Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Hearing God's voice?

I have been thinking about the subject of hearing God's voice.

Since the day that I came to believe in Jesus Christ as my wonderful Saviour, I have been taught the line of waiting on the Lord for direction to my life and that of my family.

Around 1998 God brought me to a full understanding of the doctrines of grace, also known popularly as Calvinism or even TULIP (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints). So, as a charismatic who used to be in all kinds of errors like Word-of-Faith (WOF) and also holding to the idea that God spoke to us everyday outside of the Bible and that we should be waiting on God to speak to us, I now held to doctrines traditionally opposed to what charismanianism holds to.

However, for some time now I have seen myself as a Reformed Charismatic, although I have had a big problem with the word "charismatic" since that word today has more baggage to it than what it had, say, 40 years ago. Today, it has added to it all kinds of heresy such as the WOF heresy (Kenneth Copeland, etc) and other heretics such as T.D. Jakes and more.

Nevertheless, I have been wondering about the whole issue of hearing God's voice. I was not of the kind that believed that hearing God's voice today added anything to the Scriptures, but that anything contrary to the Bible was obviously not God!

So, for a long time now I have been thinking to myself that I do not know of anywhere in the Bible where it commands us to actively wait on the Holy Spirit to hear from Him. I can't even think of examples where it was a common occurrence!

If there is someone that believes that we have such clear commands or that we have ample examples of this in the Bible I would like to see it!

The point is, in the charismatic/pentecostal circles a lot is made of hearing God's voice and obeying Him. Those who apparently do not hear from God as regularly as the super-spiritual ones, are vilified and made to feel that they could NOT possibly be in God's perfect will!

Sure, I do not deny that God could speak to us today. What I do deny is that God sits at His throne like a little puppy waiting for us to come home so He could spend time with us. God's providence is way bigger than that! Do people really believe that God is unable to accomplish His work without them? God can make the rocks on the ground praise Him if we don't!

The way I see it, and help me if I am wrong here, is that God speaks when He wants to. Right through the Bible, people were going about their daily (or nightly) business when God sovereignly stepped into their lives and spoke to them! It was God who stepped into the life of Abraham (before He was a "Hebrew"), Moses at the burning bush, Samuel while sleeping and Paul while riding in the desert. Later, Paul was on his missionary journeys when God spoke in a vision to Paul telling him to go to Macedonia. Paul was seemingly on his way in one direction and then God called him in another! If we are to constantly wait on God for His direction, why was it necessary for God to interrupt Paul's dreams to call him to Macedonia if it was not for the reason that it was not part of everyday Christianity to want to know God's will for the next step? Maybe Paul was just not spiritual enough yet!

On the other hand, should we not just let God guide us in His sovereign providence?

Just thinking ...

No comments:

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin