Hear From God?

             For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ (Matthew 13:15)

He answered, “Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”

Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”

 “No, father Abraham,” he said, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”

He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:27-31)

 

          The basic theme of today’s reading in Hearing God is the question of why God should bother to speak to me, or to you. The question isn’t meant to be nasty but it does have a barbed point. I’ve told people before that one of the ways I recognize that God might be speaking to me is that my reaction is, “No, no, no, no…no…no…no.” One of my requests to God is that He would speak to me and direct me in spite of the fact that I will likely fight Him tooth and nail at least until I get on board with the project in question.

          I tell myself that I don’t fight God because I want to fight God. I say I want to do what He wants me to do or what He wants to do with me, but there’s that “old flesh” that just won’t cooperate. I can’t not fight Him, or anyone else. It’s just not possible. That’s one reason why God could speak to me, and I would not recognize His voice.

          Another reason is that I’m fairly convinced that God doesn’t really trust me. God is like the doctor who must find a way to distract me before He works on me. He gives me minor tasks while He’s doing the big job with the goal to finish before I notice.

          Professor Willard says that just because we don’t think God is speaking to us, that doesn’t mean God is not.  He also points out that we need to be ready to hear God. I can just imagine God saying, “Karen, go _____ and do ______.”

          To which I would reply either “OK, God, I’ll put it on my to-do list for a year from yesterday.” Or, I’d rush out to do it right now when His directions were for three weeks from now. The latter is the reason I struggle with HuNy (Hurry up!  Not yet!)

          Professor Willard asks, “Are we ready to be in business with God?” Are you free to do business with Him, or are you like the man who asked Jesus to let him go bury his parents (who might not have been dead yet) before he joined the disciples. He goes on to say, “When our lives are devoted to the will of God, he has reason to speak to us.” (Hearing God, p. 70) Before that, why should He?

          Another reason he suggests is another problem I’ve faced. If you show up unexpectedly where I am, I may not recognize you. If God speaks to me when I’m not expecting Him to, would I notice? Would I recognize that God was speaking? This brings me back to Peter climbing out of the boat. Which would I assume, that it is God? Or that it is not God? Would I climb and walk, or cling and wait? And would I be right?

          There’s a final option that Professor Willard doesn’t mention here, but it fits with his teaching. He often talks about becoming the sort of person who (in this case) does what God tells him to naturally. Do we not “hear” God because we are so in tune with Him that we naturally do what He desires without having to be hit in the heat with a baseball bat and told, in exquisite detail, what we’re supposed to do. Most of us would likely say, “Nah!” to such an outlandish idea, but isn’t that God’s goal? To make us conform to the image of Christ?

          Lord, make us the kind of people who do Your will even when we don’t receive exacting instructions from You in a basso profundo voice.