Earlier this week I had the opportunity to chat with one of my colleagues and they were describing a really confusing situation. They told me that a situation had arisen where they had shared some news with a small group of friends, who then shared this news with a wider circle of friends. This then led to a number of people starting to comment and provide advice through social media. The colleague explained that though the friends were all trying to be helpful, so many voices emerged that it just became confusing and overwhelming.
As this person was describing this situation to me, I recalled the times when I too have felt confused and overwhelmed because it seemed like voices were coming at me from all directions, and I just wanted to put my fingers in my ears to make the voices go away! Have you ever felt like that?
Later as I was reflecting on this conversation, it occurred to me that often God always desires to talk with me with His calm, quiet reassuring way. However, other voices can often drown Him out. Yet, even when this happens, I still love God’s heart; He wants to speak with me.
I once read: “God seeks to ask us what’s going on inside, to help guide us away from confusion and gain a hearing from us. He queries if we are listening too much to the opinion-formers of this world, if we’re bowing to easily to the pressure of our peers or the fashionable trends of culture or even paying too much attention to those damaging voices from the past that seem to often reverberate in our memory banks. So, when God poses the question to us. “Who told you?” it challenges the ideas we have based our lives upon and confronts us with the possibility that we may be believing and trusting in lies.”
As I was pondering this how can I discern which voice I need to be listening to when I feel overwhelmed, I recalled the passage in the New Testament book of John. In Chapter 10 and verse 27, it says, “they followed Him because they knew His voice.”
Life’s experiences have helped me to come to a deep understanding that there is only one voice that can guide us safely through this world, and it is the voice of our gentle loving ‘Shepherd’, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an understanding I would love each student, staff member and parent within this community to have.
As I was coming to this understanding, I came across the example of George Bernard Shaw, who was a person to was strong in voicing his unbelief in God yet recognised the need to listen to someone other the many voices that surround us.
George Bernard Shaw wrote, “I’m no more a follower of Jesus Christ than Pilate (the Roman Governor in Jesus’ day) than you gentle reader, yet like Pilate I greatly prefer Jesus to the religious leaders of His day; and I’m ready to admit that after contemplating the world and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world’s misery but by the way of Christ’s will!”
Those who have been able to refine the practice of listening to God’s voice have noted that by hearing and listening to His voice and holding to the truth as Christ tells it, we are able to be set free to be loving, truthful people. This is my desire for each of our students, that they become the people God has called them to be as loving, truthful people who are guided through life as they listen to Jesus’ voice.
This is one of the main reasons why we start each day in homeroom across the College, reading and listening to God’s Word as found in the Christian Bible. As we delve into God’s written Word, it provides each of us with the opportunity to listen to Jesus’ voice.
My prayer for each of you is that you too will know and experience the blessing of allowing Jesus’ voice to be the main voice that you are able to hear and listen to.
Blessings,
Ross Grace
Executive Principal