What it means to Listen

From time to time I hear great stories about how God speaks to people in obvious but unexpected ways. Two come to mind. One time someone who was struggling to connect with God cried out that He give them a sign! While they were driving home that very day they noticed a huge billboard with a Scripture passage on it that spoke directly to their need. They had driven past that spot hundreds of times before and never “saw” that billboard before that moment. Another time a person was struggling with a big decision they had to make and asked God to make it clear to them. They were driving in the country and said, “God, if this decision I am making is the right one – let me see a deer along the side of the road”. Within a matter of minutes they looked and spotted a deer just off the highway. “That’s too much of a coincidence” they said to God. “If this is really you, let me see another one.” Almost immediately they saw a second deer trotting along the side of the roadway! 

These are great examples of how God sometimes communicates with us. Listening to God doesn’t always mean we’re waiting to hear an audible voice inside our heads. It means tuning ourselves to His wavelength. It means paying attention – with ears and eyes open, mind and heart prepared to ponder and receive. God can use any variety of means to make His mind known to us. But we’ll miss it if we’re not looking for it.

The Patriarch Job complained that God wasn’t responding to him in the midst of his suffering. His friend, Elihu, disagreed. Elihu corrected Job by saying, “You’re wrong Job, dead wrong. God always answers, one way or another, even when people don’t recognize his presence.” (Job 33:12-14 The Message). Elihu then went on to give some concrete examples: In a dream, a vision at night. Or through pain and suffering. Or by an angel, sent to help us make sense of our situation. Elihu says, “This is the way God works, over and over again. He pulls our souls back from destruction so we’ll see the light” (Job 33:29-30 The Message).

Many years ago I had a boss who lived outside of the city in a country home. These were the early days of satellite TV and he had a huge satellite dish outside of his house pointed up into the sky. There was a little control knob inside the house which you used to manoeuver the dish to improve the reception. Because the planet is moving you had to do this frequently! It made watching TV rather frustrating I’m sure.

God may use our circumstances to speak to us, but in order for us to hear what He’s saying we have to be tuned into Him. Could it be He’s trying to get our attention even now? What’s going on in your and my life that should be drawing us to fall on our knees and seek God (verse 26)? What could we be doing differently to help us pay better attention? Being still so we can hear God doesn’t mean we’re looking for the spooky or the supernatural – it means we’re being discerning and reflective. That way when God does speak to us, we won’t miss it.

God, can I trust you?

Posted Wednesday, April 19 2017 @ 1 PMbyKevin ArmstrongTagged No tags0 comments Add comment

It’s one thing to listen for God to speak to you. It’s another to actually trust Him when he does. That’s why I love the stories of the Patriarchs and saints in the Old Testament. These men and women from ancient times had real lives, real struggles and real flaws when it came to their lives of faith. Through their stories I am encouraged that God is patient, and that His grace works out in our lives, even when we get it wrong ourselves. I’ve been there!

In Genesis 31 we have the account of Jacob’s departure from his time of servitude in Laban’s household. Jacob has spent twenty years working for his father-in-law. In that time he’s been tricked, deceived and cheated multiple times by Laban – yet all the time God has been blessing Jacob and causing him to prosper. But the time comes when God speaks to Jacob in a dream and tells him it’s time for him to go home to the land of his father and grand-father, Isaac and Abraham (verse 13). Jacob shares what he has heard in his dream with his wives, Leah and Rachel, and together they agree that it’s time to leave Laban’s household and return to Jacob’s land. 

When the time comes to depart, we learn that Rachel decides to steal her father’s household idols to bring along with them. Hedging her bets for additional good luck for the journey perhaps? And we’re told that Jacob decides to sneak away without actually telling Laban he was leaving – because he was afraid Laban wouldn’t let him go (verse 31). Sure enough, the very thing they were fearful of happens. Laban gathers his men and pursues them for seven days. 

