Hearing the Divine

Though I have always known that prayer is a conversation, early in my Christian walk prayer was a one way conversation--usually in which I demanded God to give me things I wanted! This was the model prayer I grew up around. People would come together to pray for an extended period of time, but once they were done, they simply got up and left as if they did not expect God to speak back to them. There was no waiting to hear God. But how do you hear God?

Often people look for signs from God. When they see a ‘sign’, they then try to make sense of it. They even suggest some of them--"God if you want me to date her, have her say hi to me." Or, we use an existing circumstances to read God’s voice into them--"Wow, she said hi to me. I think that means God wants me to date her." Of course I do not deny these methods, but God has no trouble simply talking to us! The problem is that we don’t understand how He speaks to us; and we don’t know how to listen to Him.

The Bible says that God is Spirit [John 4:24]. Spirit is not physical flesh and blood. So God does not ordinarily talk to us in a physical way, as in an audible voice. Of course, God can and does speak to us in audible manner, but these instances are rare and few. It’s just not his usual method in communicating with us. His usual method is spiritual!

Some people rely on their feelings to hear God. That too is physical. Some people determine God’s voice through a feeling of electric charge, a tingling sensation, a strange burning feeling, a pain in the back...etc. Those are all physical. Of course God can give us a tingly feeling if He so chooses, but often these are psychological reaction to something God is  doing that is spiritual. You’d have same kind of feelings at a rock concert or when someone asks, “Will you marry me?” That’s you - your response to what God is doing. Emotion is you reacting to what God is doing spiritually, but that is not God. You can hunger for God so much that you can actually fabricate these reactions. Did you know you can conjure up feelings of happiness, sadness, joy and rage? That’s why as important as emotions are, we’re not to trust them completely when it comes to God. Emotions simply are too unreliable, even though they are very important to our walk with Jesus. Therefore, having a group of loving people, such as our growth group, to pray along to confirm God’s voice is important!

At this point I want to be clear. I am not saying God does not speak to us in audible or emotional way. He does! Some more than others. But that is not his usual method. We are physical but we also have a spiritual component. Remember, our spirit is not made of flesh and blood. But it’s part of us which interacts most with God. Holy Spirit speaks to our spirit to remind us and share God's thoughts with us. This is the part where we find what the Bible calls ‘the heart’ -- not the blood-pumping organ but the center of our spirit. The heart is who we are. It’s the part God sees when He looks at us. It’s what he listens to when we pray. It’s also the part of us He talks to. It’s our spiritual ear; so use your heart! God pays attention to our heart not necessarily to our words - even though words can be our heart’s expressions. So people often shout and yell when they pray and others are so desperate, like Hanna in the book of Samuel, who could not utter words but mutely expressed her hunger and desire for the Lord.

When the words we speak and heart do not match, it’s what is referred to as double-mindedness. And God does not answer such prayers. When God speaks back He usually speaks to our heart. Now the hard part is that we listen not through our physical ears but with our hearts. And by the way, when God speaks to our hearts, he does not necessarily speak to us in English. Or whatever our first language is. He speaks in raw, powerful ideas. But when we understand and want to communicate God’s message to others, we have to put it in terms we can understand. That involves a bit of interpretation on our part. That is why each Bible writer sounds unique; yet at the same time, they all sound like God. God’s message filters through their own personality and uniqueness. 

If you are a visual person, God’s messages to you are more likely to evoke visions and prophetic dreams; or perhaps you are going to notice things others don’t. If you are the words-type, you get words, poetry, and vocal messages. If you are musical, you will produce music. If you are artistic, you produce art - abstract or otherwise. If you are emotionally sensitive person, you will be moved emotionally. Everyone produces different result when God downloads into them.

Now it’s totally possible that you have been talking to God but had never realized what you were producing were the results of speaking to God and Him speaking to you. You never realized that He’s been speaking to you all of your life, even before you were a follower of Jesus... and you thought you were the one coming up with all these brilliant ideas! Interacting with God will rub off on you. He talks to us all the time, far more than we realize.

Have you had this happen to you? You are about to do something and then all of sudden something deep inside reminds you, “I should not do this; it’s wrong.” And you start to argue with this voice, trying to rationalize what you are about to do. You are thinking, but that’s me. If it’s you, why bother arguing with yourself, just do it. But no, it’s God. The Holy Spirit is speaking to your spirit, leading you towards Jesus, and trying to direct you towards God! Many people can’t hear His voice anymore because they have rejected him repeatedly. The place to start for them is to repent and turn towards God. They must sensitize their hearts again to the Lord’s voice by spending time with him, i.e. Quiet Time.

God speaks to us all the time. One by one, you have to learn to recognize which promptings are of God. We have to learn to stop confusing them with out own internal voice. That takes time and effort. But the more we practice differentiating between God’s voice and our own, the better we get at it! 

