St. John Studies

I was in a Bible study at church the other night and a woman was present who expressed a sentiment that many of us feel.

“I can go to Bible study after having read my assignment and I think I know what the verses mean. I listen to people discuss the verses and then I go home with very different ideas, ideas people have shared around the table.”

Such it is with the parable of the talents [Matthew 25: 14-30] as Dr. Willard expresses a new view [for me] of the famous passage.

Dr. Willard seems to think the parable is about the human perception of God as taskmaster. Of course when the master gave talents to two of the servants, they increased their talents by 50%. The other servant buried his talent and gave it back to his master.

He explained that he did that because he was afraid to lose the money and he anticipated his master’s anger if that happened because the master is a “hard man.”

What made the master mad was his servant’s conservatism, his inability to take the money and make it grow.

What the conservative servant did was misunderstand his master.

It is not too much of a leap to see that the master is God and we are the servants.

Do you see God as a hard man?

Do you see God as a conservative taskmaster?

Do you fear God’s punishment if you make a mistake?

Does that fear keep you from taking action in this world, action which God wants you to take?

Dr. Willard says God does not want to be our “cosmic boss, foreman or autocrat, whose chief joy in relation to humans is ordering them around, taking pleasure in seeing them jump at his command and painstakingly noting down any failures.”

How would God prefer to see us?

Friends

John 15:13-15

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Co-workers

1 Corinthians 3:9

“For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

It is a shame that some people don’t understand how God wants to relate to us.

Yet that is what it is for many people.

I had a good friend who told me that he did not want to believe in God because God just keeps “black books” on people. He is waiting for us to mess up so he can put black marks in his book. He told me that that type of life is not for him. He wanted to have fun with his alcohol, his partying and his “fun” lifestyle.

His misconception is keeping him from joining the church. His misconception is keeping him from understanding God. His misconception is keeping him from knowing “the peace that passes all understanding.”

The irony of this misunderstanding of the role of God is that if you want God to be your taskmaster, He will fulfill that role, even though He does not want to fulfill it.

Dr. Willard says “He [God] …often condescends to us because our consciousness cannot rise any higher.” He admits if we have had harsh taskmasters as parents, bosses or other superiors, that can distort our view of God. But that is a shame. God does not want to be our personal autocrat.

To be our friend, we must share our thoughts with God.

To be our coworker, we must be willing to do what God wants us to do.

It is not easy. I know of many people who cannot share their concerns with others. I don’t know if they feel their thoughts are unimportant or if they feel they must live a life of secrecy and they are quiet people who don’t feel compelled to share.

I also know of people who are stuck in a routine that is the opposite of growth. They are mired in concrete, trying to maintain their status quo. I know some folks who are scared to death of change and get ill if anything in their life changes.

As I mention these two problems, I return again to the parable of the talents.

The disappointing servant would not disappoint his master if he had practiced good communication with his master, sharing his perception of his task and asking questions. The disappointing servant would not disappoint his master if he had been willing to take a chance and invest his talent so it would grow.

Question of the day:

What are you doing with your talents? Are you taking what God has given you and doing something with your talents? Are you wasting your talents by being too conservative?

I have written about grace before. It is a term that is so hard to understand. The short meaning is unmerited favor. Why would God extend His grace to us? We don’t deserve it. We need it. We are all flawed individuals, in need of understanding and forgiveness for the sins we all bear, every day.

Another term that is spoken a lot in Christian circles is agape love. Like grace, what makes it so hard to understand is the idea that it goes against our cultural values.

Agape love is what I would call a theme of the New Testament so it is very important that we understand it. So many phrases occur in the NT that help us define agape [Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, Love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude. Love is not selfish]. Paul writes so much about an unselfish love, a self-giving love that is the result of living a life of Christ.   The source of this love is God. The response of faith that we have is the result of this love. Paul spells out that the Christian walk we have with God results in an increase of love that we have for others.

The love we feel is given to us via The Holy Spirit.

This is where Hearing God comes into play. Dr. Willard feels that human beings begin to understand agape love through the maturing process of hearing from God.

We don’t have a mindless relationship with God. We come to Him because we want to. We come to him with intact personalities.

He takes us as we are and he works with us to make us better Christians.

The Bible has so many rich images and to me one of the most powerful is that God is working with us just as a potter works with clay. Jeremiah 18 references the image of Jeremiah going to the potter’s house where he saw the potter working at the wheel. He was shaping the clay and it was marred. He started over with another pot. God explains to Jeremiah that He can do to Israel what the potter is doing to the pot.

