God's Voice Within

​I often find myself in conversations about how we can know God’s will for us. We want to do God’s will. We just need help discerning what God’s will is.
 
Although they might not seem it at first, our readings offer that help.
 
They begin with the big picture, the end times, the climax of all of history.
 
Isaiah promises us that one day God will create new heavens and a new earth. God invites us to “be glad and rejoice forever in what [God] is creating.” And God, too, “will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in [God’s] people.” In the world that God will eventually bring forth, there will be no more weeping, and no more cries of distress.
 
Exactly what God’s kingdom will look like is considerably above my pay grade. But that’s OK. All we really need to know about the end is that God wins and that God is good. That makes us people of hope, no matter how challenging things may get.
 
And that’s a good thing, because Jesus warns us, before God’s kingdom comes, things may get really hard. People will lead us astray. Nation will rise against nation. There will be natural disasters, famine, and plagues. Christians will be persecuted because of Christ’s name. Life can be very hard on the way to God’s kingdom.
 
Thankfully, Jesus offers us some good news, too.
 
Jesus is with us always, even, maybe especially, when times are tough. Even in the worst-case scenario, Jesus promises to give us words and wisdom. And Jesus promises us that by enduring whatever comes our way, we gain our souls.
 
Both readings describe events around the Second Coming, just before and just after. But we don’t have to wait for the end of time to experience trials and tribulations or to experience God’s victory over sin and suffering and death. In these prophetic descriptions of the world to come, we can also see a picture of the world we actually live in.
 
The trials and tribulations are obvious enough. They are so obvious that people in virtually every generation, including ours, wonder if they may be living in the time of tribulation Jesus describes.
 
I would like to think that all of us have also experienced something like Isaiah’s vision of joy and delight in God’s creation.
 
My week hasn’t been as ecstatic as Isaiah sounds, but I’ve had all kinds of little tastes of God’s kingdom.
 
Whatever you think about the government shutdown and reopening, I rejoice that hungry people won’t have to worry quite so much about their next meals. On the day I wrote this sermon, most of the trees in our neighborhood were bare, but the leaves on a pair of dogwoods visible from our kitchen were just hitting their peak. This weekend, our Diocese gathered in Convention, and the worship was glorious. Last Saturday, I spent significant time with old friends, and this week I had significant time to myself, both of which were great.
 
Those were all little tastes of the kingdom that gave me joy, and that are reasons to give thanks to God.
 
Then we can pull in even closer. What we can see in our readings about our world—both the good and the bad—is true of our spirits, too.
 
Sometimes I feel a lot like Jesus’ description of coming tribulations. Mostly I am pretty upbeat. But at times, I am beset by competing impulses pulling me in different directions and potentially leading me astray, by inner conflict, by a spiritual hunger that won’t go away.
 
Other times, I am closer to Isaiah’s joy and delight.
 
And, importantly, my inner world does not always reflect what is happening around me. I may experience inner turmoil even in good times, and I may feel the true peace that passes understanding even in hard times.
 
This brings me back, at long last, to the question of discernment, of knowing God’s will.
 
In his ongoing effort to educate me, Terry gave me a book by Mark Thibodeaux called God’s Voice Within.[1] Thibodeaux has many wise things to say about listening to God’s voice, particularly when we have to make important decisions. But if you boil it all down, his point is simple. We need to pay attention to what is happening in our inner world because that is one of the main ways God guides us.
 
If, when we make a decision, our inner turmoil increases, if we feel more like what Jesus describes in our reading, we are probably going astray. But if we experience peace and joy at our deepest level, even when things are difficult, we are probably following God’s will. The trick is to get better at attending to what is happening on our insides.  
 
My standard example is Carrie’s and my decision to move to New England, which was an important turning point in our lives. For me, in addition to whatever else was at stake, moving meant giving up my teaching career and committing to the life of a priest.
 
Making that decision took us several years.
 
At the beginning of our process, I got angry and anxious every time I contemplated the move. I was a lot closer to our Gospel reading than I was to Isaiah. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to go.
 
But over time, I found myself getting more agitated when I thought about staying in Georgia. Increasingly I found myself bored and unsatisfied with the life that, not long before, had been really rewarding.
 
At the end of this long process, I took a backpacking trip by myself. To my surprise, on that trip I found for the first time that I could contemplate moving and changing careers without getting agitated.
 
I was still anxious about how things would go for us in New England, and what it would be like to dedicate my life to the Church. But underneath that anxiety, I was at peace. I was even excited. I was getting closer to the joy and delight Isaiah talks about.
 
That internal shift, that inner peace and joy despite my surface anxiety, told me I was listening to God’s voice. That is Thibodeaux’s point.
 
Of course, we can’t take years to make most decisions. But we can always do a shorter version of Thibodeaux’s process.
 
When we have to make a difficult decision, we can imagine choosing one of the options before us, and then paying attention to how we feel, deep down, beneath the surface. Are we more agitated or more peaceful? More trial and tribulation or more joy? Then we can do the same for our other options.
 
Thibodeaux makes one other important point. As we are attending to our inner spirit, and particularly as we get closer to making a final decision, we should also seek external confirmation. If what we are feeling on the inside and what we are hearing on the outside line up, we can be pretty confident we have found God’s will. If they don’t, we have to keep at it.
 
Listening to God’s voice always matters. But it is particularly important for us as a parish as we enter a season of planning for our future. Now is the time for each of us to make stewardship commitments. Over the next two months, we’ll gather our leadership team and put together our budget for next year. The question for us is, who is God calling us to be, and what is God calling us to do? My prayer is that we can listen carefully.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.


[1] Mark Thibodeaux, God’s Voice Within: The Ignatian Way to Discover God’s Will, 2010.