Why Should I Listen For What God Has To Say?

To anyone who has read the Press for any length of time, you should know I believe God still speaks to people. Sometimes, the things God says are useful for other people. Prophets, by and large, are not always men with unkempt beards in the desert. Sometimes they look like my friend, Sean.

About four years ago, Sean told me he felt like God wanted him to tell me something. He handled it very well. First, he prayed about what he heard for several days. Second, he asked other leaders in the church what they thought of the word and if they thought he should share it with me. But that's just an aside. I want to focus more on what he actually said. 

"God knows you want to serve Him as your Lord. But I think God wants you to know Him as your father." 

Every so often, I would pray about this word and get a little more understanding each time. The other night, A light clicked when I heard someone read John 15:15. 

"No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."

We do still serve God, sure. Just before, in verse 14, Jesus says, "You are my friends if you do what I command you." At first, this might sound like the neighborhood bully giving you orders and threatening to not be friends with you if you refuse. But if we know God in terms intimate enough to call Him friend and father, then we would also know who He is and what authority He holds.

I have a very good relationship with my dad. Like most dads out there, he used to expect me to obey him without justifying his reasons. But there came a point where he stopped using the "do it because I told you" line and started letting me in on the big picture. Despite my tendency to argue, seeing his vision for what we needed to accomplish motivated me to follow his plan.

And so, God speaks to His friends. Learning how to hear is one thing, learning to listen another, and understanding His heart behind the words yet another. When we read a command in the Bible or feel the Holy Spirit put something on our hearts, we can have the assurance it comes from a close friend and loving father who wants us to join in what He does in the world.

This is why I want people to know how to hear what God has to say.

The Great Silence - What do I do when I don't hear anything from God?

Now that the holidays are over, I'm going to tell you a secret. I don't get very excited about Christmas. I mean, I love celebrating Jesus, but I can do without the trees and cookies and shopping and so on. I can't remember where it started, but I stopped asking my parents for Christmas presents during my teenage years.

Of course they still wanted to give me gifts. So for three years, my Christmas and birthday gifts were hours of recording time at a studio in West Michigan. Over those three years, I made my teenage angst album, The Great Silence.

I knew at the time God spoke to people and I had heard him during times of prayer. But for a while, I didn't hear much. Every Sunday afternoon, my family would take time to pray and listen for God. More often than not, I wouldn't feel the Holy Spirit putting anything on my heart. "Why not?" I would ask myself. "Is God mad at me? Am I screwing up? Have I lost all favor? Should I become a monk and earn His acceptance?" Those years were bleak and I didn't handle them well.

Sometimes I'll get messages from people who have read Stark Raving Obedience and I regularly hear this question: "What do I do if I don't hear anything from God?" My go-to answer is, "Don't worry. God wants to guide you. If you pray and don't hear, make a decision you think would make Him happy. Through it all, keep praying. Then be open to change if you feel Him telling you to do the contrary." But I've never loved that answer. It may be correct, but when you're in the middle of your own Great Silence, it can sound lame.

I went through something like this again when the ceiling of my old house fell. My wife and I lived in spare bedrooms and kept asking God what we should do. For three weeks, I didn't hear much. By the end of the month, we had a great new home and I had a new job. God had orchestrated a huge blessing in the background of a hard trial.

I thought about this again today when I read the latest post on Stuff Christians Like. Please read it. I think it will encourage you.

Eggshells and Combat Boots - A look at Biblical confrontation.

One of these days, I think I'm going to write a post about how certain books of the Bible have unexpected endings. You've got 1 John, which doesn't end like most letters with a "sincerely" or "yours truly", but instead says "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." After 21 chapters of Judges, where God uses men to rescue and guide His people time and time again, the writer dusts off his hands with the sentence, "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." And then there's Jonah, with some of the best drama of any Sunday School story. God asks Jonah a funny rhetorical question before you turn the page to Micah and realize the book has ended. 

I think the book of James also has an unexpected ending. James tells his readers to be humble, mature, and concerned more with spiritual rather than financial growth. Then he signs off by telling them, "My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." 

This got me thinking about how Christians approach confrontation. I grew up around some people who knew we were at war, and war was all hell. The people around me took James's advice by shouting, gossiping, or in one lady's case, trying to exorcise me. No kidding. 

And then you've got the Christians who swing to the opposite extreme. They don't want to appear judgmental. They don't want to offend people or scare them away from Christianity. They saw the movie Saved and decided they didn't ever want to look like these girls.


So how do we take James's advice without becoming spiritual lunatics? First, as always, I recommend praying. Ask God how to talk with someone and then listen for what He tells you. James opens his book by telling people to ask God for wisdom, so I assume that would apply well to these situations. Second, there's always the Matthew 18 model of confrontation. Discuss the problem with the person in private, then with a trusted third party, and then only in public if the person refuses to change. The third thing to keep in mind when confronting people is Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." If these attributes aren't at the heart of your confrontation, it may be good for you to step back and reevaluate your approach. 

How do you feel about confrontation? Do you tend to walk on eggshells or walk all over people?
 

Should I Pray About Everything? - Discussing whether God is a good father or a gang boss.

Five years ago, someone asked me, "You listen for God to speak, right? And you ask Him what He wants you to do? At what point do you use your brain?" Since then, several people have asked a similar question. It seems natural to ask God for wisdom and direction when it comes to big decisions like where to live, who to marry, etc. But should we go overboard and stand still, waiting for orders? Is it like working the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke where you have to get God's approval before everything? "Getting a drink of water, Boss."

This question came up last night during a Bible study after some friends and I read James 4. Verses 13-15 say, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'"

We talked for a few minutes and asked ourselves, where's the line? Do we avoid boasting 'I'm going to get a drink of water' and instead say, 'If the Lord wills, I will live to get a drink of water'?

Wise people make wise choices because they have wisdom. That makes sense, right? And according to Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." If we seek to know God, we'll know how to live. Fearing Him could simply mean we make decisions we know will make Him happy. We live for His approval.

Of course we should still ask for wisdom and listen for the Holy Spirit when we pray. When I lived at home, I asked my dad for his advice whenever I needed guidance. And yet there were times I chose to do something based on what he had already taught me. At all times, though, I also had to be open to his correction. I may have thought it was alright to dig for treasure in the backyard, but I had to listen to him when he told me to stop and dig in the woods instead.

Do you ever have trouble finding that line between listening and action? Which side do you lean more toward?

How Do I Stop Saying Lame Prayers?

Have you ever felt like a wimp when you pray? Your prayer was trying to enjoy a day at the beach, not doing anybody any harm. Then without warning, someone else says a prayer that walks by and kicks sand in your prayer's face. Doesn't it make you want to feed your prayer raw eggs and give it an album by Survivor?

