Listen and Be Led

When he was about 30 years old, Abraham Lincoln went through a time of deep depression. A melancholy man by nature, Lincoln was quite familiar with the darkness that sometimes wells up from the depths of our souls. But the depression that he experienced around the year 1840 was the darkest time of his life. He withdrew from most of the people around him. He contemplated suicide. Today he would’ve been given anti-depressants and counselling, and maybe even admitted to hospital. But most of those resources weren’t available to him. For weeks, Lincoln was in agony.

The thing that pulled him out of it was this: it came to Lincoln that he was destined to accomplish some great thing in his life. Perhaps that insight came to him in a dream. We know that Lincoln had vivid dreams, and that he paid attention to them; he assumed that dreams could tell us something about our lives and something about the future. So it may have come to him in a dream that he was to accomplish some great thing, and that he simply had to keep living until he had done so. And of course we know that Lincoln did do great things. We know that Abraham Lincoln the melancholy lawyer became Abraham Lincoln the President of the United States; leading his nation through the worst crisis in its history and becoming, arguably, its greatest president.

Lincoln listened to his life. And in so doing he was led to his destiny. He listened to his feelings. He listened to his dreams. He paid attention to the events around him. Thus he discerned the purpose of his life. He discerned what it was that God was calling him to do. And then he did it.

Listen and be led. If you want to know what your purpose in life is, that’s what you have to do: listen and be led.

That’s what Samuel did. He was a boy growing up in the temple at Shiloh. His mother, Hannah, had no children, and she was getting on in years; so when she became pregnant she understood that the child within her was a special blessing from God. It came to her that once the child was weaned, she should bring him to the temple and leave him there as a way of saying “Thank you” to God. “I have leant him to the Lord,” she said. “As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28). Hannah went on to have five more children; while Samuel was raised in the temple by Eli, the priest.

So it was that the young boy Samuel found himself awakened in the temple one night by a voice which kept calling to him: “Samuel; Samuel!” The boy knew that he and Eli were the only two people in the temple, so he ran to Eli and he said, “Yes; you called?” But of course it was not Eli who’d called the boy. The old priest told Samuel to go back to bed. Again Samuel heard the voice: “Samuel, Samuel!” Again the boy ran to Eli. And again Eli said, “For crying out loud, boy, go back to bed!” But when this happened a third time, Eli began to clue in to the fact that it was God who was calling Samuel. So he told the boy that if he heard the voice again, he was to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Indeed, Samuel did hear the voice again. And he listened. And thus began his vocation as a priest and a prophet. A prophet who was destined to anoint first Saul and then David as King of Israel. A prophet who found the leaders to guide Israel through its darkest hour. A prophet who did great things.

Samuel listened to the Lord. And he was led toward his vocation; he found his calling; he discerned his mission in life.

Listen and be led. That’s what all of us need to do if we are to know what we’re meant to do with our lives. Listen to the voice of God, and follow in whatever direction that voice is calling you to go.

That’s easier said then done. I mean, how is it that God speaks to us? Does God speak to us? If the word of the Lord was rare in Samuel’s day, (see 1 Samuel 3:1), how much more rare is it in our day? In the 21st century, if someone says to you, “Listen, I’ve been talking to the Lord; I’ve been hearing voices in the night,” you might be inclined to get that person to a psychiatrist real fast.

How is it that we can hear the voice of God? How is it that God speaks to us? Well, sometimes God does speak to us in the night. God speaks to us in our dreams. I firmly believe this. More than once I’ve had a dream that’s been so vivid and so real that I just had to pay attention to it. And when I do the thing that the dream seems to suggest that I need to do, generally it turns out to be a wise and faithful thing to do.

God speaks to us in the night. One night a young pastor couldn’t sleep. He was speaking out against injustice in his community and he’d received yet another threatening phone call. Too upset to go back to bed, he decided to make himself a cup of coffee. As he sat there at the kitchen table it was as if he heard a voice saying, “Stand up for truth; stand up for righteousness.” Which is exactly what Martin Luther King did.

God speaks to us in the night. In dreams and visions and the gentleness of a still small voice, God speaks to us in the night. That’s one of the ways in which we hear the voice of God. That’s one of the ways in which God tells us what we’re meant to do with our lives.

