Even as a child I wanted to hear God’s voice. I was promised in Sunday school that He was individually interested and that He spoke to each one of us through His Word. Looking to test this, I would pull my Children’s Explorer’s Bible off the bookshelf lined with my grizzled collection of My Little Ponies, and flop down on my bed; open the book at random, and drop my finger somewhere on the exposed pages to see what God had to say to me. I didn’t really think it worked like that—the spiritual equivalent of spinning the globe with your eyes closed to find out where you should live—but I thought it was worth a try. If memory serves, God didn’t have any specific messages for me.
These days I find myself doing slightly more sophisticated versions of the same foolish thing because I still want to hear God’s voice speak directly to me. I want Him to talk to me about the things that are close to my heart and the things that are close to His. Sometimes I think I’m listening to the Holy Spirit, but I hear my own heart instead. It is so easy to err when God starts to sound a little bit too much like me.
Few of the deceptions that we face in life are as unvarnished as an email from an obscure Nigerian prince with an inheritance to bestow upon those who speedily reply with their banking details. Even the slickest of con men seeking to swindle the unsuspecting out of their money are only mere entry-level deceivers. True deception—the kind you really need to be on guard against—has a far subtler hand. It oozes in through the cracks in the brickwork of your life; it pushes open the unlatched gate; entering through the broken places you just haven’t gotten around to mending yet. And it isn’t after your money, but rather your soul.
“The heart is deceitful above all things.
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?”
(Jeremiah 17:9)
Culturally, the heart—the seat of our emotions— is lauded as the most trustworthy organ of decision. Following one’s heart is the irrefutable defence; the final say on a matter; the trump card that has no equal. The heart is the means by which the unbelieving world chooses its way. Absent the Holy Spirit, the World must feel its way forward, rather than discern what the Spirit of Wisdom is speaking.
The scriptural warning against the heart is not an embargo against emotion. Human beings are made in the image of God and our emotional capacity finds its original template in the Most High. But real deception invites your emotions to dance. It offers you its hand through offence, jealousy, fear, anger, lust, despair, or pride;— until it whirls you about in a flurry of feeling and confusion; never tiring in order that the room never stops spinning. Emotions are a powerful counterfeit for truth because they feel so true—and we feel powerful when we feel so much. Wisdom, however, promises no such affectation.
Discernment is the spiritual means of perception, and it is a function of the Holy Spirit. It is the ability to differentiate the whole truth from the half-truths—the genuine from the counterfeit—amid the cacophony of emotional noise. It is the only remedy against deception; the still small voice that reveals what is true as opposed to that which only feels true. It’s worth contemplating then, that the Holy Spirit came to rest upon Jesus as a dove;—a sensitive creature apt to take off at the slightest surprise. No dove ever came to rest upon someone in the middle of a temper tantrum. Likewise, the Spirit of Discernment, cannot be heard when an emotional reaction has been given free rein to guide. The voice of wisdom is heard by the quieted soul in a posture of humility who is longing to hear. It’s not complicated, but it is hard.
(A version of this article was published in the July/August edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com)
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