What God is doing to you and me is shaping us, just like that potter shapes the pot on the potter’s wheel.

Dr. Willard states that we are already established as the clay is established. He goes further by stating that we are not without a mind, we have our freedom and we have personalities.   God knows us intimately. God is willing to work with us with the idea that we have intelligence, freedom of choice and personality.

At times, I wonder why He would want to develop me, with all the flaws that I have.

But He does.   To develop people into better people is a major goal of God. That’s why He wants to establish a relationship with us. Over time, we learn from God as he communicates his messages to us and one of the best messages He communicates is a deep understanding of agape love.

What stands in the way of this message?

Again, agape love flies in the face of American cultural values. Today we [as a culture] are pretty selfish. The idea of grabbing as much as you can in life is pounded into us from all types of media sources. Giving love to others is not the prevailing thought. The prevailing thought is that we should get love from others, mostly a love that is centered on physical pleasure and satisfaction.

Agape love is not centered on physical pleasure and satisfaction; it is about benevolence, it is about selflessness, it is about others, not me.

To understand this complex concept, one needs to hear the voice of God and comprehend it.   One needs to hear the voice of God and realize that the Voice is about growth. One needs to hear the voice of God and realize that God wants us to mature as Christians.

People who struggle to understand agape love the most are the unchurched and Christians who are stuck. Stuck Christians are not growing. They are not interested in learning. They are mired in their own problems to the point that their thoughts are centered around themselves.

The person who understands agape love knows that others need their love and people who need it most are the people who struggle the most, the poor, the down-trodden, the lost, the sick and yes, your enemies.

Dr. Willard says that our “primary goals are not just to hear the voice of God but to be mature people in a loving relationship with him.”

One of the most important “primary goals” is to work to understand and implement agape love in our lives.

In Chapter 1, Dr. Willard says there are three general problem areas that humans have regarding receiving messages from God.

I know he comments on them but I want to discuss them also. They deserve extra attention.

Problem Area # 1

It is human nature but sometimes we want to inhibit the Lord and His power. However, Dr. Willard says God can communicate to us in many forms. He is all powerful and He will use any means that He wants to use to send us messages.   Too often you hear things like “The same issue keeps showing up again and again — maybe it’s God trying to tell me something.” “I don’t feel at peace about something, there may be a message in my turmoil.” “I feel at peace, there is a message in that.” “A similar idea or theme keeps showing up in my life; perhaps there is something to learn from God in this recurring idea.” “A door has closed in some area of your life; perhaps there is something better or different on the horizon.”   These are common signs that people cite as instances of God communication but as Dr. Willard says, “God is willing to reach out to humanity in whatever ways are suitable to its fallen and weakened condition.” If we get fixated on certain things happening, we may miss a message from God when He gets creative in His message delivery system. Our preferences for certain communications can limit our ability to receive His word.

Problem Area # 2

We have wrong motives for seeking to hear from God. I don’t know how much time I spend in my day thinking about what I am going to do. It disturbs me greatly that I don’t pay more attention to what I am doing in the moment. What I am saying is I want to know my future.

This obsession about knowing my future can weaken my faith in my Lord as I want to hear what God has in store for me. Many of us are like that. We want to glare into the crystal ball and see where we will be next week, next month, and next year!

We want to know God’s will for our lives. We want to know how to get prepared.   We want to see a bright future. That knowledge of the future is powerful but it is not the main reason to know God’s will.

Most of us are so preoccupied with ourselves that we don’t want to be surprised. We want to be safe and comfortable.

What if God does not want us to be comfortable? What if he wants us to rely on Him a day at a time? The Israelites were promised by God that He would provide for them as they crossed the desert and God did, but they were not happy. They wanted to store the manna that God provided but He said do not store it. It will spoil. They chose to disobey His commands and it did spoil. God was not happy at all.

What did God want?

He wanted them to depend on Him day by day.

We want to know what to expect tomorrow and the day after.

Problem Area # 3

How we perceive God can be a problem. I have commented in a past entry about some people who see God as a benefactor. Some see God as a friend and some see God as a change agent.

How we see God can have a profound effect on how we receive messages from Him.

I have heard countless times of people struggling to know God. The major stumbling block can be how they were treated by their earthly father. If a child has an abusive father, that can make a relationship with the Heavenly Father tough. If a child has a permissive father, that can make a relationship with the Heavenly Father tough.

