THE VOICE INSIDE

"…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice…" (Deuteronomy 30:19-20, NIV)

When I step on the seventeenth tee at the Cypresswood Traditions Golf Course I hear voices. The seventeenth is a 300-yard par-4 with water running all the way down the right side of the fairway. To lay up at the 100-yard marker is no easy task. You have to place your shot between four bunkers, carry your shot 175 yards over water, stay left of the water on the right, and hit a slight draw around a giant pine tree guarding the left side of the tee box. It is almost as easy to hit driver at the green without penalty. So this conflict of risk versus reward sets in motion a battle in my mind. These voices struggle for the physical control of my body that leads to performing an action.

Do you play a similar golf hole that brings out the voice inside of you? Ideally, each time we play these holes, we make the best decision possible—observing the weather, remembering our tendencies, and using strategy based on the situation of the match at hand. Proper club selection is a decision made in wisdom.

Every follower of Christ has a voice inside that speaks to him or her in wisdom. We hear it most clearly when our minds are not focused on ourselves.

Of course, there is a competing voice inside us all. This selfish voice screams for our attention and wants to control our actions. Humans are tainted with a sin nature. This natural voice is the strongest in all of us from birth until the moment we are born again as believers in Jesus Christ. If you are now a believer in Jesus, the dominant voice inside of you should be that of the Holy Spirit.

We make wise decisions in life when we tune out the selfish voice and focus on the voice of the Holy Spirit.

In this regard, my mind is drawn specifically today to the selfish voice as it wars against the voice of an unborn child in a mother's womb. This is the voice of a tiny baby that cannot speak for itself, yet somehow the Holy Spirit testifies to the baby's beauty and potential.

Unfortunately, we often choose to ignore this voice, and thus abortion has grown to become a heart-piercing issue affecting almost every extended family in the Western world.

My immediate family we has been deeply pained by an abortion. Also, a good friend of mine, currently a pastor, was part of an abortion in his younger years. In both of these cases, the unborn life was healthy but dismissed because those involved listened to the selfish voice inside.

I know an amazing and beautiful story of a couple that listened to the Spirit's voice. This family lives in The Woodlands, Texas. Dear friends of mine, they were very excited to have conceived twins after six years of waiting. This is their story in their words:

"The complication came about when we were pregnant with twins at the beginning of our pregnancy, but one of the twins miscarried. Usually this does not affect the other twin in any way and the mother's body deals with it in a healthy way, but in [extremely rare cases] the placenta of the miscarried fetus continues growing and becomes a tumor. The chances of survival for the [living] baby are 40 percent at the highest because the mother usually begins to hemorrhage before the baby is able to survive outside the womb. To be fair, the medical community has seen so few of these situations that there is no standard operating procedure or treatment, so it is safest for them to say, 'Evacuate the pregnancy and protect your life.' But we love this child! We have celebrated every trip to the doctor where we have seen: the heartbeat, thumb sucking, and hiccups."

This couple decided to go headfirst into a situation that all the doctors advised against, yet both mom and daughter survived! Jaydn was born a beautiful tiny little girl at one pound, nine ounces and she is now seven months old. Her name means literally "God listens."

Yes, God listens to us. But are we listening to Him or to our sinful natures? God's voice of wisdom is able to deliver life-giving courage in the face of our toughest decisions.

--

Marcus Jones

January 3, 2007

Copyright 2007 Links Players International

The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.