The Voice of Jesus

Discernment, Prayer and the Witness of the Spirit

Gordon T. Smith

• Publisher: IVP Formatio
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780830823901
• eBook ISBN: 9780830893911
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A Personal Growth Finalist in the Word Guild Canadian Writing Awards

"My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me."

Jesus takes it for granted that you will hear his voice. But how do you hear it?

How do you separate it out from the cacophony of other voices you hear everyday, including those of your own desires? Is your experience of Jesus' voice something purely subjective, or is it something you can talk about with others and have them confirm?

Building on the rich spiritual tradition that spans the diversity of history and theology from Ignatius Loyola to John Wesley to Jonathan Edwards, Gordon T. Smith helps open your ears and heart to the depths of the inner witness of the Spirit. By learning to attend to the Spirit, Smith urges, you will learn to hear and heed the voice of Jesus in everyday life.

Written with warmth and wisdom, this book speaks to the mind and heart of every Christian who longs for a closer, more intimate walk with Jesus.

1

Jesus and the Spirit

A Christian is a person who has deliberately and eagerly decided to live by the Word of God. Holy Scripture makes the extraordinary assumption that God the Creator has chosen to speak to us. In the Old Testament era this speaking was through the prophets. At that time, if one was to listen to God, one had to attend to the prophets; they were the mouthpieces of God. With the advent of the New Covenant, however, there came an astonishing transition, described cogently in the opening words of the letter to the Hebrews: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1-2).

The life of God is found in knowing the voice of the Son—the voice of Jesus. God has spoken to us through Jesus.

The Words of Jesus

Jesus is the incarnate second person of the Trinity, but the Scriptures remind us that he is also a Teacher who speaks on behalf of God, and his words are the words of life. As Jesus said to his disciples, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (Jn 6:63). And so Jesus himself announced that if we attend to the voice of the Son of God, we will live (Jn 5:25). For what Jesus speaks, he speaks on behalf of the Father (Jn 12:50).

The words of Jesus are the bread by which we live (Jn 6), the living water for which we thirst (Jn 7:37-38) and the light of the world (Jn 8:12). He is water, bread and light to those who listen to his voice. Jesus is the good shepherd, and so of course his sheep hear his voice (Jn 10:4).

This voice is powerful. Jesus commanded Lazarus to come out of the tomb and back from the dead (Jn 11:43). This same voice tenderly called Mary Magdalene by name in the garden following the resurrection (Jn 20:16). And on some level this is what we all long for—to hear Jesus call our names. We yearn to hear the redemptive voice that, in the words of the hymn writer, “calms our fears and bids our sorrow cease.” But more, we long to hear the voice of Jesus in the midst of the competing demands and expectations that we all face in the world and in the church. This is the voice that will give clarity, meaning and direction to our lives, enabling us to know who we are and who we are called to be. We somehow know that the voice of Jesus will enable us to live with courage and grace in a broken world.

In our early adult years we yearn to know Jesus’ voice because we are making critical life choices. In midlife the issues are no less demanding as we seek to know that we are not alone, that Jesus is there for us. In our senior years the longing to know the voice of Jesus is, if anything, even more pronounced, for then we need to hear the voice of comfort, the voice of courage, the voice assuring us that indeed we know God and God knows us. Thus one of the deepest desires we have as Christians is to know the voice of Jesus.

As often as not, this longing arises when we face an important decision and yearn for God to speak to us and give us wisdom, direction and assurance in the midst of perplexing circumstances. The choices we make affect our lives and the lives of those we love; we long for the guidance of God. Further, in times of suffering and disappointment, we ardently seek to hear Jesus that we may know grace, comfort and hope in the midst of our pain.

This longing seems accentuated for those who live in busy and noisy cities. The city confronts us with a bewildering and confusing array of choices. We will live with sanity only if we are able to nurture the capacity to discern—to know the voice of Jesus in the midst of the choices we must make and in the midst of the myriad of competing voices we hear.

To discern is to make a distinction between the voice of Jesus and those competing voices that invariably speak in our hearts and minds. Sometimes these voices are nothing more than our own inner emotional turmoil; sometimes the voices we hear are the spoken and unspoken expectations of others; and there is no doubt that sometimes we come face to face with the subtleties of the evil one.

In the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St. John, the apostle wrote of a series of visions that included seven messages for the seven churches of Asia (Rev 2—3). The Christian community over the centuries has always been taken by one in particular, the remarkable words spoken to the church in Laodicea. It is a sobering assessment of this church. The Lord said they were neither cold nor hot, and they were seemingly content in their lukewarmness. The angel of the Lord called them to repentance with words that echo deeply in our hearts.

