Let me ask you a question: Is God still speaking to us here and now, today? And if so, how?  Well, what are the answers?  If God is indeed still speaking, shouldn’t we be listening?  Imagine what a difference it could make in our lives, to know His will for our lives.

Is God Still Speaking?

Now, here … here is a question that these days, pretty much divides the church down the middle. Are you ready? Here it is: does God still speak today? Ooooh … the controversy; the division that that little question creates, is huge. There are some who contend that the only way that God speaks today; the single only way is through the Bible. Read the Bible; that’s God’s Word; that’s how He speaks.

Then at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you have Christians who claim to have seen signs and wonders; to have so called, “words of knowledge” and “prophesies” over their lives. I even know one man whose pastor constantly claims to have visions of Jesus. WOW man, what do you do with that? How do you understand that?

And then there is little old you and me. If you are anything like me, deep inside there is a desire that burns for God – something that, well, it’s hard to explain – a hunger after God Himself; a yearning that won’t, that can’t be satisfied by some dry, academic, cerebral answer to this question: does God still speak today? It won’t be dismissed by shallow responses either. And nor will sensational claims quench the thirst after Christ Himself.

And so that’s why these coming weeks on the programme we are going to explore this question: does God still speak today? And if so, how? As I said, I ache to know God; to experience Him; to hear Him speak into my life. And I know that there are many, many more people on this earth who feel exactly the same. I want to live my life out completely for Him – everything I am, everything I have, all my hopes and all my dreams, to serve Him with the lot.

And it’s not because I’m some great guy – believe you me, I’m not. It’s because I have tasted the sweetness of His love – the many splendored love of Christ, as A.W. Tozer calls it. I have tasted His goodness and His joy and His peace and do you know what – I want more!

And so I want to hear Him speak because any relationship that means anything; that has any value to it is based on communication – and not one way communication, two way communication. A marriage is headed for divorce when there’s a stony silence between husband and wife. If all that they do is communicate on a transactional basis, about the mundane things of life and they no longer communicate heart to heart, then friend, unless they do something about that, their marriage is headed for divorce.

So the question is: Does God still speak? In my experience, He does, in a variety of ways. But experience … experience isn’t the “be all and the end all”. We have emotions – they go up, they go down – sometimes we are on the top of our game, other times, frankly, let’s be honest, we are off with the pixies. So whilst we may be experiencing God speaking through prophesy, through signs, through dreams … all sorts of different ways, I believe with all my heart, the truth, God’s chosen way of revealing Himself to us; providing us with a rock solid basis for understanding Him and understanding our experience, is His Word, this thing we call the Bible.

Inspired by Him, written through human beings, for sure – each of the sixty six books of the Bible, written in different times in history, under different circumstances, for specific purposes but together those sixty six books are the inspired Word of God – God speaking to the generations that have gone before us and to us and the generations that will come after us. And God never contradicts Himself. He never says one thing and does the other. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So if any one, whether it’s you or me, claims to have heard from God in a certain way, then the question is: does the Bible say that that is how God communicates with us? Because if it doesn’t, then friend, at the very, very least, I am very, very suspicious that this person has indeed heard from God. And secondly, if this person claims to have heard from God and acts on it or shares what God has allegedly said to him or to her, is the message consistent with the Word of God – the whole council of God? Because if God says one thing and some so called, “prophet” comes up with a so called, “revelation” that contradicts God’s Word, then forget it. It ain’t God talking! Does that make sense?

When we step into the realm of God speaking with us about specific things happening in our lives or in the lives of other people, then we are stepping into territory which is rich and fertile on the one hand – if God is indeed speaking. I for one would want to hear but on the other hand, it’s open to manipulation and to error.

This approach is summed up in this Biblical principle – it comes from First Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 19 to 22. Have a listen – it says:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

In other words, don’t ignore God speaking through His Spirit. Don’t despise the words of prophets, but at the same time, sift it; test it – hold onto the good, ditch the evil. So, is God still speaking? Absolutely! This is what Jesus said: John chapter 10, beginning at verse 1:

Truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and – listen to this – the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

Again John 15:26:

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.

And again, John 16:14:

He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Is God in the business of still speaking to His people through His Spirit today? Absolutely! That’s exactly what Jesus promised would happen – over and over and over again. It’s promised in the Bible. But as we read back in First Thessalonians – whilst the Spirit is at work, speaking, declaring and we shouldn’t quench what He is doing. When people claim to be speaking on God’s behalf, then we had better test it to make sure that it’s from God. And I guess that’s at the very heart of what we are going to be talking about over the coming weeks – discovering how to hear God speak into our lives. It’s powerful stuff!

The Word of God

I remember when I first gave my life to Jesus – I had such an incredibly strong sense of God’s presence. He wrapped His arms around me during a particularly difficult and painful time in my life and yet I was full of the joy of the Lord. And a dear friend of mine, Phil, the pastor of the first church I attended sat me down over a coffee and he said to me, “You know Berni, it’s not always going to feel as good as this.”

And whilst in one sense, he was right, there was something inside me – well, it made me angry. I thought to myself and I said this to God, “If I can’t have a close, intimate relationship with my God, each day; if I can’t experience His joy and His peace, each day, then you know something, Lord, I don’t think I want You.” It’s pretty radical stuff! And to be sure life has had its ups and downs. Sometimes circumstances are against us and sometimes everything is rosy. Sometimes our emotions are up and sometimes they are down.

In those early days of becoming a Christian, they told me; Phil told me that I should read my Bible every day. Can I tell you what a turn off that was? Can I tell you what a burden it was to think that I would have to open this old, stuffy Book; this huge Book; seven hundred and seventy five thousand words, thirty one thousand, one hundred and seventy three verses, one thousand, one hundred and eighty nine chapters in sixty six Books. Written in times and places and cultures that were completely unfamiliar to me.

Who or what, for instance, is Ephraim? And why was everyone sacrificing bulls and goats and doves and stuff? You get the drift! But Phil, my pastor, was a persuasive guy – real salt of the earth kind of guy and when I listened to him preaching on Sundays he made an enormous amount of sense to me.

So I did something back then – I established this pattern of getting up early in the morning; something I have been doing since I was a small child anyway, because I am an early riser – while everyone is still asleep – and spending some time in prayer and reading the Bible. I was surprised – God’s Word made a lot of sense. A lot of it was confronting – it was like shining a really bright light on my own immaturities and the things I was doing that weren’t pleasing God.

And day after day, month after month, year after year, here’s what has happened to me – it’s changed me. I open the Bible these days and it is God speaking to me. Now there aren’t fireworks and clashes of thunder and great amazing revelations each and every day – it’s not like that. Little by little, God’s Word has become part of who I am. I’m not good at memorising verses – some people are – I’m just not. But what I find amazing now is that when someone asks me to get up and speak about something or we are having a discussion amongst friends about this issue or that, the recall that God has given me over His Word, is amazing.

I can remember the things that God says – maybe no word for word, but pretty close – and where He says it and that makes all the difference. When someone is really bugging me and I want to tear them apart, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit says to me, “Turn the other cheek!” And wisdom from above is pure and peaceable and gentle and willing to yield and all of a sudden, God’s Word is guiding my behaviour. God’s Word is giving me what I need to live my life. The Holy Spirit speaks His Word right into my life when I need it.

