Hearing the voice of God

I recently read an article by John Piper written back in 2007. This article raised some very serious questions in my head, but most importantly of all, how does God speak to us today? Has the way He has spoken to us changed in the past 100 years or even 1000 years?

The title of this article is titled, “The Morning I Heard the Voice of God.” There are typically two responses you could have in reading that title you could think, “Oh wow, I wonder how God revealed Himself to piper! What did He say?” or you could have the thought, “I always knew Piper was a mystic! Let's see what experience he had this time. *rolls eyes*” With my mind, regretfully, leaning towards the latter I read his article.

In a nutshell he talked about getting up one morning and hearing God speak to him. Piper says,

“God said, 'Come and see what I have done.' There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality.”

Piper heard God speak to him! That's quite a claim! Every theologian should have red flags go off in their head by now, as was I. But as we read on he states,

“What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day.”

Whew! That was a close one Piper. Don't scare me like that! But Piper has a point here. God has not become silent. We have a God that can be relevant in 2011, but how does He speak to us? We live in a very visual society and if we cannot see something then we better be able to hear it and if we can't see or hear it, well then it must not exist. I often hear skeptics, and sometimes Christians saying, “If God really wanted people to believe in Him, then He would appear to us.” Honestly, that's a great observation. Why doesn't God just appear in a cloud and do some miraculous thing and show everyone He is God? Hasn't God thought about how to reach our visual society? Well let's look at the Bible before we go making calls about this.

The story of Lazarus and the rich man comes to my mind, Luke 16:19-31. In this story the rich man and Lazarus die, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man to hell. Now the rich man can see Lazarus in heaven and pleads with Abraham for many things, but the one we will focus on is that he pleads in verses 27-28, he says,

'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house for I have five brothers

so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'

Wow, this guys is in hell suffering and asking for Lazarus to be resurrected from the dead and go witness to his family to be saved. Our initial thought is that this would be a very effective endeavor, but that's not how Abraham responds. He says,

But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'

This a shocking response! Abraham is referring to the Old Testament when he says Moses and the Prophets. Let's get this straight, Abraham could resurrect Lazarus from the dead and have him go out and witness to the rich man's brothers but his response is, let them read their bibles. Let's see how the story ends.

And he(the rich man) said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

Again, wow. What Abraham has said here is that a visual act of God's power will not guaranteed response from people no matter what time period they live in. That if we are not reading our Bibles and hearing God in that way, a physical sign isn't going to cut it. This is the total opposite of our cultures thinking and more often than not our thinking.

We read about the story of Saul/Paul and think, “Man, if only God spoke to me like that I would be so on fire for God right now!' But here's the thing, He does! Through His word! I know that sounds cliché but it's true. So often we have a completely wrong view of scripture. It is God speaking to us. Let me say that again, it is God speaking to us! 2 Tim 3:14-17 says,

“Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

God did not leave us and say, just wait for me to appear and let you know what to do. He left us His word. It was not an accident. God could have chosen to reveal himself audible to everyone of His believers to make them believe, but He didn't. He left His word, His holy, complete word. We falsely view God's word as an nice instruction booklet but when we really want to hear God we will open and window and wait to hear His voice when all along His voice is sitting on the bookshelf behind us. If you want to hear God speak, to you, read the bible. Don't think if only God would reveal Himself in this way or that way I would believe. The truth is if you don't believe in Him and trust Him with your life based on what you have in the Bible then your not going to no matter what sign comes along.

So my challenge to you is do you have a proper view of scripture? Do you look for it for guidance or do you treat it as an old irrelevant book that has no place in our society? We would never say that, but is that how we treat it? We know we have a sovereign God and He has chosen to reveal Himself to us through His word not because He didn't think of the other options, but because this would give Him the most glory. My prayer for you and myself is that we would treat the Bible in a reverent God glorifying way with these thoughts in mind.

The Many Dangers of Legalism

 Now you may be thinking, oh who's a legalist anymore? Haven't we all agreed that it doesn't work? Well I would hope so but just in case anyone out there is confused, lets define legalism.

