How to Hear God By Phil Arms

Transcription

1 How to Hear God By Phil Arms Very often when I am witnessing to an individual or debating a given issue in a public forum someone will say, Oh, well, that is just your opinion or, that may be what the Bible says but I believe such and such. On such occasions I cringe. In a day when truth is under its most severe assault in history, Christians need to be reminded that God is not a kind of highly evolved Dr. Phil or an enlightened and celestial Dear Abby offering seekers His well thought out opinions. In fact, please consider that God has no opinions or as I recently heard one ask, Has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? In other words, God has never just been sitting around heaven and suddenly looked up, snapped his fingers and said, Hallelujah, I've got a great idea! There is no area of our life, no conflict we face or question we have that, upon our inquiry of God on the matter, He will respond by saying, Uh, ya know, I've really not thought that much about it before... or... Let me think about it for awhile and I'll get back to ya. The eternal, sovereign, all-knowing, everywhere-at-all-times, never-sleeping God, Creator of the Universe who is, has been and always will be is not standing on some kind of sanctified soap box frantically trying to be heard above the multitude of other voices competing for your attention. His voice is The Voice that will be heard, if not immediately, then certainly ultimately; hence, the problem with humanity as a whole and each of us as individuals is not in our trying to get God to speak, but rather in our willingness to listen to what He has already said. I never cease to be amazed at how many folks tell me, I'm really praying God will speak to me about this or Oh, Brother Phil, if only God would tell me what to do or I'm waiting on God to reveal His will on the matter. The fact is, God has spoken and revealed His will on all issues. It is our responsibility to search the Word, listen to the Holy Spirit and act in faith. Millions of Christians who never pick up their Bibles spend billions of dollars wanting to know what God said about the matter to...t.d. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Billy Graham and Oral Roberts.

2 So many believers remind me of the penguins I watched on a recent PBS documentary. The mother penguin, once she has found food for her infants, will swallow the food and after a while, return to her babies. Upon arriving, she then regurgitates the predigested food into the baby s mouth. How like so very many in our churches who show up every Sunday for predigested milk from the pastor. If it were not for the spiritual immaturity of the vast majority of American Christians most major ministries on TV and radio would go off the air next week for lack of support. The greatest threat to false prophets and illegitimate ministries is wellnourished, growing and discerning believers who have discovered that they can actually pick up the Book of God, hear from Heaven and then walk in victory, having an ever-increasing intimacy with God s Word. Hence, the secret to our knowing God s mind on a matter lies not in getting God to speak but rather in disciplining ourselves to discover God s will on any matter, by spending time with Him and His Word every day. I urge you to read Romans 12:1-3. HOW TO KNOW IT S GOD Jesus said, My sheep know my voice. (John 10:4.) And yet most believers have had those moments when they hear more than one voice. However, God is not the author of confusion. God s Word articulates the character of God s voice and God s voice never contradicts God s Word. God never screams or even raises His voice. It is the enemy who clouds the air with traffic and he does so hoping to confuse, frustrate and to deceive. When I am waiting on a clear word from God, I ignore the sounds of the storms and all those distracting background noises that one hears upon seriously focusing. It is the still small voice, yea, the whisper that carries the heart of God upon its wings. There is just something about a whisper that in itself is very alluring. In fact, this week I was at a large local bookstore, trying desperately to concentrate on a project that required intense focus. Normally, the place lends itself to such an endeavor, but that day as I sat in one of the five large sofa-like chairs, fairly close together, trying to really concentrate, all kinds of irritating noises began to compete for my attention. I caught myself trying hard to block out the intrusions

