In my last blog I made a case for the idea that God seeks to communicate to human beings. This is actually a common idea amongst Christians. But for many believers, the communication from God's side is seen as having stopped. The idea is that everything God wanted to say has been said, supremely in and through Jesus. This is nearly a fair understanding of the beginning verses of the Letter to the Hebrews. There is a sense of finality about this text. "In these last days, [God] has spoken to us by his Son . . . after he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs." That Jesus Christ is the supreme self-expression of God to human beings is clearly the point of the text. That he supersedes all other communications is also clear. That God never speaks again is neither clear nor a necessary conclusion from the passage.
In fact, the Gospel of John suggests that while there is a finality about the essence of God's communication to us in Jesus, there is a continuing aspect as well. "The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you." (John 14.26, The Message). In the more detailed translations, the Spirit will engage in two functions that we are interested in here: teaching and reminding. In others words, the Spirit will remind us of what Jesus taught and apply the things of Jesus to our lives in fresh and original ways.
This naturally assumes that we have a record of the teachings of Jesus. And we do. Both the Gospels and the Letters of the New Testament contain the teachings of Jesus. Now it should be clear that a person cannot be reminded of something they have never known. Neither can these teachings be applied, where they have not first been learned. In our lives as believers, followers of Jesus, it is not enough to simply know "the story," the general narrative of Jesus' saving acts--his death and resurrection. If we want to be in a position of being able to live responsively to God in Christ, then we are going to have to learn his words, his general directions, the basic flow and content of his thought. We cannot do this if we never spend time exposing ourselves to it in the first place. There simply is no substitute for first hand knowledge of the words and teachings of Jesus and those of his earliest followers!
Too often people just want to hear the directions of God for their lives in terms of "do this thing over here" or "that thing over there." As if true spirituality was about God leading us by the hand all day long. This is a mistake. God wants to build us into people who can do His will when we see it needing to be done, without having to ask, even as he also wants people who can hear his voice and be instantly responsive to it, when he chooses to speak to them directly. That requires a sensitivity within our minds and spirits that few people choose to cultivate. It is also what defines true spiritual maturity (obedience to the "voice" is here assumed for the moment).
This means that the first order of business for God's people isn't to develop some sort of specialized wavelength that they can tune into whenever it suits them. "I need to hear God's voice in this situation, so I'll get in the right [insert 'posture,' 'attitude,' 'place,' 'language,' 'prayer attitude,' or whatever]." That is the self-willed person deciding when he/she needs to hear God. It isn't the mature person who is ready at all moments to hear and obey. The first order of business is to spend time--lots of time--attending to the heart of Jesus as revealed to us in the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament. It is only familiarity with this material that can sensitize us to the "voice" of God. How can we expect to "hear" the voice of God if we have never really trained our ears to recognize it?
An example or two might be helpful here. I have read The Lord of the Rings some 25 times. And though it has been a while, my guess is that if you give me a line from that book, amongst a number of other quotations, I will be able to identify it as having come from J. R. R. Tolkein's fantasy. Another example: although it has been a very long time sense I have spent great amounts of time reading C.S. Lewis, I would almost wager that I could take a random quote from him set beside any number of others, and correctly tell you who said it. I have been that familiar with the "sound" of their "voices." This is what we need to be able to do with Scripture--all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. The great danger here is to imagine that we are following Jesus when we are only following one of his interpreters--who may get him right and who, on the other hand, may not.
Paul said it well and Eugene Peterson translates it perfectly: " Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another--showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us." (2 Timothy 3.16) That is the first order of business--making ourselves so familiar with the voice of Jesus from the Scriptures that whenever he chooses to whisper it in our ears, we can recognize it instantly. Everything else follows from that. -PJ
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Listening to God
This begins a series of blog posts focusing on our listening to God. But to get to that point, we first need to set the stage.
The Bible everywhere affirms that Christians worship a God who communicates. Everyone has either used or thought of using the sarcastic remark "So, you think you have a hotline to God!" Or maybe "So God talks to you, huh?" There are even questions in the best known psychological exam which ask whether a person thinks they hear from God. Of course, if they mark the answer as "Yes, I do" the little red flag goes up. The world does not believe in a God who communicates to humans. But the Bible teaches that God is everywhere and always communicating to human beings, precisely because it is his nature to do so.
Some 9 times in Genesis 1 alone, God speaks. More than that, when he speaks, when he expresses himself, things happen in direct response. The whole creation story, as told in Genesis 1 is about the world being an example of God's self-expressive creativity. God is self-expressive.
