Hey, I’m finished with four (out of nine) chapters of Willard’s “Hearing God” book, and want to pause for a minute to remind you of the goal of the book from the first post:

How do we hear God’s voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What if what God says to us is not clear?

Being close to God means communicating with him, and this communication is a two-way street—telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing and understanding what he is saying to us. It is this second half of our conversation with God that is so important but can also be so difficult. How can you be sure God is speaking to you? The key is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator. Hearing God is but one dimension of a richly interactive relationship, and obtaining guidance is but one facet of hearing God.

I believe this is an important topic and a good book, but it is a challenge to summarize.  While I’m going to finish the book, I don’t need to finish blogging through it.  I want to make sure it is something you find beneficial and that it is making sense to you. 

So…I’m taking this chance to tap the mike and say “Is this working”?  Please give me your feedback!  Would you like me to continue?  I would love your thoughts!

Three quick truths about hearing from God from chapter 4 of Willard’s “Hearing God”:

1. He can speak to us.  I know, I know…how can God hear and speak to millions of us at the same time?  God is not limited by His creation.  There IS a spiritual reality that is just as ‘real’ as the physical one we can touch and see.
2. He would speak to us.  The greatness of God is not to be likened to the greatness of a human figure.  Great people do not typically speak with ‘ordinary’ people.  Even if they wanted to, there are simply too many of us for them to interact with.  On the other hand, God’s greatness is precisely what makes Him able, available and ready to speak to and hear from us!
3. He does speak to us.  Think he doesn’t speak to you?  Consider some possible reasons you don’t hear from Him when He speaks.  First, perhaps you aren’t listening.  Second, perhaps you don’t really want to hear what He is telling you.  Third, maybe your life revolves more around you than it does around Him.  Think about your kids.  Sometimes they simply aren’t listening and sometimes their minds are so made up that you don’t waste your time trying to communicate with them.  And sometimes they are so wrapped in their own world they don’t give you the time of day!

Here is a great nugget of wisdom I would agree with: If you believe God has told you to do something, ask Him to confirm it to you several ways: through His Word, through prayer, through circumstances and through other people who may know nothing of the situation.  He can speak, would speak and does speak…but we can also be deceived when we rely too heavily on any one of these ways He does so.

Here are some questions to consider:

Do you believe God can speak to you? Do you believe God would?  Do you believe He does?  Which of these three might be keeping you from hearing from Him?

There are two big ideas from the last part of chapter two of Willard’s “Hearing God”…both of which are important in approaching a conversational relationship with Him:

The first big idea is how God communicates.  The primary mode of communication from God to humankind is via the Word of God.  The Bible is literally God’s Word to us preserved in written form, and it is still speaking today.  Consider Psalm 119 or this passage from 2 Timothy:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)

Another way God speaks today is through immersion with Him in His work.  We have all experienced an occasion when we were working so closely with someone that we knew exactly what was coming next…without a word being spoken.  In some cases, Willard write, “our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is nothing short of a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work”.  Ouch…that is a convicting thought.

So, there is a place for blind faith, feelings of closeness and supernatural experiences  in our relationship with God, but they cannot take the place of communication with Him via His Word and our shared activity.

The second big idea is how we sometimes mistakenly view God’s communication with us. 

1. The message-a-minute view.  In this view, God is (or could be or wants to be) constantly telling us what to do at every turn, always directing the intimate details of His followers.  I don’t think there is evidence of that in Scripture, in fact I would say the opposite is true (Psalm 32:8-9)…what He wants is to build our character to the point that our actions reflect His.
2. The it’s-all-in-the-Bible view.  The Bible is not necessarily intended as a step-by-step guide to make daily decisions, and cannot be taken as such.  It can be used by God to communicate His will to us, but as 2 Timothy 3 says, it’s job is to equip us to do good work, not tell us every detail of what to do.  God’s Word changes us from in inside out, enabling us to know Him and do His will.
3. The whatever-comes-view.  We often fall into the trap of believing whatever comes down the path of life is His will.  There are many reasons for this being dangerous, one of which is the fact that we are in a position of deciding (to some degree) what is to come.  In other words, the fact that something happens does not indicate that it was God’s will for it to happen.  He allows His creation to take steps that He would not have chosen for them.

Do you agree or disagree with Willard on these three ways we can mistakenly view God’s communication with us?  When have you taken these views?

Being alone.  For those whose lives are filled with people, a little time alone can be a great thing.  For those who spend too many hours by themselves, another minute alone can seem like an eternity.  But whether we like it or not, we do have a built in need need for community and relationship, and it is a need that only God can truly meet.

Willard puts it beautifully in “Hearing God” when he writes that God is “able to penetrate and intertwine himself within the fibers of the human self in such a way that those who are enveloped in his loving companionship will never be alone.”  He goes on to say that though we sometimes seek the presence of God for its external effects, “our contentment lies not in his presents, but in the presence of the One whose presents they are.”

What does a faith like that look like?  Willard suggests a progression in our faith through three phases of awareness of the presence of God:

First, we may have a blind faith driven by our conviction alone.  The person with a blind faith has no awareness of God being there with them at all and no evidence of His action in or around them…still they believe.  We’ve all been there, and if we’re honest, we all return to this blind faith from time to time.  Those described by this faith must be encouraged to believe there is much more for them to know and receive.

Second, we may have a feeling or impression of God’s presence.  Though this “feeling” is often verified by the church community, one needs to carefully consider how to accurately recognize and access the meanings of such impressions.  After all, many have gone wildly off-course when following their feelings or impressions.

Third, we may witness extraordinary events or powerful effects not easily attributable to merely natural causes.  Such events and effects are certainly attested to in the Biblical account and well-documented in the Christian experience.  I’m not talking here about big things, but things that have no other explanation other than to understand that “God was moving”.

