 Do you hear God speaking? Do you obey?
In 1835, Hans Christian Andersen published a small booklet containing a simple story, among others, The Princess and the Pea. It spun the tale of a prince searching for a princess, only to find one problem princess after another. During his search for a “real” princess an unlikely candidate appeared one evening at the king’s gate during a downpour, drenched. Inviting her in for the night, the suspicious queen mother placed a pea under twenty mattresses with the thought that only a “real” princess would be sensitive enough to feel the pea. The poor girl slept horribly, wondering what hard object hid beneath her bedding. Having passed the test of a “real” princess, the two were married and lived happily ever after. I use the story when teaching others about hearing God speak. The art of hearing God’s voice takes similar sensitivity. But, the gift isn’t as rare as the princess. It can be cultivated. A recent church at which I preached sat in a community with over 18 local radio stations. I asked if anyone could hear them. None could, naturally. To hear them would have required a radio tuned to a particular unique frequency assigned to each station. Listening to one precludes hearing any others - by design. Hearing God speak is similar. Especially during these days of global turmoil, homespun and “logical” wisdom abounds in many flavors. Everyone claims to be right. Even Christians are forming circles of opinion. The need for hearing God’s single voice is profound. Humanity needs truth. By definition, truth excludes all other kinds of information. God’s voice crowds out all others for those who hear Him. How can it happen and what follows? I explain using five words: listen, hear, recognize, understand, and obey. When all five happen, a person not only hears God’s voice, but they carry out His intentions. They feel the pea under all of the mattresses. No one hears without listening. Listening is an intentional act. It still amazes me that someone can be standing beside another person who is talking and be totally unaware. Or, they can be in a crowd and miss everything. They aren’t listening. The human ability to be physically present, but ignore our sense of hearing is astounding. Listening is akin to awareness. It means “checking in” to the world outside our heads. Once I’m listening, I can hear. It’s like opening a spout. When I hear something, it penetrates my listening and seizes my attention. Consider a loud boom, a scream or a horn blast. A listening person suddenly turns in the sound’s direction. Listen. Hear. They occur in order. Then, recognition can happen. Recognizing is another fascinating human ability. I can know the identity of a sound without seeing the source. Humans have stunning voice recognition capabilities. But, those abilities have to be trained. My brother-in-law called many times after I’d gotten married and simply said, “Hey,” when I answered the phone. It was before caller I.D. My response was, “Who is this?” Awkward pauses always followed. After a while, I began recognizing his voice. I didn’t need his name anymore. Spiritually sensitive individuals train to recognize the voice of God. They don’t want to be led astray. In a crowded noisy room, I might suddenly notice a familiar sound, so I begin listening more intently. By recognition, I focus upon individual sounds among those I hear. I isolate those that sound familiar because I know them. I search for one sound. Thus, in that crowded and noisy room, I can hear my wife speaking across the room by recognizing her voice and focusing upon it. Of course, that only happens when I want to hear and when I listen first. I suggest a robust diet of daily Scripture - familiarity fosters recognition. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Then, understand. Decoding is the trickiest step of communication. If I use the wrong code or algorithm, my efforts of understanding can return only a vague, muddled, confused message - at best. I won’t be able to understand the message. It takes care and skill to understand. Setting, mood, history, and other factors influence the apparent meaning of a message. Noise can interfere. Christians must listen intentionally, hear God, recognize His voice, then carefully decode God’s instructions and messages. Otherwise, we miss what He’s trying to get across. Finally, once a person understands what God is saying, he or she faces a test: obedience. What one does with revelation from God matters. Imagine going to the trouble of listening, hearing, recognizing, and understanding and then ignoring the message. It happens all the time. Following God’s instructions takes the same intentionality required of listening and understanding. It takes work. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Understand. Obey. It takes a special princess, a sensitive one, to detect a pea under twenty mattresses. Likewise, with all the distractions of today’s world, it takes a spiritually sensitive person to actually hear and understand God. Scripture says, “The unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything” (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). God speaks because He wants us to hear His voice. He wants to converse with us. He wants us to hear of the treasures of heaven, hidden to us by sin. He wants to unfold His plans into our lives. He wants to interact. That’s why He speaks. Communication is effortless for God, but a journey for humanity. So, do we listen like unbelievers or like spiritual people? It’s a question worth pondering. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Understand. Obey
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 Do you hear God speaking? Do you obey?
