Following the Whisper: Conscience, Communion, and the Quiet Voice of God

~ Benaiah Strongman ~ Leave a comment

By Benaiah Strongman

We often may hear phrases in our Christian life like, “God told me…” or “I heard God say…”  — spoken with conviction, but many believers, though affirming that God can communicate, find themselves skeptical or hesitant. Can we trust what we hear? How do we distinguish God’s voice from our own thoughts, anxieties, or desires?

Often, we may wait for signs, listen for something audible, or assume only the spiritually elite have this kind of intimacy with God. But what if God’s voice is less like thunder and more like a whisper — not only from outside us, but also from within?

As Christians, we believe something profound and deeply humbling: God lives in us. His Spirit doesn’t merely guide from above — He dwells within. And if this is true, then perhaps one of the clearest ways we hear God isn’t through audible revelation but through our conscience.

The conscience, for those born again, is not just a feeling or gut instinct. It is the moral faculty through which God’s Spirit gently communicates with us — nudging, restraining, prompting, warning. That moment when we feel the tension — tell the truth or bend it just slightly, hold the grudge or extend grace, keep silent or speak up — that is not just psychology. That is spiritual terrain. That is where God speaks.

And this changes everything.

Because now, hearing from God is no longer relegated to mystics or mature saints. It is accessible to every person — in every part of life. Whether you’re making a hard decision at work, speaking with a friend, choosing how to spend money, or deciding how to respond when you feel wronged — your conscience is speaking. And if we believe God is present and active within us, then it is not a stretch to say: God is communicating.

And it simplifies things.

This is not only about deciphering signs or unlocking divine secrets. It is about faithfully responding to the light we now have, God’s indwelling Spirit, in the quiet moments of everyday life.

We find ourselves making small choices constantly — at work, at play, in relationships, in solitude. And when we begin to listen more intentionally, we realize: God is with us in every waking moment. He is always guiding, always alongside us. And how we ought to cherish that! Because this is how we begin to experience true life — not compartmentalized into “quiet time” and “real life,” but a life where God leaves the quiet fifteen minutes of a daily devotion and we realize Him as our constant companion.

Now imagine: what if we actually obeyed our conscience? What if we let that quiet voice shape us every day?

This is where we begin to see why stories like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde endure. Dr. Jekyll didn’t become Hyde overnight. He made a series of small concessions. He tampered with what he knew to be right, until the darker self — once hidden — became dominant. The horror of the story lies not in Hyde’s rage, but in Jekyll’s slow erosion of moral clarity.

It’s a cautionary tale about ignoring the voice of conscience — how quickly we can descend when we justify the wrong things, even for the right reasons. And it’s not just a literary warning. It’s spiritual truth.

As C.S. Lewis wrote:

    “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you… into something a little different from what it was before… You are slowly turning this central thing into a creature that is in harmony with God, or else into one that is in a state of war with Him.”

That “central part” — your soul, your self — is shaped not only by dramatic moments, but also by the quiet ones. By how you respond to the whisper.

And here we see how much responsibility we have to form our conscience. It is not enough to say “follow your conscience” if that conscience is malformed or neglected. It must be shaped by things like prayer, fasting, Scripture, moments of silence, community, and wise counsel — not so that we become rule-followers, but so that we become the kind of people who can hear God clearly when He communicates.

And of course, we don’t always follow that voice. We drift. We override. We rationalize. And here enters the grace of confession — not as religious guilt, but as moral honesty. Confession is simply the act of saying, “I knew better… and I didn’t do it.”

As Scripture puts it:

    “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” — James 4:17

Confession, then, is not about flagellating ourselves but about returning to the light. It’s about saying, “I want to listen again.”

And how humble this should make us. That the God of the universe would communicate to us in our inner life — not simply in fire or earthquake, but in the still, small voice — is astonishing. But even more, that we so often ignore Him should make us quick to forgive others, because we ourselves are daily in need of forgiveness.

This is the quiet power of the Spirit-led conscience:

   •       It’s accessible to all.

   •       It forms us with each choice.

   •       And it draws us back when we go astray.

In the end, no one reaches old age and says, “I regret listening too closely to my conscience.”

