The Word of God // How Can I Hear God Speak to Me?, Part 2

So many people wish that they could hear from God. What’s He thinking? What’s He up to? What’s His will for my life? How can I hear from Him? And yet so often, these are the same people whose Bibles are gathering dust up on a shelf somewhere.

Yesterday on the program we saw in fact, yes, God is still speaking today. Now some people deny that. They say the only place you can hear God speaking is in the Bible. Others are kind of out there, maybe hanging off chandeliers maybe seeing apparitions of Jesus all over the place. And then there’s the ordinary folk like you and me who are hungry to hear God’s voice, to hear Him speak, to know His heart, to receive His guidance and His strength and His peace, to know God not just in our heads and not even just in our hearts but in our actual experience.

I remember when I first gave my life to Jesus it was the 15th October 1995. In the weeks and months following that time I had such an incredibly strong sense of God’s presence. He wrapped His arms around me during a particularly difficult, painful time in my life and I was full of the Joy of the Lord even though I was travelling through a lot of pain. A good friend of mine, the pastor of the first church I attended, sat down with me over a cup of coffee he said, "You know Berni, you know it won’t always be like this", but there was something inside me that made me angry. I said to myself and I said this to God, "If I can’t have this intimate relationship with my God each and every day, if I can’t experience His joy and His peace each day, then you know something? I don’t think I want Him."

Fairly radical stuff. And to be sure, life does have its ups and downs. Sometimes circumstances are against us – sometimes everything’s rosy. Sometimes our emotions are up – sometimes they’re down. We’re all different people in different places and so the details of all that are different. But the patterns are the same. There’s ups and there’s downs and that my friend is just the way it’s going to be. In those early days of becoming a Christian, Phil told me, that I should read my Bible every day.

Can I tell you what a huge turnoff that was, tell you what a burden that was, having to open this book, it’s a huge book – 775,000 odd words in 31,173 verses, in 1189 chapters in 66 books – and all of it written in times and place and cultures that are unfamiliar by and large to you and to me. Who or what for instance was Ephraim? And why was sacrificing bulls and doves, why did they do that? And did the walls of Jericho really come tumbling down when they marched around and blew those trumpets?

You get the drift don’t you? But Phil, my pastor, was a persuasive guy. Real salt of the earth kind of man, and when I listened preaching on Sunday’s he really made sense. So I did. I did something back then. I established this pattern of getting up early in the morning, something I’ve been doing since I was a small child anyway, while everyone else is still asleep and doing something different with that time – spending some time in prayer and in reading the Bible.

You know, I was surprised. A lot of it made sense. A lot of it was confronting. It was like shining a really bright light on my immaturities and things that I was doing that weren’t pleasing to God. And day after day, month after month, year after year, here’s what’s happened. It’s changed me.

I open the Bible these days and its God speaking to me. There aren’t always fireworks and flashes of thunder and great revelations each and every day. It’s not like that. Little by little God’s Word has become a part of who I am.

I’m not good at memorising verses. Some people are. I’m not. But what I find amazing now is that when someone asks me to get up and speak about something or we’re having a discussion amongst friends about this issue or whatever it is, the recall that God has given me is amazing.

I can remember things that God says, not word for word but pretty close, and where He says it, and that makes all the difference. See when someone’s really bugging me and I want to tear them apart, all of a sudden a small voice whispers ‘Turn the other cheek’; a voice whispers ‘Wisdom from above is pure and peaceable and gentle and yielding’. All of a sudden God’s Word starts to guide my responses and my behaviour. God’s Word is giving me what I need to live my life. The Holy Spirit speaks His words right into my life exactly when I need it.

And the other thing, it sounds really mundane reading the Bible every day and in some respects it is. I tend to read an Old Testament book followed by a New Testament: one of the letters from Romans to Revelation followed by one of the four Gospels or Acts. That’s how I cycle through the Bible. I’ve pretty much ready it now several times.

The reason I cycle that way is that the different books feed me differently. Some of those Old Testament narrative stories – Judges, Kings, Chronicles – they feed me with the power and the majesty of God. And then the letters in the New Testament, they teach me about real life and understanding my life in the light of what Jesus has done. And then the Gospels and Act – 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 flavour to everything else.

Now it sounds mundane to pick up the Bible, to read the next chapter or even a few verses in the book of Luke which is what I’m reading right at the moment – it doesn’t appear systematic or anything like that, but I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve found exactly what I needed for today. The things I’m going through, the things unbeknown to me that are going to confront me today, by reading the next chapter. It's amazing how many times God has given me what I need for today from those very next verses in the next chapter that I was due to read in my mundane schedule.

Reading the Bible sounds like a chore, it sounds mundane but after years of doing this here’s what I want to share with you. From time to time I’ve received a prophecy from someone or a word of knowledge, we’ll talk about them another day – and those times have been powerful markers, turning points. But the strength and the maturity and the growth and the transformation, the things that have made my life better – can’t begin to tell you – they have come from this wondrous habit that Pastor Phil taught me all those years ago of reading my Bible every day.

The ability to discern whether someone else is speaking from God or not, the wisdom to know how to handle tough situations, the maturity some days to lay my life down (boy that’s hard), all those things have happened as the Word of God has become part of who I am.

Genesis Chapter 21 verse 26 says that we’ve been made in the image of God. The problem is that our rebellion and our sin have marred that image. Reading God’s Word most days, listening to what He has to say most days, is like being restored back into His original image. A repair job here, clean-up job there, a new bit here and all of a sudden we’re a different person. It’s knowing the truth that sets us free, and the Bible is God’s way of sharing His truth with us.

If there is one thing, just one thing that I can point to that was the smartest thing I ever did after I gave my life to Jesus, is opening up that Bible, a daily habit, and letting Him speak His Word into my heart through His Spirit. 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 – all over the place – because there’s no foundation, there’s no anchor into God’s truth.