And the other thing is – sounds really mundane reading the Bible every day and I guess it is. I tend to read an Old Testament Book followed by a New Testament Book – one of the Letters, from Romans to Revelation, followed by one of the four Gospels and Acts. It’s kind of how I cycle through the Bible. And I have pretty much read it all now, several times. The reason I cycle is that the different Books feed me in different ways.

Some of those Old Testament narratives – the Judges and Kings and Chronicle Books – they feed me with the power and the majesty of God’s faithfulness. And then the Letters in the New Testament – they teach me about real life and understanding life, in light of what Jesus has done. And then the Gospels and the Book of Acts – they take me back to the heart of my faith in Jesus. And then some of the wisdom Books in the Old Testament – Proverbs, Psalms, Lamentations – I sprinkle them throughout and it’s like adding salt to everything else.

And as I read through, bit by bit, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have found exactly what I need for today – the things I am going through or the things unbeknown to me that are going to confront me later on today. It’s amazing how many times God has given me what I need for today from those very next few verses, in the next chapter that I was due to read.

Reading the Bible sounds like a chore – it sounds mundane but the strength and the maturity and the growth and the transformation; the things that have so made my life better – I can’t begin to tell you. They have come from this wonderful habit that Phil taught me all those years ago – the ability to discern whether someone else is speaking for God or not – the wisdom to know how to handle tough situations – the maturity to lay down my life. That’s hard, boy, it’s hard some days. All those things have come as the Word of God has become part of who I am.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 tells us that we have been made in God’s image. Problem is, our rebellion; our sin has marred that image. And reading God’s Word most days, listening to what He has to say most days, is like being restored back into His original image. It’s a repair job here; a cleanup job there; a new bit here … and all of a sudden we become a different person.

It is knowing the truth that sets us free and the Bible is God’s way of speaking with us. If there is one thing … just one thing that I could point to as the smartest thing that I have ever done, after giving my life to Jesus, it’s opening up the Bible – that daily habit – and letting God speak His Word into my heart through His Spirit. And the tragedy is that so many people … the people who don’t do that are the very ones whose lives are all over the place because there is no foundation; there is no anchor into God’s truth.

The Time of Prayer

Earlier we saw that one of the main ways that God speaks to us … in fact, THE main way is through His Word, the Bible and it’s an awesome thing. And as I said back then, the simple habit of reading God’s Word, even if it is just a few verses, every day, has utterly changed my life.

But that’s only one side of the coin in my daily time with God – because the other side of the coin is prayer. There’s an amazing contradiction that so many people are living out in their lives – people who believe in Jesus. Here’s how it goes: on the one hand these people really would love to hear God’s voice; they would really like to know that He is there with them, that He has some practical words of wisdom for them, some guidance on the decisions they need to take – that’s on the one hand.

And yet these, so often, are the very same people who are too busy to sit down for twenty minutes, half an hour, maybe even forty five minutes or an hour, most days, to spend that time in prayer with God. Too busy, too busy, too busy! Well, fair enough, I know all about that! See, I’m one of these busy type “A”, action oriented people – we’re more focused on doing things and getting outcomes than on spending time on relationships. So anyone who says to me, ‘I’m just too busy to pray’, well, I really understand; I really relate to that.

But the problem that comes out of that is that we head off into our day and we confront all the issues and tensions and decisions and all that stuff – we are so immersed in it all – and then right in the middle of it, we think, “Ah, where’s God? Why is God talking to me? Why isn’t God guiding me? Why isn’t God comforting me?” Well, I’ll tell you, friend! God was waiting for you this morning; He was waiting for you to get still before Him, to spend some time with Him reading His Word the Bible, listening to what He has to say and then chatting with Him in prayer. Have a listen to this Psalm – it is one of my absolute favourites – Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it will not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice and the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, he shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Powerful truth in verse 1 is that God is our refuge and our strength in the middle of all this mess. You don’t have to be afraid – if the mountains are shaking, if they are falling into the sea, if there is calamity, there’s upheaval, there’s uproar – that’s the picture in the Psalm. The sorts of things that we go through in the rough and tumble of life – we don’t have to be afraid! Why? Because there’s a stream flowing right through the heart of our city that makes us glad. The nations may well be in an uproar but God is God above all and when He speaks the earth melts before Him.

Now, that’s a great theory but when we are in the middle of this calamitous uproar; when tensions are running high at work; when we are hard pressed on every side; when we are running through life at a hundred miles an hour, how are we meant to experience this river of joy from God? How are we meant to hear Him and know Him and not be afraid because of Him when all this stuff is flying through the air? Well, the answer comes to us in verse 10 of this Psalm:

Be still and know that I am God.

Isn’t that beautiful! Just … with all that stuff going on … just be still and know in your heart of hearts that your God is God; that your God is in control. I don’t care who the relationship is with, if we don’t take time away from the hustle and bustle, just to connect, just to spend time together, just to talk – whether it’s husband and wife or work colleagues or friends – if we don’t do that, then the hustle and bustle is going to distract us from the reality of the relationship with that other person.

We forget, in our experience, how wonderful the love of our husbands or wives is; we forget the joy of a friendship because our dominant reality; the thing we are focused on is the busyness and the battle of life. And friend, if we want to know that God is in control, we need to get still before Him and just KNOW! It’s as simple as that! That’s what prayer is – getting still before God.

Here’s how it so often works for me: I pray a bit and I ask God to speak with me. Then I open the Bible and I read the next bit I was going to read; the next chapter in Luke’s Gospel or whatever and in reading that, the Spirit of God speaks to me through God’s Word. I get this sense that God is up to something here but then I need to chew it over so I pray about it and I ask God, ‘What are You saying to me?’ I think about it, I get still, I listen and that’s the place where God so often speaks, with a word of reassurance, with some specific guidance or direction.

I had that happen this morning, in fact. I had a difficult situation; some difficult decisions to make and after spending time in God’s Word and thinking and praying and listening, well, the answer was as plain as the nose on my face. So often I’m confronted with a “to do” list longer than my arm – I can’t possibly get it all done today. “God, what is Your priority? What do You want me to do today?” And that’s where the most important things drop into my lap, so I go and I do those ones. It’s a gift from God.

Friend, so many people’s lives are in a mess. “I want to hear God speak!” Well, let’s get still before God; let’s spend time with God. If we want to hear God speak right into the middle of the realities of our lives, we need to get still before Him.

Let’s get a revelation today! I know your life is busy – mine is too. But if we start spending fifteen minutes, twenty minutes a day, quietly, all the distractions gone, the doors closed, the Bible open – time in prayer; God shows up. He loves spending time with us. He loves it when we set time apart for Him. And frankly, if you are struggling to hear from God but you are not making time to spend with Him, this message today, is for you. Start spending time just with Him and little by little He will start speaking. Day by day, we will learn better how to recognise His voice. Little bit by little bit we will get guidance about things for today and things for tomorrow and things that we need to lay down.

Jesus said, “The shepherd speaks and the sheep hear His voice.” In my experience, sometimes in my prayer times over the years I have misheard God but the longer I spend at this, the more discerning I am and the more easily I am able to recognise the voice of my Shepherd.