In the end it all works out. God speaks to Laban in a dream, warning him not to harm Laban, and Jacob and Laban work it out between themselves (though, interestingly, Rachel gets away with keeping the idols – more to come on that another time I’m sure). 

But why all the drama? Why did Jacob try to sneak away – even after he knew that God had told him to return to his home? Didn’t he think that God would be able to watch over him and protect him once he had stepped out to do what God had said? The short answer is, no – he didn’t. Jacob clearly heard God speak to him, and he understood clearly what God told him to do. But that didn’t mean that Jacob trusted God as much as he needed to. He was still learning that.

Jacob believed God had spoken to him, but he didn’t trust Him. Belief is not the same as faith. Belief can be mostly mental – we cognitively recognize the truth of something. But faith is trust. Faith is when we put things on the line to actually “do” the thing God has spoken to us about. Faith is not recognition of God speaking – it is following through on how God has spoken. 

It’s good that we are learning to listen to God. It’s good that we are asking God to speak to us, individually and as a congregation. But let’s be prepared – what will we do once God does say something to us? What will we do then? Will we have faith?

What it means to Listen

Posted Wednesday, March 29 2017 @ 10 AMbyKevin ArmstrongTagged No tags0 comments Add comment

Isaiah 28:9-10 was a memory passage for me when I was a young Christian. It says, “Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. 10 For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little”. 

I grew up in a King James only church so of course I memorized it in that version. I was taught that this passage meant that understanding the Bible was like putting together a jig-saw puzzle. Topical studies were best, because you had to pull all the references on a certain subject from all over the Bible and put them together in order to see the big picture. I believed and practiced that for quite a few years.

But there was a problem. That’s not what that passage means – in fact, it’s not even what it says! The whole context of Isaiah chapter 28 is God’s rebuke of Israel for their unwillingness to listen to Him. The specific thought expressed in this passage actually needs to include verses 9 through 13, if one really wants to understand what it’s saying. Here it is in an English translation of the Jewish Bible:

Can no one be taught anything?
Can no one understand the message?
Must one teach barely weaned toddlers,
babies just taken from the breast,
10 so that [one has to use nursery rhymes]? —
Tzav la-tzav, tzav la-tzav,
kav la-kav, kav la-kav
z‘eir sham, z‘eir sham
[Precept by precept, precept by precept,
line by line, line by line,
a little here, a little there].
11 So with stammering lips, in a foreign accent,
[ADONAI] will speak to this people.
12 He once told this people, “It’s time to rest,
the exhausted can rest, now you can relax” —
but they wouldn’t listen.
13 So now the word of ADONAI for them comes
“precept by precept, precept by precept,
line by line, line by line,
a little here, a little there,”
so that when they walk, they stumble backward,
and are broken, trapped and captured!

The Hebrew in verse 10 is ambiguous and difficult to translate. In the Message, Eugene Peterson translates it as, “Blah, blah, blah”. The very point of this passage is that the Word of God becomes childish jibberish to those who have stopped listening to God. The passage doesn’t teach us that the way God wants us to understand Scripture is through the cut and paste method – it actually tells us that we end up approaching God’s Word that way when we’ve stopped listening to God with our hearts.

When it comes to listening to God. We don’t just listen to His Voice with our ears – we listen with our hearts. The message I take away from this passage is that we open the ears of our souls by listening with a genuine heart that wants to be led by God’s Spirit. So listening to God begins with the heart, and not the ears. Without the right heart, we’ll only hear what we want to hear, and not what God is actually trying to say to us. 

That’s crucial to this 90 day exercise in listening that we’ve undertaken as a church. We shouldn’t come to this expecting God to confirm things we already think we know. If we do, that’s exactly what we’ll think we’ve heard. Listening begins with opening the heart to God. Be willing to be surprised by God. Be willing to be made to think and reflect deeply on what He has to say. Be willing to be led by the Holy Spirit. That is the key to listening.