16But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”
17So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
18But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed:
“Their sound has gone out to all the earth, And their words to the ends of the world.” (Rom. 10:16-17).
Even though the context above is talking about hearing the sound of an actual voice, for my entire life I have thought that this verse, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” referred to reading the Bible and understanding it, to metaphorically “hear” what has been written. The Holy Spirit over the past few days has enlightened me as to what is actually meant here.
Just recently I had had weird, heavy, prolonged nose bleeding for over a month. All the time-honoured ways to stem the bleeding were ineffective. I visited my GP who couldn’t determine the cause and wanted to write me a referral to an ENT to have the blood vessels cauterised.
My girlfriend prayed for me to find the cause. Shortly afterwards I heard the Holy Spirit simply say, “Ginger is an anticoagulant. This is the cause of your problem.”
I googled this and found that this was indeed the case (who would have thought it!) and that it can cause nosebleeds in susceptible people. (I should confess that I had newly discovered a wonderful source of delicious fresh young ginger and we were using a kilogram of ginger a week!)
So, I very reluctantly removed ginger from our diet and after a day the nosebleeds stopped and haven’t returned.
That wasn’t the end of the matter, however. The Holy Spirit then went on to instruct me that as I had heard His voice in this instance, so I had increased my faith in Jesus. I had grown in confidence that Jesus heard my prayers and that Jesus answered prayers. The Holy Spirit added that this is what is meant by the words, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Interestingly, when we read “hearing by the word of God”, the“word” is actually referring to “a spoken word, made "by the living voice."”[i]
As a follower of Jesus we are privileged to actually hear His voice:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand (John 10:27-28).
So listening to the voice of God is something that every believer is privileged to receive. How absolutely wonderful is that! Don’t you just love how our God has equipped us to live our lives with Him? How our faith grows when we hear His voice!
#kristinatrott #christian #christianblogger #christian @kristina_trott #voiceofGod #hearingGod #rhema #Romans10 #voiceofGod
All quotations are from the NKJV.
[i] J. Thayer from https://biblehub.com/greek/4487.htm accessed 10.6.23
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