It’s one thing to want to hear God speak. Lots of people do! “How can I hear God speak to me?” is one of the most common questions I’m asked. But half the time, I wonder whether we’re not wandering around with our ears shut and our eyes closed.  Really!

The Providence of Preaching

My enduring memory of being dragged to church when I was a child was the droning of the preacher. I can honestly say he never said one thing; not a single thing back in those days, that impacted my life for good. Perhaps there was one thing – I was so bored this particular Sunday, sitting on these hard wooden pews, as a young lad, that I took the time to learn to wiggle my ears. But that was it! An incredible waste of time when you think about it and really sad because there is something incredible powerful about hearing the Word of God preached and receiving God’s wisdom that way.

Last week, we kicked off a series of messages about how we can hear God speak. I mean, if God is God and we are meant to have a relationship with Him then, shouldn’t we be able to communicate with Him? Of course, we can pray – that’s communication in one direction but what about communication back in the other direction? How can you and I actually hear God speaking His will into our lives?

As we saw last week God is still speaking today. We have chatted so far about hearing Him speak through His Word, the Bible and during times when we get still before Him in prayer. We are going to chat today about two more ways that we can hear God speak – firstly hearing through His providence of preaching and later through the reading of signs. Humm!

Now, the idea of preaching – some guy getting up and speaking about God’s Word, teaching what is in the Bible – you know, to many people, it seems pretty old fashioned. And the other problem with it is that there’s lots of bad preaching going around as well. I have sat and listened to a lot of people talk about the messages they get from their pastor on a Sunday morning and I have to tell you, in many, many cases, the news is not good. There’s a lot of dead preaching out there – people droning on with irrelevant, boring messages.

Not everywhere, of course, not every pastor, not every church, but a lot of it. A.W. Tozer in his book “The Pursuit of God” put it this way. He said:

It’s a solemn thing and no small scandal in the Kingdom of God to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table. Sound Bible exposition is an imperative ‘must’ in the church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church, in any meaning of that term. But exposition can be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any spiritual nourishment whatsoever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul but God Himself and unless and until the hearers find God in their experience, they are no better for having heard the truth.

It’s sad but true! Hang on, this is nothing new though! This is how Luke records the reaction of people to Jesus preaching – Luke chapter, verse 31:

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority.

And again, in Matthew, listen to what he says. Matthew chapter 7, verse 28:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

In other words, this stuff that Jesus was talking about was not the sort of preaching and teaching that they had been hearing from their scribes and synagogue leaders and priests and the rest of the religious establishment – in fact, quite to the contrary. Again listen to what Jesus had to say about the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees – Matthew chapter 23, beginning at verse 2:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

So, I guess what I am saying is that there is good preaching and bad preaching. Let’s call a spade a spade here. Preaching that brings life and sadly, preaching that brings death. And people who sit under dead teaching, well, their faith and their passion for Jesus ebbs away. And little by little, they grow cold – little by little their faith dies and they with it.

Does that mean that good preaching is all hyped and motivational and you know, about success and earning a lot of money? No that’s not what makes good preaching! Good preaching speaks the things of God into our lives – there’s an authority, there’s a gravitas – a weight, a power that reaches into our hearts. The people listening to Jesus were amazed because He spoke with authority. They could just pick it.

Remember what Jesus said to His disciples when He was telling them how He was the Good Shepherd? John chapter 10, beginning at verse 2:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from the stranger because they do not know the voice of strangers.

And then Jesus went on to say:

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.

See, when you hear the voice of God through someone preaching, you just know. Friend, seek out the sort of preaching and teaching that you know comes from Jesus – the sort with authority; the sort through which power and grace and truth and love from Jesus ring out. Clear, pure and unmistakable – it’s the sort of teaching that God uses to change lives. It’s astounding; it’s amazing because you can feel God reach out through the speaker into the realities of your own life. Listen to those sorts of teachers and do not sit under dead teaching.

Scribes and Pharisees are alive and well in the church today. And there’s tired, uninspired, dead preaching to be had in abundance. I don’t want to sound critical or self-righteous – that’s not what this is about. This is about calling a spade a spade; it’s about being honest and direct. How sad it is to sit there and just learn to wiggle your ears, as I did as a lad, and miss out of the Bread of Life. Tozer was right – this is no small scandal.

Let me share a story with you. There was a time just before my wife Jacqui and I were married and we were engaged and it seemed that everything was going against us. We were really, really low – both of us. We had a great church and a great pastor and a great teacher but we were low. So we decided to go down the hill one Sunday evening and visit another church – just on a whim.

The preacher wasn’t the regular pastor whom we knew but a visiting guy from some surfing ministry. He preached on Matthew chapter 14, verses 22 to 33 – the bit where Jesus walks on the water and Peter steps out of the boat in the middle of the storm. As we listened to this message, we looked at one another because we realised that God had put this message and this preacher there for us, to strengthen us and encourage us.

Over the coming weeks, we preserved through the challenges we faced with a new courage and it all worked out. And to this day I remember that message, even though it was decades ago now. To this day, when I am facing challenges and my faith is being challenged and I need courage, I go back to that passage. God is still using that message in my life today.

Inspired, anointed preaching and teaching is one of the ways we hear from God. It’s mighty and it’s powerful and God can target issues and needs in our lives so accurately; so precisely. Let me encourage you to find and to receive that sort of teaching and preaching in your life. Not the stuff that necessarily entertains you or tickles your ears or tells you what you want of hear – there is plenty of that stuff out there too and that is leading many people astray. But the sort of preaching that tells God’s truth with power and with authority.

Reading the Signs

Now, in February 2007, German woman Ewa Wisnierska was competing in an international para-gliding competition in rural New South Wales in Australia. The winds were from the south so she and most of the other competitors headed north. Now there was a thunder storm brewing towards the north but if they could only get through that before it formed, well, they would be well on their way. She could see it happening but the band of clouds and storms hadn’t formed fully yet. So there she is, hanging off her para-glider, trying to skirt around a small cloud when all of a sudden the clouds merged in front of her and she found herself in the middle of a powerful thunder storm – rain, hail, lightening and winds. She had misread the signs.

Now the problem with clouds for a para-glider is that clouds mean lift. The storm rocketed her upwards at twenty metres per second – up and up. There was nothing she could do to stop it – the updraft was just too powerful. Three thousand metres, four thousand, five thousand, six thousand – now at seven thousand metres we run out of oxygen – no one survives. Seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand – almost ten thousand metres; ten kilometres above the earth’s surface – frozen, unconscious, in the minus fifty five degrees Celsius, oxygen depleted stratosphere, dangling from her para-glider, she glided there in a slow turn until suddenly, the weight of the ice on her para-glider caused her to plummet several thousand metres. Then, miraculously, the para-glider snapped open again and the jolt woke her up.

This was the most extraordinary experience – really a miracle. No one has ever survived something like that. Can you imagine how she felt when she came to – she has been sucked up into this thunderstorm, she is covered in ice, barely able to move, aware that she was in a precarious life and death situation. Still in this storm that could snuff her out, as by the way it had to another experienced competitor from China who had been just a few hundred metres away from her.

