A Still Small Voice: A Guest Post from Savannah Guthrie

By Savannah Guthrie / February 23, 2024 at 1:02 am

How do we hear and recognize God’s voice? It’s one of the most important and challenging aspects of faith. In John 10, the Bible returns to one of its favorite metaphors. God is the Shepherd; we are his sheep.

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In this passage, the sheep are having a moment. They’re discerning—they know their caretaker’s voice and follow him. And they’re shrewd—they’re not fooled by an impostor. They spot the counterfeit a mile away and wisely skedaddle.

Sheep—they’re just like us?

Maybe on our good days. It is incredibly hard to hear God’s voice in our whirring, mile-a-minute culture of commotion. The internet is loud. The news is loud. Our music is loud. Our kids are loud. Our problems are loud. Our distractions are loud.

And God is described as having “a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:12, kjv) No wonder we miss so much.

When I had my first baby, Vale, I was amazed at something. Well, a lot of things: her little squeaks, her sweet sighs, her pretty rosebud lips. The astonishing, adult-truck-driver volume of her burps. But back to the subject. Somehow, even though she was only days old, she seemed to recognize my voice.

Newborns are fascinating, but let’s face it, they don’t do much. Some say the first month of life is really the tenth month of gestation; infants aren’t ready for the world but are just too darn big for the womb. (When I was pregnant with my second, Charley—who came into the world early at nearly ten pounds—I was so enormous that my work colleagues said my belly entered the room thirty seconds before I did.)

In those first weeks, newborns mostly sleep and cry and barely open their eyes. And even when they do, they can’t much see. But babies can hear—and much more than just the indistinct clang and clamor of the world. By the time they are born, many newborns know and recognize the sound of their parents’ voices. In Vale’s first few weeks, sometimes I swear I could see it happen: this tiny lump of flesh, barely days old, eyelids shut tight, reacting—stirring, shifting, eyes flickering—when my familiar voice entered the room.

How could my little newborn seem to recognize her mother’s voice from the moment she entered the world? Because we had spent a lot of time together. We had been intimately connected. Inseparable—literally. She would know my voice anywhere.

And so it is with our relationship with God. If we want to recognize his voice, an intimate connection is vital. Moments spent together, just logging time. We must do life with him, like a baby does with Mom.

To be quiet enough to hear God’s voice, we need more than a quiet place; we need quiet in our spirits and our souls. We need to make space for him, just being present to him—hearts open, ears peeled.

And by the way, quietness is hard. Stillness is hard. This is not a prerequisite, yet another impossible threshold we have to cross before God will speak. But it sure makes it easier to hear him when he does.

Over the years, I feel I have experienced God’s voice maybe a time or two at most. And it wasn’t a booming, loudspeaker, Voice of God voice of God. It was an assertive, surprising, and quasi-intruding thought that seemed to emanate from somewhere outside of me.

You might wonder: How do you know the voice you hear is not just your own internal dialogue? Or worse, your own self-soothing or wishful thinking?

I don’t have a perfect failsafe to guard against that. But in my experience, when I hear God’s voice, it is usually saying something I never expected to hear him say. It is foreign from me, consistent with who God is echoes the Bible, and doesn’t always tell me what I want to hear.

I love this part of John 10: He calls us by name. That means more than just he knows who we are. He knows how to reach us. Our God knows exactly what speaks to us.

These days, we hear a lot about “love languages.” In marriage, especially, we might learn that our partner receives love in a different way than we do. My love language might be Mike putting the kids to bed for me. Mike’s love language might be . . . a foot massage (please, God, no).

God knows exactly what speaks to us. He knows our love language. Think about the times you felt touched by him. It could be through a person, an interaction, a song, or a scene in a movie. God knows what moves you. He knows how to connect to your heart. And words don’t constrict him. Sometimes he doesn’t need words at all.

In fact, in the particular language of every human heart, he is fluent.

So what is God’s voice saying to you? Well, that’s between you and him, isn’t it? But to return to the metaphor Jesus loved, it is actually quite clear. The Shepherd calls the sheep. In its simplest form, God is always calling. He knows our name. If we really listen, we will know his voice.

And always, boiled down to its very essence, he is saying one thing. “Come with me.”