I have heard people say “I could not relate to God until I cleared away my thoughts about my earthly Dad from my experience.”

God is not going to be domineering. God is not going to be too directive. God is not going to be controlling.

God wants you to choose your behaviors. He may guide you and me but He wants us to be active in the way we shape our behaviors.

I had a counselor tell me one time about the love of the Lord. He does not want us to be caged birds.   He wants us to be birds that live in a cage with an open door. The cage shows us some boundaries but we are free to live as we want. What makes God happy? We fly back to the cage and choose to live with Him.

That’s a pretty simple explanation of God’s unconditional love and His desire for us to have free will.

He does not want to treat us like children. He wants us to live a life of adults, making adult decisions, living adult Christian lives, choosing Him over the distractions of everyday life.

Dr. Willard uses John 10:27 to summarize this point: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

As we move on into Hearing God, Dr. Willard will address these three problems in greater detail, but I am sure that he will say that these impediments to hearing God must be dealt with if we want to have Divine communications.

As we reflect on the three problems, they are caused by our lack, not God’s. We are the ones who want God to talk to us in agreed-upon ways. We are the ones who want God to predict our futures, and we are the ones who want God to be more directive or less directive. God wants us to have free will.

If the rest of Dr. Willard’s book is as good as what he has written so far, the three general problem areas will not be left undiscussed, unanalyzed and unsolved.

These barriers to hearing from God will be removed and we will be all the better for having studied them.

Hearing from God is a serious subject and Dr. Willard knows that.

When messages from God are discussed, it is important to consider all aspects of the topic. Let’s look at some scriptures.

“Everything that happens in this world happens at the time God chooses.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17).

Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

Proverbs 16:9 “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”

Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Second Chronicles 20:6 “O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you.”

What is the focus of these scriptures?  They all seem to support the idea that God is totally in charge.

Not seeing God in everyday Life

But is God totally in charge?  How much of what happens on this earth can be attributed to God and how much of what happens on earth can be attributed to man?  When something happens, what is the cause? One would turn to the scripture above and say “Well of course, it is God. He is totally in charge.”  However, many people experience life and do not see God in anything at all.  Those people find themselves unable to decipher messages from God and Dr. Willard states they can make “no sense of what is called ‘divine guidance’”. So how can anyone say that God commands them or God is in charge of them and what they do?  These people call what happens in life “blind force” or “fate.”

God is in charge of all of life

Others take the idea of being in charge to the dangerous extreme that God is so in charge of everything that man is not in charge of anything.  This is the idea that decisions that I make do not count because I am an ordinary person.  Let me say that this can cause a person to lose their faith in God.  I do make decisions and some of my decisions are bad. I literally get in the way of the wonderful life God has in store for me and that is a shame. But it happens.  To say that God controls all my choices is incorrect.   To attribute all that happens in the world to God—both the good and the bad–is incorrect. Man gets in the way of God’s plan all the time.  All evil in the world comes from acts of man, not God.

Confusing a Desire of Man for a Message from God

Some people are devout followers of God and they earnestly seek God’s guidance. There is nothing wrong with that but one should be careful. Too often a personal desire can creep in and become a “message” from God. Too often a person can act on a whim and that can be their “message” from God. Some people may have dangerous routines that can lead them far from receiving a real message of God.

I had a friend who sought God’s guidance and he was what many considered a devout Christian. Very frequently when he was in the midst of times of indecision he would take his Bible and drop it on his desk [on the spine of the Bible]. The Bible would open up to a random page and then he would close his eyes and point to a place on the page. That was his message from God.

Good routine or bad? You decide.

Messages of God used for the Power of Man

Lastly we have people who are intent on having earthly power and they use messages from God to get their way. What are we talking about here?  Examples could be David Koresh and the Branch Davidian disaster of 1993.   Toss in Jim Jones and The People’s Temple in 1978.  On a more personal level, my son had his first experience as a member of a jury in Chicago. The trial was to determine the guilt or innocence of a man who was accused of molesting his own daughter over a period of time. The man took the stand and cited scripture that was supposed to justify his actions.  Really?