A few weeks ago, I told a woman at my church she didn't have to feel self-conscious about the way she prayed. Prayer doesn't need oratorical magic. I've heard plenty of stories where people prayed stumbling, half-thought-out prayers and saw God move powerfully. John Wimbur once told a story of a woman who couldn't see. She asked one of the church leaders to pray for her and the man misheard her request. So he prays for God to heal her from the flu, or something, and God restored her sight. I mean, shouldn't that make us feel more confident in God to answer our prayers, even if they don't have a set of free weights?

But I've felt like a wimp when I pray. I don't know how else to describe it. I know that Jesus gave his followers authority in Luke 9:1-2 and Mark 16:17-18, but I don't always pray as if I had that authority. Sometimes, I hear myself asking God to please heal someone or to restore a marriage and yet I don't feel very authoritative.

I wonder if I'm still unlearning my childhood lessons on prayer. The "God, if you would just..." or "Be with them, Lord..." schools of prayer. What if I tried a little more boldness, tried to pray like the people in Acts? Wouldn't it be crazy to hear someone throw out a "Be healed!" during a prayer circle?

But what if it came out wrong? Well, what if they've all been coming out wrong? I have the feeling God already gives us a lot of grace. Why wouldn't He overlook stumbling prayers for the flu and heal a pair of eyes anyway? If I'm listening to the Holy Spirit as I pray, I think I can expect Him to tell me how to pray with greater power and authority. Maybe my first question should be, "Lord, how do I pray for this?" Then it's only a matter of following God's direction in obedience.

"What Do I Do Now, Knowing What I Know?" - Seeking God in my outrage.

If you're one of the fifteen people who read my post about anger last month, you might remember my friends Tim and Kelsy. They both have a heart to expose and end human sex trafficking. Kelsy has worked with a group of people making a very important and unsettling movie about the topic. You can watch the trailer here, if you want.

My wife and I went to the Tennessee premier last night and I didn't know how to define what I felt when it ended. I wasn't heartbroken or shocked, exactly. I knew this stuff existed. It took a few minutes to realize I felt outraged.

Emotionally, I've found myself in this place before now. It's possible I'm an easily outraged person. I used to get caught up in campaigns and causes, telling people why they should also care with the same kind of conviction. Every time, without fail, my zeal would fizzle out or get replaced.

Part of this, I think, is because I operated out of my human wisdom. Last night, I was able to recognize this. So I said to God, "What do I do now, knowing what I know? Because I won't do any good unless you give me your heart and your wisdom." Within moments, and I mean just a handful of moments, I received wisdom and direction for how God wanted me to respond. I didn't have emotions zooming around my insides anymore. I had something to do.

At this moment, I can't recall any passages in scripture where God told his people to react in their outrage. Maybe there are a few. If so, you can tell me where to find them. However, I do know that loving God with everything is the basis of all we should do and I know He wants to give us wisdom.

How do you respond to outrage? What do you see happen as a result?

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."

The Comfort Of A Narrow Path - Why Christians need the Bible

Last month, I wrote about the need for people to understand the basics of Christianity. Since every post regarding this topic will have its foundation in the Bible, I wanted to first write about the Bible itself.

In Romans 10:2, the apostle Paul teaches about people having genuine zeal for God, but zeal "not based on correct understanding". Verse 3 says, "for, since they are unaware of God's way of making people righteous and instead seek to set up their own (way of making people righteous), they have not submitted themselves to God's way of making people righteous." They didn't correctly understand God's message of salvation so they created their own. Elsewhere in the Bible, you can read about this man-made version of salvation. It based itself on the merit of good deeds (Matthew 23:2-4, Galatians 2:16), ethnicity (Luke 3:8, 1 Timothy 1:3-4), and painful surgery (Galatians 5:6-12).

Paul goes on to use several Old Testament references explaining Jesus as the only source of salvation, ending with a quote from the prophet Joel in verse 13, "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered." Starting in the next verse, Paul gives us a strong argument for the need of the Bible in understanding the truth of God and the salvation He offers. "But how can they call on someone if they haven't trusted Him? And how can they trust in someone if they haven't heard about Him? And how can they hear about someone if no one is proclaiming Him? And how can people proclaim Him unless God sends them? - as the scriptures put it, 'How beautiful are the feet of those announcing good news about good things!'"

God told specific men to proclaim the truth of His words, to write them down. These writings are the Bible. The Bible truthfully and sufficiently tells us about who God is, what Jesus has done, and how we can know Him with the help of the Holy Spirit. If a person reads the Bible and comes to believe its words are true, he can put his trust in Jesus and receive salvation. Romans 10:17 sums it up this way, "So trust comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through a word proclaimed about the Messiah."

This is a very controversial and emotional topic for people. I think it's probable every person who reads the Bible has or will come across a passage offending their reason or emotion. The idea of scripture as the unchanging standard of truth can cause panic. People like flexibility. But when people resist the teachings of the Bible and come up with a different explanation of God or how He wants us to live, they almost always deviate toward some form of humanism, nihilism, pluralism, or universalism. These appeal to human reason or emotion and make them the final authority. For example, the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to find forgiveness for sin and spend eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus said in John 8:24, "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He (the Son of God, the Messiah), you will die in your sins." But then, some might say, what about people who will never have a chance to hear about Jesus? Does that mean they'll go to Hell, even if they never had a chance for salvation? According to the Bible, even they have no excuse for their sin and face an eternity in Hell (Romans 1:20).

Most objections to scripture tend to occur because of this sort of specificity, not because of vague generalities. Time and culture don't determine its truth. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Jesus knew some would struggle with this when He taught in Matthew 7:13-14, "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it." One of my favorite interpretations of this passage comes from Dennis and Rita Bennett's book, The Holy Spirit and You. Bennett compares the narrow way to the flight path of an airplane traveling from Los Angeles to Honolulu. The plane must follow a specific route to make its destination, otherwise it will end up somewhere way off course near Fiji. If the pilot follows the correct directions given him, he can fly without fear of losing his way.

Talking to people in Nashville, one of the country's most heavily-churched cities, I'm amazed at all the pilots thinking they can travel north to go west. If they're really nerdy, they might argue, "It's like Star Wars when Luke flies his X-wing into the Death Star trench. I'm just letting the Force guide my hand. It works so much better than the navigation device." Or, if they're less nerdy, they might say, "I'm more spiritual than religious."

Okay, I get it. The stiff and hypocritical church pissed me off enough to say the same thing a few times when I was younger. I talk to people all the time about how they need to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit for guidance while they pray. Until recently, I didn't stop to think about how many people assume I'm talking about guidance apart from the Bible. Let me make this clear: the Holy Spirit always agrees with the Bible. Yes, you might hear something regarding a personal situation or an edifying word for the church meeting you attend. That doesn't mean the prophetic word can defy or contradict scripture. Paul says just as much in 1 Corinthians 14:36-38. "Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anyone thinks he is a prophet or is endowed with the Spirit, let him acknowledge that what I am writing you is a command of the Lord. But if someone doesn't recognize this, then let him remain unrecognized."