I can vividly remember one of my experiences of these words. I was attending a concert put on by the Vancouver Chamber Choir and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra on December 3, 1999. The concert included the oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach called Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (“Now Come, Savior of the Nations”), which contains a wonderful recitative that is sung by the baritone. Derrick Christian was the baritone that evening, and I sat there and heard him sing the words to the Laodicean church, as found in Revelation 3:20: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” As he sang, I realized that I longed for nothing so deeply as that I would hear and know the voice of Jesus. These words called to the deepest part of my being.

I am not alone in this; the church over the centuries has found great comfort in Christ’s promise. But there is an irony in this because these are words of warning and judgment on the church in Laodicea. Christians of all generations and cultures see their own failure reflected here. We are often deeply conscious of how we have failed (and are still failing) to live in a manner consistent with our confession and with the call of Jesus. Thus the words of judgment to the Laodicean church are for us words of mercy and reassurance; the Lord is inviting this pathetic congregation (and us!) to hear his voice with the promise that if we listen, he will enter and we will be with him and he will be with us.

But what is this voice? If Jesus is the good shepherd and his sheep hear his voice, how do we hear it? How is it recognized and known?

The Witness of the Spirit

For one thing, the voice of Jesus is found in the words of the apostles, as inscripturated in the New Testament. Indeed the whole of holy Scripture is the word of Christ (Col 3:16). Furthermore, many Christians would affirm the role of the church and of those within the church who are called to speak for Christ in the life and witness of the Christian community. But Christians of all traditions are appreciating more and more that the voice of Jesus is also present to the Christian community through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. As I hope to show, this inner witness is always grounded in the written witness of the Spirit—holy Scripture—and it is recognized by those who live in mutual submission within the community of faith. With these two anchors in place, Christians can know and live by the remarkable reality that God speaks to us through his Son, Jesus Christ, and that Jesus is present to us by his Spirit. We hear the voice of Jesus as we attend to the inner witness of the Spirit.

Earlier I referred to the words quoted in Revelation 3:20: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in.” As mentioned, these words were spoken to the Laodicean church, one of seven “messages” that were given to seven different churches. It is noteworthy that each of these seven messages concludes with a standard phrase with little variation: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Rev 3:22). The link with the voice of Jesus is very apparent—we attend to the voice of Jesus by listening to what the Spirit is saying. We find this same link in the letter to the Romans, where we are reminded that we are children of God when we are led by the Spirit (Rom 8:14) and that the kingdom of God is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).

The connection between hearing the voice of Jesus and listening to the Spirit should come as no surprise to those familiar with the Gospel of John. An underlying thread of this Gospel is that the disciples learned to live by the voice of Jesus. Then in chapter 14 Jesus announced that he would be returning to the Father and that this meant he would be physically absent from them and from the world. They would no longer be able to see and touch him or hear his audible voice—the voice that had come to mean so much to them. Yet he also urged them not to be anxious about this. He would not leave them orphaned (Jn 14:18); rather, he would send them “another.” This other was an Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, who would testify on behalf of Jesus (Jn 15:26).

John 14 opens with wonderful words of reassurance from Jesus: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” The chapter concludes with these same words (Jn 14:27), spoken immediately after Jesus had assured the disciples that the Holy Spirit would come. The entire ministry of Jesus was one that was empowered by and guided by the Spirit (Lk 4:18). And at the conclusion of his ministry, as a final gesture of love and empowerment for his disciples, he would breathe his Spirit on them (Jn 20:22). That being the case, we read that “by this we know that [Christ] abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us” (1 Jn 3:24).1

This is the heart of the matter. John 15 is a call to live in union with Christ, as branches that are grafted into the vine and that bear fruit because we abide in Jesus. This union is known through the ministry of the Spirit. We abide in Christ when we are a people who receive his Spirit and live by his Spirit. As is highlighted earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus is the one who speaks the words of God, “for he gives the Spirit without measure” (Jn 3:34).

It comes as no surprise, then, that the early church was a community that lived in intentional response to the Spirit, as is evident throughout the book of Acts. In Acts 13, for example, we read that “the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’ ” (Acts 13:2). And the church in Antioch obeyed because they knew that in so doing they were following Jesus, the Lord of the church.

The Spirit has come in place of the bodily presence of Jesus, and so the church follows Christ only insofar as it intentionally responds to the Spirit. Therefore, when we long to hear the voice of Jesus, what we seek is not an audible voice that we hear with our senses. Rather, we listen to Jesus and live by his “voice” when we attend to the Spirit—when we are, in the words of Romans 8:14, led by the Spirit. Jesus is known, and thus the voice of Jesus is known, through the ministry of the Spirit.