Many would stop with these three, and I am thankful that Willard does not.  To stop here would leave our interaction with God, as he puts it, “too close to the level of vague feelings, the Ouija board and even superstitious conjecture.”  Simply put: there is more to a relationship with God than believing it, feeling it and seeing it!  How can we be friends of God, enjoying a rich relationship with Him, if that is all there is?  No, there is another way we can be aware of God’s presence.

Fourth, we may be with God in a conversational relationship in which He speaks with us individually as it is appropriate.  This is to be expected between persons that know each other, care about each other and are engaged in common activities together.  Isn’t that the sense you get from these words spoken by Jesus?

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.” John 14:15-21 (NLT)

I’m going to save some thoughts on how God speaks in a conversational relationship for the next post.  Until then, ask yourself this question:

Which of the four phases of awareness of God have you experienced in the past?  Which are you experiencing right now?  Why the difference?

It is usually a good idea to establish some guidelines or ground rules before starting something new.  The second chapter of Willard’s “Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God” discusses three things to keep in mind when we seek to hear from God.  Let’s get right to it:

First, we must make it our primary goal not just to hear the voice of God but to be mature people in a loving relationship with Him.  Only in this way will we hear Him rightly. 

When this is our goal, we will realize that God’s aim is not order us about or direct our every move, but that we would understand what is needed so that no directions are necessary.  It is similar to a marriage in that we would much rather our spouse understand what we’d like them to do because they know us so well, not because we asked them to do it.  In the same way, God does not delight in having to always explain what His will is; He enjoys it when we understand and act upon it.  God wants us to know His will because we know Him.  He wants us to hear and understand Him as just one aspect of His presence with us.

Second, we have to believe that the stories in the Bible are real stories about real people, and subsequently relate our personal experience to the theirs. 

Do we believe that what happened to Moses, Peter, Samuel, Paul, Esther or David could happen to us?  Do we believe that the story could have been basically the same had we been there in their place?  Do we believe that being human will not in itself prevent us from knowing and interacting with God like they did?  In a nutshell, do we read the Bible as though it is real or as a collection of stories told to make a point?

If we don’t read the Bible in a realistic manner, we will likely do one of two things.  We will read it like a book of doctrine, expecting it to contain only abstract truth about God rather than being a place to find God Himself.  This was the problem of the religious authorities of Jesus’ day: they knew the Scriptures, but they didn’t know Him.  Again, God is not looking only to inform us of Himself, but to transform us into His likeness.  The other problem is that we may just stop reading the Bible altogether or read it in regular doses, like taking medicine that is good for us.

If we do read it in a realistic manner, two cool things can happen:  We can be transformed from within, and we can observe how God’s voice came to the people described in history.

Third, we have to understand that when God speaks to us, it does not prove that we are righteous or even right.  It does not even prove that we have correctly understood what He said.  His infallibility does not guarantee ours.

How many of us have experienced a friend or child that did not hear us quite right?  They were close, but not perfect?  Perhaps we expressed ourselves in a very clear way, but they weren’t listening perfectly or they interpreted our words in a different way than we meant them.  We must be humble enough to realize we may not have heard God with 100% clarity or that what He told us is to be taken in combination with what He is telling others.

Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes. 1 Corinthians 8:2-3 (NLT)

Here are a couple things to ponder until the next post in this series:

Do you agree with the three guidelines Willard suggests?  Which of them is the most difficult for you to follow?

Perhaps you have heard people relate stories of when God has “spoken to them”, or when they were “very clear about what God wanted them to do.”  Perhaps you’ve questioned the sincerity or sanity of their comment, or thought to yourself, “I wonder why God never speaks like that to me?”  I know I have been there and sometimes still marvel at the extent to which God seems to speak to some people.  However, I have also experienced the remarkable truth that He can and does speak, and that He speaks clearly…if we know how to listen.

Willard’s opening chapter of “Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God”, deals with an important paradox we face when considering the contemporary experience with and understanding of hearing God.  Willard contends that it is a paradox that “seriously hinders our practical faith”, and I would agree.  The paradox is this:

There is a great deal of testimony to and belief in God’s personal, guiding communication with us.  At the same time, there is a great deal of uncertainty about how we hear His voice today, and what place that voice should have in the life of the Christian and the Church. 

As a result, we believe God could speak to us and we desperately want to hear from Him, but we don’t really know how He might do so or what to expect when He does.  So, we miss His communication or give up trying.  Either way, the communication fails to occur.

We need to understand it better, starting with three important thoughts:

1. God’s communications come to us in many forms.  This is confirmed by both the Bible and the experience of others.  We should not expect Him to communicate in the same way to every person or in every circumstance or for every purpose.  We certainly have different ways of communicating…so does God!
2. We may have sincere but wrong motives for seeking to hear from God.  Willard says here that our “extreme preoccupation with knowing God’s will may reveal that we are over-concerned with ourselves rather than having a Christ-like interest in the well-being of others or in the glory of God.”  In other words, we want to hear from Him so that we have some sort of advantage or so that we will avoid some sort of pain.  It is about us, not Him or others.
3. We may misunderstand the very nature of our heavenly Father and of His intent for us.  God is not so much interested in directing every little (or even major) decision in our lives.  Rather, He is interested in developing our character into the character of Christ.  God is not so much interested in answering every detailed question we might have.  Rather, He is interested in building a relationship with us.

I think this last one is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE.  God’s goal is His glory and our transformation.  If we let Him transform us, we will know His will.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:2 (NLT)

Here is something to ponder until the next post in this series:

Which of the three thoughts above might be tripping you up as you seek to hear from God?