In the next post, I'll discuss more on the Bible's authority and inerrancy. For now, I want you to think about man's need for the Bible. I hope with this post you will begin to think of it more than a positive moral influence. I want you to see it as a detailed guide, vital to your life and relationship with God. Without it, every decision made will come from man's own fallen reason or fickle emotion. Man needs an authoritative, objective truth and I believe God revealed it in the Bible.

Eleven of the Twelve - Zechariah and the attitude of a shepherd.

Since the beginning of this series on the minor prophets, I wanted to explain the main theme of each book and point out where the prophecies look forward to Jesus. In Zechariah, the two goals seem to become one. The book opens with an exhortation. "The Lord was extremely angry with your ancestors. Therefore, tell them that the Lord of Hosts says this: '"Return to me," says the Lord of Hosts, "and I will return to you," says the Lord of Hosts. "Don't be like your ancestors. The earlier prophets proclaimed to them, 'The Lord of Hosts says to turn back now from your evil ways and deeds'; but they didn't listen or pay attention to me," says the Lord.

Zechariah, like Haggai, prophesied to God's people after their return from exile. They are the kinder of the minor prophets. Where the others proclaimed God's coming wrath for sin, Zechariah and Haggai offer a different tone. God's justice is perfect, but He is also deeply in love with those He chose as His own. Zechariah sees a picture of men riding over the whole world to report on its affairs to God. When the men report the world as "quiet and at peace", the angel speaking with Zechariah prays, "Lord of Hosts, how long will you keep withholding mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah? You've been angry with them for the past seventy years!" God replies, "I am extremely jealous on behalf of Jerusalem and Zion; and to the same degree I am extremely angry with the nations that are so self-satisfied; because I was only a little angry at Jerusalem and Zion, but they made the suffering worse." God goes on to promise the restoration of the Temple and all of Jerusalem.

See, God sounded pissed during all those years at the time of the earlier prophets, but it was more like "Dad Voice". He expected the other nations to continue in wickedness like one might expect the trouble-making neighbor kids to egg your house. But if any of you parents were to learn that your kids were involved in the vandalism, you might have an idea of what God felt.

It's true that Zechariah speaks to the inhabitants of Jerusalem regarding immediate issues, but I might sound redundant if I focused on that part of his message. Where Haggai spoke of an attitude of poverty, Zechariah seems to address the spirit of poverty in the heart. For example, in chapter 8, God promises a beautiful restoration of Jerusalem. There's peace there, families, and joy. In verse 6, God dismisses the circumstances. "This may seem amazing to the survivors in those days, but must it also seem amazing to me?"

More than anything, though, I see Zechariah talking about the coming Messiah. Here we read the prophecies foretelling Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (9:9), Judas' price in betraying Jesus and what he did with the money (11:12-13), His being a firstborn son killed in public (12:10), His followers abandoning Him at His arrest (13:7), and His triumphal return when one day He comes again to rule (14:4-9). Jesus seems to be everywhere I look in this book. If not in outright prophecy, Zechariah at least describes the attitude of Jesus.

In my first few times through the book, I stumbled over Zechariah's use of the word "shepherd". I knew that they symbolized the leaders of Judah, but there seemed to be two different kinds of shepherds. At times, God is pissed at the shepherds and wants to punish them. Other passages talk of a good shepherd. In 10:3, God says, "'My anger burns against the shepherds, and I will vent it on the leaders of the flock.' For The Lord of Hosts will care for His flock, the people of Judah; He will make them like His royal war-horse." But a subtle change takes place in this verse. The leaders of Israel often had a reputation for ignoring God's law, the message of the prophets, and the suffering of the people. Nehemiah had to correct the nobles of oppressive usury in Nehemiah 5. The second half of Zechariah 10:3 takes the responsibility of Judah's care off of its leaders and onto God Himself.

The prophet further explains this change of responsibility in chapter 11. God tells of ridding Judah from three shepherds in a single month. I can't say for sure, but it sounds to me like a reference to Josiah's three sons, the last three kings of Judah. Here, the flock is "handed over to the power of a neighbor and to the power of his king." At the end of chapter 11, God promises to raise up one more cruel and careless shepherd before punishing him as well.

Chapter 12 tells of God rescuing Jerusalem from calamity. An interesting change in attitude happens here. God says in 12:6, "When that day comes, I will make the leaders of Judah like a blazing fire pan in a pile of wood, like a fiery torch among sheaves of grain; they will devour all the surrounding peoples, on the right and on the left. Jerusalem will be inhabited in her own place, Jerusalem." Here, finally, the leaders would find themselves in their proper place. They would operate in God's power and follow His direction.

In the gospels, Jesus referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd. This claim makes sense of Zechariah 13:7. "Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me." This is the one time that God claims a shepherd as His own. He had already pledged to take responsibility for the flock. His shepherd is Jesus, who became a man, and stayed close to the God the Father. He now acts as king, now in the church and in the future over everything. He is our high priest, praying for us and offering us salvation through his death and resurrection.

Good leadership, those who shepherd the flock under Him, must follow His lead. Jesus said in John 5:19, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner." Like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, we can know what God wants through scripture and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. For any of us who lead to any degree, whether in a political office, church responsibility, or as the head of a household, we must have this attitude. Instead of the worthless shepherds condemned in Zechariah, who sought personal gain and prominence, we need to humbly submit ourselves to God and seek His direction.

This sounds like a simple ending, but it comes with a challenge. When making a decision (and I don't mean something like "do I take another sip of coffee or not?"), stop to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give you guidance. If the Bible instructs something contrary to the way you have always done things, decide if you are going to pattern your life after scripture. In our own power, apart from God's wisdom and direction, we are doomed. Without Him, we can make no good decision.

Eight of the Twelve - A very frank conversation.

It's impossible for me to remember every prayer I pray and every word I hear from God without writing it down. That's why I began to keep a prayer journal back in 2003. In it, I write my words in parenthesis to distinguish my voice from the Holy Spirit. This way, I'm able to see the flow of conversation and remember who said what. If anyone were to read how God and I interact without knowing the purpose or function of the journal, I may be accused of schizophrenia. I can especially see that during the parts where I use the words "Huh? But Lord..."

Journaling prayer isn't a modern innovation, though. Not that I'm putting my spiral notebooks on the same level, but some of the prophets record when God told them to write His words. Among them were Jeremiah, John when he received the Revelation, and Habakkuk.

As a child, I would refer to Habakkuk in Sunday school to see if the other kids knew it was in the Bible. Kind of like that old joke where the preacher opens a message with, "Please turn to the book of Hezekiah," and you laugh at the sound of onion skin paper fluttering around the room. However, in the last few months, I have seen or heard three Bible teachers refer to Habakkuk. It seems times have changed for the journaling prophet. He's at least a little more like Ferris Bueller and a little less like Anthony Michael Hall in the Breakfast Club.