This theological principle brings to mind two subtle errors that we must avoid. First, we cannot conclude from this development (Jesus’ return to the Father) that the presence of the Spirit is a minimally acceptable alternative to Christ. Not so! Rather, through the gift of the Spirit, we have the capacity to experience the entire Trinity and to live in dynamic union with Father, Son and Spirit. Second, we cannot suggest that the gift of the Spirit supplements what we have in Christ—that, having received Christ, we now need in addition to have an encounter with the Spirit. Indeed it is by the Spirit that we know the crucified and risen Christ in personal experience.

Attending to the Spirit

As we have seen, it is by the Spirit that we are enabled to know the voice of Jesus.This leads to the following conclusion: The genius of the Christian life is the resolve, willingness and capacity to respond personally and intentionally to the prompting of the Spirit. To be a Christian is to walk in the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, to respond to the Spirit, who transforms us into the image of Christ. What made the day of Pentecost so significant was that this event established our claim that every believer can know the immediate presence of the Spirit in our lives.

It is helpful to speak of this presence as the inner witness of the Spirit. By this we mean a direct impression on our inner consciousness, usually but not necessarily occasioned by some event or circumstance in our lives. God can, of course, bring a deep inner peace or awareness of his presence through no apparent catalyst. But whatever the means, the Spirit of God can and will make a direct, unmediated impression on the heart and mind of the Christian believer. It is possible to experience this witness and know with confidence that this is the inner work of the Holy Spirit—to know it is the voice of Jesus.

This witness is available to each individual Christian. But we can also affirm that God speaks to us as a community. As individuals, we develop the capacity to hear the voice of Jesus. But then as communities of faith, we can also seek and urgently need to develop our capacity to listen together to the witness of the Spirit. We need to know, corporately, as part of our patterns of governance and decision making, how to attend to the Spirit and know what the Spirit is saying to the community as a whole.

For us as individuals, the danger is that we might never develop an inner life. It is easy to live by duty, the expectations of others, the routines of our work and the inertia of culture and religious traditions. Surely what we long for, though, is an authentic interior life in which we know to the core of our beings that the Spirit of God is present to us and speaking life to us—a life that is personally and dynamically our own. With a well-developed interior life, we live our lives in response to the Spirit. We choose to live that which we are called to live—our life, not someone else’s life.

The same could be said for churches and religious organizations. We do not genuinely fulfill what God is calling us to be and do as a community unless we develop the capacity to hear together the voice of Jesus in our midst—his voice of assurance and comfort, but also his voice of call and guidance. It is easy for churches or religious organizations to look elsewhere for models or trends to follow. Some church leaders are easily attracted to attending a conference or reading the most recent how-to book to learn how to help their church or organization develop in the same way as some remarkable church on the other side of the continent or the ocean. Others, in contrast, are nostalgic about a tradition, about the way things have always been done in this particular community, and speak of it as “our way.”

Yes, we need to learn from others. And surely we are right to stress the value of the heritage we have within our church communities and organizations. But both our search for new models and the love for our own way of doing things can undermine our capacity to hear the new word that Jesus has for us as a community. We urgently need to develop a corporate capacity to respond to the voice of Jesus and have the courage both to hear this voice and to respond eagerly to the particular way God is calling us at this time and in this place.

This is life: an intentional response to the voice of Jesus, a voice that comes through the presence of the Spirit. Discernment is the discipline of attending to this presence and responding to this leading.

Dynamic Tensions in Christian Discernment

To attend to the Spirit is to discern the witness of the Spirit to our hearts and minds. This discernment is possible only if we are alert to several dynamic tensions that shape and guide the task of attending to the Spirit. The tension between heart and mind will be the focus of chapter three, but at least four other such tensions will guide our thinking and our response to the Spirit.2

1. Divine initiative and human response. Christian theology affirms the priority of God, and when it comes to discernment, this means that God is always the initiator. Before we can seek God, God has already sought us. Christian spirituality is always a spirituality of response. It is God who reaches out to us, speaks to us and enables us to hear his word. The genius of discernment is learning how to respond to this initiative. As God is always prior, discernment is the task of engaging this priority, seeking to know how God is speaking to us in this place and in this time.

However, while we can and must affirm the priority of God, we should never do so in such a way as to discount the significance of what we ourselves do. The fact that God has priority and that all spirituality presumes God’s initiative does not for a moment imply that we cannot ac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Formatio Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Jesus and the Spirit
• 2 Three Voices, One Tradition
• 3 With Heart and Mind
• 4 The Assurance of God's Love
• 5 The Spirit Convicts Us of Sin
• 6 The Spirit Illumines Our Minds
• 7 The Spirit Guides in Times of Choice
• 8 The Character of Our Prayers
• 9 The Call of God: Vocational and Moral Discernment
• 10 Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Care and Friendship
• 11 Making Decisions Together: The Challenge of Communal Discernment
• 12 Making Decisions Together: The Process of Communal Discernment
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes
• About the Contributor
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright