God “told” David to Quit his Job and he nearly went Bankrupt: Why we Need the Church to Hear God’s voice

David was a businessman who thought he’d heard God speak about leaving his job and trusting God for the finances. So, he met with his boss and submitted his resignation.

Time passed. His bank account began to fall. His mortgage came under strain. His marriage started to fracture. No windfall from heaven. No miraculous intervention. Nothing at all. Still David waited. Surely God would come through? But nothing. 

Finally, David went to see his pastor. What happened? Why didn’t God do something? 

Then as they talked it through, David realized he hadn’t heard God’s voice at all. He’d been suffering from the symptoms of burnout!

This man’s failing was not in his commitment to God, but in the fact that he hadn’t talked about his experience with others. Those who knew and loved him would have noticed the stress he’d been under at work. They would have been able to identify the symptoms of burnout and provided perspective. 

The truth is, you don’t need the church to hear God’s voice. The Spirit of God speaks to us wherever we are! What’s more, we know that plenty of people hear from God independently of the church and even to those who don’t know him. In the Middle East, story after story tells of how Muslims have met Jesus in a dream (Read Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?).

However, we do need the church to recognise and respond to God’s voice. This is the pattern we see in the early church and there are some excellent reasons for it.

1. The Church Helps Clear our Fuzzy Filters

First, the church helps us to recognise God’s voice. When it comes to hearing from the Spirit, we can get it wrong. We interpret life within the framework of our own minds and hearts. Our mindsets, our desires and our experiences all act together to create a “fuzzy” filter through which we hear from God (1 Cor. 13:12). That means we often mix God’s messages with our own. Typically, we hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see. 

This is why we need the community of God’s people. We need others to help us sort through the mixed messages and identify the divine one among them. 

But it’s not just the “community” as a whole that we need. “Community” means those who know and love us. These are the people who are familiar with our character and history; our foibles and blind spots. Because they know us, they are in a better position to make an objective assessment of our experiences.

2. God Speaks through the Church

The second reason we need the church is that the Spirit uses others to confirm his messages. This is one of the key advantages of the New Covenant. Under the old schema, it was more difficult to overcome subjectivity since only the prophets could hear from God. Now that everyone can hear from the Spirit (Acts 2:16,17), God can speak the same message to another person. In other words, God speaks twice.

This is the dynamic we see in the early church. On one occasion, the Apostle Peter was sitting on his rooftop waiting for lunch when he had a vision that contained an important message from God (Acts 10:9-23). The images of non-kosher food was a symbolic message about God’s heart for the Gentiles and a major turning point in the church’s mission. The question was, how did Peter know it was God? He was hungry after all. Then he fell asleep and dreamt about food!

The answer becomes clear as the story unfolds. We see that while Peter was hearing from the Spirit in Joppa, there was another person hearing God too. Over in Caesarea, Cornelius received a vision from an angel (Acts 10:1-8). The story shows how the Spirit brought them together – and they realise God had been speaking complementary messages to both of them. God confirmed his message through another person.

We shouldn’t be surprised when we see this pattern occurring in our own lives. God speaks to us individually and then repeats it to another person. Sometimes, the sermon in church will echo the same conversation we just had with God at home. Other times, someone in our household will have the same dream we just had. This is a work of the Holy Spirit confirming his message through community. There’s safety in more than one witness.

3. We Get to Know God through the Experiences of Others

The final reason why we need the church to hear God’s voice is to learn from the experiences of others. No one person has known the fullness of the Holy Spirit. We need others in the church to show us what God is like. 

The dynamic is not unlike human relationships. Say you have a friend you’ve come to know fairly well. One day you attend their birthday party. You meet their family, their work colleagues, their next door neighbour and the friend they went to school with. As you listen to the stories of your friend from the perspective of others, you begin to know them in ways you’ve never experienced before. You see the fullness of who they are.

It’s a similar dynamic with the Holy Spirit. When we meet others who know God, we get to know him better. We hear stories of how God’s spoken to them. We witness how God works with others in different situations. Then we start to recognise the Spirit more easily in our own.

While the Spirit is not confined to a church building, an individual or a specific time of the week, God has given us community so that we can discern his voice together. Hearing from God within the accountability of godly relationships provides us with a way to test our experiences and deepen our understanding of his ways. It’s the way God has designed it to be.