“Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by His Son. God has appointed Him heir of all things and made the universe through Him…” (Hebrews 1:1-2).

We do not serve a voiceless, nameless God, but One who is communicative with His people. And thank goodness He is.

Imagine, for a moment, what life would be like without a word. Imagine walking into a new school without a class schedule, a map, or an idea where the cafeteria is located. Imagine starting a new job when your manager didn’t explain fully the expectations of the role, or how you can be successful, or that on Fridays everyone wears sweatpants to the office. Imagine moving to a new city and having no one to tell you which part of town to live in, where to buy groceries, or where the closest park is. Imagine life without a word, and now imagine life without a word from God.

It’s aimless. Purposeless. Directionless. And very, very lonely.

This is the reality for many of us, not only because many don’t believe God has left us a word, but also because many others claim He has and yet live like He hasn’t. Think, for a minute, about how often as Christians we make some version of this statement:

“I just wish God would tell me His will about…”

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve never had God write me a message in the sky about what house to live in or spell out the name of the right job in my alphabet soup. So it’s not as if every decision we have to make is absolutely clear. But neither is it the case that God has not spoken. He has spoken, and His Word stands. So what does that mean for us? Many things, but here are a couple to think through.

1. Because God has given us a word, we have a responsibility to listen.

There have been so many times in my life when I’ve moaned about not knowing whether God wants me to do this or that. Even though in the moment those seem like gargantuan decisions, they’re only a small part of life. If you want to put a percentage on it, you could estimate that we spend about 10% of our decision capacity on things like these. That leaves 90%. And most of that is in general areas of life – and God has plenty to say about that. He has said much about relationships, priorities, money, marriage, parenting – you name it. But we get so fixated on the 10% that we fool ourselves into thinking God hasn’t spoken at all. He has, but we often aren’t putting ourselves in a posture to listen.

We listen by doing the same old things we’ve always done – we read, we pray, we meditate, then we act on what we hear. Simply put, we don’t have much room to cry about what God isn’t saying if we aren’t listening to what He is saying.

2. Because God has given us a word, we don’t need to look for another one.

One of the early heresies that permeated the church was something called gnosticism. Though it has many forms, much of it centers around the idea of having some kind of secret knowledge that’s only available to a select few. As we look around the evangelical world today, I have to wonder if gnosticism is still out there, just wearing a different set of clothes:

– Thinking we’ve discovered something new that no one else has ever discovered about God before.

– Looking for “deep” things outside the revelation of God.

– A sense of superiority because of some kind of unique relationship with God.

All of these traits and more stem from a disbelief in God’s revelation of Himself. They’re all searching for some kind of ever elusive “else” that manifests itself in looking further and further out when we should be looking further and further in. Again, simply put – God has given us a word. And He is not going to contradict Himself.

Or to put it another way – we don’t need a “fresh” word from God. We need the same one He’s already given, but fresh eyes with which to see it.

Instead of moaning and searching, we can live with a sense of gratitude that although God could have left us to squander on our own, He did not. He chose to communicate with us. And He even went further than giving us His book; He gave us Himself. As we dig into the written Word of God, we find ourselves coming alongside the Living Word of God. And that’s where true life resides.