Postcards from the Mess #6
learning to hear His voice
Happy Friday Friends!
This week, I want to tell you about a question I’ve been carrying around all summer. It sounds simple when I say it out loud, but I haven’t been able to shake it: Is that God's voice, or is that just me?
Last year was supposed to be my year at home. Both boys were finally on the same full-time school schedule, and I was ready to build the routine I’d been waiting on for years. Then my best friend from college called. Her preschool assistant backed out suddenly, and she needed help on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I said yes, and I loved it. But I told myself this next year would be different. This year, I’d really be home, focused on our home and all that comes with it. I would also be able to really lean into my writing and this newsletter.
Then the boys’ school reached out about an assistant teacher position. I turned it down. A few weeks later, the principal called again. A teacher is going on maternity leave mid-year, and would I want to fill in?
Three asks in one year. And somewhere around the third one, I finally stopped and asked the question out loud. God, is this You?
And that's where we're landing this week: right in the middle of that question. Not because I've figured out the answer, but because I really want to. And I would love to hear if any of you struggle with the same thing.
Before any of these questions started arriving, I had begun to read Tyler Staton’s book, The Familiar Stranger, with my book club. We were all eager, and a bit nervous, to hear what he had to say to us about the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
As the weeks of reading went on, I started wondering if I was really listening to the Holy Spirit in my life at all. And when the school offers kept coming, I’ll be honest, I was as confused as ever.
When I got to his chapter on discernment, this quote stood out to me, like someone had highlighted it before I got there: “Discernment is the gift of attuning to God’s voice amid the competing counterfeit noise” (p 99).
The word attuning made me think of how I used to find my favorite radio stations in high school by turning the dial in my car. I knew the number of the stations, and I knew which one held what I was looking for. And I had to ask myself: Do I know God’s station in this way? Do I know how to attune my heart and mind to find it?
The truth is: I have been asking God for answers without spending much time learning what He sounds like, and I can’t recognize the voice of someone I treat like a stranger.
And that’s where our verse comes in. Jesus tells us in John 10:27, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
Jesus’s sheep (us) are not strangers to Him. He loves them, protects them, and guides them. They are attuned to His voice, not because they passed a discernment test or because they are good listeners. But because they hold a trusting relationship with their Shepherd.
The attuning to His voice grows out of this relationship.
And that is what I am sitting with today: learning to trust the relationship I already have built with My Shepherd and to continue to lean into that daily leading.
I have not made a definitive decision about teaching as I write out these words, and I am still fighting to discern which voices are whose. But each time one of these moments arises, it gives me the chance to listen for His voice and to practice following it.
I know sometimes I might even get it wrong… But I know that My Shepherd will stop at nothing to bring me back (Matthew 18:14).
Until next week, Blair
P.S. I'll leave you with one more thought on discernment from Tyler that I keep chewing on:
"The key to discerning between the Holy Spirit's whisper and the deceiver's scheme, then, starts with recognizing what the voice is doing to you as you listen to it. What part of you is being inflamed by this inner voice — your shallow hungers or your deep longings, your ego or your soul? … God appeals to the deepest longings within us. The deceiver appeals to your shallow hungers. God nourishes the soul. The deciever massages the ego."