Habakkuk wrote a discussion he had with God in prayer. It started as a complaint and the prophet asked God some pointed questions. After God's response, Habakkuk wrote a humble song of praise. I want to refer to C.J. Mahaney in his book Humility: True Greatness and its discussion of Habakkuk. "I believe we all need to listen intently to Habakkuk so we can emulate his example when our circumstances seem to contradict the character and promises of God. And let me assure you: At some point in your life, you will know circumstances that seem to contradict the character and promises of God, if you haven't already. At some moment in your future, life will not make sense." Mahaney then puts forth an excellent discussion on Habakkuk's transformation from pride to humility. Even though I recommend anyone to read his book, I want to focus on another aspect of this prophet. Habakkuk and God spoke candidly to each other.

I believe this also sets an example for how we can approach God when life doesn't make sense. Chapter 1 begins with Habakkuk's prayer, "Lord, how long must I cry to you without your hearing? 'Violence!' I cry to you, but you don't save. Why do you make me see wrongdoing, why do you permit oppression? Pillage and cruelty confront me, so that strife and discord prevail. Therefore the Law is not followed; justice never gets rendered, because the wicked fence in the righteous. This is why justice comes out perverted."

If this were written in my prayer journal, I may have said it like, "Lord, you told me to pray but it doesn't seem to do any good. People are still sinning wickedly around me and taking advantage of others. They're cruel and quarrelsome. They despise the Bible, the standard of truth, and choose to live their own way. But that affects me and everyone else, God. It's not fair!"

Mahaney points to Habakkuk's prideful tone in this prayer. God does address this, but I want to make note of how He does not reproach Habakkuk for asking the questions. In 1:5-6, God replies, "Look around among the nations! What you see will completely astound you! For what is going to be done in your days you will not believe, even when you are told. I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and impetuous nation, who march far and wide over the earth to seize homes that are not their own." God responds in turn with Habakkuk's prayer and goes on to tell him of the coming judgment. To paraphrase, "Yep, I'm pissed about their behavior, too. That's why I'm sending the terrorists in to level the place and take it over. Their army is stronger, faster, and meaner than yours. Diplomacy doesn't matter to them. But before you accuse me of allowing evil for evil's sake, you should know that I'm going to punish them as well."

Understandably, Habakkuk doesn't like this answer. My prayer journal would have read, "Huh? But Lord... that city they're going to destroy? I live there!" So the prophet asks God to explain Himself and in 1:13 writes, "Your eyes are too pure to see evil, you cannot countenance oppression. So why do you countenance traitors? Why are you silent when evil people swallow up those more righteous than they?" This kind of sounds like back-peddling. "Lord, I know I said we were bad, but these guys are worse. This doesn't make sense to me."

This reads like a very frank conversation between people who know each other. I want Christians to understand that we can come before God with this kind of familiarity, though not necessarily with the same attitude. I've met a good deal of people who tell me they want to hear God's voice. After we talk about how to listen, they often return telling me, "I didn't hear anything." My best answer to them is, "Keep praying. Keep listening." When my dad first began learning how to listen in prayer, he said, "I'm not going anywhere until you say something to me, Lord."

Habakkuk says something similar in 2:1. "I will stand at my watchpost; I will station myself on the rampart. I will look to see what He will say through me and what I will answer when I am reproved." He went somewhere by himself and waited quietly until God answered his questions. The rest of chapter 2 chronicles God's answer.

I'm not suggesting we treat God casually. These frank conversations aren't meant to diminish God's glory and majesty. We are, in fact, to respond in praise like Habakkuk in chapter 3. And like Habakkuk, our relationship with God should cause us to thank Him for Jesus. It's through Jesus' death and resurrection we are able enjoy this kind of intimacy. For Habakkuk, he knew God wouldn't completely destroy His people because of Jesus. In 1:12, the prophet said confidently, "My God, my holy one, we will not die." God had promised over and over to bring Messiah, Jesus, through the Jews. In 3:13, Habakkuk's song repeats this confidence and reminds the listener of God's plan for salvation. "You come out to save your people, to save your anointed one (Hebrew: Messiah); you crush the head of the house of the wicked (a reference to the prophecy in Genesis 3:15), uncovering its foundation all the way to the neck."

If I were to let you read my journals, you would see that my frank conversations with God haven't led me to show Him contempt. When He answers me, my love for Him grows because I understand more of His character and promises. I argue with Him less these days and, I'm happy to say, praise Him more.

In the Meantime, Write New Songs.

So, I realize some of you may have walked away from the last essay without much relief. In fact, my hope was to say, “Life is hard. We’re all frustrated. But God is good and He tells the truth. What can you do? Keep going.” Someone in agony just got a pat on the back. Waiting in trust can suck sometimes. I’m there with you. The question is, what do we do while we wait?

This is why I want to write an addition to Avoiding Ishmaels. Here’s the story. One day, soon after writing the endurance essay, I had a really great day of prayer. God and I talked for hours. When I got up that morning, on my break at work, hanging out at a coffee shop afterward, and in a prayer meeting at a friend’s house later that night. I loved it. I’m about to get super-vulnerable and let you in on part of this conversation. At one point, I asked Him, “Why has it been so hard to write songs lately?” By that time, I had only written four songs in the last year. For those of you who don’t know me well, this is unusual. Then a thought came to me, which is how the Holy Spirit often talks to me. “In the past, when nothing clicked, you would write something new and wait for the unfinished song to develop in its own time.”

If you don’t understand what that means, let me explain. On a few occasions in the past, I wrote a riff or a chorus that I liked, but everything I tried to put around it felt weak in comparison to the one good part. So I would write down or record the good part and move on to something else. Sometimes, it took years for that part to mature into a good song.

The thought in prayer continued, “For the last year, you have played the same riffs over and over until they develop. And so, you’ve only written four songs in the last year. These are good songs that please me, as I was pleased to give them to you. But you have ignored opportunities to discover other songs I wanted to give. This reflects your attitude spiritually. Imagine the riffs are promises. You were given several, and yet you keep pushing on the same handful, neglecting the others. When you find yourself waiting for some promises, pray and work on the others.”

He then reminded me of some specific promises and how I would in time have even bigger things to look forward to. “You focused so much on the old ones you missed asking about the new ones. Now, the promises I already gave are good and please me, but I want you to have more. So, with both songs and promises, ask for more.”

As I’ve thought of this over the past week and a half, I tried it out. I wrote a song. I had fun, recorded it, and sang it a few times to the house. It was easy. I felt like I learned how to write songs all over again and I’m excited to write more. Some of them will go on records, some will stay on Garageband. It doesn’t matter. I’m moving on to new songs while I wait for the others to grow. I have life to experience and a God to love and learn about. I have work to do.

