pat loughery

We started a new topic in our home group last week. We’ll talk about hearing the voice of God, but from the perspective of conversational relationship with him instead of seeking Him as the great cosmic CNN Stock Quote Ticker, dispensing small bits of trivial information when we choose to flip to that channel.

To that end I’ve been studying Dallas Willard’s book Hearing God. Mostly because I like Willard, and also because Keck recommended it to me. (I think I’m a closet Eric Keck groupie – dude, I dig your attitude and direction).

Read on for a few choice quotes in lieu of me actually adding them to my quotebar for now:

From chapter 1:

“There is not in the world a kind of life more seet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.” – Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (intro quote to chapther 1).

Is there a more profoundly challenging little bitty tiny simple book than Practice of the of the Presence? Nope, I didn’t think so.

“Wilhelm Hermann, a great theologian of the late nineteenth century, goes so far as to mark the Christian out in terms of a personal communion with God. ‘We hold a man to be really a Christian when we believe we have ample evidence that God has revealed himself to him in Jesus Christ, and that now the man’s inner life is taking on a new character through his communion with te God who is thus manifest.’” (p.24)

I’ve never heard of Hermann, but I like the direction he’s taking. You mean that Christian-hood comes from Jesus actually having transformed my character? Not just that I sit in a specific chair on a specific day of the week?!? Huh, how novel 😉

“Authority in spiritual leadership derives from a life in the Spirit, from the minister’s personal encounter and ongoing relationship with God.”(p.25)

Whoobaby, this is convicting. And very good. authority comes from my own ONGOING relationship with God. Books have been (and should be) written on the topic of the spiritual leader’s spritual health, over against dried up faith and burnout.

Willard’s ch. 1 premise is that there’s a paradox about hearing God:

“On the one hand we have massive testimony to and widespread faith in God’s personal, guiding communication with us…”

“On the other hand we find a pervasive and often painful uncertainty about how hearing God’s voice actually works today and what its place is in the church and in the Christian’s life”(p.25)

Good point. I’ve been to several workshops in conferences on the role of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in church (mostly meaning the Sunday service). And these are generally at Vineyard conferences, where we profess a strong belief in the utility of the gifts for today’s church.

“The (above) paradox about hearing God’s voice must, then, be resolved and removed by providing believers with a clear understanding and a confident, practical orientation toward God’s way of guiding us and communicating with us.…(italics are Dallas’)

There are three general problem areas that must be briefly addressed…

1. God’s communications come to us in many forms. […] If we give primacyto forms of communication that God does not on the whole prefer in relation to his children, that will hinder our understanding of and cooperation with his voice[…]

2. We may have the wrong motives for seeking God.[…] I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a devidce for securing their own safety, comfort and righteousness. (emphasis mine)

3. Our understranding of God’s communication with us is blocked when we misconceive the very nature of our heavenly Father and of his intent for us as his redeemed children and friends (italics Dallas’).

I like this set of points. I particularly like #2: How often do we see (or I find myself) “seeking God’s will” so that I can find my way out of a bind? Or have a more comfortable, well-ordered and planned life? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

This week while blogsurfing I saw a fantastic quote that I can’t find again (if you know whose this was, please let me know). It was to the effect of:

A God who incarnates himself and is crucified isn’t very concerned about your comfort.

Wow.

“The ideal for hearing from God is finally determined by who God is, what kind of beings we are and what a personal relationship between ourselves and God should be like. Our failure to hear God has its deepest roots in a failure to understand, accept and grow into a conversational relationship with God, the sort of relationship suited to friends who are mature personalities in a shared enterprise, no matter how different they may be in other respects.”

++Jesus my Lord, remind me that I am your friend and coworker in the Kingdom. Apply this into my life. Keep me from seeking you from wrong motives. Transform my understanding of your nature.++