January 5
Responding to the Right Voice
Genesis 10-14
Think about the joy you have when you talk with people you love. Your spouse shares words of love with you. Your preschooler just loves you and wants to hang out with you and talk. Your teenager unexpectedly wants to converse about life, or your adult child returns to you for advice. God has created us in such a way that simple conversations increase love, build trust, and strengthen relationships.
That shouldn’t surprise us, actually, since God is Himself a God who communicates with us. From the beginning, God simply spoke and things happened; light appeared when He commanded that there be light (Gen 1:3). In today’s readings, I am again struck by the number of times the text says something like, “God said,” “God told him,” and “the word of the Lord came to him.”
Hear this amazing truth: the God who created the world communicates with the people He creates. At three different points in today’s reading, then, Abram makes the appropriate response to this relational God:
“So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.” (Gen 12:7)
“He built an altar to Yahweh there, and he called on the name of Yahweh.” (Gen 12:8)
“So Abram moved his tent and went to live near the oaks of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the Lord.” (Gen 13:18)
God talks with us, and He expects us to respond in worship and obedience when He calls. Here’s my question today, though: knowing that we face a real enemy who seeks continually to deceive us, do I know God’s voice so well through His Word and His Spirit that I recognize the liar when he shows up?
Or, might I be easily deceived because I don’t the voice of Truth well enough? Sometimes the enemy wins simply because his voice is the only one we’ve heard consistently.
RESPONSE: Live in God’s Word so you always recognize His voice—and consequently, the enemy’s counter-voice.
