A Question Of How We View God.

I've been thinking about how we sometimes criticize God. I've heard people try to use the Old Testament as evidence against His goodness or justice. If He says "don't murder" why did He command His people to go to war? If one of His attributes is Omniscience, then how is it possible Abraham and Moses seem to change His mind with their prayers?

And then there's the classic, "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" I could get into the fact that people aren't good in the first place, but something else has occurred to me.  When we criticize Him, aren't we appealing to a sense of "good" over God? But if God is sovereign, then doesn't He set the standard of what is good?

I have a feeling our sense of justice is fueled more by our emotions than our understanding. Who has a better understanding of the law? The person who wrote it, or the people who interpret it?

Is This Thing On? – A brief message on why Christians pray.

I knew at some point in this series on basic Christian living I'd have to talk about prayer. Christians do it all the time. But has anyone explained to you why? Haven't we all heard people describe feeling like their prayers hit the ceiling and fall splat on the floor like an undercooked pancake? Haven't we felt once or twice like our prayers don't do any good? Still, those who read the Bible and live by what it says can't ignore verses like Psalm 5:3. "In the morning, O Lord, you will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to you and eagerly watch." Not only should a Christian pray, but he should expect God to both hear and respond to the prayer.

Early in the drafting process of Stark Raving Obedience, Dad and I added a Lily Tomlin bit somewhere in the text. "Why is it when a person talks to God it's called prayer, but when God talks to a person it's called schizophrenia?" The first half of our book deals with the reality of God speaking to people. I could easily rattle off the verses we cite about God speaking, people hearing His voice, the verbal guidance of the Holy Spirit, and so on. When I thought about verses talking of God hearing people, I had a harder time coming up with examples.

I mean, it's in there. The Bible definitely talks about God hearing prayers. In my search for good examples, I went where anyone would go: The Beginning. Nobody makes an explanation of prayer in Genesis. No, "Adam heard the Lord and called out, 'Who said that?' And thus did Adam speak the first prayer unto the Lord." Nope. People and God talk to each other as if that sort of thing happened all the time. Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah, all sorts of people. It doesn't even sound like prayer was anything different than simply talking to God until Genesis 4:29, "At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord." I don't think this means God couldn't keep up with all the people trying to talk to Him at once. Prayer isn't like Santa's workshop, receiving millions of letters and sorting them based on importance and a naughty/nice list. It would make more sense to see this text as people realizing just how much sin had caused separation in their relationships with God. Maybe they felt like their prayers hit the ceiling and it freaked them out.

As my research went on, I found lots of passages where God hears the prayers of Kings and Prophets. In 1 Kings 9:3, God tells Solomon he heard the King's prayers. When King Hezekiah finds out he'll probably die of a particular illness, he prays for God to heal him. God tells Hezekiah in Isaiah 38, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." The leaders of Jerusalem asked Jeremiah to give them a word from the Lord and Jeremiah, knowing they had wrong motives, responded, "I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the Lord your God in accordance with your words; and I will tell you the whole message which the Lord will answer you. I will not keep back a word from you." I can relate to Jeremiah's frustration. Why didn't the rulers just pray to God themselves? In another passage, Ezekiel tells the people of Edom that God hears more than prayers when he says in 35:12, "Then you will know that I, the Lord, have heard your revilings which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel." In Micah 7:7, the prophet says with straightforward confidence, "My God will hear me."

But those men had special distinction. They were recognized Prophets and Kings. Of course God would hear their prayers. Then I reread a verse in Habakkuk 1. The Prophet feels like his prayers hit the ceiling, too. You can hear his confusion in 1:2 when he says, "How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and you will not hear? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' Yet you do not save." Once in a while, even men of spiritual distinction ask God, "What the eff?" This passage should give us some comfort. God never promises to answer our prayers quickly or in the way we expect.

Isn't that great? I spent all of July talking about the authority and need for the Bible because it lays a foundation for our understanding of a relationship with God. The Bible doesn't just say God will hear and prayers and respond to them, it also says we'll sometimes feel like He's not listening. But that's just how we can sometimes feel. Scripture is clear. God hears us. This is why He laid out the plan of redemption. It makes Him happy when we pray.

As for God talking back to us, I feel like I've written at length on that topic already. Suffice to say for now the Bible also tells us we'll hear from God. I bring up July's discussion on scriptural authority because some people have expressed concern over the topic of listening prayer. One lady told me I was playing a "dangerous game" listening to voices in the spiritual realm. "How can you know it's really God and not something evil?" She wasn't trying to put me in my place. The look on her face told me she genuinely cared about my soul.

I tried to explain, as I often do, "Everything spoken from God has to line up with the Bible."

