He Cannot Tell His Own Thoughts From God

There was a stretch where he tried, and the trying is what ended it.

He would get a thought, and it would be a good thought, and he would sit with it and try to work out where it had come from. And every time he did that, he could construct a completely convincing account of it being his own head, and a completely convincing account of it being something else, and he could switch between the two accounts at will.

Which meant the test was worthless, because a test you can talk into either answer is not a test.

So he stopped. He did not stop believing anything. He stopped trying to sort, and treats the whole category as unavailable, the way a man treats a subject he was never taught.

And what he would say if anybody asked, which nobody has, is that he is not troubled by not hearing. He is troubled by not having any way to find out, and by the fact that everybody around him seems to have a method they have never once described.

The boy did not know the voice and the text says so plainly

There is a scene in Samuel where a boy hears something three times and does not recognize it, and the writer explains why without any embarrassment.

Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him. (1 Samuel 3:7, King James Version)

Did not yet know.

He is not being criticized. The text is explaining that this is a thing a person learns rather than a faculty they arrive with.

And notice the number. Three times he gets it wrong. He goes to the wrong person three separate times, at night, and the story does not treat any of that as a failure.

You are not defective for not recognizing it. 1 Samuel 3 states the reason plainly and lets a boy get it wrong three times without comment, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old explanation take something off a man who stopped trying.

An older man gave him a sentence to use

The way it gets sorted in that chapter is worth reading, because it is not a technique and it is not intuition.

Eli, who is old and half blind and by that point not a great example of anything, works out what is happening and hands the boy a sentence.

Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant heareth. (1 Samuel 3:9)

Go and lie down, and if it happens again, say this.

That is a person telling another person what to do. The sorting does not happen inside the boy's own head, and it never could have, because he had no reference for it.

Which is worth having for a man who has been trying to run the whole test privately.

You were never meant to run this test on your own. 1 Samuel 3 has an older man hand a boy the sentence, and it is His Spirit who makes an old exchange feel like the missing piece rather than a story about somebody else.

The recognizing is described as something that happens over time

There is a sentence in John about sheep and a voice, and the tense in it is worth noticing.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27)

My sheep hear my voice.

That is a description of a state rather than an instruction, and the picture is agricultural. Shepherds in that world moved flocks by voice and the animals learned it, over months, by being around it.

Nobody in that picture works out which voice is which by analysis. They learn it by exposure, which takes time and does not feel like anything while it is happening.

You are described as something that learns a voice rather than identifies one. John 10 uses a picture that runs on exposure rather than on analysis, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old farming image describe something that takes months.

Luke praises the checking

There is a note in Acts about people who did not simply accept what they were told.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11)

Searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

They have an external reference and they use it, and the man being checked is the one whose traveling companion wrote the compliment down.

That is a method. It is not intuition and it does not run inside somebody's head, and it is available to a man who has no confidence in his own sorting at all.

You have an external reference rather than only your own head. Acts 17 records the checking and calls it noble, and it is His Spirit who makes an old commendation hand somebody a method.

And John says to test rather than to feel

There is an instruction in John's letter that is unusually practical about this.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

Try the spirits.

Try there means test, in the sense of assaying metal. It is a technical word about establishing what something is.

He does not say you will know. He says test, which assumes the difficulty is real and normal and that a person is expected to do something about it rather than to have a sense.

You are told to test rather than expected to know. 1 John 4 uses an assaying word and assumes the difficulty, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old instruction stop being a comment on somebody's spiritual condition.