Voices and messages bombard us each day with the desired intention of getting our attention, modifying our thinking, shaping our opinions, and altering our decisions. The voices have exploded in the last few years. Our culture has steadily moved beyond airwaves and print options into a variety of electronic media sources that are expanding at an amazing rate. For example, the first text message was sent on December 3, 1992. Twenty-five years later according to Charlotte Beale, “The world now sends 23 billion text messages every day - or 16 million every minute. We type 156 million emails, 452,000 tweets and 3.5 million queries into Google every 60 seconds.” Those findings reflect what was occurring in 2017. What would the data reflect today? These voices bombard us each day and likely influence us more than we can imagine. In fact, there are individuals who make their career and livelihood by being social media influencers. Their goal it is to elbow their way into people’s lives intent on being noticed and impacting the way people think and act. What is troubling is that many of these voices often are espousing trivia or are lacking truth.
With all these voices we need to ask ourselves, “What voices are we listening to?” This is essentially a source question. Do we listen to the tumultuous cacophony of messages that swirl around us in our culture? Or are we carefully discerning who is launching their message and evaluating whether they are a voice to which we should be listening. Just because a message is proclaimed and is noted does not mean that the message should be received and listened to. Many of us have caller ID on our phones and it provides a great aid to protect us from unwanted contacts. Perhaps we need to develop a “discernment ID” that provides a similar service for our lives. This does not mean we are not aware of what is happening in our world. It does mean that we do not allow all that is happening to impact our lives in such a way that our thinking processes are distorted by trivialities and falsehoods.
The alternative to listening to the wrong
voices is to seek to listen to the right voices. The Psalmist David refers 7
times to “the voice of the Lord” (Psalm 29:3-9) that got His attention – very
likely a poetic description of a thundering storm. When the Lord got his
attention, David listened. C. S. Lewis points out that, “God whispers to us in
our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His
megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” In a world filled with turmoil and troubles we
need to listen to whatever God uses to speak into our lives. God speaks. Do we
listen to Him or is He being drowned out by voices and messages from our
culture that yield little direction, consolation, or perception?
There is a young boy named Samuel (1 Samuel
3) who heard a voice of the Lord but did not know what it meant. He was
confused and assumed the source of the voice was from a priest, Eli, with whom
he lived. Three times he heard a voice but did not perceive from whom the voice
was coming. His problem was that he lived in a culture that was not used to
hearing from the Lord (3:1). Eli finally realized the Lord was speaking and
told this young man to respond if he heard the voice again, “Speak, for your
servant hears.” That is what Samuel did the next time he heard the voice from
the Lord. The Lord spoke and Samuel received and communicated the message the
Lord gave him. Perhaps that is a similar problem in our culture today. There
are lots of voices surrounding us, but we are not listening to the voice that
matters most. We lack perception and therefore miss the most important messages
from God.
There was a famous commercial years ago
produced by Verizon Wireless. The commercial ran for nine years and the was
composed of the same question with just five words, “Can you hear me now?” The commercial
showed a “test man” on a cell phone speaking those five words in a variety of
settings to see if people were receiving his message. Perhaps those same words
could be asked of us as we live in a world flooded with a tumultuous cacophony
of voices. Might God ask us, “Can you hear me now?” Do we need to respond like
Samuel, “Speak, for your servant hears.” God’s voice is one worth listening to!
He can give the right direction in these confusing days. We need to listen up!