3 of these irritating sounds coming from their irritating creators that I found it impossible to focus on my work. It was the loudest quiet I had ever heard. A young man on my left, a college-aged fellow, was eating an apple, a very large, obviously juicy and clearly crisp apple. It seems to me and perhaps only to me that every time he took another bite it caused the earth to shake. It was obnoxious. Didn t he know I was desperately trying to help people discover the love of God? And then the devil said, Yeah, he knows and he is just doing that obnoxious crunch noise to irritate you. But the apple guy noise was suddenly outdone by the girl in the chair on the other side of me. She was one of those people who cannot chew gum without making it sound like you are in a war zone. First, she would blow a series of small bubbles and then suck them in real fast, creating the most repugnant series of tiny explosions imaginable. Then, with her irritating little wad of gum inside her mouth, she would somehow create a rapid fire series of insidious popping sounds that prompted me to look at her sternly, hoping she would get the hint that I too was about to snap-crackle and pop. But alas, she never even looked up from her comic book to see my seriously stern look. No sooner had I gotten the victory of the gum girl and apple guy than straight across, in front of me, up jumps Sally cell phone. By now we all know the type. They think their never-stop-ringing cell phone impresses us. And when they re talking on their phone one wonders why they must yell into it. It makes you wonder why they need a phone. I wanted to say (but I didn t) Hey Lady! Save yourself the money, throw away the phone and just hang your head out the window and holler! They ll hear you! Then after I finally got right with God, I relegated all these quirky things to the back of my mind and decided to ignore it all and to really, really focus upon my situation. That is when the shoe popper decides to play a ballad by slapping the bottom of her slip-ons against the sole and heel of her foot as she sits with legs crossed, in chair number four, flopping her slip-ons through the pages of six dozen magazines she had snatched off a nearby shelf. However, not to be outdone by gum girl in chair number two, shoe popper in chair number four adds yet another inspiring instrument of irritation to the concert of confusion. She, too, has that infernal

4 gum and without even blowing bubbles outside her mouth this girl can, with every single chomp, create a symphony of crackling eruptions of baby bubbles inside her chubby little cheeks. I felt like I must be on Candid Camera! So, not to be deterred from my mission, refusing to allow these demonic little weapons of mass confusion to defeat me, I asked God to forgive me for being too sensitive and then again rededicated my life. Thereon, I took a deep breath, shut out the chaos and one more time began to write. I had not put down two sentences when the only remaining empty chair in our circle was suddenly occupied, not by one but by two young teenaged, giggling girls who had clearly never been tutored in library etiquette. No sooner had they squeezed their two ample bodies into one chair, then they too, joined our little circus. As I stated earlier, nothing is more arresting of our attention than the whisper. And these two precious little gifts from God had mastered the art of whispering. When someone in a group, any group whispers, I assure you anyone close enough to pick up the slightest psssst, pssst will immediately stop whatever they are doing in hopes of being able to hear the big secret. And that is exactly what happened. Almost simultaneously apple guy in chair number one stopped in mid-bite and gum girl of chair number two who had just prepared a new monster batch of bubbles and was ready to break the sound barrier when suddenly upon hearing the whisper almost dislocated her jaw in an effort to suspend her ear-shattering demonstration in mid-pop. Then, without even finishing with her next number, Sally-cell-phone in chair number three casually leaned toward the whispering duo. Finally, even old shoe popper herself (remember chair number four) in mid-beat suddenly stopped floppin and poppin. Everyone wanted to hear the secret behind the whispers. As I sat watching this remarkable scenario unfold, the genius of the still small voice began to make sense. The voice of God is not just another sound in the cacophony of noises surrounding us. Yet, in order to hear Him, I mean to really hear Him, we must choose to ignore all others. To find His desires, to discover His will and to experience His heart we must Be still and know that He is God. Psalm 146:10.

5 Once we have truly paid the price to shut out all the noisy distractions and disciplined our hearts to ignore all the mental, emotional and spiritual traffic that competes for our attention, then and only then are we able to discern the whisper of the Spirit communicating the secrets of God. ALLOW THE NEED TO SPEAK God longs for us to live in constant communion with Him. He longs to communicate His will, His direction and His solutions to those with ears to hear. And, all of us who truly belong to Him will be constantly confronted with problems, needs and crises. The fact is God allows such to come our way as we mature in His graces, so that we will call upon Him and discover His sufficiency in all things. That s why we should not think it strange concerning the trials that come our way. I Peter 14:12. In those special moments we should remind ourselves that this is the voice of God. Such trials bend our hearts to hear Him. I sincerely pray that you will join us as we continue to speak God s Truth. We really do need your help as well as your prayers that ears will be open to hear and to obey the Word of God. Phil Arms The Foundation "Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular." --Thomas Jefferson