By Drew Williams
Coram Deo is a Latin phrase translated as “in the presence of God.” To live in the presence of God is to know God’s voice—to walk so closely with Him that we can hear literally hear Him.
Does that sound like a presumptuous idea? A dangerous idea? Perhaps even a foolish idea? But what if the human system cannot properly function without such a close walk with God? What if it’s just not possible to undertake human existence without hearing God? Dallas Willard wrote, “The fine texture as well as the grand movements of life show our need to hear God.” I look back on an earlier part of my life, lived in the absence of God, and can see that without His voice, I was left to the mercy of my own good and less-than-good ideas about what was best.
So how do we hear God? How do I make space for the possibility that God is real and He is really talking to me? I would invite us to consider Moses, and his dialogue with God that first ensued through a burning bush. In this unlikely conversation, I wonder if there is something also for us to be realized, recognized and received from God.
1. Realize… that in love, God is trying to get our attention: If we are to hear God, it is as if we have say to God, “Look, I am going to keep my ‘material world view’ and You must show up somehow within that.” And remarkably and mercifully and graciously, that is exactly what He does! Moses had spent many years in the desert. The sight of a spontaneously burning bush would be unusual in Bruce Park, but was not unusual for Moses. Tinder-dry vegetation that burst into a sudden flame was not uncommon.
What was unusual was that the bush should have been blackened ash in seconds “…yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2b). And for this reason Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned” (Exodus 3:3). God had initiated a conversation with Moses by getting his attention with something that was at once ordinary but imbuing it with the extraordinary. God took the natural and made it supernatural. God met Moses with a burning bush in the desert because it was what was at hand. He knew Moses well enough to know that this might cause him to “turn aside.”
Our hearing God begins with the realization that, in love, He is trying to get our attention. And, just as He did with Moses, He will take the ordinary in our lives and imbue it with something extraordinary, something abnormal within the normal, something exceptional within the ordinary. What does that look like? It will be different for each person. One of the amazing attributes of God is that He is omniscient, which mean He knows everything about us, including our past, present and future. In fact, He knows more about each one of us than we know about ourselves. Speaking of the Lord, Jeremiah wrote, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” (Jeremiah 1:5a).
God knows us well enough to know what will get our attention. John Shea wrote, “There are signs of His presence. People find them in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. They are open to argument and refutation but their impact on the ones who receive them can only be welcomed.” God would encourage us to allow our hearts to be honest about the impact. Often, we don’t want to look foolish to ourselves! God is not much bothered about that.
2. Recognize… the voice of God: When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses… I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God literally introduced Himself through His word. The Bible is always the first place to go to hear God and it is the first place that we go to discern what we believe the Holy Spirit might be saying to us personally. There remains a crucial connection in our recognizing God’s voice in and through His word.
All day, every day, from every conceivable source, our minds and hearts are being bombarded with messaging that contradicts God’s voice. This messaging has a knack of scrambling God’s voice from within. We lose the clarity of God’s voice. God will therefore build in us a love for His word, because in it we both hear and verify His living, intimate presence in our lives. To put it another way, the Word of God finely tunes our hearts and turns up the volume on God’s voice. In this way, Augustine could write, “Lord, Thou didst strike my heart with thy word… and I loved thee.”
3. Receive… the promise of God: Moses went on to say to God, “’Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ [God] replied, ‘But I will be with you…’” (Exodus 3:11-12). In other words, the conversation that God had initiated with Moses was not a one-shot deal. It was not a monologue, but a constant dialogue. And because of the promise of the Holy Spirit, we can enter the same fullness of relationship. In fact, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jesus promised His disciples (including us) that they would be able to hear God like never before. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth…” (John 16:12-13a).
For a long time, I was reasonably comfortable that from time to time God might speak to me. I just hoped to goodness that I would be paying attention when that moment came. And then I had three children and everything changed. It dawned on me that if we truly are God’s sons and daughters, and if God created us for the most intimate, loving relationship that is possible—“Beloved, we are God’s children now…” [1 John 3:2a]—and if He really is our heavenly Father—“…you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ [Romans 8:15]—then as surely as I love my own children, it follows that He is speaking to us all the time.
Perhaps like Moses, perhaps like me, you may have wondered if you are worthy of such a relationship. If I think about it, the burning bush is an extraordinary visual demonstration and a source of enormous encouragement to us. Clearly God did not need a beautiful pile of sticks, a highly-educated pile of sticks, a hugely successful pile of sticks, an “I’ve got my life all together!” pile of sticks, or even an extremely pious pile of sticks; the important thing is not the pile of sticks, but that it was God who was in the pile of sticks. At the very heart of God’s desire to speak to you is His great love for you—His heart for a restored relationship with you.
The Rev. Drew Williams is senior pastor at Trinity Church in Greenwich.