More than that, in Genesis 1 God intends for humans to be his image. Whatever that means, and theologians still disagree about what it means, it is clear that an image is representative. God means to communicate who he is by placing his image on the earth in the form of humanity. If anybody else is looking, they were supposed to be able to look at humanity and discover something important about God. This image is, by common consent among believers, defaced. To what extent is also a matter of debate. But the vast majority of believers in all times and places have concluded that however badly the image is defaced, it still communicates something about God. God chooses to express himself through his image--human beings.
Everywhere you look in the Old Testament, God is speaking to people who will take the risk to trust him. Sometimes, as with Abraham, he does it face to face, by taking the temporary form of a human. Other times, as with Moses, he speaks from a bush, or out of cloud, smoke or fire. His very finger carves the stones upon which the law is found, which law is itself an expression of God's own heart and will. Sometimes, as with Joshua, he appears and speaks as a messenger angel. And sometimes, as with David and the prophets, his voice comes in less well defined ways. But anywhere you look in the Old Testament, God is communicating.
When we open the New Testament, this point is made with greater emphasis and power. Jesus is said to be the very Word of God. Hebrews tells us that God spoke to the fathers of old in a variety of ways, but now, at this time, he speaks by means of his Son, who is supreme above all other beings. St. Paul uses similar language as the Old Testament when he calls Jesus the eikon of the invisible God--the image of the invisible God (Col. 1.15).
What is the meaning of all this? Just what I have already suggested. Our God is a God who communicates. It is what he is--a communicating God. And his supreme effort at communication was aimed at humans and was put forward as a human. What can this mean but that God wants to communicate to humans? Indeed, Jesus, in John's Gospel is constantly telling those who will listen that he has a message from his Father. That he only communicates what his Father tells him to say and he only does what his Father tells him to do. And yet, we see in Jesus the person who is most free and most able to be authentically himself. He cannot help being God's personal communication to humanity.
That God wants to speak to us is embedded in the heart of the Scriptures. That he has done everything necessary to be heard, and heard clearly, seems obvious. Does he still mean to communicate? Has he things to say today, to us, right now? Does he intend to speak into our lives as he did once into the lives of those who lived so long ago? In the next blog I hope to demonstrate that he not only means to do so, but that he has equipped every believer with everything they need to hear the voice of God, if they only want to and will make it a priority in their lives.
The Bible everywhere affirms that Christians worship a God who communicates. Everyone has either used or thought of using the sarcastic remark "So, you think you have a hotline to God!" Or maybe "So God talks to you, huh?" There are even questions in the best known psychological exam which ask whether a person thinks they hear from God. Of course, if they mark the answer as "Yes, I do" the little red flag goes up. The world does not believe in a God who communicates to humans. But the Bible teaches that God is everywhere and always communicating to human beings, precisely because it is his nature to do so.
Some 9 times in Genesis 1 alone, God speaks. More than that, when he speaks, when he expresses himself, things happen in direct response. The whole creation story, as told in Genesis 1 is about the world being an example of God's self-expressive creativity. God is self-expressive.
More than that, in Genesis 1 God intends for humans to be his image. Whatever that means, and theologians still disagree about what it means, it is clear that an image is representative. God means to communicate who he is by placing his image on the earth in the form of humanity. If anybody else is looking, they were supposed to be able to look at humanity and discover something important about God. This image is, by common consent among believers, defaced. To what extent is also a matter of debate. But the vast majority of believers in all times and places have concluded that however badly the image is defaced, it still communicates something about God. God chooses to express himself through his image--human beings.
Everywhere you look in the Old Testament, God is speaking to people who will take the risk to trust him. Sometimes, as with Abraham, he does it face to face, by taking the temporary form of a human. Other times, as with Moses, he speaks from a bush, or out of cloud, smoke or fire. His very finger carves the stones upon which the law is found, which law is itself an expression of God's own heart and will. Sometimes, as with Joshua, he appears and speaks as a messenger angel. And sometimes, as with David and the prophets, his voice comes in less well defined ways. But anywhere you look in the Old Testament, God is communicating.
When we open the New Testament, this point is made with greater emphasis and power. Jesus is said to be the very Word of God. Hebrews tells us that God spoke to the fathers of old in a variety of ways, but now, at this time, he speaks by means of his Son, who is supreme above all other beings. St. Paul uses similar language as the Old Testament when he calls Jesus the eikon of the invisible God--the image of the invisible God (Col. 1.15).
