Does God Still Speak Today?

When we think of prayer as communication with God it is so important to understand that God does communicate to us.  I want to share a devotion I read this week.  I think this powerfully illustrates the close relationship between our prayers and the Word of God.
 
The Morning I Heard the Voice of God
By John Piper

Read this resource on our website.

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples’ retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, “Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?”

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: “I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever.” Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by “come and see.” He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the “awesome deeds” he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear his very voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, he spoke again. “I keep watch over the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. At least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said, with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, “Never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me.”

I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. “I keep watch over the nations.” He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God.

Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites—this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

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

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind—and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

This is why I found the article in this month’s Christianity Today, “My Conversation with God,” so sad. Written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian University,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

I am sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, “For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear” (emphasis added). Surely he does not mean what he seems to imply—that only when one hears an extra-biblical voice like, “The money is not yours,” can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness ten thousand times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible.

I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, “Incline my heart to your word” (Psalm 119:36). “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Grant that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and our inheritance and the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:18; 3:19). O God, don’t let us be so deaf to your word and so unaffected with its ineffable, evidential excellency that we celebrate lesser things as more thrilling, and even consider this misplacement of amazement worthy of printing in a national magazine.

Still hearing his voice in the Bible,

Pastor John

 

Recap and Initial Question

This morning we discussed the spiritual discipline of prayer, and we applied this discipline using a prayer model. 

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication

The “ACTS” model has been very helpful to me in my prayer life, especially for times of extended prayer with the Lord.  The progression that exists in this model also helps us pray with the right attitude and perspective.  Are there any stratagies that you use regularly in your prayer life that may help all of us as we pray?  One of my favorite ways to pray is to pray the Scripture!  What are some of your favorite prayer helps?

 

Predestination vs. Fatalism II

Frank Turk, aka the Centurion, posted a question that I am quite certain he has an opinion on already.  But, it has caused me the urge to write an article concerning the difference between Predestination and Fatalism.  This is important because I believe there is a HUGE difference between the two concepts.  The starting point is going to have to be definitions.  Language is so abused today we must undergo the tedious task of defining the terms.

Fatalism:   a doctrine that events are fixed in advance so that human beings are powerless to change them.

Predestination:  the eternal plan, by which God has rendered certain all the events of the universe, past, present and future.

Here are the two definitions.  You may ask, what is the difference?  I would argue that the doctrine of predestination does not render human beings powerless.  Predestination, in the scriptural sense, includes God’s revealed will to us that insists and demands that we act in certain ways and do certain things and if we don’t there are real and eternal consequences.  The difference between the two ideas is really a matter of degree or attitude. 

Fatalism lends itself towards immobility and inaction.  It is like the seat-belt argument I used in the sermon on Sunday.  A fatalist would say, “I don’t need to wear a seat-belt, if I die it was meant to be.” 

The idea of predestination should lend itself to a more positive approach, “Since God has ordained my time on the earth, and has blessed me with the gospel, and has demanded that I share it with others, I should thank him for the technology of this car and this seat-belt that has been given for my protection so that I may safely drive and share the gospel for as long as the Lord allows.”

Like I said, this is a fine line.  All mysterious doctrines have fuzzy edges.  But, since we are biblicists, we have to believe this is true.  Let me expound on some other reasons not to live as a fatalist and defeatist.

Lets look at Proverbs 16:9, “The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”  Solomon, being the wisest man (not counting the God-Man Jesus) ever to walk the face of the planet give us great insight in this single proverb into the concept of concurrence.  God cooperates with us, he gives us a very real and tangible role to play.  What we do matters…it matters so much that the Lord establishes our steps.