In 1835, Hans Christian Andersen published a small booklet containing a simple story, among others, The Princess and the Pea. It spun the tale of a prince searching for a princess, only to find one problem princess after another. During his search for a “real” princess an unlikely candidate appeared one evening at the king’s gate during a downpour, drenched. Inviting her in for the night, the suspicious queen mother placed a pea under twenty mattresses with the thought that only a “real” princess would be sensitive enough to feel the pea. The poor girl slept horribly, wondering what hard object hid beneath her bedding. Having passed the test of a “real” princess, the two were married and lived happily ever after. I use the story when teaching others about hearing God speak. The art of hearing God’s voice takes similar sensitivity. But, the gift isn’t as rare as the princess. It can be cultivated. A recent church at which I preached sat in a community with over 18 local radio stations. I asked if anyone could hear them. None could, naturally. To hear them would have required a radio tuned to a particular unique frequency assigned to each station. Listening to one precludes hearing any others - by design. Hearing God speak is similar. Especially during these days of global turmoil, homespun and “logical” wisdom abounds in many flavors. Everyone claims to be right. Even Christians are forming circles of opinion. The need for hearing God’s single voice is profound. Humanity needs truth. By definition, truth excludes all other kinds of information. God’s voice crowds out all others for those who hear Him. How can it happen and what follows? I explain using five words: listen, hear, recognize, understand, and obey. When all five happen, a person not only hears God’s voice, but they carry out His intentions. They feel the pea under all of the mattresses. No one hears without listening. Listening is an intentional act. It still amazes me that someone can be standing beside another person who is talking and be totally unaware. Or, they can be in a crowd and miss everything. They aren’t listening. The human ability to be physically present, but ignore our sense of hearing is astounding. Listening is akin to awareness. It means “checking in” to the world outside our heads. Once I’m listening, I can hear. It’s like opening a spout. When I hear something, it penetrates my listening and seizes my attention. Consider a loud boom, a scream or a horn blast. A listening person suddenly turns in the sound’s direction. Listen. Hear. They occur in order. Then, recognition can happen. Recognizing is another fascinating human ability. I can know the identity of a sound without seeing the source. Humans have stunning voice recognition capabilities. But, those abilities have to be trained. My brother-in-law called many times after I’d gotten married and simply said, “Hey,” when I answered the phone. It was before caller I.D. My response was, “Who is this?” Awkward pauses always followed. After a while, I began recognizing his voice. I didn’t need his name anymore. Spiritually sensitive individuals train to recognize the voice of God. They don’t want to be led astray. In a crowded noisy room, I might suddenly notice a familiar sound, so I begin listening more intently. By recognition, I focus upon individual sounds among those I hear. I isolate those that sound familiar because I know them. I search for one sound. Thus, in that crowded and noisy room, I can hear my wife speaking across the room by recognizing her voice and focusing upon it. Of course, that only happens when I want to hear and when I listen first. I suggest a robust diet of daily Scripture - familiarity fosters recognition. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Then, understand. Decoding is the trickiest step of communication. If I use the wrong code or algorithm, my efforts of understanding can return only a vague, muddled, confused message - at best. I won’t be able to understand the message. It takes care and skill to understand. Setting, mood, history, and other factors influence the apparent meaning of a message. Noise can interfere. Christians must listen intentionally, hear God, recognize His voice, then carefully decode God’s instructions and messages. Otherwise, we miss what He’s trying to get across. Finally, once a person understands what God is saying, he or she faces a test: obedience. What one does with revelation from God matters. Imagine going to the trouble of listening, hearing, recognizing, and understanding and then ignoring the message. It happens all the time. Following God’s instructions takes the same intentionality required of listening and understanding. It takes work. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Understand. Obey. It takes a special princess, a sensitive one, to detect a pea under twenty mattresses. Likewise, with all the distractions of today’s world, it takes a spiritually sensitive person to actually hear and understand God. Scripture says, “The unbeliever does not welcome what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything” (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). God speaks because He wants us to hear His voice. He wants to converse with us. He wants us to hear of the treasures of heaven, hidden to us by sin. He wants to unfold His plans into our lives. He wants to interact. That’s why He speaks. Communication is effortless for God, but a journey for humanity. So, do we listen like unbelievers or like spiritual people? It’s a question worth pondering. Listen. Hear. Recognize. Understand. Obey Sometimes, God stuns me with His intentions for His church. I tend to view possibilities from the perspective of and realities of the church in the world. Other saints and I start with what the church "is." We gauge progress from the starting point of "now." God, instead, views the church from the standpoint of His original intentions, which still exist in His eternal thoughts. He sees something far different from what I regularly see. God begins with His intentions and ends there, too. He's crafting a church out of redeemed sinners into exactly what He planned, exquisite plans. His image of the finished church is majestic, perfect, divine. Five components of biblical love describe what He means for the church to become.