Even in this barely conscious state though, knowing the mistake that put her in this place; knowing that she only had one chance at survival, now that the storm was weakening and she was more on the edge than in the middle, she did the one thing she knew to do – she put herself in a downward spiral. With everything she could muster, she created this downward spiral and she survived to tell this most extraordinary tale. In fact a week later, she was back in the air with the very same para-glider.

I watched her being interviewed – the one thing she said was this, along these lines: “It was a race. We were all trying to win. We saw the storm coming but everyone headed towards it and so I followed them. The thing that I have learned,” she said, “was that next time I’ll read the signs for myself and make my own decisions about going on or pulling out.” Now that … that is a bit of wisdom that really struck me between the eyes.

We are talking this week and the next few weeks too, about hearing God speak. If God is God, how can we hear Him speak? Last week we saw that He speaks through His Word the Bible, and we can rely on that as our bedrock; our foundation. God never contradicts Himself – whatever else we may hear, see or feel – what He says in His Word is the truth and anything that contradicts that, isn’t the truth.

And we saw that He speaks to us as we spend time in prayer; in thought quietly with Him. And earlier we saw that He speaks to us through anointed and inspired preaching and teaching.

What we are going to look at now is “signs”. Now God speaks to us through signs as well and one of the things we are taught in His Word is to read the signs. Come with me to Luke chapter 12, beginning at verse 54:

Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Now here, let’s get the context right: Jesus is talking to them about the fact that they have got the Son of God right there, under their noses and they just don’t get it! But the word “sign or signs” appears over a hundred and eighty times throughout the Bible. Sometimes we are talking ‘miraculous signs’ but other times, they are not so much “miraculous” and almost exclusively, these signs – listen to this – are pointing towards God and what He is doing and who He is. That’s the whole point of “signs” – they are pointing to something.

Jesus, the miracles He did: John in his Gospel refers to them as ‘signs’. Jesus was and is the Word of God; God speaking to us about whom He is and what He is up to in this world. And so often there are signs in our lives – maybe right under our noses, God is pointing us in a direction but either we miss them altogether or we misinterpret them.

I wonder how often people look at all that is going on in their lives; the storm clouds are rolling in and they ask themselves, “I wonder what God is up to?” Have you ever been travelling through a situation; something difficult or complex and you don’t quite know the whole picture or how it’s going to turn out and then all of a sudden there’s a flash of lightening over there and a thunder clap that follows but over in a different direction there is a ray of sunshine; of hope?

See most of us, we can look up at the sky and see that the weather is changing but we ignore what God is saying to us about what He is up to in the things that are happening around us. So here’s what I do: well, if something is a little fuzzy; it’s not quite clear, I take the time to quietly get before God. I pray a bit for wisdom and insight and then I just look at the different things that are going on and I think about them prayerfully. “God, that event, what does that mean? Is there anything that You are trying to say to me through that? Or this person, he’s being so difficult and what she said, do you mean for me to take notice of those things?”

I remember once we were having problems selling one of our houses, when we had already bought another one. Now, it’s not something we had done out of hubris, we felt God leading us on to downsize and downscale and so we stepped out in faith – we bought a new house before we had sold the other one. And way before things became difficult, a wise, experienced real estate agent has quipped to me – he said, “I always tell people when they are selling, ‘Don’t panic, it will sell eventually.’”

Now, I thought nothing of it at the time. When things got tight and difficult and really tight and settlement of the new place was coming up and the old place wasn’t selling, time and time again, God brought that passing comment back to me; into my remembrance and spoke to me through it and gave me peace.

It might be something you saw in a movie or on television or a thunderbolt or a ray of sunshine – you know sometimes God will give us insight through those things that He is doing. He expects us to read the signs – it says so over and over again in the Bible.

Is that like reading tea leaves? No! It’s about looking at all the stuff that’s going on through God’s eyes – getting still and listening to what He is saying to us. So often God is speaking and we aren’t even listening. I really encourage you to get still before God. Think about the different things that are going on and ask Him what He is trying to say to you through the signs that you see around you. Ask God for His wisdom and insight.

You know, when we go to God, He never holds back; He never withholds wisdom if we ask Him and believe He will give us the wisdom and believe He will give us the insight, you know what – He will give it to us.

It’s a process of learning to discern what God is saying and when it’s Him talking and when it’s not. The one thing I always come back to is this: God never contradicts Himself. That’s why we can be absolutely certain that anything that contradicts God’s Word, in fact, isn’t from Him.

Preaching and Practice

I often tell people about a man who has had an enormous impact in my life – Phil Littlejohn. He was the pastor of the first church I attended after I became a Christian. Phil was and still is a gifted teacher of God’s Word. Week after week I have listened to him preaching and whilst I didn’t realise it back then, him faithfully telling me each week what God had to say through His Word, laid the foundations of my faith. It’s like a bedrock; solid.

I realised that when I stumbled across this passage; something that Jesus said to His disciples – Matthew chapter 7, beginning at verse 24:

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!

That’s exactly what was happening when I received God’s Word through the preaching from Pastor Phil – it was like building a house whose foundations were on solid ground. The preaching of God’s Word, that I received through Phil, was very much God’s providence for me. In every sense of the word, it was God sent. And that’s why it is such an incredible tragedy for people to waste their time, waste their lives sitting under dead, lifeless, uninspired teaching.

With all that I am, let me say this: if that’s what you are doing right now in your church, something has to give. Don’t keep doing that because instead of laying a foundation of rock; solid, strong – you are building your house on the sand. And here’s the point: the preaching thing is not just about learning the theory, it’s about have the wherewithal to put it into practice in life because storms come in our lives – they always do.

So we need the foundation of God’s Word. But then we go out there and we put it into practice. That’s why being able to read the signs out there in life, is equally important. I know people who believe in Jesus but they treat preaching like it’s some theory lesson. They don’t value it highly because they don’t ever intend to go out there and – wait for this – put it into practice. But that’s exactly what Jesus intends. There’s no separation between preaching and signs in His view. Just read how He lived His life, here on earth. The preaching and the practice were one and the same to Him.

And the more God’s Word becomes a part of us – through our own Bible reading, through the preaching of those whom God has sent to us to teach us His Word, the more His Word becomes part of our DNA like that, the more we see the world through His eyes; from His perspective. Rather than from our own selfish, worldly perspective and the more we will be able to read the signs, to hear His voice, to figure out His will for our lives.

It is exactly what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 12, verse 2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

In other words, as God’s Word takes root in us, we are changed because we change our minds and that is when we become able to discern the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for our lives. It’s not just theory – it’s theory and practice. It’s hearing God’s Word and taking that – let it become part of us and go and do it and live it.

Preaching and practice, preaching and practice, preaching and practice, over and over and over again and before we know it, we are hearing God so clearly … so clearly, it is just an awesome thing.

Friend, I want to encourage you again – get in your Bible, spend time with God, reading His Word, prayerfully thinking through it, praying. Go and get good teaching – good, solid, inspired, anointed, God-given Bible teaching and then take those things and put them into practice in your life and my friend, they will bear fruit a hundred fold.

God is a God who speaks to us. It’s something He’s been doing for centuries. Millennia in fact. And sometimes, sometimes he speaks to us in ways that we just don’t expect.  Right out of the blue.  Question is: Are we listening?