But many have lived with the ache of knowing they spent years silencing it.

Jekyll and Hyde may be fiction — but its truth echoes in us all.

Because whether we realize it or not, we are always becoming someone. Moment by moment, choice by choice, we are either feeding the hidden self or forming a life of increasing wholeness, holiness, and communion.

So then we grow to see the wisdom of actively cultivating a life of obedience — attuned to the voice of the One who is constantly communicating, the One who calls us to drink from the rivers of delight.

It is joy. It is life. It is peace. 

Amen.

Lost in Lofoten: In Search of the Perfect Line

~ Benaiah Strongman ~ Leave a comment

It was by serendipity that I discovered Lofoten. At the time, it was my habit to plan an annual ski trip for friends, and as a token of gratitude for this gesture, my friends surprised me with a wonderful ski jacket for my birthday. 

Finding that the jacket did not fit well in the arms, I exchanged it for another that fit quite wonderfully, from a brand that I had long been intrigued by, Norrona, from their Lofoten line of big mountain freeride skiwear. 

Curious about Lofoten and its whereabouts, I looked it up and discovered it to be an archipelago of islands in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle with dramatic sharp mountains plunging all along the coast deep into the cold, blue waters of the Norwegian Sea. Little did I know the pictures could hardly do it justice for what it looked like in person.

Lofoten is hauntingly beautiful— the type of place where your deepest dreams can become your ultimate realities. And the mountains offer a seemingly innumerable number of lines to ski— one can be endlessly mesmerized just looking and staring at all the possibilities. It is here where I found myself, some years later, on a treacherous traverse, clutching the side of a steep mountain slope under the steady guidance of our professional mountain guide Erica.

My dream was simple: to ski a couloir— a steep, narrow gully flanked by rock walls— with a direct ocean view, as though skiing straight into the sea. Erica, ever game to accommodate the request, led us deep into the mountains after parking our car on the roadside, a Lofoten custom for backcountry adventurers.

Trekking through snowcapped boulder fields and icy-walled foothills, the roadside soon vanished from sight. And after hours of hiking through a series of towering traverses and intimidating ridgelines, we found our ideal line: steep, narrow, framed by sheer rock, and dazzling under a bluebird sky, with the ocean beckoning below. It was the proverbial stuff of dreams, becoming that ultimate reality— though not a perfect one, as one hard turn at the top uncovered a near full wall of ice, buried beneath the powder. Drawing on my East Coast roots (where icy slopes are the norm), I navigated the hazard and plunged headlong into the couloir.

If you find yourself in this situation, and I do hope you do, you’ll discover that moments like this are why you ski. The snow flies up in soft, roaring pillows as you carve powder turns, adrenaline surging through each swooping arc. Every heart-pounding turn flings you closer to the immense, jagged rock walls before the next pulls you away, with the scenic sea below. “Fun” doesn’t begin to describe it.

And if you’re staying at the Lofoten ski lodge, which I would highly recommend, you can unwind by regaling your fellow travelers and skiers in the barrel-shaped sauna perched on the fisherman’s pier overlooking the harbor and jolt your senses back to life again by jumping headlong into the frigid, yet magnificent, waters off the Arctic sea. After dinner, accompanied by copious pours of beer and wine, and feasting on the daily catch of local cod, you sink deep beneath soft down covers in your cozy fisherman’s cabin, painted bright red with a white roof, only to do it all over again the next day. 

The snow isn’t always perfect, and sometimes you get caught in a wind squall so strong you feel like you’ll be blown clear off the side of the mountain, but then the sun will peek out, the wind might lift, and you’ll clear a patch of tacky snow to find yourself knee deep in soft powder gliding through a winter wonderland of jagged peaks soaring towards the heavens with the sun cascading down the backside. These are the moments you live for. 

And in that sense, skiing, like life, is about finding those moments. The beauty lies in the small openings, the fleeting breaks in the clouds. When the sun shines through, you grab it and savor it for all it’s worth. And while you don’t need to go to Lofoten to find your dream line, if adventure calls, one could do far worse than getting wonderfully, gloriously lost in Lofoten.