Hearing from God

Hearing from God is both an individual and a communal practice. Gordon Smith, in his book The Voice of Jesus, makes it clear that there is danger in relying too much on ourselves or too much on the community of faith.

“The community, then, while it is essential to our individual identity, is also a threat to that identity. We do not find ourselves in isolation from the community and we do not find ourselves if we are subsumed within the community. When it comes to discernment, we realize that we do not know the voice of Jesus and the witness of the Spirit if we are lost within the community. The collective can become so strong that that we cannot hear what God is saying to us. We must be alone. We must remain ‘other’ from the community and not be absorbed into its powerful collective identity.”[1]

Personally, I have found that I hear from God best when I spend time in solitude with God first,  and then seek the input of the community. My time of solitude will involve reading the Bible, praying, listening to God, paying attention to dreams, paying attention to nature, and being alone with God. Then, I will go back to my trusted prayer partners, that is, my community of faith, for confirmation or correction in what I think I have heard from God. This has been a tried and tested method for me that I would recommend to others; but I also recognize that God works within our personalities and may function differently with others. Take a moment to respond to this blog and tell me the ways in which God speaks to you.

Works Cited

Smith, Gordon T. The Voice of Jesus. Downers Grove: InterVaristy Press, 2003.

---

[1] Gordon T. Smith, The Voice of Jesus; InterVarsity Press, 2003; p. 210.

Purpose and a Relationship with God

Mark 1:35 says, "Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray."
Mark 6:46 says, "After telling everyone good-bye, he went up into the hills by himself to pray."
Mark 14:32-42 gives us the account of Jesus spending the entire night in deep prayer.

Those who read this blog regularly will recognize that sometimes I speak as a science enthusiast and sometimes as a pastor. This will be a pastoral post.

Our purpose in life will flow out of our relationship with God. In order to do great things, we must first have a deep relationship with our Lord. In order to serve this world our senses must be finely tuned to Jesus. This requires that we constantly pay attention to the Spirit of God and avoid other things which crowd out our sense of God. My language here is intentionally Trinitarian.

Some of us spend time daily reading the Bible and praying. Another necessity is solitude. We will benefit from taking time to get away from distractions. Might I suggest that on a weekly basis you leave your electronics behind and spend a few minutes in a quiet place. Once or twice a year plan a retreat in which you work hard at listening to God. Our goal is to determine our unique place in the work to which God is calling us. Our goal is to determine where we are at, right now, and then determine how we can get to the place to which Jesus is calling us.

Thin Places

The concept of "Thin Places" fascinates me. The definition of a "thin place" is "a place where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially thin. It’s a place where we can sense the divine more readily."* This was an important concept to Celtic Christians. For the Roman church, the place to meet God was, and is, in a church building or a cathedral. To the Celts, the place to meet God was at a thin place. Such places were most often outdoors and defined by islands, mountains, points of land that thrust out into the sea, caves, or other natural landmarks.

The concept fascinates me and unnerves me at the same time. It is not something of which the bible explicitly speaks and yet it seems that the concept is there and that several people in the bible had their own thin places. If you think of Mount Sinai, Mount Carmel, Jacob and his ladder, and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane you will get a picture of what I mean. Perhaps it is not that the places have particular significance but that the places come to have special relevance for a person or for people in general.

I have a few places where God has spoken in unique ways. These are places where His voice was a little more clear and He has spoken more often. They are places to which I return to hear from Him again. It is not that He always speaks at such places; for He can be just as silent in such places as any other. It is not that these are the only places where one can hear from God. They are, however, places to which I return with increased expectancy and with an increased desire to listen. Perhaps that is the purpose of this metaphor in my life. Mark D. Roberts has this to say about the concept.

If you want to use the thin place metaphor, then you might want to say that the purpose of thin places is to help us realize that all places can be thin. Or, better yet, perhaps the purpose of a thin place is to train us to make the other places in our lives thinner. Moreover, when we realize that the Spirit of God dwells within us, we will come to believe that we are called to be thin places, as God makes his presence known through us.*

May you seek places in your life where you might find a greater depth of connection with God. May there be enough thin places in all of our lives to spur us on to love and good deeds.

* For some helpful theological reflection on the concept of "thin places" see Mark D. Roberts Blog series on the topic. This is where I found this particular definition. http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/thinplaces.htm