Purpose & Calling
Other people talk about God telling them things. I have prayed for years and never heard anything like that. Is something wrong with me?
“Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him.”
Samuel was a boy living at the tabernacle under Eli, in a period the text describes as spiritually barren, when messages from God were rare. He mistakes God's voice for his mentor's three times before anyone works out what is happening. The narrator is careful to say Samuel was not yet familiar with God, not that he was disqualified. Unfamiliarity is a starting point, not a verdict.
“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;”
Hebrews was written to Jewish believers tempted to drift back toward a faith full of dramatic signs and familiar ritual. Its opening move is to survey centuries of how God communicated, in fragments and many different forms, then to say the fullest word has already been given in his Son. Whatever you have not heard, the decisive thing has been said and it is available to read.
A path forward
Ask the three people whose walk with God you most admire how they actually receive direction. Most will describe scripture, counsel and slow conviction rather than a voice.
Read one gospel straight through over the next fortnight, marking anything that stops you. This is the most reliable place God has promised to speak.
Take a month away from podcasts and posts that trade on dramatic spiritual experiences, and notice whether your sense of God's nearness actually changes.
Closing verse
“Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.”
- Psalm 25:4
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