This reminds me of the opening scene in the book of Acts. Jesus rises from the dead and presents Himself to people over the course of forty days. Beginning in Acts 1:4, “Gathering them together, He (Jesus) commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’”

Okay, so Jesus just made an enormous promise to his followers. Because of His death on the cross, he took away the sin separating them from God. The presence of God would soon come among them! But they were focused on another promise and kind of missed that. “So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’” The riff they kept pushing came from the prophets that Messiah would establish the Kingdom of God on earth and rule over the world. They weren’t happy with Rome and wanted Jesus to hurry up and become king already.

“He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’” Essentially, Jesus just told them, “Hey, don’t worry about that right now. We’ll get to that eventually. But I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to dwell in you so you can tell the world about me.” He was trying to tell them about another promise and give them work to do until He returns to set up His kingdom on earth.

They still didn’t get it. “And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.’” Two men, who many believe were angels, told the disciples straight up. “Listen, you’ll just have to wait!” Only then did they go back to Jerusalem and wait for the other promise. And when it came, as you can read in Acts 2, it was awesome. They praised God and told everyone about Jesus.

Like the disciples, we’re still waiting for Jesus to return. I’m still waiting for a foxy, Bible-reading, Jesus-loving lady to date me. We’re all waiting for something that feels centuries away. But I don’t want to stand around staring at clouds while I could be interacting with the Holy Spirit and sharing the Gospel. This is the lesson I am learning. Don’t give up on the old promises. Endure. But in the meantime, write some new songs.

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.

Secondary Questions - Or, lessons from a homeless man's reading list.

In 2004, a man named Dan walked into the coffee shop where I worked in Grand Rapids. My co-worker took his order and I made the drink. While they waited for me to finish, she decided to make some small talk with this guy. “I’ve never seen you before. Do you work around here?”

“I don’t work around here or anywhere else,” he said.

“Oh. Well, do you live around here then?”

It was an innocent question, but she clearly didn’t understand that Dan was probably homeless. I hip-checked her out of the way and handed him his drink. He paid with a dirty dollar bill and some change, if I remember right, and began talking with me about education and religion. Unlike some of the other people I talked with in that neighborhood, his points were articulate, well reasoned, and truthful. He mentioned some books and asked if I had read them. Then he wrote the titles in beautiful cursive on the back of a concert flyer. “You’ll find these at the Grand Rapids Main Branch Library,” he said.

He told me that one of the books, The Art of Clear Thinking, didn’t have much to say. He really only recommended the chapter, “How To Not Be Bamboozled”. I found all the books on his reading list and read them over the next four months, but I remember this chapter best. “How To Not Be Bamboozled” warned against accepting false information in an age where information is so easily accessible. And mind you, this book was written in the 1950’s, way before the lightning speed at which we could all WikiTubeBookSpace. The author said that all information should be tested by three questions: “Why do I need to know this? Who is telling me? And what are their sources?” I won’t give you my book report summary of the chapter, but I want to point out the importance of further inquiry. It’s easy to hear something and assume that we have a complete understanding of both its context and credibility.

I’m awesome when it comes to acting like I understand everything. Reader’s Digest once had an article that explained how you could impress people at parties. I was ten and woefully insecure, so I ate this stuff up. The author’s strategy was to say truthful statements, but to say them in such a way that deceived people. Imagine someone asks you, “Have you ever read Dante’s Divine Comedy?” Instead of saying “No,” you can answer, “Not in English.” The second reply insinuates that you’ve not only read the Divine Comedy, but that you read it in Italian. But this is a party. You can move on to another circle of cocktails and leave that person to bask in the residual glow of your coolness.

I’ve spent the better part of the past five years re-training myself to not play that game anymore. It all started when I couldn’t get away fast enough and the person started asking questions that proved I was a phony. My Reader’s Digest-inspired cool (if such a thing were possible) couldn’t stand the test of secondary questions.

But secondary questions aren’t just a BS detector. What if every conversation you ever had sounded like a job interview? You have your set of questions for people to get the basic information of who they are and what they’ve done. But without context, do you really know the person? I recently filled out an application that asked me to tell them a little about myself. “What makes you tick?” it asked. I looked at the space given after the question and basically wrote in, “It’s a long story, but at least it’s not boring.” I couldn’t give a short, easy answer. If I had given an answer like, “I’m a writer,” and left it at that, their assumptions could lead them to a conclusion miles away from my meaning. In Nashville, when you say you’re a writer, most people immediately say, “Songwriter?” I have to tell them, “No, typewriter.” It takes another question for them to understand what I meant.

I’m learning to ask secondary questions when I pray. First, it’s important to ask questions that test the truth of what I may hear in prayer. 1 John 4:1-3 says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” Just because I hear something while I’m praying to God, and just because it sounds like something God might say, it doesn’t automatically mean the word is from God. John encouraged people to ask questions that would test the spirit speaking to make sure the word came from God.

Then there are the questions I ask God to build an understanding of what He may require of me. I think He wants us to make an effort to understand, to learn and grow instead of passively accepting everything that comes our way. There’s a reason, I think, why James 1:5 encourages us to ask for wisdom from God. And the writer makes it clear that God wants to give you wisdom. But you have to ask.

If God were to tell you to get a new job, for example, does that mean you should get any job other than the one you have now? Or should you take a moment to ask, “Where do you want me to work?” That could save you a lot of frustration applying and interviewing at dead ends, which might cause you to blame God for making your life hard. And I’ve found that asking God the secondary questions doesn’t only give me clearer information on what He wants me to do, it also helps me to understand His heart, how He desires to give me good things, how He loves me enough to guide me.

Secondary questions help keep us from being bamboozled. We can see if the guy at the party is making himself look a lot cooler than he is in real life. We can see if God is speaking, or if a lying spirit is trying to deceive us. Information without credibility will eventually break down if you press it with questions. That sure beats having your thinking enslaved by lies.

Secondary questions also make space for a relationship. It’s the difference between a boss who only wants you to know your duty and a Father who wants His adopted son to become more like Him. Information without context is just trivia, and I don’t want my life to be trivial. Instead of asking the wandering homeless guy where he lives, you could ask him why he’s out of work. Who knows? He might give you a cool reading list.

Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy, or some Gentile thoughts on the nature of rest.

Sometimes while reading the Bible, I’ll start laughing because I put myself into the story. Like here in John 5:2-17, I’ll insert my commentary throughout the passage.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.
What’s a portico?
In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.] A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
Drag.
When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
No, He asked if you wanted to be healed, man.
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.
A drag no more.
Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.”
If Jesus knew that this guy had been lame for years, didn’t the locals notice the miracle? What a bunch of kill-joys.
But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?”
They still aren’t picking up on the part where the man was healed. Why are these guys so caught up in a dude holding his mat?
But the man who was healed (at least the writer insists on mentioning the healing) did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”
Wait, did anyone else catch that last part?
The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
“Alright, if you’re going to harass anyone for healing me of a life-long handicap, blame this guy.”
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.
“Are you the guy who told that cripple to carry his rug?”
But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”
“Yeah, I’m the guy. What are you going to do about it?”