The Power of the Prophetic

It’s just fantastic to be with you again this week and yes, we are continuing this week with our look with how it is that God speaks to us today – here and now, in the twenty first century. This series is called, “How Can I hear God Speak to Me?” And today’s message is about expecting the unexpected.

It’s interesting, way back in the Old Testament, God spoke to His people through the prophets – people like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and all those Old Testament prophets – men whom God had called to speak His message to His people.

Then in the New Testament, He speaks to us, first and foremost, through His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ and the Apostles and the other writers of the New Testament Books. And He is still using those, through His Word the Bible, to speak to us today. By His Spirit, He speaks today.

But interesting – the New Testament in particular, tells us how His Spirit speaks today. Sometimes it’s easy to ignore that – it’s easy to get all dull and boring about the way that God communicates with us but God is a stunningly creative communicator. There’s absolutely nothing dull and boring about how He communicates. And one of the ways He does that is through the power of the prophetic.

So today, what we are going to do is take a look at that. Now, in embarking on this today, I acknowledge that there are those amongst God’s people who simply believe that there are no more prophets today – that this is something that belongs to the past and not the present. What’s a prophet? Well, simply someone who speaks on behalf of God. Someone who speaks God’s will into the lives of God’s people.

And yet, other traditions and denominations really emphasise the prophetic dimension of God’s communication. And sadly, some do so to the point of abusing the prophetic. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t carry any particular baggage of denomination or tradition around when it comes to these things. My heart is simply to open God’s Word, the Bible and to figure out what God says and to go with that.

So that’s precisely what we are going to do today. Let’s take a look – this is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth – so after Jesus has died, risen again and is sent into heaven. This is the fledgling New Testament church that he is writing to. First Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 4:

Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

Now, here Paul is talking about supernatural gifts that are given to the family of God. And not just the special super-spiritual Christian leader type people. Have a listen again to verse 7:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

In other words, to each person; to each believer, is given one or more of these supernatural gifts. Now, I have heard people say, “Oh, well. That was for back then. It’s not for now.” Umm! This passage – First Corinthians 12 – rolls straight on to First Corinthians 13; the next chapter that famous passage about love, which kind of says, “You know, you can have all the spiritual gifts under the sun but unless you use them in love, they are useless.” And it goes on to explain what love is.

These same people love to quote First Corinthians 13 but somehow, maybe it’s because in our Western mindset; maybe we are uncomfortable with the idea of these supernatural gifts – we can’t explain them rationally. Some people want to deny that this bit of the New Testament – 1 Corinthians chapter 12 – actually exists and yet they go on and rely on the next chapter. I’m not quite sure why that is.

But I find nothing – let me say this – NOTHING in the New Testament that tells me that this thing on spiritual gifts – supernatural gifts – was meant for them back then and not for us here and now. Nothing! And the gifts; words of wisdom and of knowledge, extraordinary faith, healing, miracles, prophesy, discernment of the Spirit, speaking in different tongues, interpreting different tongues.

One of the arguments against words of wisdom and knowledge and prophesy, is that these so-called “modern day” prophets can set themselves up above the Word of God. They can say things that don’t agree with the Scriptures; God’s Word. So what are we going to do with that? Well, I have to tell you: like anything else good that God gives us, you can take it and you can abuse it. Absolutely! I have seen it happen in this area, where people go for emotionalism and manipulation, where they claim to be speaking for God, but in fact, they are not at all. But just because something good from God can be abused doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing from God.

There are several times in my life when someone has given me a specific prophesy, just for me, and all of those, barring one exception – which simple didn’t ring true as being from God to me or other people who were there at the time – but the rest of those had a huge impact on my life. I look back on them now – and most of them were key turning points in my walk with God. And you know, these weren’t proud people coming out with “Thus sayeth the Lord” type of proclamations.

One of the most powerful was from a man called Dennis Adams. He worked at the time for a Christian Radio Network called HCJB – it was at a conference. I had just become involved, full time, here at Christianityworks. My predecessor had taken all of our radio programmes off the air. There was almost no financial support – the ministry was almost dead and I simply didn’t know what to do. I met Dennis for the first time at a Christian Media Conference. He looked at my name tag – we didn’t know each other – but he had heard some of the short radio messages I had preciously put together. And almost immediately, tears welled up in his eyes and with such passion and such conviction, he said to me, “You have to start doing those radio programmes again. You just have to.”

That day, Dennis’s words pierced my heart and because of that we spent the last few thousand dollars the ministry had on producing the first series of these radio programmes but at the time we had no idea how we were going to get onto a radio station anywhere. Well, that was almost six years ago now and today, these programmes are heard by millions of people each week, around the world. See, I know that those words that Dennis spoke to me that day were God’s words; they were a prophesy and without them I wouldn’t be here today.

Should we discern prophesies? Absolutely! Should we think them through and pray them through? Absolutely! Should we reject any that don’t ring true? Absolutely! But, friend, God’s Word says that He has appointed prophets amongst His people. God’s Word says that He is still speaking to us through prophets and their prophesies today. Why, oh why would we want to deny that?

Out of the Blue

Have you ever heard kind of a voice out of the blue and wondered, now, where did that come from? We are chatting this week again on the programme about hearing from God. How does God speak these days and how can we hear Him. That’s what we are exploring because God is still speaking and He means for us to hear Him. Now one of the ways I notice He talks to people throughout the Bible is well, it’s like a voice out of the blue.

I had coffee with a dear friend of mine, James, just yesterday. He was telling me about how the day before he had been racing out for a meeting and he had this distinctive impression on the way out the door; a strong impression that he should go back into his study and grab his diary. Of course, he ignored it and on the way something happened and he needed to contact the person he was supposed to be having this meeting with to adjust the arrangements. The problem was he didn’t have the man’s phone number on him. You guessed it – the phone number was back in the diary, sitting on the desk in his study.

Now sometimes God has big things to say to us and sometimes He has just little things to say. And in my experience, if we love Him, if we are in the business of drawing close to Him, sometimes in the thick of things, while we are on the run, He speaks to us out of the blue. Some people are uncomfortable with that.

There is a school of thought that God only ever communicates to us through His Word, the Bible. Well, I agree – the Bible is the primary way that He communicates with us and if anyone claims any other form of communication – prophesy, a word of knowledge, something from God out of the blue – if anyone claims to have any communication from God like that, but it’s inconsistent with what the Bible says, well then, my friend, it is not from God. God never contradicts Himself, so I agree on that front.

But the number of times He speaks to people in the Bible and they answer Him, “Here I am, Lord” – let’s have a look at one of those today: Moses – this burnt out old wreck of a man – he is eighty years old. He had murdered an Egyptian as a young man and so, even though he grew up in Pharaoh’s house, he fled out to the back of the desert and he had been tending sheep for forty or fifty years. But all of a sudden, when God is ready to speak with Moses, well, God speaks – out of the blue or at least out of a bush. Let’s have a look at Exodus chapter 3, beginning at verse 1:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

The cry of Israel has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

Was it an audible voice or was it a voice that Moses heard in his heart? Well, we don’t know, but God didn’t have a Bible to speak through back then – it wasn’t written yet. So He spoke to Moses out of the blue, as it were.

