Listening to the voice of God

“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” (Psalm 19:7)

God speaks to those He loves, if they will stop long enough to listen.

Dorett Rose of Yallahs, in the parish of St Thomas, remembers clearly the first time she heard what she explained to be the voice of God.

It was during a time when she had not yet surrendered her life to Him and was giving birth to her second daughter.

“I went to a hospital to have Shanelle, and the nurse put me on a bed in the hallway and left.

“When I felt as if the baby was coming, I beckoned to the nurse to tell them what was happening, and he told me to go in the labour room. So mi seh, ‘Nurse, the baby a come, mi cyah move’, but still he paid me no mind.

“At the time, there was a power cut, and he was sitting down with his friends, minding their own business,” Rose said.

Rose said that with a baby on its way down and all alone in the poorly lit hallway on a hospital bed, she began to push.

“I pushed until half of the baby came out, but then, I began feeling very weak. Mi weak out and tired and all feel faintish and was just about to give up pushing when suddenly, I heard an unfamiliar voice say, ‘You can’t stop now’.

“When mi hear it, mi mek one big push and just feel mi passage free up,” she said.

The now woman of God is adamant that it must have been the voice of the Lord that she had heard.

According to her, “A mi alone deliver Shanelle, and up until minutes after, the nurse still didn’t come. Anyways, I noticed that I didn’t hear the baby bawl, and mi kinda ease up to check, and while shaking her a little, I heard the sound of her cry, and I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus!’

“I wasn’t serving God at the time, but no nurse or anybody else was around me, so I thought it must have been God that whispered to me, encouraging me to keep pushing.” she said

Confirmation, she said, came years later while she was again alone in her bathroom battling with what she thought then to be an impossible situation.

“I later came to truly recognise that it was indeed God that had whispered to me that day on the delivery ward after I got baptised long after.

“I was in my bathroom considering about something I was going through, and I heard a voice say, ‘I’ll help you.’

“Same time, I said to myself, ‘Then isn’t that the voice that I heard when on the labour ward with Shanelle? That same soft and compassionate voice that hasn’t left my mind since the day it first spoke to me?’

“And right away, I knew that it was God,” she affirmed.

Rose told Family & Religion that she is happy that the baby God helped her to deliver some 20-odd years ago now worships alongside her at their church. She said she is holding on to the hope that her elder daughter, who sometimes visits the church, will soon join them in a life dedicated to God.

familyandreligion@gleanerjm.com