Listen and be led. Listen to the whispers in the night; but not only to those whispers. Listen to your whole life. Pay attention to your feelings. Sadness and depression are often signals that something in your life needs to change. And pay attention to the patterns of your life. Pay attention to the things that seem to keep happening over and over again. Maybe some of those patterns aren’t very helpful to you and the people around you, and there’s something that you keep doing which puts those patterns into motion; something that you need to change. Or maybe those patterns are pointing the way to some new direction that you need to take in your life. I love the whole phenomenon of synchronicity; when two or more seemingly independent things come together at about the same time. Like the time that I had an opportunity to serve a church north of Barrie. The interview had gone well and it seemed like a good fit between the needs of the congregation and my gift set. But I had this nagging sense that I shouldn’t accept the call. I couldn’t think of any logical reason to say “No.” Saying “No” was a crazy idea! Yet there was this nagging sense that it was not where I should be. Sometime between the first and second interviews, Cora and I went to see a movie: Field of Dreams. Only thing I knew about the movie was that it was about baseball, which was reason enough for me to see it. Turns out it’s about an Iowa farmer who gets this crazy notion that he should plough under his corn and build a baseball diamond where long dead baseball players will come and once again play ball. There was no logical reason for him to do it. It was a crazy idea! But he built it, and those ballplayers came. Well, it occurred to me that I also needed to do the crazy thing and say “No” to that congregation. So I did. And it set in motion a string of events that eventually led to the call to come here to Knox. I was struggling with the need to listen to my intuition. And then, coincidentally, we went to see a movie about a fellow who did listen to his intuition. In that synchronistic event, I heard God’s voice and found direction in my life.

Listen to your life. Pay attention to the patterns of your life. Pay attention to your intuition; to those feelings and insights that come from your gut and may not make any sense whatsoever. Pay attention to the things that bring you joy. As Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss.” Go with the things that bring you joy. All of these are ways in which the Spirit may be speaking to you, and leading you on to new adventures.

Listen and be led. Listen to the whispers in the night, and to your life, and to the world. As troubled as the world is right now, there are also amazing things happening in the world; there are great things happening in the world. And if you listen to the world, you’ll hear God’s voice and see God’s hand in those amazing things, and you’ll be reminded that you can be part of those amazing things; that maybe that’s part of your calling. You know, you may have a dream in which you’re doing something great in your community or in the world; and you may sometimes get this intuitive sense that you need take some bold initiative, but then you draw in the boundaries of your imagination and you think, “No, no, no; those great things, that’s not for me; I’m not capable of operating on that level.” Listen, I’ve got news for you: you are a child of God; don’t sell yourself short!

When I was a boy, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was told that I could be anything that I wanted to be; even President of the United States. But my Black classmates knew something that I didn’t know; they’d read the fine print in that promise, and the fine print said, “Black folks need not apply.” And that fine print applied to more than just the Presidency. My African-American classmates knew that there were certain churches that they’d better not set foot in; and there were certain neighbourhoods that they’d better not walk through.

But we need to listen to the world and hear what God is saying because brothers and sisters, this week the fine print has been erased. This week the world is saying, “There’s a new clause which says in bold type, “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). I read that line in a book somewhere. And maybe the ancient Israelites read the same book. Trapped on the sea shore with the Egyptian Army bearing down on them, they started walking down the beach, walking toward the water as if it was going to part and let them escape; and it did, because with God, all things are possible. Maybe Harriet Tubman read the same book. Having escaped the brutality of slavery in the U.S., she left her home in St. Catherines, Ontario 13 times, and she led other escaped slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and hiding by day, braving the slave catchers and the blood hounds, they made their way north to Canada; and they made it because, with God, all things are possible. Maybe Jackie Robinson read the same book. A Black man, he signed a contract in 1946 to play baseball with the Montreal Royals, a previously all-White team, and then he went on to become the first African-American to play major league baseball because, with God, all things are possible. Maybe Martin Luther King read the same book. In 1963 he stood under the solemn gaze of Lincoln’s stature, and he dreamed of a day when his four children would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character; he dreamed, and this week that day has come much closer because, with God, all things are possible. Maybe Barak Obama read the same book. A skinny little kid, abandoned by his father, raised by his mother; a Black kid trying to find his way in a White world, who made his way to Columbia and Harvard and the University of Chicago; who made his way from the streets of the South Side to the Illinois State Senate, and then the U.S. Senate, and on Tuesday he will become the 44th President of the United States because with God, all things are possible.

Listen to the world. There are amazing things happening in this world. We can hear God’s voice in those amazing events. God calls each of us individually and all of us collectively to be a part of those great things, to do great things.

Listen and be led. Psalm 139 speaks of the deep designs of God. Like a master artist, God has created those designs deep within you; God has created those designs in the world around you. Life is like a glorious tapestry of different colours and patterns. The trick is to find your pattern in the midst of that design. Listen to the whispers in the night, listen to your life, listen to the world; and you’ll hear the voice of God. That voice will lead you on a marvellous adventure, if you listen, and you follow. Amen.

Text: 1 Samuel 3:10
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
18 January 2009