Can I hear from God?

Hearing God.  

Is it important? 

Is it possible?

1 John 1:3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Do you take John seriously?   I happen to believe that John meant those words for all of us. I think John had experienced fellowship with the father and his son Jesus Christ. Also believe that John thought it possible for every believer to experience the same thing.

 Our heavenly father wants fellowship with us. Do you find that as amazing thought? He wants to commune and communicate with us  In a true Fellowship of love and enjoyment of each other! 

 Hearing God.   Is important? Absolutely. Is it  possible?   Yes.   I’m afraid that many of us want to “get more from God”, but I think the emphasis from Scripture is for us to have fellowship with him. Fellowship with God is impossible if we cannot hear him as well as talk with him.

A HEARING EAR

 What we must develop  is an ear  to hear.   The challenge is to learn to listen to God.   To develop a hearing   ear we must make a choice.  15 times the statement is made by our Lord and is quoted in the New Testament. It indicates to me the importance of 2 things:  (1) a basic premise: having ears to hear; (2) a basic choice: choosing to use those ears to hear.

 When someone receives spiritual new life one receives the abilities in the spiritual life. God’s gift of spiritual life contains the ability to hear in and from the spiritual world.

 Without the ability to hear -  communication, meditation and hearing our heavenly father are not possible.

 The baby is born with the physical ability to hear but does not know what he hears.   Likewise a baby sees but does not know what he sees.   What is the difference? Understanding. Comprehension. These 2 must be learned.

 Listening is a communication skill that we practice often but many of us really never learned to do it right. Communication is a learned ability not an innate behavior.

 In a marriage relationship husband and wife soon learned by trial and error the importance of learning to listen.

 In the spiritual realm Christians equipped with “ ears to hear”  must learn to communicate with their Lord and father in heaven in an ever-increasing way. This is where the choice comes in.   Choosing to use your ears to hear. 

 If the capacity to hear is there, then the ability must be developed.

First secret:   hearing God must become vital to you.

 Something is vital only if it is perceived as necessary to live.

 If the Scripture is vital to us then we will give it priority in our life. If building a relationship with God is vital to us then we will practice it whatever the cost. Like you I have known people that encounter God only in a time of great need or personal crisis. Why is this so? The answer is simple. In times of crisis we don’t know who to turn to or how to handle it so for our survival in a crisis we often turn to God.  

Our desperation, coupled with our inability and our weakness makes hearing from him an absolute necessity.

 The great tragedy is that most of us only come to God in times of crisis you move from crisis to crisis and never learned that we need him and his words for every part of our life.   And until hearing from God becomes vital to you and to me we’re not likely to experience him on a daily basis.

Second secret:   developing a hearing here requires exercise.

 Recently, It became apparent that my blood pressure had gotten too high.   The doctor was insistent on putting me on medication.   I begged him not to.   As a compromise I asked for a few weeks to exercise and change my diet to see if my blood pressure would come down.    You see, It became vital  to me.   So, I sought after exercise.   So far so good it has worked.

There are 3 steps to this process,  I  must become fit.  (physically and spiritually) to become fit spiritually parallels becoming fit physically consider the following:

F  is for frequency.   I must make a deliberate choice and effort to set my mind on God.   I must learn to ask his help to turn my undisciplined mind into something he can use. 

I  is for intensity.  I must make deliberate choices to exercise my mind and focusing on God. The best way is for me to give myself a regular time to pursue this relationship intently, purposefully, and regularly.   Like other forms of exercise, I must begin at low levels and increase gradually.

 T is for time.   I must set my mind on God in every area of my life.   I must determined to consciously bring every thought captive to God and immediately turned to God in every circumstance.    Over time it will become a natural spontaneous reaction.   It will become in time a natural reflex as you develop the habit.

Churches today are filled with spiritual babies who are failing to grow in the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is because we have substituted a real relationship with God with so many things.   My next blog entry in this topic will deal with the substitutes that we embrace.