Now if you have access to an electronic version of the Bible, I suggest that you do a search on the words ‘here I am’. It happens over and over again – God speaks to people out of the blue and they answer Him, ‘Here I am, Lord.’ Has it ever happened to me? Well, I have never quite been called to lead Israel out of Egypt, to be quite honest with you, but at the same time God has spoken to me out of the blue, about things that are big and about things that are small.

I remember not long after I became a Christian. I was alone in my house – it was a Saturday afternoon and I was ironing down stairs. As I finished each shirt, I would take it upstairs and hang it in the wardrobe. As I was heading back downstairs I was just overwhelmed by the presence of God so I sat down on the stairs and what I experienced over the next fifteen/twenty minutes was God calling me to preach the Good News of Jesus.

I thought, “Hang on, I have been a Christian like five minutes and You are calling me to do this?” And then He showed me how, over the prior twenty years, as I had been invited all over the world to speak at conferences and events in the I.T. Industry, which is what I did back then – I was an I.T. consultant – He showed me how He had been getting me ready for this, even before I had given my life over to Him.

These weren’t my thoughts or my ideas. This wasn’t a vivid imagination at work. It was a definite ‘someone’ outside of me, speaking to me and showing me this stuff – kind of an experience. Did I hear an audible voice? No, I didn’t – never have. But I knew it was God.

Jesus said in John chapter 10, verse 16:

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they will follow me.

And that’s exactly how it was for me that day. I just knew that it was God speaking. I just knew that He had called me to do this. I didn’t know how it would happen – I had absolutely no idea, at that point that it would involve radio – none what so ever. That didn’t come until another eight years later. Sometimes I thought I heard His voice and I don’t think I got it quite right, so I always test things – I think, I pray, I see if it makes sense. And little by little, what I have discovered is that I am getting better and better at recognising His voice and listening to Him.

In my day to day life, God sometimes nudges me this way, sometimes that. In the middle of the pressure and conflict sometimes, the Holy Spirit speaks strongly and directly, often with a Scripture, to me, that leads me to behave in a godly way, rather than following my natural human inclinations.

And that’s exactly what Jesus promised.

When the Advocate comes,” He said in John chapter 15, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, will testify on my behalf. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Friend, God is in the business of communicating with us. When He does, when we hear Him out of the blue, let us test everything against His Word, the Bible, if it’s not consistent with His Word, then it is absolutely certain this thing was not from God. But He does communicate with us in all sorts of different ways and sometimes He speaks to us completely out of the blue. It’s fantastic! Let’s just be ready to listen.

Feet on the Ground

You know, I love the fact that God speaks to us in all these different ways. We have looked at quite a few over these last couple of weeks – ways that He speaks to us today. And we will be doing that again next week too. But as I said, I really feel the need to end today on a note of caution. The point is that not everything that someone says, supposedly in the name of God, is going to be true. And not everything that we feel sometimes, or think we hear sometimes, is going to come from God. Why? Well, we’re human, we’re fallible. Sometimes we get things wrong. Sometimes other people have ulterior motives.

Now, this is nothing new – false prophets have been around for a long time. And sometimes the things that false prophets have to say, is stuff that we really, really want to hear – its stuff that sounds much better than the stuff that’s coming from the true prophets.

Listen to this – Jeremiah chapter 5, verse 31:

The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule as the prophets direct; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?”

In fact Jesus said – Matthew chapter 7, verse 15. He said:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

So, there is a risk; there is a danger. Now that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t speak through prophets or through dreams or visions – quite to the contrary. The biblical record is clear – He has been doing that for millennia, even though all that time, there have indeed been false prophets around. In fact, often in Israel’s history there were many more false prophets than there were true prophets.

And so, in the face of that, there are two equal and opposite errors that we can make. The first one is to deny the unexpected; to retreat to the safety of things that we can understand and live our lives believing that God only ever speaks to us from one source these days – the Bible – and that’s it.

Now if you know me you will know that I believe that the Bible is God’s Word and it is the authority; the absolute truth, when it comes to what God has to say. And for that reason, it’s because of what I read in the Bible that I simply can’t come to the conclusion that God doesn’t speak through prophets anymore or dreams or visions or words of knowledge. God’s Word doesn’t let me draw those conclusions.

And the other error that we can make, on the other end of the scale, is to chase after the false prophets who tickle our ears with things that we love to hear. Jesus said – Matthew chapter 24, verse 11:

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

So, the answer, quite simply, is this: it too comes from God’s very own word and I love this because God’s wisdom is so balanced. First Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 19 to 22:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.

In other words: don’t fall into either of these two errors. Don’t deny what God is doing anymore. Don’t quench the Spirit – don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. God is still speaking today – God is still speaking through prophets. “Don’t despise the words of prophets.” But at the same time, don’t take everything everybody says as though it is true – especially if it tickles your ears and if that’s what you want to hear.

Instead, test everything, sift it and weigh it, sort through it – go to God, go to your Bible and under God’s hand, decide whether it’s good or bad. If it’s good, hold onto it, if it’s bad, abstain from it.

I mean, imagine you are walking down the street – some guy in a flashy, shiny suit walks up to you and he says, “I have the best investment plans for your savings that you will ever find. Give me all your savings and I will invest them for a hundred percent return every year.” Let me ask you something: you don’t know this man from a bar of soap – would you give him all your savings? Would you at that point, walk to a bank, take out all your life savings and give it to this man to invest? Of course not! We would discern what he has to say; we would figure out – is this person trustworthy? Is this something that’s good or should I just ignore him and walk away?

And it’s the same with prophesies and words of knowledge. People, God’s Word calls us “not to quench the Spirit, not to despise the words of prophets but to test everything” – to sift it, “to hold fast to what is good; to abstain from what is evil.” Pretty good advice!

I frankly can’t figure out why people want to fall into either of these two errors – throw the baby out with the bath water, quench the Spirit, or, accept everything without being discerning. Why would you want to do that?

Now, I know I am going to get some mail over this message, from both camps – that’s okay. For me, it’s about going to God’s Word – without baggage we carry from the past and openly, honestly, faithfully finding out what it is God is saying and how He speaks to us today.

That’s where it’s at! That’s what God honours!

Over the last few weeks on the program, we’ve been discovering how it is that God speaks to us today and how we can get about hearing Him when He does speak. The question is: When it’s something big or important, how can we make sure that we’ve heard Him right? Because the last thing we want to do, is to get it wrong, right?

The Counsel of Others

It’s great to be with you again today in this last message in the four part series that I have called, “How Can I Hear God Speak to Me?” And today we are going to take a look at how God sometimes speaks to us through the people around us.

Just the other night I was asked to spend some time facilitating a discussion amongst the elders, the church council, of a particular church, not far from where I live. It seems that what had been going on was that there was conflict amongst some of the leaders and that’s not good. Leaders of God’s people shouldn’t be in conflict – they should act in unity.

The Apostle Paul, writing to his friends at the church in Philippi said this – Philippians chapter 2, verse 2:

Make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love and being in full accord and of one mind.

We were chatting about the fact that God has made each one of us differently – Romans chapter 12 – some of us are prophets, others servers, others teachers, encouragers, givers, leaders, carers. And I can tell you, a leader is going to have a totally different view of the world compared to say, an encourager or a carer – that’s because leaders are wired one way, the encourager is wired another way and the carer is wired yet another way, on the inside. That’s the way it is, because we are different. We see things differently and often, that’s the source of conflict.

