If it is not God, then how?
I’m going to try to spare a devotional talk or theological discussion of any sort and just type. (Good luck with that!)
This whole topic is rarely far from my thoughts. Today it was sparked when I got lesson plans for this week’s kid’s church, where we’re talking about hearing from God. (I’m glad we’re covering this crucial topic with the kids.)
I’ve been slowly reading through Jeremiah and find the first chapter of high relevance. Jeremiah was only a youth and God called him to be His voice to a kingdom that has lost its focus on God and what God had laid out for the entire country. Think of it as God telling some kid in middle school that he’s going to one day go before the USA’s president and tell them they need to revert back to God’s ways or else the Canadians will invade and take over.
(Thinking thoughts of the movie “Canadian Bacon”.)
Yeah, lots for Jeremiah to swallow, even more to act on.
In my case, I wasn’t too far off from Jeremiah calling, yet not at all in the context of being a voice from God to any political leaders. I’ll share about being receptive to hearing God’s voice.
Some clarification on “hearing God’s voice”
I don’t hear voices inside my head. If you do, likely you have something going on upstairs and you might want to get that checked out. (I’m just saying…) Now having said that I’ve heard on the rarest of occasions a voice that wasn’t my inner thoughts and conscious, which could be an angel or the Holy Spirit or something like that. I’ll share one instance.
I was driving home from work one day and was almost pulled into my drive way. I heard a neuter voice in my head that said “you’ll be alright“. Yeah, that came out of no where. I thought about it realizing that ok, if I’ll be alright, then that is agreeable to me. A week later I had major car issues, where my car was assessed as a total loss. Financially, I still owed money after the value of my car was paid. Yet with the extra money I had at that time I was alright and I ended up with this truck that I’ve had for almost 6 years.
God Speaks?
God is very creative…
God designed the universe and all its creatures, along with all these senses. So God makes use of senses in communication to all of creation, especially humanity. We have the Bible, a book we can read through sight, though touch, and through sound. There is prayer, which is a two way communication through voice, written word, and thoughts between people and God. There is nature, there is art, there is music, there is so much ordinary communication between us and God. It might not be like we call up God and talk on the phone or get a reply back from an email, yet these things mentioned are creative and fairly accessible. Doesn’t mean they are not frustration and difficulty free.
God has made us all unique even though that uniqueness blends together in quantities that number in the billions. I reference Psalm 139 a lot and I’d say it is a psalm everyone should read at least once. Since we are all unique, we all are not alike, though in some ways we all can be alike. If you are familiar with the 5 love language, you know that each person has love spoken to them a certain way, like for instance quality time is my top love language. That’s why God has such diversity in his communications with people and why he’s so creative. I’m sure he could have made us all the same and made us all work under one uniformed system, but that’s just not how God does His thing.
How God speaks to me
God speaks to me through nature, rather by sharing time alone outside. That’s the #1 reason why I’m an outdoorsman. One thing I hate about my recent pursuit of participating in triathlons is that my time outside is more training related and less just getting outside. Even so, I still have my time to get out, clear my head, and open my mind and heart to God. This is the quality time I enjoy most in my life with God.
God speaks to me through other people. If you don’t get what I just said, it could take a lot to explain this, which I won’t. I’ll just add that God is not limited to the dimensions of a box and that there are many angles, many perspectives outside my tiny sphere of self. I need God to send people into my life in areas that are not my strengths. I need to be challenged. I need to be around people I share similar interest or circumstances. I need that good + healthy rivalry too. And God works + speaks through other people, as I know he does through me to others. Might be a bit of patch work, not perfect at all, yet the social dynamic of God speaking is extremely significant. (That’s why we need to go to church and fellowship.)
God speak big time to me through music and I’m not talking “Christian music”, rather music in the broadest of context. Music for me engages the logic side of my brain, it instantly reaches to my soul, and it speaks to my emotions. So this is a two way street too with music, where not only does God speak to me through music, I sing and play instruments back to God in praise, worship, and in the wide variety of motions I display before God. Worship is the gateway to the presence of God and I am forever grateful for this.
God does speak to me through the Bible. I am 31 years old, graduated from Bible college 9 years ago, yet there is still stuff I’m learning and discovering as I read the Bible. I’m not one of those people that have to read through the Bible every year or two, though I have a couple times. I like to pick a book of the Bible and slowly read through it. It is nice to re-read books of the Bible I rushed through reading to get my Bible merit in Royal Rangers as a kid. Lastly I’ll add about Bible reading about God sending scripture in a timely fashion my way that is exactly what I needed to hear from God. It is like God personally sent me an email.