What is the meaning of all this? Just what I have already suggested. Our God is a God who communicates. It is what he is--a communicating God. And his supreme effort at communication was aimed at humans and was put forward as a human. What can this mean but that God wants to communicate to humans? Indeed, Jesus, in John's Gospel is constantly telling those who will listen that he has a message from his Father. That he only communicates what his Father tells him to say and he only does what his Father tells him to do. And yet, we see in Jesus the person who is most free and most able to be authentically himself. He cannot help being God's personal communication to humanity.
That God wants to speak to us is embedded in the heart of the Scriptures. That he has done everything necessary to be heard, and heard clearly, seems obvious. Does he still mean to communicate? Has he things to say today, to us, right now? Does he intend to speak into our lives as he did once into the lives of those who lived so long ago? In the next blog I hope to demonstrate that he not only means to do so, but that he has equipped every believer with everything they need to hear the voice of God, if they only want to and will make it a priority in their lives.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Knowing the Difference
Sometimes, I'm not so sure I know the difference. In fact, if I was going to be honest, I'm not sure I know the difference most of the time. I am so used to making the decisions in my life for myself, so accustomed to doing what I want to do my way, when I want to do it, that I am not always clear when I am living my life the way my surroundings tell me to live and when I am living the way God has asked me to live. Honestly, how many of us are really all that conscious of which is which?
I think many of us think about life this way: we want to achieve certain things that we have always wanted to achieve and so we structure our lives to get those things. But so often, we do not critically examine whether those things are really worth getting. And when we get them, it's so strange, because we end up not being satisfied with them. We love our new home--until we begin to want something "bigger, nicer, more conveniently located, in a nicer neighborhood." We love our job, until we hit some snag--a person who is difficult to work with and we have to work with them all the time, a poor supervisor, unmanageable students, grumpy clients/customers, stupid paperwork, poor organization, etc. I could continue, but the point is made. Life lived this way creates a restlessness in us. And then we repeat the approach, hoping to get a different result this time. And instead, we get pretty much the same situation, dressed in different clothes.
Paul, in Ephesians 21-6 (The Message) talks about our being "mired in that old stagnant life," in which we "let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell [us] how to live." And we do. We let the world teach us how to live. And it really doesn't know the first thing about how to do it well. But we go to class all the same, learning from the world about how to live. It's like the line Dave Ramsay uses about taking a shop class from a shop teacher who is missing all their fingers. Why would you do that? And then we wonder why we chase fulfillment and never seem to find it. All the while, there is God, the author of life, available to teach us all we ever wanted to know about living the fulfilled life. And we let him stand in the corner, because we are too busy trying to figure it out for ourselves.
God wants to make us alive . . . in and through Jesus. It is not that there are other ways to find life. There are none. The question we have to answer is this one: do I want to be alive, or do I want to be dead? It's our choice. We can "fill our lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhale disobedience" and death. Or, we can breathe in the breath of life and breathe out God-focused trust that gives life. Which would you prefer? More importantly, what will we do about it? Under the Mercy, PJ
I think many of us think about life this way: we want to achieve certain things that we have always wanted to achieve and so we structure our lives to get those things. But so often, we do not critically examine whether those things are really worth getting. And when we get them, it's so strange, because we end up not being satisfied with them. We love our new home--until we begin to want something "bigger, nicer, more conveniently located, in a nicer neighborhood." We love our job, until we hit some snag--a person who is difficult to work with and we have to work with them all the time, a poor supervisor, unmanageable students, grumpy clients/customers, stupid paperwork, poor organization, etc. I could continue, but the point is made. Life lived this way creates a restlessness in us. And then we repeat the approach, hoping to get a different result this time. And instead, we get pretty much the same situation, dressed in different clothes.
Paul, in Ephesians 21-6 (The Message) talks about our being "mired in that old stagnant life," in which we "let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell [us] how to live." And we do. We let the world teach us how to live. And it really doesn't know the first thing about how to do it well. But we go to class all the same, learning from the world about how to live. It's like the line Dave Ramsay uses about taking a shop class from a shop teacher who is missing all their fingers. Why would you do that? And then we wonder why we chase fulfillment and never seem to find it. All the while, there is God, the author of life, available to teach us all we ever wanted to know about living the fulfilled life. And we let him stand in the corner, because we are too busy trying to figure it out for ourselves.
