Voices

If the voice of God tells you to do something, would you challenge it?

Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together, and crossing the Jordan they encamped in the Valley of Jezreel. But the spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon; and he sounded the trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called out to follow him. He sent messengers throughout all Manasseh, and they too were called out to follow him. He also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them. Then Gideon said to God, "In order to see whether you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said, I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said." And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, "Do not let your anger burn against me, let me speak one more time; let me, please, make trial with the fleece just once more; let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew." And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew. - Judges 6:33-40

In the news recently was the story of a woman in Danbury who strangled her three children and then committed suicide, hanging herself in a shed.

She left a note to her husband claiming she heard voices.

The report doesn't say whether or not she thought the voices were divine, or if the voices told her to kill her children, but it made me wonder what I would do if I started to hear voices in my head.

Gideon knew he was talking to God, and still he challenged the voice, asking for proof, not once, but twice, that God was who he said he was.

He wasn't about to go off into battle without assurances that God was with him.

There was a story a few years back, of a woman who heard divine voices telling her that she had a brain tumor.

Doctors failed to diagnose the problem, but when the voices continued, she insisted they take a closer look and sure enough, there was a tumor.

It just so happens that the tumor was putting pressure on the part of the brain that controlled her hearing, so it could have been explained away, not as something divine, but something biological, albeit unusual.

We might not be able to convince the woman that God wasn't involved, though.

And I think that is the underlying issue here.

We approach everything from our perspective, which is often prone to bias.  So, if we believe God would talk to us, we might hear Him speaking through the voices, dreams, imaginings of our own brain.

So, maybe what Gideon did makes sense for all of us.

He challenged the voice and got the proof he needed, before accepting it as real.

Imagine if we did that with every voice we hear.

More to come...