Jesus flat-out admits to their accusation by saying, “I Myself and working.” What a bad-ass! And when the scripture says the Jews were persecuting Jesus, that’s a nice way of saying they wanted to kill Him. He had to know that. And then, for the rest of the chapter, Jesus talks about His authority as the Son of God and chastises the Jews for rejecting Him. Ouch. There is a lot I could talk about here, but I’m going to stick with the Sabbath for now.

The subject of the Sabbath, or God’s appointed day of rest, can irritate a lot of Christians. Let’s be honest, how many believers really observe the Sabbath? What is the Sabbath, anyway? And for that matter, when is the Sabbath? We talk about it so little that it becomes easy to ignore. I’ve thought about it more recently because of an argument I had with a guy. He observes the Sabbath, and on Saturday. “The real Sabbath,” he said. He got mad at me because I didn’t think it was necessary to observe all the Jewish laws so strictly.

“But it’s one of the Ten Commandments. How can you ignore that? And don’t tell me that you pick your own Sabbath. God appointed Saturday, that’s when we’re supposed to rest. You can’t change God’s rules,” he said.

I responded, “You know how much I like Jewish people, but we’re not Jews. As far as I know, we’re Gentiles. When the early church wanted to know if the Greek believers should convert to Judaism before Christianity, James told the church leaders, ‘But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.’” That’s Acts 21:25, in case you’re wondering. “Of all the commands they could have given the gentiles, they pretty much said, ‘don’t serve other gods or do things that glorify death, and stay sexually pure.’ They didn’t mention the Sabbath.”

We never really came to an agreement. This argument gets sticky because the two sides are both technically Biblical. God did command His people to observe the Sabbath. And God was serious about it. In other portions of the law, He tells His people to execute other Jews who don’t observe the Sabbath. Hence the Jews "persecuting" Jesus.

At the same time, Paul talks about the different applications of the law for Jewish and Gentile believers in Romans 2. It’s a pretty complicated passage, so I won’t get too deep into it. But notice verses 27 through 29, “And he who is physically uncircumcised (which was technically against the law for Jews), if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”

The point I want to make is this: Jesus didn’t break the law by healing a man on the Sabbath, and the man healed didn’t break the law by carrying his mat. The Sabbath was put in place to remind men that God created them for more than their work. It was meant to allow time for us to focus on our relationship with God. Jesus did as the Spirit of God led him to act, and the crippled man obeyed the Messiah. So if both of them acted in obedience, and their actions glorified God, how is that sin?

Galatians 5:3 says if you take one part of the law, you take on the whole of the law. And the message of Romans 2 is that Jews shouldn’t judge the Gentiles because they themselves fail at keeping the whole law. People who claim to observe the whole law and do so without having “circumcised their hearts”, or dedicated themselves to their relationship with God, they bring judgment on themselves. Jesus says this to the kill-joys in John 5. Those men were caught up in their image of perfection. If they had been concerned with glorifying God, they would have recognized the miracle and praised Him. Their trust in Him would have grown. Their relationship with Him would have deepened. And it’s in this deepening relationship that we find a true Sabbath of the heart.

Safe Answers, or God as a Magic 8 Ball.

For all of the grief I give my old Sunday school lessons, I really did enjoy them. It's hard to hate flannel graphs and construction paper and cookies and swing sets. The wordless book? Does it come with M&M's? Those were good days. I liked Sunday school up until about the third or fourth grade. Thanks to the sophisticated education I received in the public school system, I learned that information needed to become increasingly complex. Mathematics went from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division. American history eventually mixed in with world history. Music lessons went from singing Raffi tunes and patriotic classics to reading simple sheet music and playing recorders. But in Sunday school, the teachers offered the same simple answers to nearly every question I asked. "It's either Jesus, the Bible, prayer, or church."

My friend Erik told an old joke last weekend at a Christian youth conference. "A Sunday school teacher asked his students, 'what's brown, with a fuzzy tail, and stores acorns for the winter?' One of the students raised his hand and said, 'Well it sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer has to be Jesus.'" We laughed. The kids laughed. Everybody felt a little righteous in knowing that they weren't like those people. But then the guest speaker stood for his half hour lecture. He talked about the common belief that God answers prayer in one of three ways, "yes, no, or in a little while." I'd heard that all through my early years in the church. I graduated high school hearing this from teachers. When the guest speaker brought this up, I leaned forward in my seat, hoping he'd go into the direction of the Holy Spirit in prayer. He was so close. Man was he close. But he left it at another safe answer. "God always wants the answer to be 'yes'. The closer you get to God, the more you'll ask for the things He already wants to give you."

My first thought was this, "You just simplified an already over-simplified answer." Why do we treat a complex, personal, and infinite God like one of those coin-operated fortune-tellers? I’m not saying that every simple explanation of faith bothers me. For example, what’s the basis of my salvation? Jesus came, died an innocent man for the guilt of humanity, and then got up. Sure, there’s more to it than that, but the simplicity of the answer is a true summary of the gospel.

It’s when people read something they don't understand in the Bible that they feel compelled to have a simple explanation. For example, the Bible says that it’s God’s will to heal people. Jesus told his disciples to pray for the sick and heal them. But when some people didn’t see this happening in their daily lives (how do you spell that one guy’s name? Warfield?), they start adding interpretations to life that don’t seem to have any basis in scripture. Suddenly, the gifts of the Spirit were “for those times, but not for now.” It’s like they gave God an easy way out of proving Himself. As if He needed one.

In terms of hearing God’s voice, allowing Him the answers “yes, no, or in a little while” presents another easy out. A person doesn’t need to hear His voice if they only ask God for something and then assume His answer based on whether or not it was given to them. But what about those times when a person is desperate and needs guidance, a solution to a problem? What if they exchange looked like this:

Man: God, what should I do?

God: Yes.

Man: Yes what? How will I ever reconcile with my dad?

God: In a little while.

Man: Okay, I guess that sort of makes sense. But what should I do when the opportunity presents itself?

God: No.

I remember having a conversation like this when I was, like, ten. But it was with one of those Magic 8 Balls. My friends were trying to tell me, “This thing can answer any question. It’s kind of spooky.” I asked questions I knew it couldn’t answer, like “who was President of the United States last year?” and, “Who is a better band, Soul Asylum or Green Jelly?” My friends protested that it couldn’t answer those types of questions. I said, “Yeah, but you can. So I guess that makes you smarter than the Magic 8 Ball."

People ask a Magic 8 Ball for an answer they know it can give. But it’s impersonal and limited. The Christian church says that God is personal (at the very least, a personality) and limitless. Still, if we don’t understand something about His personality, we come up with an answer that sounds more like an excuse on His behalf. In our brilliance, we have to bail God out of a situation He can’t handle with answers that people can’t refute.

