Hearing God’s Voice

As we enter the final stretch of 2024, it’s clear our nation faces several challenges that will be very difficult to navigate. So, once again, we turn to Scripture as our guide to keep us on solid ground as we traverse the next few months together.

Our new series “Prophets” will be our central study between now and the season of Advent. The many Hebrew Prophets we encounter throughout the Old Testament also lived through their own troubled times. Though we’ve named books of the Bible after many of the prophets and hold them up as heroes of the faith, most of what they experienced in their actual lives would be desirable to no one. God usually asked the Prophets to say and do things that were difficult and dangerous. They were responsible for announcing judgment and consequences of sinfulness and disobedience to the powerful and the common person alike. They were often commanded to speak even to entire nations, saying things like: “You’ve turned your back on the One True God, If you do not repent, a day of reckoning is coming!”

Early in the Book of Hosea, the first of the Minor Prophets, we read that “The Lord began to speak through Hosea” (1:2). I pray that as we enter a season of new beginnings together, we will hear God’s voice as He speaks to us as individuals and as a church, no matter what challenges are ahead.

I believe some great things are on the horizon as God prepares us for a time of fruitfulness. I could not be more excited about what is ahead! At the same time, I am incredibly thankful for all that God has done for us in the past. The same God who has always been faithful to us will continue to be faithful, and I pray we will hear His voice above all others.