to either speak into the lives of others on His behalf or help
them in their time of need.
Most of the great men and women of God whom I’ve
personally known, or whose remarkable lives I’ve read about in
books, had a common thread: they would tell you without
hesitation that God talked to them. Frankly, to confess that God
talks to you takes guts! But the written accounts of their lives
reveal they specifically knew what God said to them, where
they were when He said it, and more important, how (or if) they
responded to Him. And very often they risked their lives or
reputations because they believed God asked them to do
something unusual or unexpected in order to stop or start
something that they had no strength or ability to do on their
own. They would tell you that when God talked to them, they
rarely used their natural abilities but were required to believe
beyond what they could see.
I could choose any number of people to highlight from the
annals of history—those who heard God speak to them and did
great things on His behalf: missionaries to China, such as
Hudson Taylor or Marie Munson, who made the first and
lasting inroads for Christianity into that nation; politicians who
valiantly fought against injustice in the ilk of England’s William
Wilberforce; preachers like D. L. Moody, whose lack of
education or personal charisma would never suggest the
enormous and rousing responses his sermons elicited. Each
believed—and more important, documented and modeled—
that God personally talked to them.
Taylor, Munson, Wilberforce, and Moody realized that God
talked to them because He had something to say that was
either timely or life-changing in that moment for themselves