5 Impediments to Hearing God’s Voice

Two men were walking along a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly, one of the men remarked, “Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket,” But the other man could not hear the sound.

He asked his friend how he could hear the sound of a cricket amid the roar of the traffic and the sound of the people. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature.

He did not explain to his friend in words how he could hear the sound of the cricket, but instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a half-dollar coin, dropped it onto the sidewalk, and watched intently as a dozen people began to look for the coin as they heard it clanking around amid the sounds of the traffic and the sounds of the city. He turned to his friend and said, “We hear what we listen for.”

Hearing the call of God means tuning out the other voices that try to speak to us, and tuning into the frequency of the Spirit. Our ability to hear God’s voice affects all areas of our life and ministry. Therefore, let’s cite some of the most common impediments to hearing God’s voice.

Saul

1.     Insecurity

And Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me? (I Samuel 9:21).

When Samuel met Saul and gave him a hint about the call of God in his life, it seemed that he forgot who was calling him to be the first king of Israel.

Saul’s envy and attempts to kill David imply that he loved the position, and humility didn’t cause the reaction he had when he learned of God’s plan for his life.

Insecurity and self-deprecation come when we focus on our capabilities or limitations, rather than putting our confidence in God. Humility is different from self-deprecation; humility means we are acknowledging our limitations and recognizing our need of God, while self-deprecation means focusing on our flaws and failing to acknowledge that God can help us.

2.     Impatience

And he [Saul] tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came (I Samuel 13:8–10b).

Gene Wilkes said that there are three types of waiting: quiet waiting, expectant waiting and frustrated waiting.

Quiet waiting is “like sitting on a porch at the end of the day, reflecting on the day’s events.” Expectant waiting is “like sitting on a restaurant waiting for a friend who said he would join you for breakfast.” Finally, frustrated waiting is “like waiting in the doctor’s office for two hours knowing you have work to do back at the office.”

Saul’s failure to completely wait for Samuel is an example of frustrated waiting. His impatience didn’t only cause him to miss the plans of God; it also took away the kingdom of Israel from him.

3.     Inner conflicts

And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal (I Samuel 15:20–21).

Samuel’s instruction to Saul was to attack and kill all the Amalekites, destroy all their possessions and slaughter all their animals. Saul’s incomplete obedience, however, revealed the inner conflict in his heart – he wanted to please men rather than God. A wrong motive in our heart will certainly hinder us from adhering to the plan of God.

Ananias

4.    Arguing with God

Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name (Acts 9:13–14).

God was in the process of unfolding His plans for Saul (Paul) when He called Ananias in a vision. Because Ananias knew that the chief priests gave Saul authority to arrest the disciples of Jesus Christ, he argued with God! He got a hold of his knowledge and didn’t immediately choose to let go of it when the Omniscient One asked him to meet Saul of Tarsus. It was good for him that he eventually abandoned his argument and yielded to God’s call. Otherwise, God would just leave him and find someone else who wouldn’t argue with Him!

Peter

5.    Preconceived ideas

And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common (Acts 10:13–15).

As a Jew, Peter grew up with people who taught him how to keep the Mosaic Law. Although we don’t have any recorded accounts about Peter’s life before the event when Jesus called him, I would say that he was a devout man. His personality implies that he was zealous of everything he thought was right. He was hesitant when God challenged his preconceived ideas. If God didn’t open his spiritual eyes, Peter would have missed the call to reach the Gentiles.

Jews

The majority of the Jewish people in the Scriptures had been so zealous that they didn’t consider God reaching out to the Gentiles even in the book of Acts. On the day of His ascension, Jesus’ original plan was for them to go and be witnesses of him “both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). However, it took them many years to bring the gospel to other nations.

The Jews who were with Peter in the house of Cornelius were astonished “because on the Gentiles was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 10:45). The believers in Jerusalem who heard the news about Cornelius “contended with him, saying, ‘Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them’” (Acts 11:2). The disciples who went as far as Phenice, Cyprus and Antioch because of the persecution preached the word “to none but unto the Jews only” (Acts 11:19).

Paul, the apostle whom God appointed to the Gentiles, suffered from the prejudice of the Jewish believers. After hearing Paul’s preaching at the synagogue in Antioch, many people followed his ministry. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, “they were filled with envy . . . And raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas” (Acts 13:45, 50). Believers from Judaea taught the Gentiles, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). The Jewish believers wasted a lot of years not adhering to the call of God to reach the Gentiles. Their prejudice might have caused God to destroy Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and made Antioch the new centre of revival and evangelism. Our prejudice, indeed, can hinder us from hearing and obeying the voice of God.

It is a fearful calamity to miss our call. God summoned a whale to swallow Jonah when he tried to turn from his calling to Nineveh. Destruction came to the church in Jerusalem when they didn’t fulfil the desire of God for the Gentiles. The conflict in the Middle East doesn’t end because Abraham attempted to fulfil God’s plan according to his timing and ways. We will certainly find ourselves in an adverse situation when we neglect and pervert the call of God in our lives.

If we get rid of every impediment to hearing the voice of God, we will undoubtedly hear Him calling us to a particular place in the ministry. Like a dew, His call will softly and gradually come into our personal life, but like thunder, we will hear it generally for a lifetime. God’s call is insistent; it will bring us into a place of discomfort and dissatisfaction until we fulfil it in our lives. If we are truly called to do something, we will have no other choice but to be what He called us to be.

The time we are living in demands us to pursue the call of God. We cannot leave ourselves picnicking at the gates of hell while this whole world is marching towards it. There is no time for our personal ambitions. The harvest is too great for us to disconnect ourselves from the specific calling that God has placed in our life. It doesn’t matter if we are called to be a pastor, a missionary, a giver, a leader or an intercessor; whatever calling we have in our life, now is the time to fulfil it! Let’s pursue our call in such a time as this. Charles Spurgeon said, “As surely as we want our hour, so surely the hour wants its people.”