Called by Name

Have you ever heard God's voice, and you know that you know that you KNOW that you heard Him?

I mean, there's times when you hear Him whisper or nudge, and you have to think about it a bit before acting. But then there's other times when it just hits you with so much clarity that you can't deny it. There's no shadow of uncertainty. There's only peace.

That's what Paul was talking about when he said "peace that passes understanding" (Philippians 4:7).

Recently, I stumbled upon a familiar story about Abraham. After he's waited decades for the birth of his long-anticipated son, Isaac, God asks Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, then stops him at the last minute. The biggest take-away of this story is that it is a type and shadow of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. However, I think this story might offer us a couple of checkpoints to know that God is speaking to us.

Read it with me from Genesis 22:

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

Let's stop there.

Hearing God's voice, checkpoint #1: He FIRST calls you by name.

Keep in mind here that God was about to ask Abraham to sacrifice the very promised child that He Himself had given him. The miracle son. This was going to be a big, scary, confusing surprise to Abraham. He needed to be sure that the Lord was speaking to him.

So the Lord called him by the name that He had given him.

Note that God had promised Abraham that he would father nations long before He changed his name. I won't do a detailed exegesis of the whole book of Genesis (even though I kind of want to.... #nerd). Long story short, when God promised Abram he would father many nations (in chapter 15), God made the promise, and God gave Abram a sign to confirm it. It was more like an info session than a conversation. God had called Abram to be the father of nations, but his name hadn't been changed.

However, when Abram responded to God's faithfulness with action--circumcision--his name was changed by God to reflect his identity (chapter 17).  Abram showed God that he believed Him so much that he was willing to, you know, cut off a part of his own body to prove it. That's commitment.

The name "Abraham" signified God's faithfulness to him as well as Abraham's faithfulness to God. It was a relational name, one that God called him to mark their friendship. God was the first to call him by that name. It was special and set apart. So needless to say, Abraham recognized the voice of God when He called him.

When I think back on moments when I know that I know that I KNOW that God is speaking to me, they have something in common: God always calls my name first.

I don't mean that He appears to me, checks my birth certificate and driver's license, and states my full name. I mean that I feel called by name. This is something difficult to describe. This called-by-name feeling is the same as being lost in worship and knowing that you are the daughter or son of God. It's feeling the ultimate, all-consuming, irrefutable concentration of your identity in Christ, when nothing else matters but Him knowing you and you knowing Him.

Whenever the Lord is about to speak something important to me, He doesn't come as a burning bush or a scary angel or a booming voice. He comes as a Father who gently whispers into my spirit, "Hey, daughter...my beloved one...my own little girl."

If you're a man, He probably doesn't address you that way. But children know their father's voice among the voices of all other men. Sheep know the shepherd's voice (John 10:27). When you hear Him calling your name--the name He gave you--you know it's your Father speaking. In that moment, the connection you feel between you and Him is the pure connection that Jesus had in mind when He died on the cross to reconcile us to our Father. It's as loud and clear as the boy prophet Samuel heard the Lord for the first time calling in the night: "Samuel! Samuel!" (1 Samuel 3).

Notice that Abraham did not respond with, "Is that you, God? Are you sure?" He simply said, "Here I am."

I don't know if it feels the same for everyone, but I imagine you are probably thinking of several times in your life when you've heard the call and felt in your spirit, "Here I am." If you aren't a believer, you probably have felt bits of it and didn't know that it was Jesus.

Maybe you haven't heard Him speak because you don't recognize your name when He calls it. The world's labels, your own construction of your identity, get in the way. The solution to that is to read His Word and learn who He is, that you might learn what He calls you.

In short, you know when the Lord is speaking because you suddenly, strongly know who you are.

But back to the story of Abraham.

After God, called him by name, He continued speaking.

He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac [Abraham could make no mistake about which son God was talking about] and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. (vs. 1-3)

Wait....Abraham did not argue with God. He had just been told something confusing: that the son that God had promised him, whom he'd waited for for decades, was to be a sacrifice. How in the world was he to be the father of nations if he killed the child who was to inherit that legacy?

But Abraham didn't argue, because he knew that he knew that he KNEW that God had spoken. He just woke up the very next day and did what God said.

That's checkpoint #2 for hearing God's voice: It requires response.

I don't imagine that Abraham was too happy about the news that his beloved son was going to be slaughtered at his own hand. (He couldn't have dreamed that the Father Himself was going to do the same to His own Son so many years in the future.) God sometimes asks us to do confusing things. Things that derail our own plans. Things that shut down the joy rides of our imaginations.

But when we know we heard Him speak, we are compelled to do it, and not three weeks from now. We have to do it TODAY. Or tomorrow, in Abraham's case. We must do it as soon as we possibly can.

