March 13, 2013

• IS IT GOD? IS IT ME? OR IS IT MEMOREX?

   

  Does God Still Speak?
  

   

  

  Nope!  Not how God speaks.
  

   

   

   

  "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me."

  John 10:27

   

   

  When I say, "God speaks to me", I'm saying a great deal more.  I spent the early years of my relationship with God wondering who was doing the talking.  My own feelings fairly shrieked at me.  What other people felt and wanted got through loud and clear.  That crappy Pharisaical religious voice could have ruined my whole life.   Was God speaking to me at the time?  Yes, surprisingly, very often.  Now when I say God speaks or spoke to me, I don't mean God sat down across a table from me at Starbucks.  Don't get me wrong that would be so unutterably cool, but that isn't God's style.  Learning God's style of speaking is very important.  There are many people who believe many things about God which have nothing to do with God at all.   How does God speak?  How can I know it is God speaking and not merely my own selfish desires, someone elses selfish desires, or even the narrow dogma of the self-appointed Pharisaical morality police?

  WHO DO YOU SAY JESUS IS?

  The first and most important step to hearing from God is to recognize that God is a completely separate person from oneself.  My friend Shawn tells the story of a seminary professor. who always asks his first year students to explain their personal view of Jesus Christ.  Without fail, the majority of his students present a view of Jesus Christ as a person who is just like them.  This professor then sets out to present Jesus of Nazareth as a person who stands alone.  At the end of the course this professor again asks his students to write about their personal view of who Jesus is.  Again, without fail, the majority of his students, despite his best efforts to challenge their thinking, present a personal perspective that Jesus is a person just like them. 

  God is nothing like me or you.  We are God's good idea, but we have taken it upon ourselves to ruin God's idea.  God is his own person, and the only human who is like him is Jesus.  This is why everyone born of God is predestined to be conformed to the image and likeness of Christ.  Jesus is not a miracle working appendage of mine.  Jesus is not a celestial slot machine which pays off if I put enough "faith" quarters in the coin slot.   If Jesus is just like me, then we have an enormous problem.  I can't save myself, so if Jesus is just like me, he can't save me, and he'd be doomed himself.   Jesus is not a Republican or a Democrat; not a conservative and not a liberal.  Jesus would never vote for Obama or Bush.  Jesus is a king, and he has his own kingdom.  It is recorded in the gospel of John, no less than four times, that Jesus' kingdom is not of this world.   It doesn't matter how many times God says something, people who've decided God is like them will make God say the most outrageous, and all too often heinous things. 

  I remember a call from a woman when I worked the prayer line at my first church.  She called and wanted God to make this guy she was interested in romantically, declare himself.  She had other opportunities, and wanted to pursue those if the guy wasn't into her.  I asked her why she didn't merely pray for God's perfect will.  Her response shocked me.  She said, "I was married before, and at first he seemed like a Christian, but he turned out to be a false believer and a cheater."   She continued, "I asked God over and over to tell me if I shouldn't marry him, and God never warned me."   She finished with, "I'm not sure I can trust God..."  I said, "May I ask you a personal question?"  She responded, "Sure, I may not answer it, but you can ask."  I asked, "Did you and your ex-husband have sex before marriage?"   "Ummm..." she was caught off guard, but collected herself quickly, "I don't know what it has to do with anything...but yes, we did."  She wasn't too happy about the direction of our conversation.   She then asked, rather testily, "What does that have to do with God answering me about whether or not I should have married him?!"   I responded as calmly as I could, "Well, what does the Bible say about sex outside of marriage?"   "We were going to get married anyway, so I don't see what difference it makes," she fairly spat out.   I asked again, "What does God tell us in the Bible about sex outside of marriage...?"   This phone call wasn't going the direction she wanted, and she didn't bother hiding her increasing frustration and anger.  "WHAT HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH ANYTHING?"  "THAT MARRIAGE IS OVER, AND GOD NEVER BOTHERED WARNING ME..."   I said, "God tells us to "flee" sexual immorality, doesn't it?"   She was nearly yelling at me, "OKAY, YES, BUT SO WHAT?  GOD COULD STILL HAVE WARNED ME NOT TO MARRY THE GUY!!"  I responded, again as calmly as I could, "God already spoke to you through what has been written in the Bible for thousands of years... If you didn't listen to what is clearly stated in black and white, why would God think you'd listen to anything else?"  "You didn't care about anything God said, so you certainly won't care about anything else he is going to say."   Utter silence... for the first time she was listening and not pushing for having her prayer.   "Okay," she said, "you're right...maybe God didn't warn me because I wasn't listening."   She continued attempting to be quite reasonable, "I'm trying to seek God now, and I haven't had sex with this guy..."   I said, "Alright... may I pray for God's perfect will for your life?"   The anger returned, "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST PRAY THE PRAYER I WANT YOU TO PRAY???!!!".  "NO!" I said, "I will gladly pray for you, but I will only pray for God's perfect will... take it or leave it."  

  She left it.  I was a judgmental little a-hole wasn't I?  Actually, I wasn't judging her.  It hadn't been all that long since I'd quit having sex outside of marriage myself.  If she hadn't been professing to be a committed Christian, I'd have never handled the situation the way I did.   I'd been hanging out with hookers for a couple of years by this point and my judgmental attitude had been undergoing a radical change.  I didn't see this woman as some terrible sinner.  I saw her as no different from myself.  I'd always wanted God to accept my sexually active lifestyle, but...BUT I certainly never made God in my own image.  I never made for myself a Jesus who winked at my sin; or a 20th Century Jesus who was with "the program".   My own view of my "immoral" lifestyle had also begun to change.  By the end of my lifestyle I wasn't enjoying sex anymore.  It was more like having hives that could never be scratched into submission.  I'm certain that when I started having sex I enjoyed it plenty, but no one had ever told me that when the pain, loneliness, and self-loathing get powerful enough you can't remember anything good about it.  I didn't hate the woman on the other end of the phone line.  I didn't condemn her, but I knew from my own life experience and my experiences with hookers that God has an important point to make about sexuality.   I didn't know all God's reasons for putting the boundaries around human sexuality, but I was quietly glad for the change in my own life.  I never scratched the itch enough to make it go away, but I found in God's boundaries, for the first time, the freedom I thought I would find in "sexual" freedom.   Were God not different, those, "proverbial" hives would have surely lead to my death, by my own hand. 

  The bottom line for me is, always has been, and always will be, God is his own person.  He conforms me to the likeness and image of Jesus.  I do not define God, and the longer I live the more I am glad God is VASTLY DIFFERENT from me.

  When God speaks he doesn't sound like us, and he doesn't think like us.  When God speaks it is costly to give an ear.   Jesus said it..."Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”  Mark 10:21  When God looks at us with love one of the things he always says to us is, ..."come, take up the cross, and follow me."   God isn't a bully.  God knows the truth about me, and all of human kind.   "There is a way that seems right to a person, but in the end it is the path to death."  Proverbs 14:12  

   

   

  • 11:46 PM
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