Experiencing God VI: ‘God Speaks - Part 2’
Sermon Review
06 May 2001
1Cor.2:9-12

God wishes to communicate clearly and personally with people. Knowing Christ means coming into a relationship in which God will primarily guide our lives by means of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures, Prayer, the Church and circumstances. In relation to the Scriptures, last week I shared a method proven by centuries of Christian experience. I wonder if you have begun to implement this method? I hope so. A deaf Christian is as handicapped in their relationship with God as the physically deaf are in their human relationships today. Let us begin by looking at the topic of prayer.

Prayer

Lets take a moment to consider a nineteenth century Pastor in England called George Mueller. He was a man who was concerned that God’s people had become very discouraged. They no longer looked for God to do anything unusual. They no longer trusted God to answer prayers. They had so little faith. George began asking God to lead him into a work that could only be explained by people as an act of God. George wanted people to learn that their God was a faithful, prayer-answering God. By the time of his death at 93, he had been used by God to build four orphanages that cared for 2,000 children at a time. Over 10,000 children had been provided for through the orphanages. He distributed over 80 million dollars that had been given him through prayer, whilst he himself had worldly possessions valued at $800 when he died. Throughout his life and ministry he had to constantly seek God for his guidance and help. How did he find it? By doing the following:-

The things that he said confused that guidance or stifled it completely were the following:-

Aided by personal honesty and patience, his best guidance from prayer came through the Scriptures. Time and time again, God answered his prayers by specifically impressing certain Scriptures upon his attention. This is a reminder that if we want to hear what God is saying to us in response to our prayers, then we need to combine alert and prayerful reading of the Scriptures with our supplications. This is by far the best means of experiencing God communicating to us. Prayer removed from reflection on the Scriptures is less effective as it removes the primary tool that the Holy Spirit uses to communicate to Christians.

My own experience is that while praying, as with the Scriptures, I will sometimes experience the small, still voice of the Holy Spirit quite obviously and identifiably, below all the noise of my scattered thoughts or swirling emotion. I have found that God does speak with authority, and reasonableness, not accusatively, or angrily and antagonistically,. At other times, rather than His voice, I experience the emergence into my conscious mental flow, certain memories, or ideas, or events, or relevant scriptures that I know, or principles from the Scriptures that I am familiar with, and which are related to my prayer content. Sometimes I find these thoughts etc. persistantly cropping up all throughout the day in my mind. When I am wise I concentrate on these and reflect on them. I keep conversationally praying about them. If God has something to say to me, it normally become s clear, especially as I also keep an eye out for corroboration from circumstances or through what others may say or do. My reading and talking with other Christians encourages me to think that this is quite normal and nothing new or remarkable.

What About Silences?

Of course, at other times I as well as you will experience silence. Don’t worry unduly about this. God does not dictate a word a minute with guidance. For example, I have said before that God is not an inveterate conversationalist; He provides people and community for that. He comes with intention and communicates for a purpose. The message-a-minute theology is difficult to support either from experience or from the Scriptures. Neither Peter, Paul, or even Jesus seemed constantly bombarded by communications from God. There is no indication that they continually received, ‘do this’, ‘now do that’, ‘now do this’ type of dictation. By far the main source of their daily obedience stemmed from faith and a mature understanding of what God wanted. It must continually be understood that God is not in the practice of making robots. If He did, then He would have saved a lot of trouble for Himself as there would have been no fall to begin with. Constant communication and guidance would be just a variation on mechanical guidance, molding us into automatons.

If Silence Continues:

If silences continue, then a number of can be done:-

So, through times of silence and activity, prayer is one of the key means that we communicate with God, and through which he communicate to us. However, let us move on and briefly consider the Church and other Christians as a source of guidance before we run out of time.

The Church

The church is the body of Christ and is made up of many individuals, all gifted with the Holy Spirit for the common good of all who are a part of Christ, and the unsaved world. I have preached many times on this subject. Let me just say that God communicates in many different ways through the body of which each Christian is a part. For example, God has provided Pastors and Teachers to help open up the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit uses these types of giftings to communicate God’s mind on all manner of things Eph.4:11-16 He provides Eldership and Leadership to help discern God’s will and direct the individual and corporate life of the church Heb.13:17; 1Tim.3:1-13 etc. Often God will speak through the preached or taught word by bringing conviction, or comprehension, or challenge, or rebuke. Or through approaches made to others by Christian leaders, seeking their involvment in this or that, or to deal with something, or consider a particular option etc. God even uses other Christians to speak into our lives in informal conversation, loving actions, testimonies – inadvertent comments. Sometimes they catch like a burr on the cloth of our minds, or hit us like a brick, other times they simply get in under our skin and work their way into relevance. Those who ignore fellowship and participation in the life of a local church will miss out on much of what God wants to say and do in and through their lives. The church is in fact one of the primary means of communicating His will and ways to His children.

