That is…
’Cause sometimes we can’t seem to hear him. Much as we try, we can’t detect what he’s telling us. Sometimes because we’re too stubborn or impatient to listen. Sometimes because haven’t listened to the last thing he told us to do, so he’s waiting for us to act on that before he tells us anything more. (Oho, didn’t think of that one, did you?) And sometimes because we’re listening to him instead of
Y’see, too many of us Christians get into the bad habit of not reading the scriptures. And once we’ve learned to hear God, we figure, “Why bother?” God already tells us what we need to know! Why dig around some 2,000-year-old book for answers when we can just ask our Father, “Hey, what do I need to know rght now?” I mean, if it really is a need-to-know deal, God’ll come through, right?
Yeah,
God’s training us to be better than that. You think Jesus,
So from time to time, when he feels we need to crack our bibles and get back into ’em, God puts his side of the conversation on pause. Or he straight-up tells us (as he has me, many times), “I already answered that in the scriptures; read your bible.”
Hence that’s become my go-to response whenever somebody tells me, “I haven’t heard from God lately,” or otherwise complains God feels so distant, or the heavens feel like brass when they pray.
Okay, maybe you already do read your bible. Good. Keep it up.
And go deeper.
A lot of people don’t read. Not just bible; they don’t read anything. My dad, fr’instance: He doesn’t read newspapers, the internet, or books. He listens to the radio, and watches TV news and YouTube. Buy him a book and he’ll never read it. Write an email that’s too long, and he’ll get irritated: You could’ve phoned him and said all this stuff, and now he’s gotta read it.
Likewise a lot of Christians don’t read. Not because they’re dodging the bible; they don’t read anything. (They might listen to
There are a number of valid reasons people don’t read, like learning disabilities, poor eyesight, poor retention, and so forth. Reading takes a lot of effort for them. Way more than they care to put in. Which is why I point such people to audio bibles; does it matter how they get their bible?
Other times it’s purely an deficiency
When we get too dependent on God’s short answers, it’s a lot like feeding children nothing but Doritos and Pepsi: Kids need a regular substantial, nutritious meal! For Christians, that’d be bible. The writer of Hebrews was irritated at how her audience was only interested in snacking at God’s table. Because they weren’t deep thinkers, it seriously restricted what and how much she, and her fellow Christian leaders, could teach them:
Hebrews 5.11-14 NLT - 11 There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. 12 You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. 13 For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. 14 Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.
The problem with quick answers is how little thought goes into them, and how rarely Christians
So we gotta wrestle with these ideas. Study them.
Get a better grip on how God’s voice sounds.
Every so often, a Christian’ll tell me something cool they’re pretty sure God’s told them. Problem is, their cool new idea doesn’t always jibe with the bible. Verses instantly come to my mind which contradict their clever ideas. (’Cause I know a lot of bible. ’Cause I read it!)
So here’s the obvious question: Why do these people think God told them this?
Well a clever idea dropped into their heads, and they’re pretty sure it’s not just a clever idea, but a God-idea. It’s so clever, it can’t be their idea; the Holy Spirit must’ve dropped it into them.
Which makes sense. That is one of the usual ways God talks to us. But here’s the catch: The Holy Spirit is
God’s voice isn’t an audible voice! (It can be of course, but more commonly he doesn’t talk to us with an audible voice.) So how do you know what you heard is his voice? How do you know it’s not your imagination, where you’re imagining what the Holy Spirit might say… but really it’s just you, having conversations with yourself like
I’ve met more than one Christian who’s been talking to themselves all this time. How can I tell? ’Cause their “messages from God” aren’t necessarily evil—they know better than to embrace evil!—but they’re not consistent with bible. Or they think they’re consistent with bible, but they interpret the bible wrong in obvious ways, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t interpret the bible wrong at all.
And of course their predictions about the future don’t happen. Every time they go out on a limb, it snaps.
Okay, let’s begin with the basics. How do we detect whether the voice in our minds “sounds” like God, even though he doesn’t use soundwaves? It’s actually simple: We gotta recognize the content of his character. We know him
But how do we learn the content of God’s character? Also simple: Read your bible.
With rare exceptions, God won’t tell us anything inconsistent with his character. And in the scriptures, that’s what God sounds like: We see him consistently speak in character, regardless of whatever prophet he speaks through. When we read the words of Jesus, we hear exactly what God sounds like.
So we need to get very familiar with, and regularly return to, the scriptures’ examples of God’s voice. Otherwise we’re gonna base God’s voice on what we think he last told us. And if that’s actually the devil who last told us something, it’s gonna trick us into making it the baseline for what God sounds like. Yep, this is precisely how
I mentioned “rare exceptions” where God’s gonna say something inconsistent with his character. Yes, sometimes he does that! It’s meant to shake us up a little, and get our attention: “Wait a minute, God! Didn’t you say otherwise?” But how’re we gonna know he said otherwise… unless we read our bibles? Note
Who says God can’t speak to us through the bible?
The Holy Spirit
Now don’t get the wrong idea: When the Spirit drops these insights into our brains, he doesn’t change the meanings of the scriptures so they now mean something new. Yet plenty of Christians imagine he does. I’ve heard many a false prophet quote
True, you’re gonna read the bible and think, “I thought it meant one thing, but in context it means something entirely different!” Happens to Christians all the time. It’s because there are so many bad teachers out there, misquoting away. We’ve learned so much junk, and the Holy Spirit has so much to correct! It’s just shameful how often bible is misused.
But yeah, the Spirit’s frequently gonna remove the veil from in front of our eyes so we can finally understand what the scriptures have said all along.
Frequently the Spirit’ll show me something as I’m reading the bible… and then I’ll go double-check it with a historian or biblical commentary. Most of the time, the scholars’ studies of these verses line up precisely with what the Spirit just told me. It’s kinda nice to have God’s revelations confirmed by scholars. It helps me know I (and they!) aren’t misfiring.
When the Spirit gets personally involved in our bible study, it’s
Indirect revelation.
But even when the Holy Spirit doesn’t plan to personally guide us through his bible, it’s still a good idea to read it as we’re waiting for the Spirit to say something.
Back in the olden days—before phones, email, DMs, and texts—people had to wait a long time between communications from their loved ones. They’d send a letter or telegram, and have to wait a day. Or days. Or weeks or longer. What were they to do in the meanwhile? Well they could sit and wait and go squirrelly. Or they could get out their loved one’s old telegrams and letters, and read them.
The bible is God’s old letters.
So rather than sit there and imagine what God might say, it’s much healthier and more realistic to look back on what God did say. Because it’s very easy to imagine God wrong. We’re nothing like God. Our sin and self-centeredness twists everything. When we speculate what Jesus might do, we have a bad habit of inventing a twisted caricature of Jesus
But when we read the scriptures (and don’t distort them!) we have something solid to go on. Really, it’s a lot more solid than the stuff he told us personally. Not because the bible’s more reliable than God; I’m absolutely not saying that. It’s because the bible’s more reliable than us. We might’ve misheard or misunderstood God. We might be re-interpreting what he told us, just as we might bend what he said in the bible, in favor of our own selfish ideas which we like better. But in the case of the bible, everybody has a copy of God’s words; everybody can read it for ourselves; everybody can confirm he really did say and mean that. Much easier to double-check the bible than our personal revelations.
So read your bible. Keep reading your bible. Never stop reading your bible. And whenever God grows quiet… fall back on your bible. Not as a substitute for God; it’s never that. Those that treat it that way
