Intimacy with God: Listening

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How can you have an intimate relationship with someone in a coma? You go into his room to visit and read and talk but there is no evidence that the person in a coma has heard you. When you enter the room, he lies there doing nothing but breathing. When you say hello, he doesn’t respond. As you talk to him there is no flutter of the eyes. There is no voice. There is no movement of his body in any way that reflects that you are present except for the methodical breathing that indicates he is still alive. So how can you develop an intimate relationship with that person?

For many Christians, this is the problem we have in our relationship with God. We believe by faith that God exists and so we pray and read our Bible and although we believe God can speak to us through the Scripture we read, that is as far as it goes.

There are Christians who talk as if God speaks to them all the time. “God told me to do this,” and “God spoke to me and told me to do that.” But there are a lot of strange Christians and whatever it is they are talking about, it can’t be right. People who think God speaks to them are the ones who go on a shooting spree killing all the bad people God has told them he does not like. People who think that God speaks and gives personal messages are deluded and often dangerous people.

The problem for me is that when I read the Bible, it seems that God spoke to men and women all the time. God spoke personally, specifically and not just through Scripture. The God of the Old and New Testaments spoke to people. God spoke through angels, visions, dreams and verbal messages.

How can it be that God in the Bible is so different from the God we experience? Can it be that we are mistaken about what the Bible says about God speaking to people?

Think about when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. What exactly happened there?

Exodus 3
Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro when he saw a burning bush.
3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”  6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Did Moses hear a voice calling his name? Is it possible that Moses was just imagining that he heard his name spoken? Did Moses sit down one day in the wilderness and reconsider his desire to liberate Israel from the Egyptians and in his deliberations imagine this conversation? Did Moses eat some strange plant and have a bizarre dream?

None of these possibilities makes any sense. It is clear that this account describes a genuine encounter, a real conversation. God spoke and Moses responded. Moses spoke and God responded.

In verse 3 Moses thought and in verse 4 Moses said. This is not just an imaginary conversation. It is an encounter with unspoken thoughts and spoken questions and answers. It is a conversation with very real events. Moses throws down his staff and it becomes a snake. He picks up the snake by the tail and it becomes a staff. He puts his hand inside his robe and it becomes leprous. He puts it in again and it is healed.

And then the fact that old Moses carrying a huge sense of inferiority and failure sets off and confronts Pharaoh with such power indicates that this was more than a dream, his imagination at work.

What about the prophets? Did they hear God speak to them or was it just their own thoughts that led them to do and say what they did?

In September I will begin a series of sermons on the prophets Elijah and Elisha whose stories are found in I and II Kings.

Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”
2 Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah:  3 “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.  4 You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.”
7 Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.  8 Then the word of the LORD came to him:  9 “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”  10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks.

How is it that the word of the Lord came to Elijah? Was it a spoken word? Instructions God put into the head of Elijah? It does not really matter which it was. Elijah was clear that God had spoken to him.

Could it have been just Elijah’s imagination at work? If it was the imagining of Elijah, how could it be that his imaginings were so specific and became reality?
As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”

Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan.  4 You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.”

“Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”

If it is not God speaking to Elijah, the story does not make any sense. God spoke to Elijah. Elijah delivered the message to Ahab and it stopped raining. This is far more than imagining. This is not Elijah reading a scroll and applying a verse. This is a specific direction from God given to him.

Let’s go to the New Testament. In Acts 10 there is an account of God speaking first to a Roman centurion named Cornelius and then to the Apostle Peter.

One day at about three in the afternoon [Cornelius] had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”
4 Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.  5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.  6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

Cornelius set off for Joppa and while they were on the way, God spoke to Peter. Peter was praying when he had a vision, a sheet containing all kinds of animals.
13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

An angel appeared to Cornelius and spoke to him. God gave Peter a vision and spoke to him. What was spoken was very specific, not something one would imagine, even after eating too much pepperoni pizza. It is quite clear that Luke, who wrote Acts, means to say that God spoke to Cornelius and Peter.

One more example (although there are many, many more in Scripture). In Acts 8 Philip, one of the deacons of the early church, received a word from God. Scripture does not say what he was doing when he received this word, but God spoke to him.
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”  27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship,  28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet.  29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

God spoke to Philip, through an angel, and gave him very specific instructions that led to the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch which led to the Gospel of Christ coming to Ethiopia.