The Bible reveals God loving humanity and loving His church. It reaches further, calling humanity to love one another like He loves them. When His church understands what His loves looks like, His people possess a target, as standard, toward which to aim with their own love. Without that target, God's people resort or descend to contemporary versions of love and kindness, models that change and deteriorate with time. Conversely, God's love never changes, never fades and never ends. To such love He calls His church when Jesus says, "Love one another, even as I have loved you" (John 13:34). The first component of biblical love is genuine desire. This component describes one person wanting to be with another, having the desire to be together. Christians sometimes sit in their worship centers, separated and focused more on sitting in their normal spot than sitting together. A person with genuine desire would enter the worship center and begin scanning those seated, struggling to choose who they will sit with today - desiring to sit with everyone there. Such a person would never consider sitting in his or her "normal seat." Christians, who love one another, desire to be together. Church members who love each other possess the same desire. Biblical love’s second component is real affection. Affection is the delight a person experiences when he or she interacts with or thinks about another person. Something really positive happens emotionally. Real affection could describe why two people with genuine desire want to be with one another. It's pleasant. Imagine church members who have been so transformed that they not only want to be together, but the mere thought of one another brings delight. Third is unshakable loyalty. The first and second components of love increase the possibility of the third. Desire and affection apparently justify the risks inherent to loyalty. Unshakable loyalty portrays an indestructible commitment and willingness to stand up for another person when they are wronged. As such, it undergirds human unity. While genuine desire and real affection represent realities internal to the one who extends love, unshakable loyalty is a visible and outward demonstration of love. It eliminates any doubt or confusion about the authenticity of one person’s love for another. Fourth is rousing concern. This component, too, visibly demonstrates love. Here, concerns for the other person evoke more than unease and disquieted emotions. This concern motivates one who loves to action on behalf of the other. Experiencing rousing concern is compelling, not merely troubling. It actively pursues intervention and searches for relief. Rousing concern is restless and unsatisfied until action ensues. It cannot be quieted. Finally, fifth, is lavish generosity. Generosity forms the capstone of love. Any distance not covered by unshakable loyalty or rousing concern is balanced by lavish generosity. Generosity is both an attitude and an action in which a person joyfully devotes their time, energy, and resources to another person. It is both prudent and responsible, but is none-the-less munificent. That which it devotes to another substantially and significantly outweighs situations where wisdom suggests hesitation. On top of the other components of love, lavish generosity takes love beyond extravagant, to a point where it becomes truly profound, almost unimaginable. Together, these five represent biblical love. They capture the essence of God’s love toward sinful humanity, a totally undeserving sea of recipients. The five also capture Paul’s intent that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25, 28; Colossians 3:19) or Jesus instructions that the saints should love one another even as He had loved them (John 13:34-35; 15:12, 17; Romans 12:10; 13:8; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 4:9). These components, too, explain the startling injunction that righteous men and women even ought to love their enemies who hate and persecute them (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27, 35). Lastly, and most importantly, they describe how a sinner, saved by grace, should love God (Matthew 22:37, etc.). None of these love relationships are possible by human discipline, zeal or fortitude. Every human capability proves inadequate for the task. Such love isn't a human feat, but is a work of God's Spirit within a believer. Each component is fueled by the indwelling Holy Spirit. God, alone, can supply the resources to love biblically. Only with such a source can anyone offer love even to someone who demonstrates none in return or who, according to human standards, deserves no love whatsoever. Thus, Christians face the unfathomable realities of Scripture that speak of biblical love. “God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8). Or, “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). This is God’s plan for His church - love. Imagine a church with this love: genuine desire, real affection, unshakable loyalty, rousing concern and lavish generosity - loved by God and loving one another. |
Crossing the LinesThe ideas behind this blog emerged from my study and preaching of a message I titled "A Single Step." It was an unexpected message out of Philippians 2:12-18. I'm the one who was surprised. I had a whole different idea of where the sermon would go. Then, I got into the text and followed it. That led, eventually, to the response by individuals after the message. God worked in me and in our congregation. He's still at work. Categories
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