. He was a good student and worker. But the Bible says “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord” (v. 7). He was a good servant of God, but he didn’t know God. He was a faithful worker of God, but he didn’t know God. He was literally living in God’s temple, but he had never heard God’s voice by that time. Samuel had to learn how to recognize God’s voice. The priest Eli had to teach him how to listen to God. God called Samuel, “Samuel, Samuel!” But Samuel thought Eli was calling him. So he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “No, I didn’t call you; go back and lie down.” It happened three times. After this, Eli realized it was God who was calling Samuel. So he taught Samuel how to recognize God’s voice and how to respond to it. So next time when God called Samuel, he didn’t run to Eli. Instead, he said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Since then, Samuel became a prophet of the Lord. 1 Samuel 3:21 says, “The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.”

Our God is the God who speaks. But we need to learn how to recognize God’s voice. The Bible says there are at least three voices – the voice of God, the voice of self, and the voice of Satan. Some people underestimate or deny Satan’s voice. But it is real. For instance, John 13:2 says, “During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s Son, to betray him” (ESV). Satan puts his evil thoughts into our hearts. Have you experienced all of sudden evil thoughts, such as sexual immorality, hatred, anger, envy, discord, came to mind, and you felt embarrassed? That’s Satan’s voice (cf. Galatians 5:19-21). We must resist that voice right away and submit to God. But sometimes, actually oftentimes, Satan disguises himself as an angle of light and uses God’s word to tempt us. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Satan actually quoted Psalm 91:11-12 to prompt Jesus to throw himself down and show miracles. Jesus defeated the enemy three times by proclaiming the word of God. That’s why it’s so important to know God’s word in depth, not just superficially. That way we are able to distinguish God’s voice from others.

Your Story

Some Christians think that listening to God’s voice is just for certain special people or the chosen ones. Yes, it was true in the time of the Old Testament. God chose certain people, such as priests, prophets, and kings, and spoke to his people through them. But now it is every believer’s privilege to listen to God’s voice because of what Jesus has done for us. Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility that separated us from God in his own body on the cross. John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Have you received Jesus as your Lord and Savior and believed in his name? Then, you are children of God. For children, it is so natural to listen to their father’s voice. In John 10:27, Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” One day one of my colleges shared his story of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. During the trip a heavy rain began to fall while he was in the wilderness with his guide. They found a cave and sheltered themselves there, and several other local Bedouin shepherds also came to take refuge in the cave. So now different flocks were all mixed up together. The pastor was curious and even concerned about how each shepherd would separate his own sheep from others. But for some reason, the shepherds didn't seem to worry about the mix-up at all. After the rain had stopped, suddenly one shepherd got up, went out, and started sing a song. Surprisingly, that shepherd's sheep withdrew themselves from the crowd to follow their shepherd home. How is it possible? It’s possible because those sheep learned how to recognize their shepherd’s voice from their daily experience. Sheep hear their shepherd’s voice. Jesus’ sheep hear his voice and follow him.  

Are you listening? When is the last time you heard God speak? This morning I exhort all of us in this room to actually take time to listen to the voice of our Shepherd daily. In most cases, we don’t listen to God’s voice, not because he is silent, but because we are so preoccupied and distracted by many other things, although he constantly speaks to us. Let us set aside even five minutes on our knees in silence before God to listen to him before starting our day. If you are already doing this, increase time to 15 minutes, to 30 minutes, to an hour. During his ministry John Wesley, founder of the Methodism, rode over 250,000 miles on horseback, a distance equal to ten circuits of the globe along the equator. He preached over 40,000 sermons. On average he preached three times a day. Though he died more than 225 years ago, he still powerfully affects the world for Christ. So what is the secret of his fruitful ministry for Christ? The answer is that he spent two hours daily to listen to the Shepherd’s voice. He began at four in the morning to commune with God before starting the day for 60 years. One of his close friends said in this way: “He thought prayer to be more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of his closet with a serenity of face next to shining.”[1] But first, let us start with five minutes. No agenda. No request. Even no other devotional books for this particular time. Just sit still to listen to his gentle voice and say, “Speak, Lord, for I am listening.” Amen.

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[1] E.M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (Christian Classics Remix: Kindle Edition), 28.