Just because something is confusing doesn't mean it's God, the same way that just because it's not confusing doesn't mean it isn't (bear with my linguistic fumbles here). But I will say that He does often ask us to do things that don't make sense to us, whether it's forgiving someone who hurt us horribly, or choosing a career path we said we'd never choose (ahem), or selling everything to become a missionary, or getting another degree, (ahem ahem), or moving to Texas (ahem ahem AHEM...for those of you who know me).  Or it could be that He is just asking you to do something you know is right but don't want to do, like surrendering an area of your life that you don't want to give up.

God's voice demands obedience. Not because He is a king who desires groveling slaves. (If He'd wanted that, He would have just programmed all of us to follow Jesus without question.) God loves that we get a choice. He delights in allowing us to choose Him. And when He speaks, He demands obedience because obedience is not an act of fear but an act of trust. A child may not understand the directions given by a father, but he does know that obedience will lead to his good in some way, whether he understands it now or not, because he knows that his father has his best interest at heart.

It's when we're children thinking we know more than we do that we get in trouble.

When He comes to you calling your name, get ready to be uncomfortable. Because He loves us, He will never let us stay in a season for too long. That's why, when He speaks suddenly with direct instructions, we must respond. Even if our response is to disobey Him, we have still made a choice. Just like His words to Abraham, those moments of clear direction from God leave no room for misinterpretation. A good Father may give directions we don't understand from our current context, but He will never be confusing about what He expects us to do.

If you're now saying, "I don't think I've ever heard Him that clearly," I want to challenge you to look back on your life and ask yourself if maybe you weren't listening. Or avoiding asking the right questions (and I'm guilty as charged). He is always speaking. He wants the perfect plan for your life more than you do. It just may not look how you think.

It's true that there are times of silence, when we feel that we are not hearing from Him, and we must wait patiently. But prepare for that day when suddenly, clearly, He calls your name. Immediately listen, and respond in obedience. Obedience is the next step to your destiny...no matter how small, weird, or unexpected the instructions may be.

And your destiny is to look more and more like the person He knows by name, the person you were created to be: in deep relationship with Him.

My Good

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."--Romans 8:28

Every good Christian knows that verse. You probably even memorized it in Sunday school when you were a kid. It's comforting to know that all things work together for our good. "All" means everything, even the bad stuff.

But what is the "good" that the all is working together for?

Kids at VBS (and even some of us adults in the Western world) probably think that "good" is a new house, a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, great job, fancy watch, football on the weekends--you know, the American Dream. We paste this verse all over our t-shirts and wall art like a good luck charm, reminding ourselves that even if we didn't get that promotion, or even if our significant other breaks it off, surely our life goals will come to pass because God is on our side.

I'm not here to say that God is against our dreams or life goals. But I think the "good" in this verse has nothing to do with material blessings or our own goals achieved. It has to do with what Jesus died for on the cross. And, surprise surprise, that wasn't a two-car garage or a Tiffany engagement ring (sorry, ladies). It has to do with complete restoration of relationship with the Father.

Let's let scripture interpret scripture:

"My flesh and my heart may fail, 
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For, behold, those who are far from You will perish;
You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works."
--Psalm 73:26-28

The measure of how "good" your quality of life is not the size of your bank account or how many cupholders your car has. Your "good" is directly related to how near you are to the Father. 

Paul had been sent to prison, beaten, shipwrecked, dragged before courts, ridiculed, and hated. When he said "all things," he wasn't talking about getting broken up with or missing his vacation flight or somebody gossiping about him at work. He was talking about solitary confinement in a tiny cell with rats and open sores and no food and the threat of execution. How could someone say that those things worked together for his good?

Because his "good" wasn't his circumstances. His "good" was knowing the Father's heart. And I bet he learned a whole lot about the Father's heart in those dangerous, scary, unpredictable situations.

I'm not saying that God gives us "bad things" in our lives just to test us. I think bad things happen because we live in a fallen world. But I think the great redemption of the cross is that God takes what the enemy intended to destroy us and turns it around 180 degrees to bless us, if we are willing to see that He wants to use every circumstance in our lives to draw us close. 

We were created to be in God's family. The greatest good we can experience is to be near to Him, loving Him, becoming like Him. That's what we were made for. That's the end He has in mind. And if we are in Christ, He does everything in His power (and that's a lot of power, like the kind that generates galaxies) to turn everything that happens, positive or negative, small or big, into something that gets us right up under His wing. 

I can guarantee you that God has bigger plans for your life than you do. And His plans involve you becoming the image of His Son. Looking like Jesus means being close to the Father. 

Read the rest of Romans 8: 

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified. 
     What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.....But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The extent and finality of Jesus' victory is astounding. NOTHING can work against you. There is no situation that He can't redeem. His blood is the trump card. It destroys the enemy at every turn.

His mercy is just that great: that when we feel hopeless in our circumstances, He's working it for our nearness to Him. And, just like a good good father, He knows that no enemy can come near us when we are in His arms. And THAT'S good.