Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:7-13)
How does one truly hear the voice of God?
In Hebrews 3:7-13 (above) the appeal is made by the Holy Spirit, that if we hear his voice, we should not harden our hearts. Of course there is an immediate context which has to do with not drawing back into to sin, as the Israelites did in the wilderness because of their unbelief.
Yet we can see from the text that God speaks to our hearts, and the struggle is not necessarily (as we often think) with hearing God’s voice. The real struggle is our response to his voice.
The temptation is always present to harden our hearts through unbelief because it takes faith to obey God, even in the small matters.
The problem we often face is not hearing God’s voice, but the response of our own hearts to obey his speaking within. Do we have a readiness to obey God in all things?
A readiness for obedience is the fertile ground in which God’s voice is recognized. God is speaking. Are you listening with a heart positioned to obey him ?
Rooted and Grounded In Christ 