God wants to make us alive . . . in and through Jesus. It is not that there are other ways to find life. There are none. The question we have to answer is this one: do I want to be alive, or do I want to be dead? It's our choice. We can "fill our lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhale disobedience" and death. Or, we can breathe in the breath of life and breathe out God-focused trust that gives life. Which would you prefer? More importantly, what will we do about it? Under the Mercy, PJ
Thursday, June 16, 2011
A Free Life
I have been reading subversive material again. It routinely gets me in trouble. But I am addicted. And when I read this stuff, I am pulled to trying to live it. And that's what gets me into really deep trouble. So what have I been reading? It is a short, philosophical/religious tract by a well known agitator who is never satisfied with leaving well enough alone. It's called "A Letter to the Galatians!" Yep, I've been reading the New Testament again!
This time I have been reading Eugene Peterson's version, The Message. And I have been caught up in it like I have never been before. Take this passage:
"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a
willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our
way n life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely." (Gal. 5.22-23)
In another place (Gal. 6.15) Paul writes (and Peterson translates) "[God] is creating something totally new, a free life!" I look at that and I marvel! A Free Life! What would a "free life" look like? And then I realize that is exactly what he was describing in that longer passage. A free life is one where I live out my affection for others, regardless of how they act. It is a life where I am filled with energy each day because I sense that, with God, anything is possible. It is a life in which I am at peace--constantly at peace, allowing all the turmoil that goes on around me to simply wash over me, without carrying me along with it. It's where I can stick with things because I know God is with me to see it through and will carry me through the tough parts. A free life happens when I allow myself to be compassionate in every situation because I am no longer afraid of what will happen to me when I open myself up to others. It is a life where I see the holiness in everything around me, because God has made it all and sees value in it all. A free life is one in which I no longer have to force my way on others, because I no longer live in fear. Fear makes me demand my own way--the way I think is safe for me. When I live free, I can live into God's way, whatever that is today, fearless, because when I live into his way, He is always there to empower, guide, and sustain me.
I want to live free! Nothing is so intriguing to me as a life lived with perfect freedom from anxiety, constantly awake to God's presence and God's love, constantly empowered to do the good thing, the loving thing.
When I look back on my life, I find that I have always been attracted to those people who know how to live life with those easy rhythms of grace that Paul is always talking about. Sometimes they frustrate me--like they just don't see what is going on, like they just don't care! What I have discovered is that they do care--very much. They do see--often more than I do. But they also trust that God is leading them in a path that will make the best use of their lives with the very people they have the best chance of affecting. They love God, they love others, and whenever there is a good thing to do, they do it. Freely, simply, with power and graciousness. And I so long to be like that. Don't you? -PJ
This time I have been reading Eugene Peterson's version, The Message. And I have been caught up in it like I have never been before. Take this passage:
"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a
willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our
way n life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely." (Gal. 5.22-23)
In another place (Gal. 6.15) Paul writes (and Peterson translates) "[God] is creating something totally new, a free life!" I look at that and I marvel! A Free Life! What would a "free life" look like? And then I realize that is exactly what he was describing in that longer passage. A free life is one where I live out my affection for others, regardless of how they act. It is a life where I am filled with energy each day because I sense that, with God, anything is possible. It is a life in which I am at peace--constantly at peace, allowing all the turmoil that goes on around me to simply wash over me, without carrying me along with it. It's where I can stick with things because I know God is with me to see it through and will carry me through the tough parts. A free life happens when I allow myself to be compassionate in every situation because I am no longer afraid of what will happen to me when I open myself up to others. It is a life where I see the holiness in everything around me, because God has made it all and sees value in it all. A free life is one in which I no longer have to force my way on others, because I no longer live in fear. Fear makes me demand my own way--the way I think is safe for me. When I live free, I can live into God's way, whatever that is today, fearless, because when I live into his way, He is always there to empower, guide, and sustain me.
I want to live free! Nothing is so intriguing to me as a life lived with perfect freedom from anxiety, constantly awake to God's presence and God's love, constantly empowered to do the good thing, the loving thing.
When I look back on my life, I find that I have always been attracted to those people who know how to live life with those easy rhythms of grace that Paul is always talking about. Sometimes they frustrate me--like they just don't see what is going on, like they just don't care! What I have discovered is that they do care--very much. They do see--often more than I do. But they also trust that God is leading them in a path that will make the best use of their lives with the very people they have the best chance of affecting. They love God, they love others, and whenever there is a good thing to do, they do it. Freely, simply, with power and graciousness. And I so long to be like that. Don't you? -PJ
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A New Adventure
My wife Sue and my sons Joshua and Jeremiah have been after me for a very long time to share my thoughts about the Christian faith publicly and regularly for a very long time now. So, here I am. The plan is to offer a weekly (or more frequently, if deemed necessary) blog about some specific aspect of the faith and how it impacts our lives.
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