If we never have to take the risk of trusting a God who we don’t fully understand, then we never have to risk obeying a command we don’t understand. We never have to humbly take our place as created and finite beings, giving authority to the infinite creator. We’ll never have to look stupid in front of our friends or co-workers. We can keep God at an explainable distance. And it also means that we’ll never have a real relationship with Him.

God pisses me off sometimes. Seriously, He does. I wrestle with Him all the time over things that I don’t understand. But in that struggle and in the conversations, we form a relationship. We develop intimacy and trust that couldn’t exist if I limited Him to answering Yes-or-No questions. A few years ago, I finally realized that it’s okay not to know everything about God. When someone asks me a question about my beliefs, it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “I don’t know yet.” It may not be a very savvy answer, but it’s better than making something up to save face.

Is It Possible To Have Relationship With An Immaterial God?

In my first post, I presented the idea that many churches treat a "personal relationship" with God more like a membership to a fan club than anything else. Reading a Bible, going to a church, and praying heavenly voice mail messages doesn't make a personal relationship. The only way you can have a relationship with anyone is to talk with them and establish trust between the two of you. I've included the first chapter of Stark Raving Obedience to introduce how God spoke to individuals, why it's Biblical, and how it still happens today. Even to "uneducated and ordinary" men like me.

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Signs of life

“One of the greatest blessings a true believer has is to hear and know the voice of God. It is possible to hear God’s voice today as certainly and clearly as did Abraham and Moses – as clearly as did Samuel and David – as clearly as did Paul, Peter, the apostles, and John on the isle of Patmos!” - David Wilkerson

It all began with a prayer, at a time when I wasn’t sure if I took prayer seriously. This particular prayer was in response to Psalm 42:1 “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God.” As I read about David’s thirst for God I realized that even though I belonged to “the Jesus Christ Club” of Christianity, and believed myself a sold-out disciple because I did all the correct “church” things, and had once read the Bible the whole way through, I did not feel a desperate longing for God.

People often tell testimonies like this, “My life hit rock bottom, and I didn’t know what to do. Then I found Jesus. Now I have all of this joy and peace and success.” Well, it was only sort of like that for the Kallmans.

We had come to a bad place as a family when I was eleven years old. My brothers Ben and James got burned by people in the church and it seemed like they decided to break every rule the church tried to place on them. The family business had struggled and we lived on the edge of financial failure. All of that strained mom and dad to heartbreaking points. I was intensely unhappy and hated myself. Once or twice I snuck into my brothers’ world and see if drugs would make me happy, and, you know, they didn’t. For me, faith was two parts habit and one part safety precaution. I knew I didn’t want to go to hell, so I became a Christian, but devotion to a religion didn’t seem to fix anything. I felt like I was living in hell already.
At the time, I didn’t know that my father, Ted, and I were in the same place spiritually. We knew that we had accepted Christ and tried to live our lives according to His teachings, but God was this distant being to whom we paid tribute with routine. Prayer, reading the Bible, attending church, helping with church activities, Bible camp, charity, mission trips that suspiciously looked like vacations. Witnessing never seemed to do any good back then because people could probably tell that I wasn’t so sure about God myself.

A part of our family’s routine was to spend time together on Sunday nights. Usually it meant pizza and a movie. One Sunday night, we didn’t have pizza or a movie. My brothers became angry and asked why we were just sitting around the living room with nothing to do.
“We’re going to pray,” my mother answered.

I figured that one of our family members or friends were in trouble, because that seemed like the only time we sat together as a family to pray. Dad said that nobody was hurt or anything. “We want to teach you children something that your mom and I have been learning together.”
Ben and James looked like they wanted to leave, but knew that it would cause more trouble than they were willing to make. My sister Etta, often hiding silently behind our couch, took it all in. I remember feeling confused and intrigued. I knew how to talk to God. Every Sunday school kid knew what prayer was, but mom and dad had just explained that we could listen to God talk back. It sounded like a thought, but the thought was sometimes God talking to us.
So this is usually the part of that testimony where God changes our lives and everything gets better. The family magically alters into this perfect home and all of us get along and sunshine pours out of our fingertips.

That didn’t quite happen. God began to show us the areas in our lives that needed to change, and there were a lot of areas that needed change. Over time, God sometimes asked us to do strange and uncomfortable things. But when we met on Sunday night and asked God to talk to us, all of the problems we faced couldn’t diminish my excitement. I had actually met God, and He met me.

The Preacher in the punk band had it right

My pastor used to have a rock and roll band called Big Fil. Their “big hit” was a song called “I’m Not Your Grandpa”. In the song, God spoke to His people, asking them when they would realize that He was right in the middle of their lives. He wasn’t some crazy old man that lived in the attic with flowing white hair. It’s a great song. I own all of their records.
But I digress.

The point is that God wants a personal relationship with us. You’ve heard that before, right? I mean, He wants to be able to walk with us in the cool of the evening and talk with us, just like He did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He wants to be able to meet with us on mountains and talk directly to us like He did with Moses. This same God tore the veil in the temple from top to bottom when Jesus died. Man and God can interact freely, no priest required.

I’ve told lots of people that this book is all about prayer, but it’s really about knowing God. When we hear His voice and obey, then see amazing things come from that obedience, we learn to trust Him. We can approach God with confidence, we can seek Him and actually find Him.
I’m going to talk about sheer madness. I’m going to talk about the best thing that ever happened to me.

Henry Ford once said whether you believe you can or cannot, you are correct. Despite it’s self-centered bent, there is some truth to it. Before we begin anything here, you have to understand: If you don’t believe that God can or will speak to you, then you are absolutely right. This isn’t a case of mind over matter, that the more affirmation you give something the truer it becomes. I’m saying that anyone can hear, but you have to make it a point to listen.
If you’re somebody who really believes that the Bible is the true Word of God, that the Word is unchanging, that God is the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), why wouldn’t you believe He still speaks?

The book The Lives of the Desert Fathers gives a record of miracles, healings, signs, and wonders that were prevalent in the lives of monks along the Nile from about 100 AD to about 450 AD. It includes a direct translation of The Historia Monachorum In Aegypto, which tells the stories of these men and their intense pursuit of God. Listening while in prayer was a significant part of their walk. In his book Surprised by the Voice of God, Jack Deere details instances in where the early Reformers heard direction from the Spirit and acted in obedience, and how God moved miraculously. This book also cites Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hadden Spurgeon with similar instances. A.W. Tozer in his classic book The Pursuit of God describes the ongoing speaking nature of God in the chapter “The Speaking Voice”.

The problem I have in teaching people about hearing God’s voice comes in the matter of incontrovertible proof. I’m not sure I could come up with a list of bibliographical sources that would satisfy critical minds. I can only present the best information that I have and give accounts of experience.

