An Indistinct Sound

“If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?”

In the passage quoted above, the apostle Paul is speaking of the use of the first century gift of tongues in church without the presence of an interpreter, but the principle has a more general application: indistinct sounds don’t get people moving. If you don’t know what you just heard, you can’t possibly act on it.

More importantly, the Lord cannot expect you to act on it, and he doesn’t.

This “bugle principle” is not mine. It comes from a recent post by Greg Koukl at the Stand to Reason blog called “When God Speaks”. I heartily recommend it to every reader here, as it’s one of the best-written and most useful pieces I’ve come across in quite some time.

Greg’s concern is that his fellow believers are seeking guidance from God in their personal lives and not finding what they’re looking for. For them, that “closer walk with thee” never comes because they expect it to arrive in the form of subjective impressions rather than the unambiguous teaching of scripture and principles legitimately derived from it. Greg’s answer is to look to the word of God to see how his guidance and direction came to the believers of the first century.

Let’s let him make his case:

“We cannot exegete [interpret] our unique subjective experiences, no matter how veridical [truthful]. We can only exegete the teachings of the text and the experiences of New Testament Christians to see what any believer can reasonably expect to experience in his day-to-day relationship with God. Our instruction should be grounded on biblically clear teachings and on demonstrable patterns clearly evidenced in the life of the early church.

What the text teaches and what the record shows is that God’s guidance does not come through nudges and hints and subtle intimations we must cobble together and decipher in order to decode his purpose and plan for our lives. Nor does guidance characteristically come through the kind of supernatural intervention we occasionally see in the biblical record.

Rather, Scripture demonstrates that God’s standard and near universal means of direction comes from principles in God’s Word that are applied with wisdom to the circumstances immediately before us. That’s what the text teaches, and that’s what the early church practiced.”

“God’s guidance does not come through nudges and hints.” If that’s the only thing you take away from today’s post, it’s a worthwhile lesson. A recent series of struggles documented here reinforced my conviction that you don’t get spiritual direction from your feelings, your luck or your circumstances, however propitious or disagreeable. You don’t get it from hearing voices in your head. You get it from the Word.

When God is really speaking, nobody is in any doubt about what he’s trying to say. God does not mumble. Greg goes to the book of Acts to demonstrate how the Lord communicates with his servants, and asks the reader to note with him two significant details about how the Lord led Peter, Paul and others:

“First, there is no indication in the entire record that God communicated through subjective impressions. Completely absent from the text are phrases like ‘They felt led,’ ‘They thought God was telling them,’ ‘They felt God was calling them,’ ‘They believed it was God’s will for them that,’ ‘They were sensing the Lord’s direction,’ or ‘They had a peace about it.’

The kind of language Christians characteristically use to describe hearing God’s voice in some fashion is completely absent from the record in Acts. There’s no instance of anyone receiving God’s direction through internal promptings — not a single one. The rare times God gave special directives, he communicated them in clear, supernatural ways. More than half the time, he used a vision or an angel.

Second, there is no evidence that any of these directives were actively sought. There is no indication that any Christians, including apostles, were ‘waiting’ for God to guide them. In the New Testament, we find no pleading with God for guidance and no laboring in prayer for God to reveal his will. The revelations in Acts are surprise intrusions in every case.”

His conclusion:

“If you’re tempted to think God might be speaking to you, he isn’t. When God speaks, you can’t miss it. His voice is crystal clear because God doesn’t try.

If God has not given you a clear, unambiguous, supernatural communication of a specific direction for you personally, then choose the wisest, morally sound course of action available to you in the circumstances.”

Amen. I strongly believe much of the soul-searching and breast-beating in which Christians so frequently engage in the search for spiritual guidance is wasted energy. When we are not “hearing God’s voice” with respect to our present circumstances, the Lord’s answer is not “try harder”.