Circumstances:

The Islamic view is that all that occurs is the ‘Will of Allah’; the fatalist says ‘what will be, will be’; the subscriber of destiny believes that all this comes about is fated before hand – none of these even closely approximate the Christian and Biblical view of God and circumstances. Too many Christians fall back on ‘Kay Serah, Serah, what will be will be…’ etc. As Dallas Willard says, ‘This is very commonly adopted and has much to recommend it in terms of the peace of mind and freedom from struggle which it provides. But, in fact, it amounts to giving up any possibility of guidance as a conscious interchange between God and his children.’ P.49. ‘Hearing god’. Many things that happen are not God’s will, although He does not obviously act to stop them eg. 2Pet.3:9. The situation is that in life we have quite a bit to contribute towards what happens in our lives and circumstances. We do not have to sit back and just tolerate all things that happen. God desires that we make choices and use our faith and therefore we have to be wary of simply accepting what seems like ‘providential circumstances’ as being God’s communication to us. Circumstances need to be treated with a very cautious respect, and be corroborated by what God is saying through your prayers, reading and study of the word, through the church and other individuals. By themselves, circumstances are the least reliable means of determining god’s communication. They should never be accepted without other corroboration. Pray about them, seek other’s counsel, thoughtfully reflect on the Scriptures and only move ahead and accept them if endorsements and confirmations flow from these other sources.

Broadening the Horizon:

Last week I mentioned that the authors of the Experiencing God program have highlighted God’s primary concern in communicating to his people His character and nature, purposes and ways, so that people will trust him, know what he wants us to participate in and how to go about it. This is only half of the picture. The other half is that God’s quiet still voice - the convicting, reasonable and authoritative work of the Holy Spirit speaking in our minds and hearts through the Scriptures, Prayer, the Church and Circumstances, is aimed at helping people come to understand their own nature and character, purposes and ways so they will change them where and when appropriate. The fact is that by far the most communication that God directs our way will be aimed at showing what is in our hearts and how it differs to what He wants, what we are really purposing to achieve even through what seems good and right at face value, and to show us the right way of doing things, rather than revealing direction or things He wants us to be involved in. 1Thess.4:3 says, ‘it is God’s will that you should be holy’. Paul tells us that God has predestined to transform us into the image of his son’ Rom.8:29 – which means firstly in character and then in conduct.

The Holy Spirit Provides an Appropriate Balance:

If you go through the gospels you will see that the overwhelming majority of Jesus’ teaching was not about finding directions and guidance from God, but on attitudes of the heart eg. meekness, mercy, peace making, forgiveness towards brothers, sisters and others, the sanctity of marriage, hypocrisy, anxiety, judgementalism, being a good tree that bore good fruit, lacking courage etc.

As you go to the Epistles, what do you find? Again, they are either theology and exhortations to apply that theology by being forgiving, loving, not vain or proud, by not gossipping; by being kind, caring, faithful, honest etc. or reprimands and commands to rectify attitudes and their consequent behaviour which were troubling different individuals and churches.

The work of the Holy Spirit is not divergent or out of balance with the Scriptures. His work very much involves changing us, not in simply telling us what to do next or where to go. It seems to me that we are very keen to talk to God about what he wants us to do, but very loath to have him speak to us about what he wants us to be! By far the larger proportion of things that God wants to bring to our attention are things like unforgiveness, resentments, jealousies, or our anxieties; or about those attitudes which repel him and stop us from being the person who is able to do the very things that he wants us to do. Too often I hear people say things like, ‘I am very stubborn, no one is going to change me’, or ‘I am just wired up to be impatient or angry’, ‘or I am hot-blooded and that’s that’ etc., as if these things are either virtues or ‘unalterables’, and not things that offend God and that he wants us to deal with!

God would rather us deal with our hearts than seek advice on direction and choices etc. The reason is that most decisions like travel, or ministry direction, or employment etc. that we make in other areas which may not be right, God can providentially override. But in relation to our hearts He will not. Growing in maturity and Christ likeness involves cooperation on our parts. God does not force us to change. God gives us a high degree of free will and choice because He does not want robots. Therefore, He does not force heart change nor the dominance of His nature and character in us eg. 2Pet.3:9; Col3:12-14. To be sure we grieve Him with our hardness of heart, but He accepts that, and though He does attempt to persuade, and convince of the foolishness of it, he will let us suffer the consequences of our attitudes and failings.

Conclusion:

God’s wish is to communicate with his children, so that as a shepherd guides his sheep, His children can be guided. He uses the Holy Spirit to speak and to confirm what he is saying to people primarily through the Scriptures, Prayer, the Church, and circumstances, so we need to listen, learn, and adjust our lives accordingly if we want to experience the reality of God in and through our lives, individually and corporately. I wonder if God has spoken to you this morning? Have certain things I have said, or memories, events, emotions, or other relevant Scriptures hit like a hammer or are currently in the process of ‘velcro-ing’ themselves to your mind? Have you been awakened to see that there are things you need to seek forgiveness for, or rectify in your life? Have some of the silences you have experienced made sense this morning? Adjust your life accordingly and blessing will come.

Blessings

 

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