Listen to what Calvin says on this issue, “Solomon easily reconciles human deliberation(reason, decision making- my addition) with divine providence.  For while he derides the stupidity of those who presume to undertake anything without God, as if they were not ruled by his hand, he elsewhere thus expresses himself, intimating that the eternal decrees of God by no means prevent from proceeding, under his will, to provide for ourselves, and arrange all our affairs.”  I could not have said it any better- LOL

God has fixed the boundaries of our lives, but at the same time he has given us everything we need to care for ourselves.  The Lord has given us the ability to reason and make wise choices for the purpose of lending ourselves to his divine and sovereign plan for our lives.  To fail to use what God has given would be lazy, dishonoring to God, and sinful.

The line may be fuzzy and the truth my be mysterious, but I believe there is a real difference between the two concepts.  Discussion is wide open on this one.

 

Predestiniation vs. Fatalism

How can God decree a divine plan before the world is created and still hold us accountable for our choices?  This is a good question and a very important concept to consider.  As believers we are not fatalists.  Although we believe that God is working in concurrence with his creation to accomplish all of his divine purposes, we still believe that he has also decreed to work through human means such as prayer, evangelism, preaching, etc. 

 The Biblical witness is clear that God demands things of us and expects us to walk in obedience to his demands.  His doctrine of divine providence is not a license for us to sit on our hands and wait for Jesus to come.  It is a truth that should bring confidence, hope, and unwavering commitment to the call upon each of our lives to expand the Kingdom of God.

Are you struggling with this doctrine?  Please feel free to post any questions or thoughts!  Also, do not forget that you can listen online, order a CD and download message notes at www.habc.net.

 

Can we really know God?

When we take a look at who God is,  He seems somewhat unapproachable.  I have often wondered, “Can I really know God?”  The truth is a resounding YES!  I can know God.  God has made himself knowable.

1)  We cannot know God unless he reveals himself to us.  He has revealed himself to us in creation, but we can only truly know him rightly through what he has revealed to us in Scripture.  A question was asked on the blog a couple of day ago – Why did God create us to begin with?  I think one answer to this question is in this truth.  God created us because it glorified him to reveal himself to us.  We are created to know God.  God is happy to reveal himself to us, thus our greatest joy, our all surpassing treasure, and our grandest life pursuit should be to know God!

2)  Although we can know God, we can never fully understand God.  Why can we never fully understand God?  First of all, God is infinite we are finite.  Psalm 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”  Even when get to heaven and are able to bask in the glorious presence of God it will take us an eternity to know and understand God.  When I think of this truth it causes me to shout praises to God that he would even make himself the slightest bit knowable to me.  What a good God we serve.

3)Even though we cannot understand God fully, we can truly know God.  We can know true things about God and we can know him intimately.  Jeremiah 9:23-14, “Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Let us praise God today because he is knowable and has made himself known to us.  We should consider this a precious grace gift, from a great and gracious King.

 

Just One Question?

I will continue the trend of posting a discussion question on Sunday afternoon that will lead into some articles during the week on the subject of the Doctrine of God.  For discussion, if you had just one question that you could ask God what would you ask him? 

Before you post your question think through a couple of items.  1) Has he already given us the answer in Scripture? 2)Is there a particular answer you are hoping for, and what are the implications if God were to answer the question differently than you are expecting?  This is just some food for thought.

Anyway – what are your questions?

 

The Anthropic Nature of Scripture

I was going to write a diddy on canonicity here today,  but after a discussion I had at lunch yesterday and today I want to give you something to truly ponder for the weekend before church on Sunday.  If you want to talk about the creation of the canon, call me up and we can go to lunch or something.  Today I want to throw out a rather deep concept called the antrhopic nature of Scripture.

What this means is that God, as a transcendant being, had to communicate to us on our level.  We can not reach up to investigate God and would not understand him even if we could. So God had to reach down or condescend to us in order to reveal himself to us.

Let’s ponder this for a second.  God is not bound by space or time.  He is not in need of language.  He completely exists outside of our realm of sensory experience, yet he injected himself into space, time, and used human language to reveal himself to us.  On top of this, the second person of the trinity, Jesus, took on human flesh.  He was tempted.  He loved.  He hurt.  He lived and died.  Believe me, this was not an upgrade for the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Lords, to become the solution for our sin.  He had to come to us because there is no way for us to reach up to him.