She didn't seem comforted by my response. "I know you mean well. Just be careful with that sort of thing."

As long as I'm talking about prayer, I may as well attempt to clear this misunderstanding. God will only say things that confirm what He said in the Bible. Listening prayer, hearing from the Holy Spirit, isn't new revelation. It's just personal. It's as if the Holy Spirit was telling you a personal application of the Bible in a way that doesn't feel like a freakin' Sunday School lesson. The more a person reads the Bible, the more they recognize the voice of God because it agrees with what He said in scripture. It might even help us to get over that ceiling-effect. We'll always hear God respond to our prayers in the Bible, even if it's just to say, "Don't worry. I hear you."

Give Us a Sign.

A man I met at work recently read Stark Raving Obedience. After a few minutes of conversation, he made it known that he believed in God and worked as a missionary. A week later, he handed me a slip of paper. “These are some questions I have about your faith,” he said. Since my shift had not yet ended, I told him that I would read his questions later and write my answers. I planned on writing him a note, but after I read these questions, I decided to write a post.

The note reads, “If God really speaks to you, some questions.

1. My middle name.
2. My father’s middle name.
3. My grandfather’s names (father’s father and mother’s father)
4. Grammatical use of “dad and I” & “dad and me”
5. Where did you get a story of a woman standing on her head?”

When this man told me he wanted to ask questions about my faith, these were not the questions I expected. However, this is not the first time someone has asked me to prove that I hear God speak.

I want to make it clear that hearing God’s voice leads to a closer relationship with Him. The purpose of this dialogue is to develop intimacy and ultimately for God to glorify Himself. When God tells me to pray for a complete stranger’s healing, it can seem strange at first. But when it so happens the stranger has an ailment or injury, I’m excited by the confirmation. Then, if we see healing occur at that moment (which has happened on a few occasions), God gets the praise and I learn to trust His voice even more.

On the other hand, for the man who wants me to recite his genealogy, what does he hope for? If I give him incorrect answers, does that supposedly prove God’s silence and my delusion? If I answer correctly, what would that accomplish? Would it bring him closer to God? To be honest, I don’t want to treat my conversations with God like a game of Mind Reader.

Some Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign in Matthew 12:38-40. “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’” A chapter earlier, they questioned His divinity and now ask for a sign as proof. Jesus refuses to perform tricks and says, in essence, that His death and resurrection will have to do. As if that weren’t enough, right?

Four chapters later in Matthew 16, the text tells us that the Pharisees approached Jesus with some Sadducees and again asked for a sign as a test. In fact, the text in Stern’s translation from the Hebrew says they did this in order to trap Him. Again, Jesus rebuffs them and repeats himself in verse 4. “‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.’ And He left them and went away.”

The Lord brought two things to mind as I thought of these passages in Matthew. First, Pharisees and Sadducees were theologically opposed to each other much in the same way that we see opposition between Armenians and Calvinists today. I had to laugh. Isn’t it funny how Jesus can bring people together? Even if it’s to oppose Him? Just a thought.

Second, I wondered how they intended to trap Him with their request. Jesus, as God, had the power to show them His divinity. Hadn’t He performed signs and wonders throughout His ministry? Then I remembered some passages in John. First, in John 6, Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people then told them to seek Him and not the sign. Most of the people didn’t like this rebuke. In fact, even the disciples found it hard to swallow at first. Then in John 7, the Jews question Jesus’s education as He teaches in the temple. He responds in verses 16-18, “So Jesus answered them and said, ‘My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.’” Now in John 8:12-13, “Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’” In the following verses, Jesus explains how His relationship with the triune God allows the three parts to testify and glorify each other. They missed the point about His relationship with the Father, how He only said what the Father told Him to say, how He sought to bring glory to God.

I’m not Jesus. I don’t deserve the honor and glory and I shouldn’t do anything to seek praise due to Him. I want to point people to Jesus. I don’t want to waste time defending myself. When I read this man’s list of questions, I felt so much disappointment. Were these questions about my faith, I would have gladly answered them. But they seemed like a test of my truthfulness, sanity, and grammar. So, I respectfully decline to answer all but one of His questions. He asked where I got a story about a woman standing on her head. Fifteen years ago, a woman in a mid-Michigan church heard God and obeyed. My father came in contact with her through a friend of his, her pastor at the time. Since then, the story has grown legs and unfortunately suffered from a game of telephone. We are certain of the story’s accuracy as we tell it. If that isn’t convincing enough, we have fifteen more years of stories like hers.

I tell these stories in hopes that they will build people’s faith and come to understand more of the one true God who is both infinite and personal. Jesus forgive me for any other motive.