Now, in this meeting, one of the elders of the church; an older man with a great deal of wisdom asked the sixty four million dollar question. He said, “Okay, so we are all different, with different points of view – then how are we meant to discern the will of God, out of all those different views?” And that my friend, is a very, very good question.

One of the things I’m prone to do is to race out and just do things – without listening to the advice of other people. It’s because my personality type is the “leader”. I’m an action person. I work on the theory that if I make ten decisions today and get just seven of them right, I’m way ahead than if I only made three decisions but got them all right.

And my good friend Keith Henry, with whom I co-authored the book, “My Personality GPS”, he makes this point about leaders – he says that one of their natural weaknesses is they often fail because they don’t listen to advice. Those detail people – you know the sort – they analyse everything to the “enth” degree – those detail people naturally drive me nuts because they slow me down. I want to get on with things and they want to analyse things first.

But you know what I have learned? I have learned that without those detail people, I am going to fail at things because God is in the detail. The detail matters! And part of my growing up; my process of maturing is to value and to listen to the detail people because they are really, really, really important to me.

And I have come to realise that often God will speak to me through the gifts and the abilities of other people, even – let me say – people who in the natural have a tendency to drive me nuts. I love that – God has such a great sense of humour in dealing with our own immaturity.

Okay, what does God’s Word have to say on this issue – this answer to the sixty four million dollar question? When there are all these different perspectives, how are we supposed to discern God’s will? Well, there are a few fantastic bits of wisdom on this very thing in the Book of Proverbs – Proverbs chapter 15, verse 22, says:

Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.

Proverbs chapter 18, verse 2:

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinions.

Proverbs chapter 20, verse 18:

Plans are established by taking advice; wage war by following wise guidance.

Isn’t that great stuff? What God is saying to us here is that, if we rush off in a fit of pride because we think we know best, well, there’s every chance that our plans will go off the rails. But if we humble ourselves, instead of being more interested in our own opinions and listen to the advice of others, that’s how our plans are going succeed. I have to tell you this is something I have had to learn and I have learned it the hard way and the more I have learned it, the more I have succeeded.

We were recently planning something really new in the ministry of Christianityworks – quite different and quite new. And so we pulled together a group of very different people to plan and implement the project. Very different people, I have to say and with all that I am, I believe we heard God speak through this process. And with all that I am, that’s exactly what I think God meant for us to do. “Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.”

It’s awesome stuff! It is so easy to fall into conflict when teams of people are working together or at least trying to and yet, everyone sees things from a different perspective. And the key to discerning God’s will is mutual submission – that requires wisdom. Have a listen to what God has to say about His wisdom; the wisdom that comes from above. James chapter 3, verse 17:

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

The bit I really like in there, that strikes a chord with me, is the bit that says “willing to yield” – willing to get off its high horse, listen to the skills and views and gifts and abilities of other people as godly men and women that God has put around us. It’s when we yield that we hear the voice of God. Let me say it again: it is when we yield that we hear the voice of God. And there is a reason for that: James chapter 4, verse 6:

Because God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble.

So often we want to hear God speak; we want to discern the will of God: “God, what are You doing? God, what’s next? God, this is a tight spot, how do I deal with this?” And yet we ignore the good advice of the godly men and women that God has put around us. Hello!! Why? Because we are proud! Let me say this loving but directly – immature and foolish and proud, because as it says in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 2:

Like a fool, we take no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing our own personal opinions.

We all know people like that – we have all done that. We get on our high horse; we think we are right and we are not interested in listening to anyone else. And to stop doing that we need to humble ourselves.

Sometimes, as we saw last week on the programme, God speaks to us supernaturally, other times He speaks to us through the ordinary and the every day. Both are equally valid! And one of the great delights of my heart, something that I have grown to truly love is to hear God speak through the lives and the mouths and the skills and the abilities and the gifting and the experience of other people because by His grace He has taught me to get off my high horse, to shut up and to listen.

Dreams and Visions

Right now I want to go on and chat about dreams and visions, because that’s something the Bible; the New Testament talks about. But are they real? Does God really still speak through dreams and visions today or is this a phoney notion? I think they’re reasonable questions to ask when we are enquiring as to how God speaks with us.

Now maybe you are thinking, “Dreams and visions – aw, for goodness sake! Where is this joker coming from? Is he for real?” Well, my response is simply this: my heart; my passion is to dive into God’s Word, the Bible, to read it, to understand it as best I can and to live it. I’m a simple kind of guy and that’s how I approach life.

And one of the things that happen is that God often does things in ways that I, with my rational Western mind-set, perhaps wouldn’t have chosen had I been in His big shoes. Well, fortunately for you, I’m not – that’s the up side. But perhaps the downside is that if we accept God at His Word, then we have to accept that He is going to do things His way, even if they don’t always quite make sense to us.

So, what does God’s Word say about dreams and visions? I am going to share with you a passage from chapter 2, from the Book of Acts. God’s Spirit has just been poured out on these Christians and they are all talking in different languages – they are behaving as though they are drunk – literally. You can read it for yourself – the fifth book in the New Testament; the Book of Acts chapter 2.

Not surprisingly, the other Jews in Jerusalem at the time were pretty critical of this sort of behaviour. They are accusing these Christians of being drunk, so Peter the Apostle, stands up to explain. Acts chapter 2, beginning at verse 12:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

See, what’s going on here is that the unexpected is happening. These Christians are falling over as though they’re drunk; they are speaking in different tongues. And to silence the sceptics, Peter gets up and says, “You think this is amazing? This is nothing! Wait to see what else is going to happen.” And then he goes on to quote the Old Testament prophet of Joel.

Remember this is Jerusalem in the first century – everybody listening knows the Scripture that he is quoting. And he promises that the Holy Spirit will cause people to have dreams and visions and prophesies – all ways that God is going to speak with us.

“It’s in the Bible”, Peter is saying, “so don’t shoot me; the messenger.” And if I could personally echo that same sentiment to you, here and now – if you somehow feel uncomfortable with the notion of dreams and visions and prophesies and me talking about it – friend, it’s in the Bible, so please, don’t shoot the messenger.

Do you know that many, many Muslims who come to put their faith in Jesus Christ, report that they saw Jesus coming towards them in a dream. In fact, this is a really, really common occurrence. Has God ever spoken to me in that way? No, He hasn’t. I hear God in different ways and that’s fine. We are all different and God knows that and He speaks to us in different ways. But I have been impacted by this – absolutely.

When my wife, Jacqui, first visited our church – this was before she was my wife, in fact, none of knew who she was – she came on a Sunday morning; a service when I was preaching. And she came back again on the Sunday evening. Now, in the evening, our pastor Phil was scheduled to preach that night. You may have heard me speak about Phil before – he is a practical, very down to earth kind of guy. He gets up; he is about to preach and he looked towards Jacqui – he didn’t know her name; none of us knew her and he said to her, “Look, God’s given me a vision for your life.” And he went ahead and he described this picture; this vision he had had in a huge amount of detail.

That was a pretty gutsy thing to do, I thought. Well, Jacqui is pretty quiet and shy so she didn’t react. Months later though, we discovered that this was an incredibly difficult time in her life and that she had been wanting God to speak to her and that vision that Phil described to her that night, was a huge turning point in her life’s journey. In fact, if Phil hadn’t communicated that to her that night, she probably wouldn’t be my life today.