Now how do you handle all these incidences of God speaking in the Bible? Do you believe it is true? Did God actually speak to men and women as described?

I think Christians often carry two versions of what is true. If you ask what I know to be true, I will say that I know when I throw a stone in the air, it falls back to the ground. I can even tell you the speed at which it falls, 32 ft/sec².

If you ask me if Jonah was swallowed by a whale I will say that is also true. But there is a difference we don’t often like to admit. If you ask me what will happen to a stone I throw in the air or what will happen to water if you put it into the freezer, I am very confident about what will happen.

But when I read about Jesus walking on water and calling Peter to come out with him, I say that is true because it is in the Bible, but there is a small part of me that holds back from believing it to be true. I believe Lord, help me in my unbelief.

The difference is that I have often thrown stones in the air and put water in the freezer to make ice cubes. I have never walked on water or seen anyone walk on water. I have never heard God speak to me in an audible voice. I have never been walking along the road and heard a bush, burning or not, speak to me. I have never had a vision in which God spoke to me. So while I believe what I read in the Bible, I hold back a bit in my belief.

So when I pick up my Bible and read about God speaking to men and women, I ask the question: If it is true that God spoke to men and women in the Old and New Testament, why doesn’t he speak to us that way today?

Maybe God only speaks in times of critical importance. God spoke to Moses to cause him to bring Israel out of captivity. God spoke to Peter to open up the new church to Gentiles, allowing all the world to come to him. God spoke to Philip so Ethiopia could hear the Gospel. God spoke to Samuel and Isaiah and Jeremiah to call them to serve him in critically important times.

Maybe God speaks when it is really important, but other than that, he expects us to get our guidance from the Bible.

But what would you say if I told you that people today still hear from God? What would you say if I told you that God still gives very specific messages?

Some of you know Gabby from the French congregation. She had a French father and Moroccan mother and was raised here in Morocco. One time when she was in France, she went to visit her father’s grave. At the same point in time, a French woman was eating in her kitchen and God spoke to her, telling her to go to the cemetery. She ignored this word that came to her mind and continued eating. But then God spoke to her again and she got up and went to the cemetery where God told her to go speak to a young woman standing there. This is how Gabby came to Christ.

Does this sound familiar? Isn’t it like God speaking to Philip and telling him to go to the desert road? Maybe Philip was eating in the kitchen as well, Acts does not say what he was doing. But God spoke to this French woman just as he spoke to Philip.

I talked about this sermon at the board meeting this past week and Ramamoorthy and Christine Eitzen shared stories of God speaking to them. If I invited people forward this morning, I am confident we could spend the next several hours hearing stories of how God has spoken to people in our fellowship.

It is clear to me that God still speaks to men and women. But the question remains for me: Why doesn’t he speak to me in that way?

I’ve been thinking about this matter of listening to God for some time now. It has long been my desire to hear God speak. When I was engaged to Ann, she was still in college and one day I was sitting in the cafeteria having lunch with some of her friends. (This was an all women’s school so it was me and six or seven women.) We had lunch and the next morning I heard the news that one of the women had committed suicide that night. I carried her obituary with me for a long time, praying that God would speak to me and allow me to help those around me who were in trouble.

As I have been thinking about this sermon series, I have thought a lot about listening to God. It is clear to me that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us. This is the most incredible mystery in the universe. Why would the creator of the universe want to be in an intimate relationship with one of his creatures on one of the billions of tiny spheres in his creation? Amazing! Astounding! But true.

If this was not the case, why then did he bother to reveal himself to us? Why did he send Jesus to die in our place?

And if his desire to be in an intimate relationship with us is that strong, why would he not want to speak to us as he did to the men and women in the Old and New Testaments? Why would he not want to encourage us, motivate us, guide us, correct us? Yes, God does that through the Scriptures, but he is not limited to the Scriptures to speak to us.

On our vacation to Portugal early this June, I read a book by Jack Deere entitled, Surprised by the Voice of God. It is a wonderful book, very stimulating, and in it he talks about learning to listen to God as learning a new language. It doesn’t happen all at once. It takes time. One has to practice to hear the voice of God.