I already mentioned that “still quiet voice” in my car story. If you read or heard the stories about Elijah in the Old Testament, you know about how he was in an episode of deep depression out in the wilderness. There were all these natural things going on, like earthquakes, winds, and fires, yet God didn’t speak through these natural wonders. Instead it was a “still quiet voice” that spoke to Elijah. What did God speak? Pretty much he told Eiljah to stop worrying, forget about dying, get something to eat and get some rest. After that, God sent Elijah off to do what Elijah did as a prophet of God.
Then there are dreams and visions, which I speak of sometimes. There are a lot of these and I share so few of them. One thing I do know is that we all question if any of these are from God. I’d say just because you have a dream doesn’t mean that God is speaking to you. When God speaks in a dream or a vision is it clear that these are from God. When they are not so clear, that’s when internal and external discernment comes into play. I’d ask questions along the lines of where you and your mind are with things. Your mind still cranks away when you sleep and dreams are a way for your mind to process all this stuff.
Sometimes dreams are weird and abstract, yet that’s just how the complex mind works. I know for me my mind is always cranking when I’m awake and usually my mind doesn’t settle down enough until I am asleep and in dream world. Then I wake up having had “that dream” and I know it was a God dream because it has that unique God characteristics to it. And when God’s showing me something in a dream or vision, it always comes to past, even if sometimes they come to past like Joseph’s technicolor dreams.
Last on my list is through writing. I journal a lot, both publicly and privately. My private journal is a place where I write out prayers, have mind dumps, express my emotions, externalize and process thoughts, and just talk in my own words to God. I think a lot of people don’t try writing out prayers. They are definitely worth a try.
Yet, it’s still not God?!?
Ah, Gideon’s fleece…
In the book of Judges, which takes place after Joshua lead Israel into the promised land, Gideon is facing the foe of Midians. God send and angel to tell him to take up arms against Midian. Gideon was cautious and wanted to make sure of this, so at some point he puts out a wool fleece, where if the ground is dry, yet the fleece is wet, he knows this was God speaking and that was an angel of God and that he really was hand picked by God to lead the troops. The next morning, the ground was dry and the fleece was soaked.
Now that sounds awesome that Gideon was able to do something like that to make sure it really was God. I think we all do this, “God if it is you then [insert petty "impossible" event occurring]. God got upset at Gideon. Come on, God sent an angel, if that’s not impossible sounding enough. I never had an angel visited me and I’m sure I’d tumble and fall to the ground after seeing an angel. Bottom line Gideon saw this as something very difficult to do, something well beyond his capability. And you know what, it was. It was only something God could do and Gideon was just a facilitator.
I’ve heard people say that if it is of God, he’ll repeat it three times or some other silly number of times. Clearly in Gideon’s case once was enough and God got upset for having to repeat himself. Sometimes we do hear God’s still quiet voice and we have doubts. Like Jonah, “God, you really want me to do that? That’s crazy! Those people deserve to be burned off the face of the Earth.” As the Biblical saying goes, God’s ways are not our ways and I am sure God get mad when we mix that up and cower out of what God really has in store for us.
If it is God, it will stand, in spite of us!
It is ok to discern, confirm, and verify, actually if you don’t, I think you are nutz and you likely have some sort of mental problem. I still confirm and sometimes put out a fleece myself when I know I’ve heard from God. I just am careful to put out a fleece on something that is of that level of significance. When you know something is of God, then you better hold to that and act otherwise.
In Jeremiah’s case, God wanted Israel to be in good standing, didn’t want them to be concerned by the invading empire. Jeremiah’s life was dedicated to relaying that message. In Joseph’s case, all those dreams he had and/or interpreted where ultimately for the purpose of saving Jacob’s entire family from being wiped out from a coming famine. In Abraham’s case, rather Sarah’s case, it was about an old barren lady having a son at an age where even in today’s world of advanced medicine it would be deemed impossible.
God’s word is the only word that can’t be broken and that can be fully trusted. Sure God is as creative as he is ordinary in his communication with us. Thing we need to get is that God wants to talk to us, to help us, to dare I say be friends with us. Sometimes we can be like that woman that talks and talks and talks and talks and does not listen. We don’t always dial into the two-way communication. If we’d just shut up about ourselves and listen, we’d hear from God and know it was God. Instead we tend to be so death and we tune into everything other than what is really God speaking. No wonder some people can be so screwed up and then have the nerve to blame God for their mess. What idiots us people can be (me included).
So much more to rant endlessly about on all of this, yet I think this was a good to share.