In many parts of the world, people have no problems at all with the idea that God speaks through dreams and visions and prophesies, but somehow, we Westerners, with our rational, materialistic mindsets, struggle with the idea.

Let me come back to where I started. We should test everything like this against God’s Word. Sometimes, people will come to us with stuff that isn’t from God but sometimes it is from God and if God tells us in His Word the Bible, that all along it’s been His plan to speak to us through dreams and visions and prophesies, well, I don’t know about you, but I think we should be listening.

Yes, it’s open to abuse! In Colossians chapter 2, verse 18, Paul talks about this – about people who:

… dwell on visions, being puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.

That’s why we test everything against God’s Word. But friend, God does things in ways that perhaps, you or I wouldn’t have done and I hunger to hear Him speak and I delight in hearing Him speak. When, how, that’s His choice. Our job is to listen.

Ducks in a Row

Well, here we are almost at the end of this series that I have called, “How Can I hear God Speak to Me?” And over the course of these four messages, we have looked at eight different ways that God speaks to us today. (1) The Bible, firstly, God’s Word, (2) secondly, God speaks to us in times of prayer; when we get still before Him. (3) Thirdly, God speaks to us through preaching and teaching – God anointed, Spirit-filled, faithful, Christ-centred preaching. (4) He speaks to us through signs and wonders, (5) through prophets. (6) Sometimes He speaks right out of the blue – (7) other times, through the counsel and the gifts and abilities of others and sometimes (8) He speaks through dreams and through visions.

And you know, you add that up and what you discover is that God is speaking rather a lot – principally, primarily through the authority of His Word, the Bible; the living Word of God. That’s why we put it right up there at number one. If numbers two through eight purport to be God speaking, then they had better be consistent with number one, the Word of God. If they aren’t, then they are not from God – it’s as simple as that.

Let’s make no mistake – God is not in the business of contradicting Himself. God is not in the business of changing His mind. But He is interested in our lives – in the nitty gritty of our lives and He knows that sometimes we need His guidance. And because He loves us, it stands to reason therefore, that He is going to speak specifically into our lives as any father would.

I heard a pastor; a man whom I respect greatly, stand up and preach a sermon, not too long ago, in which he basically said that God, these days, only speaks through His Word, the Bible, and through no other means – not through prophets, not through signs and wonders, not through anything except the Bible. Uh!! Well, the first thing is … the first thing is that it’s not what the Bible says.

Each of the other ways that God speaks with us that we have looked at over these last few weeks – numbers two through eight, that I just listed previously – in that list we just went through, each of those is straight out of God’s Word, the Bible.

But afterwards, when I went and asked this pastor a couple of questions, it was interesting. The first one I asked was: “Well, how did you come to be an ordained minister in this church; in this denomination?” And his answer was: “Well, because I felt called!” And friend, that’s exactly the right answer – in fact, it’s God’s calling that’s the only answer.

So my next question was: “Well, how did you discern that calling; how did you come to the conclusion that God was calling you into His ministry?” And he then proceeded to tell me about this and that, all the things we have been talking about in two through eight – through other people, through preaching, through voices out of the blue. Yet, he didn’t want to acknowledge that God speaks that way, even though this man had discerned his calling into ministry that way.

It stands to reason that if we feel led by God to do this or to do that, we somehow must have heard Him speak that into our lives. That’s what this series of messages has been all about. We are going into God’s Word and learning from Him how it is that He chooses to communicate with us.

But learning to discern His calling; learning to put the pieces together sometimes isn’t easy. Along the way I have made mistakes and I’m sure you have too and when it comes to the big decisions in life, that’s a bit of a scary prospect. What if we think we are hearing from God but we’re not, in choosing a wife or a husband or in choosing a particular career or ministry or in maybe, heading off to so some distant foreign land to become a missionary? You get the point! I mean, I do believe that sometimes – often times – God’s leading leads us right into the wilderness for an experience of the wilderness, when we are expecting instant success. That’s okay; I’m not bothered by that.

The issue, simply uppermost for me, is if I am going to head off in this direction or in that, then I want it to be the direction that God has chosen and ordained and prepared for me. That’s all! Whatever way it is, I want it to be God’s way. How do you discern God’s will amongst the noise and the distractions of life? A prophesy, a dream, a passage from the Bible leaps out at you, “Man, were they from God or am I just imagining this?”

Before the days of global terrorism, as a frequent flyer, I was often invited up into the cockpit of a plane, to sit in the jump seat and watch take-offs and landings. They were the good old days. One time I was returning during the night to Sydney, on a flight from New Zealand and I was in the cockpit of a Boeing 767 which gives you a great view out of the front windscreen – better than most other commercial planes of the time.

And flying into Sydney, well, it’s a pretty big city – there were so many lights. I thought, ‘How are the pilots going to pick the runway out amidst all these lights?’ I mean, I know they were flying by instruments but eventually, they had to see the runway. And then all of a sudden, we turned and the plane levelled off and the runway came into view. This bright, straight row of lights – I mean, you just couldn’t miss it. All those lights in a row, clearly, unmistakably showed the pilots which direction to fly in and how to land once they were off their instruments into visual mode.

And for me, it’s the same thing with discerning God’s will. He speaks to us in different ways at different times and learning to understand Him is a process, as it is in any relationship. But when I feel Him leading me down a particular path, inevitably what happens is, two or three or four things kind of line up in a straight line – a Scripture verse that sets my heart on fire and just won’t go away and then someone else comes along with a word; a prophesy and they don’t know what is going on; they don’t know what I’m thinking and dreaming.

And then some event – that door over there that I thought was open, slams shut in my face and this one over here, to my surprise, opens up. And all of a sudden it’s like those lights on the runway – they end up in a bit of straight line, like little ducks in a row that point you in a certain direction.

And sometimes, oftentimes, you can’t actually see them until you start heading down the path. In fact, that’s mostly the case – we have to step out first in faith, often letting go of the past, before God reveals what is coming next. That’s why it’s called ‘stepping out in faith’.

But friend, time and time and time again, I have seen my God just line those little ducks up in a row and when I see that, I start to head down that path; prayerfully, eyes open, asking God to open doors if it is His will and to slam them shut, if it’s not. Sometimes there is opposition and that’s where faith comes in. But above all, I always remember this: God is a faithful God, He knows my heart; He will not lead me down a path that He doesn’t want me to follow.

Yes, sometimes He will take me to the wilderness; yes, sometimes He needs to prune me and cleanse me so that I can bring Him more glory. That’s fine and that’s His choice. I just want to make sure I’m following in His direction.

And whilst I have run into the occasional dead end along the way, you know, as I look back … look back over the last decade and a half of walking with Jesus, I can see how He has guided me to where He wants me to be.

Friend, God is a faithful God. God is still speaking to us today, through His Bible, through prophesies and dreams and visions and other people and He’s speaking to us in so many different ways. Can I encourage you to stop, to spend time with Him, to listen to Him, to learn to discern His voice?

Jesus said we would hear His voice and we would know that it’s Him. And as we grow in that and we discover how we can hear God’s voice, friend, that is such a wondrous thing.

God is still speaking to His people today!