“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion….” (NKJV)
If you stop to listen, you can feel the heart of God for you in every moment! His voice is always speaking, His heart is always burning for you, communing with you. He is beckoning you and me to live in the present moment, to live today, and to see the goodness of God in everything. Psalm 118:24 says “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” With Jesus, it is always a “today” moment. He paid an eternal price and became an eternal sacrifice, which is always relevant and present in the heavenly realm outside of time and space. When the blood of Jesus was shed, it changed everything for us, and replaced our striving and tired labor with “today I hear His voice”! We can now have relationship with the most powerful Being in the universe and beyond. God is no more a far away, “please come to me” hope, because a gap was bridged, and now I can enter in. Everything that I was waiting to experience “tomorrow” has now become my “today” because Jesus paid it forward; Jesus paid for me – hallelujah to the Lord who set me free!
In the face of all His gracious goodness, all I am called to do is to live my life for Jesus. I want to live this life to the fullest, to open my heart to all He is and all that He wants to do in me; to hunger for deeper Truth each day, and make the most of every moment that has been given to me.
Today the Holy Spirit exhorts us through Hebrews 3:7. He urges us to let our hearts be soft and responsive to His voice. There are many times that He speaks to us through family and friends, through a stranger on the street, through the Word as we read or listen; but we just pass by it as though it wasn’t Him, continuing with our texting, or reading our social media news feed, sometimes searching for a word from Him! There is such a connection between our recognition of the “present moment” voice of God, and the life of abundance and fulfillment that we all want to live. A heart that is “hardened” or insensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit is a heart that is not hearing, and therefore unable to receive direction; it is a heart that is in rebellion because it is not flowing with the heart of God. Many people long for the voice of God because they have a pre-conceived idea of what His voice should sound like. Elijah experienced this too, when He didn’t hear the Lord speak through fire, through thunder or lightning but in a still small voice that was easy to miss (1 Kings 19). The truth is that the voice of the Lord does not come with a loud booming reverberation in my room, or as the sound of crashing waves on a daily basis (although He can certainly speak that way too!). The voice of my Lord often sounds to me like my own thoughts, my own voice. He speaks to each of us through our own hearts, our own grid, our own physical realities and life situations. He can speak to you through your favorite song or to someone else through the story line in a movie. This morning, I had an unusual dream and I knew that the Holy Spirit was teaching me how to understand a situation I was experiencing. He can speak to you and me in a million different ways if we keep our hearts open and responsive and willing to hear! Dear friend, let this be a season of great fruitfulness and abundance in your life. I pray that everything you lay your hand to will prosper and thrive. See the power of “today” which God has placed in your hands; the eternal, Spirit ordained, potential-filled “now” moment which is to be treasured and cherished as a gift from Abba especially for you. If you stay conscious of Him in you, and you stay tuned to His voice, there is no limit to what you will achieve, and how high you can climb. He will lead and guide you and show you the path. He will speak to you in a real-time way. He will multiply His love and His power within you and teach you to live in the present moment, and to hear and obey. Today if you hear His voice, listen and be led!
Minoli Haththotuwa, January 29, 2022