So what are the implications?  1) Grace:  God is truly gracious in revealing himself to us!  2) Mystery:  Although we can know certain things about God because he has revealed himself to us, we are still very limited in our understanding.  3) Gratitude:  We can praise God that He did not stay far from us.  He is not the distant God of the deist.  He is personal and gracious to reveal himself to us in a way that we can know him, although not perfectly.  Thank You God!

 

The Sufficiency of Scripture: Practical Applications II

Now we move on to the last four practical applications that flow from the Sufficiency of Scripture…

5)  Nothing is sin that is not forbidden in Scripture either explicitly or by implication.  Now this one is very freeing to me because I have a real hard time with what is already in the Bible.  The whole love God love people thing is a challenge for me.  Legalism is a real problem in many settings.  We need to focus on obeying the clear commands of Scripture!  Don’t let anyone steal your joy by creating a list of arbitrary rules to follow.

6)  God does not require anything of us that is not found in Scripture either explicity or by implication.  This is the flip-side of number five.  We do not have to obey commands that are not there and we do not have to do any works that Scripture does not call us to do.

7) In teaching others we should focus on what God has revealed in Scripture and be content with that revelation.  Some people are always wanting something new.  They don’t believe that they are good teachers unless they are on the cutting edge of some new truth.  It is truly best to stick with the clear reading of Scripture.

In the areas where God seems silent or grey, realize that He has revealed all that he desires to reveal.  God has given us what we need – always remember this truth.

 

The Sufficiency of Scripture: Practical Applications

I want to cover some practical applications to the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.  This is the fifth characteristic of Scripture that we discussed on Sunday (If you have not heard the message it should be available online by tomorrow or you can pick up a CD at the church).  The fact that Scripture is sufficient is very important to us as we attempt to live out our faith on a daily basis.  There are eight practical applications I want to share in relationship to this doctrine.  I will share four of them today and four of them tomorrow.  Before weeks end, I want to write about the concept of Canonicity or how we came to have the 66 books of the Bible. 

First, we can approach Scripture with confidence that is has the answers to life’s everyday problems.  This does not mean that every specific answer is spelled out all nice and neatly for us.  For example, if you want to know if God is leading you to change careers, you will not find a direct answer to that specific question.  What you will find are principles that can help you determine if a particular decision is the will of God or not.  For instance, Scripture teaches that money is not our source of security and provision.  So to take a career path solely motivated by money, without regard for family considerations, etc. would obviously be a poor choice.  That is just a simple example.  The key is this – God’s Word does address the answeres to lifes problems.  It holds relevance for today.

Second, We are to be very careful to add nothing to Scripture or hold any other writings as being equal to Scripture.  This is the work of the cults, to add to the Scriptures and to have multiple sacred writings.  Rev. 22:18 makes clear that this is not a good idea.

Third, God does not require us to believe anything about himself or redemption that is not found in the Scripture.  This is why it is so important to know what God has to say to us in his word.  I have heard many so-called preachers on TV saying, “The Lord has given me a new word today that is not in the Bible.”  The greek word for that is baloney- there is no such thing as a word from the Lord that is not found in the Scripture.

Fourth, no modern revelation from God is to placed on a level equal in authority to Scripture.  John tells (1John 4) us to test the spirits.  God will never contradict himself and even when we feel as if he has spoken to our hearts, we are to use the Scripture as our testing device.

 

Initial Question

Hello!  Thanks for dropping by The Core Blog.  I want to start a discussion before I write any articles on our topic.  My initial question is this, Did you learn anything new about God’s Word from the message on Sunday?  If you did, share your thoughts on what you learned.  If you did not learn something new, share your thoughts on something that was reinforced.  If we have some discussion on this point, it will give me some direction on the best topics to right about concerning Scripture.  Thanks for participating.

Also, the message notes are posted on the page linked at the top right on the site banner.  I also hope to have the message posted on the web by days end.