I am attending a class at church on Sundays where we are looking at the life of Abraham, the father of the Jewish and Arab races. The account is centered primarily in the book of Genesis, beginning with about chapter 12. The thing we concentrated on today was the notion that Abraham left the comfort of a “home place” to go somewhere that he had never been before because he believed that God was sending him there. We talked about the uncertainty that might cause, and the fact that Abraham had faith in God and a hope for the future.
The teacher opened up the class for anyone to tell of a time when they believed that they too did something because they believed that God was asking them to do it, not knowing what the future would hold. One or two spoke about their experiences. The teacher then asked us how it is that we hear God. If God communicates to us in some way regarding what we should do, how do we perceive what He is saying to us?
Our church is a rather conservative group. We normally do not believe that God appears to us as a ghostly image floating in the corner, or that He speaks audibly to us, or even that He sends angels to us. We normally give answer that God speaks to us “through His word,” which means that we understand what God wants us to do by reading and understanding the Bible. We then talked about how we think that God speaks in ways that we don’t readily understand or have difficulty perceiving. That answer, however, doesn’t seem to me to be adequate to explain things in their entirety.
I find it incredible that we would believe that God formulates His communications to us in ways that are difficult to perceive and difficult to understand…that we somehow have to decipher, decode, translate, interpret, and work out the otherwise unintelligible something that God uses to communicate to us. It’s almost as if we believe that God intentionally codes His communications to us as a kind of a game where if we manage to crack the code, we somehow win (but we don’t win very often).
I would much rather think that the God of the universe as I know Him is such that, if He desires for us to know something, He will make it so plain to us that we can’t help but understand what He is trying to tell us…that it would only be through our own ignorance, selfishness, or lack of desire to understand which would prevent us from hearing our God with clear understanding.
I believe that I am an adopted child of God…that I am a fellow-heir to all that God has along with all others who are children of God and with God’s only Begotten and Eternal Son. I believe that I belong to a community of believers called the church, and that we all are children and joint-heirs with the Son. God has not, to my knowledge, communicated with me audibly, except through the words of human beings as they taught, preached, or read the Bible aloud. But I must say that, as any father worth his salt communicates with his children, so God communicates with His children, and in ways much more understandable than even an earthly father would use. I can’t believe that I am so dense that, as God’s child, I cannot perceive and understand the communication from my Father to myself. I can’t imagine that God my Father is playing some sort of cruel game where He forces me to guess what He’s trying to tell me about my life and life choices, then punishes me somehow when I don’t figure it out.
No, I believe my Father’s communication with me is clear, concise, and true. I believe that He tailors His communication with all His children in various ways so that each one can best understand what He’s trying to say. And I believe that it’s my weaknesses and my failures that prevent me from hearing (with understanding) what He is saying, whatever method He is using to say it. It’s not my job to try to decipher God’s coded messages, because He doesn’t use code. Rather, it’s my job to have my life arranged in such a way that God’s communication can not only get through, but that I can understand it like He intended.
4 comments:
Funny you should bring this up. In women's Bible study a week ago, the topic was "Making Decisions", which of course, included the inevitable discussion about knowing God's will, etc etc. Our discussion leader characterized making major decisions as pure agony and torture insofar as "divining" what God would want you to do. Her statements left me feeling as if God was a big game maker in the sky, and you had to learn the rules in order to guess what you think He might want you to do, and woe to you if you picked the wrong thing. Her best advice was to take 7 days of intensely praying and gutwrenching agony on your knees in order to discern the correct path before any major decision. I think there's probably a time and place for that gutwrenching agony, but overall, I agree with you. God wants us to know His will clearly, and He wants us to follow it. He does not show us His will like the "Cryptoquip" in the newspaper every morning. We are His children, and He is our "dad". He communicates with us perfectly-all His ways are perfect. Sometimes you don't know what to do, because you've got a problem in your thinking, or, here's a possibility I brought up in class, which caused the women to look at me as if I'd sprouted horns: Perhaps God is waiting for you to decide what you want to do-and is leaving it up to you. Perhaps in some situations, He lets you decide if you are a teacher, or a nurse, a ditchdigger, or a stay-at-home or "working" mom, or even really, (GASP), what church you attend. We are not puppets, and certainly, we are not puppets who blindly grope around for our way, hoping we stumble onto the right path. I agree with you 100 percent.
Somehow you manage to regularly sprout horns when in a public setting, dear. You'd be much less "exciting" to Brucie and much less fun for the rest of us if you'd be just the ordinary brown bird.
Interesting topic. For me communicating with God is a two-way street. How can we hear God in any manner if we don't stop and listen to what He wants to say. Prayer is the main way God speaks to me, outside of His Word, and that means I have to give Him time as I listen. "God's Spirit bears witness with our spirit," is a verse my Dad used to use a lot. I have always been able to sense God's leading more when looking back than when I try to figure it out ahead of time. Circumstances, thoughts, ideas, etc. come from God when we are seeking to follow Him in life. That's only a partial view, but probably enough for here.
WDK
As you may know, I believe God speaks to us in whatever way he thinks he can get through to us. I believe fundamentally it is through scripture, but when we have specific questions - I think he uses whatever is around us. I don't think that whenever events work out for the best, a Christian friend mentions something related to my prayer, etc., that it is a coincidence.
A few years ago, my niece's husband suffered a severe stroke - the most severe ever seen in someone 33 yrs old. He was not expected to live. After I received the news, I had to drive to Grinnell to pick up the girls. All the time driving, I knew I should pray - but I didn't know for what. He wasn't expected to live, should I pray for strength for my niece, her family; a miracle, what? Of course, my emotions were making any sort of prayer a jumbled mess. Then as I approached a semi - there on the back of the truck was a bumper sticker - "With God all things are possible." I refuse to believe this was a coincidence. I think God intended for me to get behind that semi. No words can explain what I felt and the prayer that came forth - came easily. So, God can even use a bumper sticker on a semi to "speak to us." It may not have been a burning bush - but a message got through to me when I needed it.
By the way, my nephew survived.
Kathy
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