Listening to God Pt. 2

     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