My biggest problem in hearing the voice of God is that I have an active imagination. When a thought comes to my mind, I’m not sure whether is it my own thought or a thought God has placed in my mind. It makes a big difference.

While we were in Portugal, I was sitting in a beach chair by the sea with Annie. To protect us from the sun, we had our beach umbrella. This is not one of the new beach umbrellas you see that are made of plastic and collapse very easily. This is a beach umbrella we bought twenty years ago with a wooden staff with a point at the end and a strong canvass top. It is a very sturdy beach umbrella.

I had been praying for a couple weeks that I would hear the voice of God speaking to me and as I sat there reading a book (a history of the third crusade with Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin), a picture came to my mind of the umbrella being lifted up by the wind, sailing up in the air, turning over and then driving down on the beach, impaling someone with the wooden stake. I accepted this thought and considered taking down the umbrella but then dismissed the thought and continued reading. Within fifteen minutes, a gust of wind came along lifting up the umbrella. It sailed up in the air, did a couple flips and then came down on a German family, two parents and four kids from the age of 2 to 8. The wind picked it up again and it sailed out, landing in the ocean.

It all happened so fast that the umbrella was already in the ocean when I got up and ran to the family. The two year old had been bumped on the head and was fine, but the father had been cut on the eyelid and had to go to get stitches.

How was I to know this was God speaking to me and not just my imagination? If I had taken down the umbrella when the thought came to me, I would never have known that it was going to lift up and sail away, striking this family.

I have had other experiences when I have had an inspiration to do something and I attribute that inspiration to God. When Greg and Kelly Preston were trying to get their carte sejour, a thought came to me. I go running in the Hilton foret nearly every morning and for two years I had been greeting four men who walk together, always in the same direction. I knew nothing about them other than the fact that we exercised at the same time. The thought came to me that I should ask them for help with the Preston’s problem. I resisted this thought for a couple days and finally summoned up the courage to ask them. It turned out that one of the men is the aide to the head of the police for all of Morocco. He set up an appointment for me and although that appointment did not result in the Prestons getting their identity cards, I still believe that God for some reason wanted me to talk to them about the problem.

I am just a beginner in this but I want to learn how to hear God speaking to me. I’m learning French and Arabic. I want to learn this language as well.

And I want to encourage you to join me in learning this language. If you do, I will benefit. Let me explain.

If God speaks to me, I have to sort out whether or not it is God speaking or my imagination at work. But if God gives you something specific to say to me, then I know it is from God.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. When I was a pastor in Ohio in the US in the 1980s, I went to a seminar in Cincinnati that focused on merging healing ministries with counseling ministries. As part of this we went to a prayer service where people came for healing.

I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, but at one point, I was being prayed for and one of the people who did not know me, who knew nothing about me, said that she sensed some hard words were said about what I would be named when I was to be born.

This sounds quite bizarre, doesn’t it? Except that when she said this, I began to sob, I cried and cried, deep sobs. And I know that after two daughters, my father had wanted me to be named after him, John Royal Wald III. And I know that my mother’s father died five months before I was born and she wanted to name me after him, Leon.

For some reason, this conflict had affected me and I experienced a measure of healing as they prayed for me.

When God gives you a specific message for someone else, you help that person to develop a more intimate relationship with God. The insight God gave that woman in Cincinnati was clearly from God and I have hung on that experience as a sign of God’s love for me and desire for me to become a whole person.

As we learn to listen to God we begin to be able to help each other grow into a more intimate relationship with God.

So I need you to learn this language of listening to God and you need me to do the same.

After reading Jack Deere’s book, I read the stories of Elijah and Elisha in I & II Kings and I have to tell you, the stories that seemed so bizarre to me in the past did not seem so bizarre this time around.

God has never stopped speaking. We have stopped listening. Join me in praying that we will learn this new language of listening to God speak. Encourage me to have an intimate relationship with God as I will encourage you.

Talk with people after church and ask them what their experience is of having heard God speak to them. Learn from each other. Pray that God will help us to open our hearts and minds to his presence and that we will develop our ability to hear him when he speaks to us.

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John 10:27
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

Deuteronomy 30:20
Love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life.