These people felt they heard from God but did they? I wonder if God was just a way for them to exercise power over others.  This is man’s madness justified in the name of God.  Before we consider messages from God seriously, we need to admit that some of the greatest misunderstanding of God’s messages comes from man as he tries to interpret the messages.  As in human communication, the message can be sent, but that does not mean that it is understood.  The sad fact of the matter is the old communication adage, the “meaning of the message is in the receiver.” Certainly a wonderful message from God can be messed up by man.  Man can take good intentions of our Lord and Savior and not be able to see them, twist them around to his desires, or even manipulate a “message” as a way to grab power.

Obviously there are many scriptures pointing to the idea that God is in charge but that does not mean that man is not there, messing up God’s plan.

When you get down to “brass tacks”, you have to admit…

We can mess up a good thing…

Even a word from God…

Can human communication ideas apply to the idea of hearing messages from God? Maybe they can. Dr. Dallas Willard’s book title is Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God. Conversation is the basic building block of human beings sharing messages with each other so it would seem possible. In this post, I will try to apply some concepts of communication to help us understand how to relate to God better. The idea is that if it works for humans, maybe it could transfer into a Divine relationship.

How does one empathize with God? Well empathy is a key element to help us relate to other humans.   What is God’s perspective? Do you think of God as your judgmental parent? Do you think of God as your Santa Claus, gifting you with everything you want on your list? Do you think of God as a big manipulator, who arranges the world in your favor? This list could go on and on but let’s stop. Do you realize that God wants to relate to you?   For me that is the story of the Old Testament, the story of His efforts to relate to man and woman. Finally, Jesus arrives on earth to be that Human/Divine Model that we can relate to. How do you empathize with God? For Christians empathy comes from Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4:15 states “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feeling of another. Reading and studying the New Testament is the key.

Be open to developing new skills. To have a good relationship with a human friend, one needs to learn to appreciate what they are interested in and find a way to talk to them about it. Instead of saying “I can’t do that” or “I don’t know how”, be open to saying “I will try.”   I believe God does not want us to be stagnant. He wants us to grow and use the skills we have. There is nothing worse than the defeated Christian who has relegated themselves to the “sideline” when they should be “in the game”. Work to learn new ways of serving. Develop new skills that will help you relate to people and maybe even relate to God.

Commit to prayer. This sounds like a “duh” comment but when you commit to prayer, you are committing to regular communication with God. Whatever you best time is, find it. Use that special time to talk to God and tell Him what is on your heart. I know it is difficult to say that you must have quiet time every day; some people don’t ever seem to have it at all, but find quiet time and talk to God, even if it is on the way to work in your car. Don’t worry, the person next to you at the stoplight will only think you have a hands-free cellphone in your vehicle.

Be flexible. People require that and God appreciates it too. Don’t lock yourself down to doing things a certain way and never change. Be open with God. Ask Him to put you where you need to be and He will. Ask him to use your skills and he will find a place for you to use them.   I am convinced that God can use flexible people. Human friends like that too. No one likes to be around a “stick-in-the mud” type of person.

Work to learn more about God’s word. The Bible is God’s written message to us and to be honest it is a shame that the United States has more Bibles than people but readership ranks far below ownership. That needs to change for a person who wants to have a conversational relationship with God. Read His word and get to know Him through His word. Better yet, before you read His word, pray for Him to open the meaning of His word to you and He will.

Always remember people appreciate honesty. Good friends demand it. No one likes a friend who has a hidden agenda. No one likes a manipulator. Can you imagine trying to hide things from God. It is absurd to think that you can. God knows everything and you cannot hide your sin from Him. With friends you can do this but when they find out, that damages the relationship. Do you think that trying to be less than honest is good for your relationship with God? It does not help.

Lastly be open. This is a key for relationships. Be willing to share your personal feelings with others. Don’t try to keep things to yourself that you should share with a friend. If they are your friend, they will keep that information private. Some people are so private that they inhibit their relationships. They do not share information from their private lives and other people just know the veneer, the superfluous information that is obvious to all.  Break through those inhibitions and really reveal what is on your mind. It can work with humans; it is necessary with God.

I am reminded of song lyrics out of my past, song lyrics that helped give Barbra Streisand a hit in 1964 as she built on her starring role in the musical Funny Girl.

As you read the lyrics and think about what I said above, it is uncanny how much they could apply to relating to God.

“With one person, one very special person

A feeling deep in your soul

Says you were half,

Now you’re whole.

No more hunger and thirst

But first be a person

Who needs people.

People who need people

Are the luckiest people

In the world!”

People who need God are the luckiest people in the world.