So, how do you know you’ve heard from God, or whether you are just hearing things? Here are some suggestions:

Compare what you think is God’s voice with the Bible. The bible is what we know God’s said in the past, and since God’s character does not change, it’ll be consistent between the bible and today! Do you want to know what God is like and how He sounds? Read the Bible. Read everything Jesus said. Read the Old Testament and New Testament! 

Have your growth group* members and pray together to confirm what you perceive to be God’s voice. Seek out other Christians who hear God. Namely those gifted in the prophetic. Find out which prophets have a good track record of conveying God’s messages correctly and accurately. Whenever you hear God’s voice, share what you think you heard with them. Permit them to teach and encourage through God’s message. 

Once you determine it really is God, there is only one thing left to do... OBEY! When God talks to you, He doesn’t do it to give us a warm fuzzy feelings. He gives you messages for a reason... to build the Kingdom of God. He wants us in. He’s looking for obedient disciples. If we act on His messages, and demonstrate our usefulness, He’ll give us more messages and strengthen our hearts so we can hear him clearer and better then ever before. The key is intimacy! The more intimate you are with the Lord, the more he will share. Spend time with Him this week and listen for his voice--the sweet soft voice whispering into your heart. Blessings.

Pray Without Ceasing

Talk to a Christian and most of them will tell you that you need to pray more. Take  a walk through a Christian bookstore and you'll realize that there is a flood of books written about prayer - subject range from fasting prayer to meditative breathing prayers. Prayer books are everywhere. Why is that? It’s probably because most Christians do not pray enough. And perhaps that is true, but these books do something to us that, perhaps, was not intentional by the authors. These books intentionally or unintentionally, make Christians think they do not pray enough. Again, this may be true but I also notice people pray for 15 minutes and beat themselves up for not praying for an hour a day! Or even longer!

I remember taking about 300 teenagers to a summer retreat where the theme centered around prayer. And at the end of the last worship service, the speaker challenged these students, who rarely prayed, to commit to two hour prayer a day! What? Really? Why do we get this sense that prayer should consist of lengthy conversation with God? I mean how long is a satisfactory time to spend time talking to God? How long does He want us to talk to Him? When we read the Bible, prayers don’t seem to be all that long!

When we talk about the length of prayer, we tend to go straight to 1 Thessalonians 5:17, which says ‘pray without ceasing’ or as the New Living Translation says ‘Never stop praying.’

Wait a minute! Never stop? You mean never ever stop praying? How do we do that? Don’t we need to sleep? I mean if you were to get a major surgery, don’t you want the doctor to pray at home and concentrate on the surgery rather than praying? Does that mean I have to join a group so we can pray every day, for 24 hours a day?

I get the sense that for most Christians, it doesn’t matter how much they pray, it’s simply not enough. How did intimacy with God, talking to God, become such a duty filled, agonizing activity? Is length what God meant by ‘pray without ceasing’?

Let’s take a look at the original word from which we get the phrase ‘never stop’, which we normally associate or interpret the word as never ending prayer - 24/7 prayer!

When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he wrote to the followers of Jesus who were ‘obsessed’ with the end times. They were fixated on the idea of the end times; so they neglected to do the things followers of Jesus ought to do. They were not caring for the needy. They were not obeying God’s clear commands. And they were not keeping up on the prayer times.

The Greek word ‘adialeiptos’ [ἀδιαλείπτως] means without a break, without intermission; hence the translation, ‘without ceasing’. But Paul can’t possibly mean we should pray without a break! Paul used this term again in 2 Timothy 1:3 when he prayed for his spiritual son Timothy - “unceasing remembrance of Timothy”. But this does not mean that in every waking moment Paul remembered Timothy! In fact, Jesus did not pray every waking moment. So in light of the context of the book of Thessalonians, we can surmise “without ceasing” to mean, not to take a break from prayer! In other words, don’t skip prayer. Don’t slack off on prayer. Don’t quit your regular practice of prayer! This takes into consideration two necessary categories of prayer: habitual, routine prayer at certain times as well as spontaneous prayer at other times. Often your prayer alertness leads to spontaneous prayer. 

So if you are not praying 10 times a day, relax... don’t fret! You are not expected to. It can be a nice habit to aim for, but first we have to get in the habit of praying once a day. Don’t go running in a triathlon when you can’t even run a 100 meter! And don’t feel guilty for not praying as much as the spiritual giants who prayed for 6-7 hours a day. Start with 15 minutes a day and increase your time as you begin to enjoy your time with the Lord. You can join our Upper Room on Friday nights to pray with your fellow brothers and sisters for an extended time. Get together with your growth group and pray together for that which concerns your heart. Come together five minutes before Sunday service and pray with those around you over our service.  Take a walk while talking to the Lord and making your concerns known to Him. Do some gardening early in the morning as you praise His wonderful provision over your life. Take a break from daily routine and spend some time thanking God for who He is and what He has done! Remember His thoughts over you are wonderful and beautiful. And the Bible says that God's thoughts over you are greater than all the sands in the world. That's a lot of wonderful thoughts from our Divine Father. Thank Him for that. Thank Him for your family, friends and co-workers. Make it a habit. Pray without ceasing!