Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
The earth belongs to You
We’ll prepare to go with You, Lord
But until the day we do, Lord,
Minute by minute, we’ll continue in the story
This mystery, Christ in us the hope of glory

– Marty Goetz (from “Hope of Glory”)

This song has been playing in my head for the past two nights. I’ve been thinking about hearing God’s voice, the means he uses, and the discernment he develops in us to know when the voice is his and when it is not.  This line particularly was on repeat in my dreams, “Glory to glory, even by His spirit, moment by moment, when the Master speaks I’ll hear it.”

I talk about learning to hear God’s voice, but honestly hearing a little bit leaves me feeling frustrated that I can’t hear more.  I want the unmistakable thunderous voice from the clouds giving explicit directions. I know one fellow, equally frustrated during a period of unemployment, who stood under thunder clouds with a metal rake balanced on his head and shouted to God, “Talk to me!” I know the feeling.

On the other hand the Bible tells the story of that time when God spoke in a loud booming voice from the sky. Some heard him clearly but others said all they heard was thunder.

The thing is, for his re-born, Spirit-filled sons and daughters the voice is no longer up in the sky. The voice is in us.

In a dream I saw people throwing huge lasso ropes into a city that was crumbling faster than a set for a sci-fi dystopia movie. One of them looped around  a young man who was almost entirely buried in debris. I joined in pulling on the rope and hauled him out of the city of destruction. He stood up, brushed himself off and began running.

I yelled, “Hey! You’re not cleaned up yet!”

He shouted over his shoulder, “Do you recognize Christ in you well enough yet to know that he has called me?” and kept running.

Then I saw a word I had never seen before written in the air. When I woke up I googled it.

I found it could mean a tight Somalian hat, it was an acronym for a number of obscure ventures and technical terms and it was part of a rude name I’m sure the Facebook police have banned by now. I gave up and came back and gave up and tried again. Pages deep on the search something caught my attention. The entire page was in a foreign language and it included this word only once. I was about to abandon this site as well when I saw numbers interspersed with the words and something like II Korint written on the top. I realized it was a page from the Bible.

I found the verse in my own bible in 2 Corinthians 13:5 and it said: Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?

My eyes fell on a phrase in verse 3 where Paul wrote, “since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me...”

It “resonated.”

At first I felt quite privileged that God set up a riddle for me this way, the way I felt quite puffed up when I learned I was a descendent of European royalty. But just like in the way that I learned that the odds of anyone of European descent not springing from the loins of Charlemagne are one in 17 million this hearing God’s voice thing is not a unique experience. It’s for all his children. It’s matter of paying attention to the mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory – however he chooses to communicate.

Minute by minute we’ll continue in the story.