Legalism is relying on works to earn favor with God, even to the extent of needing to do works to achieve or maintain your salvation. Now no true Bible believing Christian would claim this, but there are some who act on it. Legalism is a very dangerous thing, so let's take a quick look at some of the dangers of legalism. There are many different people who have tackled this and done a much better job than I so I will just give you all the tip of the iceberg.

1. Legalism says that Christ blood on the cross was not sufficient of our salvation. To truly rely on works to justify, sanctify and/or glorify you is to say to Christ that His work was not enough and that I need to add to it to make it valid. It drains the cross of its power.

2. Legalism brings glory to you and not God. What does Paul say in in Ephesians 2? That the work of salvation is by grace alone, “not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Because if we did something to get our salvation then we have all the reason to boast. We can say: We have achieved righteousness, We have achieved holiness, We have the power to redeem, We are like God, but as we all know we cannot redeem ourselves, so I guess we will just have to give all the glory to God on that one.

That's just two of the most predominant reasons that legalism is false that come to my mind. But today, I had an interesting conversation with a friend which started by me coming out of the gate making a bombastic statement, which I do way too often, and her countering it. I won't go into detail, but it spurned an interesting conversation about legalism and service in the church. I made the statement that if you are faithfully attending a church then you need to be serving in the church. I still stand by that statement but I could have said it more tactfully, as my friend lovingly pointed out. She said that there could be a family that's taking care of a disabled family member, or a man and woman that work 40+ hours a week each with a family to keep up with, which could be very true, but I still think my statement is valid with the qualifier that there are SOME special situations where they may have a valid reason to not be serving. But, I would argue that is maybe 5% of the church which leaves about 20% that are serving faithfully and the other 75% that come on Sunday mornings, hear good teaching and leave till the next week. (these are not exact numbers or anything but generalizations) And that is not the way the church was meant to be used. It is not a place where you come to hear a great sermon and then leave. You need to be involved in your local church.

A red light may be going off in your head thinking, Didn't he say that we don't do anything to earn our salvation? Then who is he to tell me I need to be serving?

That, my friends, is the other danger of legalism. We have the opposite mentality of legalism. We have a license to do nothing because we don't earn anything by our works. The only problem with this thought is that it violates scripture.

The main scripture that comes to mind is James 2:14-26. I would encourage you to read it for yourself but In a nutshell James is saying that you cannot say you have faith and not have any works at all. Your works come out of the abundance of your faith. True saving faith should bleed into all aspects of your life. We have a mentality as the "churched" to ok I'll serve for an hour then I can get back to real life and I'll serve my hour tomorrow and so on and so forth. That’s not how God intended our life's to be at all! Our life IS ministry! But that’s a whole other post for another day.

Coming back to the point that we technically don’t need to do anything to earn or keep our salvation, if we have that mentality we are completely missing the point of serving! You do not serve to gain! You serve to give back! You serve not only because God commands you to, but because it is an overflow of your love for a God that you could not even begin to match in giving. Service should be an overflow of the faith and love you have for God, If this is true then you won't want anything back! Your heart will be so full of gratitude that His glory will be the focus of your life, not gaining anything for yourself. We need to be serving in our local body if we claim Christ. I'm not saying we need to devote 5-8 hours a week, that would be legalistic, but you should want to do something. If we don't, that is defiantly a red flag to evaluate our heart and desires.

Now please don't see me writing this pleading for you to be like me, not in the least! But it is so easy to fall into a mentality of works-based Christianity or no-works, lazy Christianity. I have been guilty of both of these and want to spare you the agony of sin. There are so many snares that catch us as Christians, my goal is to encourage you in reading this.

So the real question today is not only do you serve, but why do you serve? Do you serve because you are grateful to God and want to give back what He's given to you? Or do you serve to get noticed by others? Do you serve so that God will “owe” you? These are some serious questions to ask yourself.

I will end with a quote from John Calvin from his book “Golden Booklet of the True Christian” He writes,

“All who have not been influenced by the principle of self-denial,

have followed virtue merely from the love of praise.”

This can definitely be applied to legalism, service and really, the whole Christian life. Why do you exsist? Is it for Christ's glory or your own gain and selfish desires?