Does God Really Speak to Us?

5/23/2013

Jesus says in John 10 that His sheep follow Him because they know His voice (vs 3). In preparing for my sermon a few weeks ago, I read a great book on prayer by Anglican Missionary Bishop, Alfred Stanway. Here are a few gems:

* We only learn to pray by praying. We only learn to hear God by listening.
* In prayer we not only get answers, more importantly we get God.
* When we pray God listens not as much to our words but the real needs and desires of our hearts.

- (He has our long term best interests in mind.)
* God speaks and answers usually with the purpose of increasing faith not fireworks.

Do you remember when Peter asked Jesus to let him walk on water? (Mt 14:28-31). Jesus called his bluff and responded with an invitation to act in great faith. When we come to the Lord in prayer, Jesus sometimes answers by inviting us out into a place requiring greater faith.

Our Bishop John Guernsey is a man of prayer who has spent decades walking with God and learning to pray and listen to the Lord. He tells the story of coming to God in prayer about participating in the $7 million dollar capital campaign for their new church. You can imagine his surprise when one day in prayer he sensed God asking him to give 10 times more than he and Meg were thinking they could afford. Wisely he sought counsel with wife Meg. To his greater surprise, she had heard the same thing from the Lord! So they decided together to begin asking God to provide for them the resources to give what the Lord was asking them to give. They took a step of faith in obedience to what they heard God say. Low and behold, God provided what He had ordered!

Hearing God can be risky! Hearing God speak may mean having to respond with risks, faith, and stepping out of the boat. As we are in a period of listening to God not only about our lives but about how we will participate in the future of Resurrection, may we take the time to pray and hear God speak and have the courage to obey wand trust Him with what He says.

1 Comment

gary

6/24/2015 11:29:48 am

Growing up fundamentalist/evangelical, I was told that as a born-again Christian God would “speak to me”, “move me”, and “lead me” so that I would know and could follow his will. I listened to others talk about how God spoke to them, moved them, and led them to do this and to do that…but He never did the same for me. I finally came to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me because God had decided he didn’t want to talk to me. So I left the Church.

Many years later I became an orthodox Lutheran and was told that God doesn’t work like that. The evangelicals are wrong. The voice they are listening to is their own. According to “true” Christianity, God speaks to Christians in only one manner: through his Word, the Bible.

That gave me a lot of peace…until I found out that the “Word” is full of discrepancies, errors, and scribe alterations.

I was very sad (and angry) to find out—it is ALL nonsense.

So what about my problem of not hearing the "voice" that other evangelicals were hearing speak, move, and lead them? After deconverting completely from Christianity, I came to realize that it was THEM, not me, that had the problem. They were hearing voices. I was the sane one...who did not.

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Members of staff and Vestry will be posting on the ResBlog to help us think through who we are in light of the gospel so that we might “spur one another on to love and good deeds.”
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Does God Really Speak to Us?

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