When I attended camp meetings, I noticed an interesting practice that greatly enhanced our gathering and lent special solemnity to our praise of God through song. When everyone present began praising the Lord in song, one of the chosen singers would take a microphone and begin singing with everyone else, using his voice to set the key and tempo for the other voices. If you did not see this taking place and simply sang with everyone, you might not even notice that someone was guiding the rhythm and giving a special sound to the combined voices. As a result, the song sounded very solemn and vibrant. Your voice joined the other voices in unison, creating the impression that a heavenly choir of angels had joined us in praising God. In fact, this is exactly what happens. God’s angels take part in all our gatherings and add a special quality to everything we do for God’s glory. When we rise to sing a song of praise together, their voices are skillfully woven into our singing, bringing us joy and driving away the evil spirits that seek to destroy everything.
I believe that the Lord Himself sings these solemn hymns with us, blessing everyone present as He does so.
God’s voice is entirely unique and can be heard everywhere. It may be heard in the sounds of nature, in the gentle whisper of the wind, in the joyful thoughts of children, in a friend’s words, in inspired letters, and in the speech of someone who speaks words of inspiration and instruction. The Lord has chosen human beings to save human beings, and He carries out His plan for the salvation of the world through His friends who agree to be His mouthpiece.
We read in 1 Corinthians 1:26–29: ‘For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in His presence.’
We who are called by God to be His witnesses become channels of God’s grace when we enter into covenant with Him and dedicate ourselves to His service.
I often observe the following. As I communicate with my friends, I share with them the blessings and thoughts that fill my heart. It seems that I am saying nothing unusual, and even when I do, I feel nothing miraculous; and if I do feel something, I attach no special significance to it. Yet those close to me begin telling me how good and joyful they feel and how God, through me, answered the questions that troubled them and brought them comfort. Very often, after conversations with friends, I hear words of gratitude to God. I also hear the Lord’s voice in the words of many of God’s children with whom I fellowship or who share their revelations with me. At times, this voice sounds so clearly and powerfully that I understand how deeply the Lord desires to convey something very important and useful to me. A man of God is a very significant instrument in God’s hands for communicating His will. Yet every interaction of this kind has a distinctive feature: the Lord uses one human being to speak through him to another. At that point, the mechanism of free will comes into operation, and everyone can freely choose what to do with what he has heard and how to respond to the light sent through someone like himself. At times, I may excuse my ignorance in refusing to accept God’s will by saying that the speaker merely shared his own worldview with me, while I have my own views regarding the matter under discussion. The Lord respects my choice and sends the necessary light from another source. Eventually, as I hear the same instruction from every direction, I begin to wonder whether perhaps God desires to tell me something.
The Lord uses every person who is open to God’s influence to speak through that individual to the listener’s heart. Conviction of the truth is found not in the speaker’s eloquence, but in the invisible, convincing power of the Holy Spirit, Who reveals the meaning of what has been said and brings revelations from Above into the mind.
God loves His children and, with special tenderness and care, educates each one of us while taking into account the individual characteristics of the way our minds work.
By calling us to love one another and placing this command within the framework of God’s commandments, the Lord longs for our obedience in this matter and waits for those who will hear this new commandment. God is love, and through our love for one another He desires to reveal Himself to us in all the beauty of His character, using one person to love another person. God could tell each of us directly how much He loves us and that He expects the same response from us. But in such a dialogue, we would most likely be governed by fear and awe before the supernatural. We would have no way to withdraw from such an encounter and would assure the Lord that we loved Him too, without understanding what we were talking about.
But in fellowship with a friend, I am free. Even if the Lord Himself is speaking through my friend’s lips, I am free to hear what I want to hear and then make my choice and act as I think best. My friend likewise has the right to make his own decisions regarding me, and I cannot force him to love me, even if I see a special blessing in it for both of us.
The Lord waits for the moment when my friend and I, through our mutual decision to love one another, invite Him into our relationship and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us this love so that we may receive from it the greatest possible joy, blessing, and delight.
God’s song begins to sound within loving hearts in harmony with our words. A simple phrase spoken to a friend with love contains a piece of Heaven. After passing through my heart, it can touch my friend’s soul and bring him special joy through the touch of God’s invisible hand concealed within simple words of love.
The Lord weaves Himself so skillfully into our spirit of love for one another that it may seem to us that we ourselves love this way. Our bodies come into harmony with the words of love and gladden us by releasing hormones into our emotional experience. The mind concludes that it has reached the summit of knowledge in this science and can now develop freely in this love and make new discoveries. But the Lord makes it clear that without Him we can do nothing and that only because of His protection are we able to love one another safely and become calmly established in this choice.
God’s commandment concerning our love for one another is unique because the love between us must be the same as Jesus’ love for us. Without Him, we will never learn how to love one another properly. We simply do not know how, and we will not love one another as the Lord loves us.
Jesus desires us to bear much fruit while remaining connected to Him. He is our Teacher of love, and I am His student.
Let us allow God to sing His song of love in harmony with our decision to love one another! He will not silently watch our attempts to obey His commandment. Instead, He will adorn our relationship with special sounds of heavenly origin that will gladden our hearts and make it seem that we ourselves have been able to understand and attain this. In this journey into one another’s hearts, amazing adventures and discoveries of God’s grace await us.
Bible Verses for Reflection
Hebrews 1:1–2; 1 Corinthians 1:25–31; Psalm 9:1; 30:12; 109:30; 150:1–2; 2 Samuel 22:50; 1 Kings 19:11–12; Exodus 4:10–16; John 13:34–35; 15:1–10; 1 John 3:11, 23–24; 4:7–8; 2 Thessalonians 1:12; 1 Peter 4:14.