But they aren’t all just my experiences, or my family’s, or of people unknown to the public. I’ve already mentioned Jack Deere’s book, Surprised By the Voice of God. At the beginning of the book, Deere tells a story of God supernaturally speaking to him. A student came to speak with Deere about a paper, and the Holy Spirit told Deere that this student struggled with pornography. Deere describes his reaction. “What is happening to me? I thought. There is no way this student is into pornography. I must be making this up. But why would I make up something I thought to be an impossibility?” When Deere asks if the student is struggling with pornography, the young man begins to confess and repent of many different sins, including his addiction to pornography. Later that night, the student found Deere and exclaimed, “I’m a new person!”

I believe this all began with Deere relentlessly seeking God’s voice. “For months, I had been praying for God to speak to me like this, asking him to impart to me supernatural knowledge about people so that I might minister to them more effectively.”

A high school Algebra teacher had an annoying habit of saying the same two phrases whenever I asked him a question, “it’s in the book” or “it’s in your notes.” I used to wonder why, then, I had a teacher at all. I should have just been able to read the book and look at the notes and understand how to find “X”. But I didn’t understand. I needed him to sit down with me and go over whatever impeded my comprehension. I remember muttering to myself, “No, it’s in your head.”

Growing up in my church, Sunday school teachers and youth pastors told me that God said everything He needed to say in the Bible, so He doesn’t have to talk anymore. I don’t buy that. I don’t think they were lying to me. They just didn’t know how to listen to God, so they assumed He had finished talking. I do believe that the Bible is God’s word, and that it is fully true. I don’t believe that it’s exhaustive, though, because that would mean the eternal God limited the whole of his being to a book with a beginning and end. John said it himself in his gospel, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)
In John 16:7-15, Jesus tells His disciples that the Holy Spirit will come to guide them after He has gone. He says that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all truth”, and that the Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment”. The guidance of the Holy Spirit was not exclusively for the apostles, and there was a need for guidance beyond the words written in the scriptures. Otherwise, Jesus would have left His disciples with Abraham’s words from the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:29, "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'” In other words, “It’s in the book. It’s in your notes.”

But even if that were the case, the Bible has no life apart from the Spirit’s illumination. In Greek, there are two different words for “Word”. The first is logos, which refers to the written and spoken word. The other is rhema, which refers specifically to the spoken word. Now, I have only studied a little bit of the Greek language (very, very little), and I don’t claim to have scholarly credentials, but I take it to mean this: When I read the Bible, I read words (logos), but when that word takes on personal meaning, and I feel the Holy Spirit speaking directly to me through the words, that’s rhema. Logos is written and rhema is spoken or breathed. I read logos, but hear and understand rhema.

In the Catholic Church, some believers follow a practice of praying the scriptures aloud and meditating on them. There are two ways that this form of prayer is practiced, one good and the other highly suspect, but I’ll talk of that later.

Even with the Word of God we need to hear His voice to gain true wisdom and understanding. If we study the Bible apart from the Spirit, we can have knowledge of the Word, but not wisdom. Wisdom can only come from having a relationship with the living God. No rhema, no wisdom.

In a letter to one of his closest friends, Francis Schaeffer discussed the “moment by moment” reality of God and how it applied to their faith and mission. “I am not thinking of this in some ‘mystical’ area where God becomes an abstraction, but in the strenuously practical areas of history in which we walk. If we would only allow the Agent of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to lead each individual instead of living in the areas of rules which are man-made and quite apart from the absolutes laid down in Scripture. If only we would be willing to have Christ be the true Head, and be willing for the exotic leadership of the Holy Spirit in our individual and corporate lives – rather than stagnifying the Holy Spirit’s leadership of yesterday, as seen in the lives of other men who lived in different historic circumstances, when the infinite eye of God would see today’s history as requiring a slightly different or radically different approach; or even stagnifying how the Holy Spirit’s leading of us today be what it was a year ago, when our historic circumstance is always in a flux?”

Here, according to Schaeffer, to claim that God has no need or desire to guide us in our present day is to “stagnify” the Holy Spirit. It renders His power ineffective, and if it were true, would make me wonder if His love for me were secondary.
So what am I saying?
First, God still communicates directly to people. There are examples of this throughout the Bible, Christian history, and our present day.
Second, our belief impacts our ability to hear God.
Third, as the Word says in Jeremiah 29:13, that if we pursue God with our whole heart, He will be found.

A Quick Story Of Stark Raving Obedience

There are times I wish I could introduce myself to people by means of a twenty-page overview of listening prayer. Then they would have a basis for understanding how I live my life. On the surface, this life appears very unstable, and to some, irresponsible. But if I really believe that the Holy Spirit gives me daily guidance, then wouldn't it be foolishness to reject His direction, even if it looks crazy or stupid?

Dad and I often tell a story about a woman doing a headstand at a 7-Eleven. This woman attended a church outside of Lansing. My father met the pastor of this church during our first years of understanding listening prayer. Here is the very true story...

A woman in mid-Michigan had just begun to listen for the voice of God when she prayed. Driving home one day, she felt something in her spirit say, “Stop in the 7-Eleven and go stand on your head next to the pop machine.” Was that God? To her, it felt more like some bad cold cuts in her lunch, or some sort of short-circuit in her brain. Then she heard that internal voice again, “Stop in the 7-Eleven and go stand on your head next to the pop machine.”

By now she could see the 7-Eleven, but she was determined to continue on her way home. God didn’t make insane requests like that, especially not to people like her. Old Testament prophets and acetic Nazarenes, maybe, but not normal people. This time, the nudge had urgency. “Go back to the 7-Eleven and stand on your head next to the pop machine.”

She turned her car around and parked in front of the 7-Eleven. There were no other cars. At least no one would stare at her, she thought. When she entered, she saw a young man standing behind the counter, and the woman wished that he would go into the back room to stock some things. She walked over next to the pop machine, stood on her head, and… nothing happened.
Weren’t the heavens supposed to have torn open to the sound of angel choirs singing because she obeyed? What gives?

The woman began to walk out, and the young man behind the counter stopped her. “Excuse me, why did you just do that?”

Ok, how does one explain this in a spiritually relevant way? “Ah yes, I was driving home, communing with the God of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, and He said to me, ‘Oh woman of faith and power… go thou to the 7-Eleven and stand upon thy head by the pop machine!’” Does that sound normal? Does it sound sane? Does it even sound like God? No, it sounds stupid.

She told him to please just forget about it. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’m a little embarrassed. I think I’ll just leave.”

He insisted, “No, wait, I have to know why you did that.” Then he pulled a gun out from under the counter. “A few minutes ago, I had this gun in my mouth. My life isn’t worth living, and I was going to kill myself. At the last moment, I gave God one more chance. I said, ‘God, if you are real, why don’t you send somebody in here and have them stand on their head by the pop machine.’ So I really need to know why you did that. Could you tell me about your God?”

So, was that God?

How do you know if it was God?

Would you have obeyed?