When is the last time anyone heard from God? Was Scripture his final letter to us or is he talking to us all day everyday?
I can't help but wonder when I hear someone say "God called me to do this" did he really and what was that like? We must be very careful when we put the "Approved by God" stamp on things. In my experience, people are much better at claiming God rather than following him. How many times do we take our own wishes and desires and talk oursleves into believing it is what God wants?
We are to pray and seek God's will. Yet how do we know what are our thoughts and what is God speaking to us? I have never heard a booming voice from heaven or had a burning bush talk to me and I confess sometimes I'm not sure what are my thoughts and what are not. It's so easy to let some outside thought of an overdue task to enter your prayer time and derail your whole conversation with God. And many naively believe that anything they think or feel is from God, without humility or reflection. Let's be honest, we want to look spiritual. We want to say that God is right there when we need him and we are too devoted to him to have doubts. HOGWASH!
Jesus said His sheep know His voice. Yet examining the Biblical descriptions, we find a curious variety of methods. God spoke through angels, bushes, donkeys, husbands, fleeces, thunder, wives, prophets, winds, parchments, visions, dreams, and a priest named Melchizedek. His voice is both described as a still, small whisper and like the rushing of many waters.
It is interesting to look at each encounter between God and the person He is speaking to and note that about the only similarity in these cases is that each person knew he was being spoken to by God and he heard Him. What we don't know is how they knew it was God.
Most of the books of the prophets begin with the baffling phrase, the Word of the LORD came to…. It often tells us where this took place, and in what year, and to whom it came, but it doesn’t tell us how it came. It is almost as though there is an unspoken understanding that the way in which we personally hear God need not be described. The mode by which He speaks to us isn’t what God wants us to react to; it is what He says that matters.
Is anyone listening?
5 comments:
It would seem Pat Robertson is listening.
:/
well put, I believe that God has spoken to me in various ways also.
In regard to God is that you,
I have prayed for a very long time that I might find the strength and will power to give up alcohol and cigarettes, well, God spoke to me several times by giving me bronchitis on different occasions, not only did I not want to smoke I didn't want to even eat, it took sometime to finally sink it that it was a wake up call from God saying to quit before its too late.
I don't wih to offend, but how do you know that was God? I had bronchitis before and I don't think it was gift from God. I'm not doubting or mocking you I'm really curious on how you know.
Powerball-What I meant was that I couldn't give up smoking, I prayed and prayed for strength, but when I got sick I looked upon it as a sign from God that I should stop before I got something worse, maybe I'm wrong, or reading into something that isn't there, but I did finally quit smoking.
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