Too often when we think about hearing God, we think it has to be a direct communication. For example, we think of Paul on the road to Damascus as Jesus’ voice says “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Acts 9:4.

In Acts it is reported that an actual voice communicates to Saul, the voice of Jesus Christ.

However, does it have to be an actual voice from above?

Not at all.

Dr. Willard tells of his early days as a pastor when he felt that God could speak to him through others. There are other examples.  Roman Catholics believe that the Pope has a direct connection and communication with God.  The Pope is a conduit for God’s messages.   My pastor has told me that she wakes early on Sunday mornings and she prays in earnest that something she says in her sermon that morning will touch someone’s heart and help them believe.  She prays for God to send a message through her to someone who needs it.

In other words, these instances show a belief that God can work through people.

In many sources, it is stated that God can speak through people, and I must admit that I believe that.

But I also believe that Satan can speak through people. Just the other day someone pulled me aside and warned me about something. I heard it and I immediately “considered the source.” This person can be very critical and judgmental, so I did not hold the comment in very high regard.  The comment was meant to tear down not build up.

I have a very close friend who believes in human prophecy. In fact, I have attended his church and have received a “prophetic word” from a visiting evangelist. When the evangelist/prophet “spoke a word into my life,” I heard it and wondered about it. I am not sure I believed it, but I did receive it. Others in attendance told me that they believed it.

My close friend has delivered prophetic messages to his church, but his denomination encourages those types of messages and accepts them.  Not all denominations expect prophetic words from pastors.

The Crosswalk Blog says that messages from God come through people, and they are usually a warning, a blessing or a prophetic truth. The big question for Christians is do we pay attention to these messages or do we ignore them?

The major factor in deciding what to do with “words from God” is do they line up with Scripture.

When the noble people of Berea wanted to know the truth regarding the Christian religion, they did not wait for a voice from God to answer their concerns. Rather, they examined the Scriptures to determine the truth of the apostolic message (Acts 17:11). When Paul preached at Berea, the people “received the Scripture with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Taking a word from a person and believing it is a word from God can be dangerous if you take it without examination or even some Biblical research.

However it says in James “The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere” (3:17).

That standard for the word of God is found in Scripture.

In the writing of 1 Samuel, Samuel hears from the Lord and Dr. Willard cites this as an instance when God spoke through a person.

Certainly the prophet Eli knew that the boy Samuel was hearing from God. Eli insisted that Samuel tell him what God had said and the young man had to tell him that a curse would fall on the house of Eli. That word was not easy to pass along but Samuel imparted the bad news to his mentor.

Dr. Willard refers to the counsel he has received from great Christians like John Calvin and William Law.  These venerable theologians have given him insight about how he should minister to others regarding God speaking through people.  Willard knows that Calvin and Law state that the same Lord that sent messages to men of the Bible times still sends messages to men today.

Willard also knows that for him to be a messenger of God he needs to have a heart open to the Lord.

In closing, no one wants to think that a pastor, a counselor, or a good friend would tell you a word that you believed came from God and you found out that this was just manipulation on their part. God is much bigger and better than that.   I would also imagine that God would not appreciate being used as someone’s strategy to get their way.

Certainly we wonder about messages that come from people, messages that are purported to be “words of God”.

However I personally believe God can do this.

The Crosswalk Blog rightly references Numbers 22:38.

If God could speak through a donkey, He certainly has the power to speak through a person.

That makes sense to me…

The Lord speaks to Moses in Exodus 33:11. The twenty-third Psalm of David makes reference to being lead, being guided, being with God, being comforted by God. In Isaiah, God speaks to Jacob and refers to calling him [Isaiah 41:8].

Lest we not forget to mention the New Testament, Jesus comments on the Holy Spirit repeatedly: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” [John 3: 6-8].   Paul refers to what Jesus said in the lines in Hebrews 13:5-6: “Never will I leave you;  never will I forsake you. So we say with confidence, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

It would seem Dr. Willard says that human beings are made to receive messages from God.

That is good if you believe that.

That is good if you are willing to listen.

That is very good if you are willing to do what God tells you to do.

But…

Here are the “sticky” points…

Many of us have our own agendas.   We want messages from God, but we want God to speak to us and tell us what we want to do.

Many of us want it even better than that. We ask God to “do” for us. We want God to do for us what we want Him to do.  This goes beyond just giving permission. We want Him to be our personal active Divine Agent.

This flies in the face of God’s will for us.

To be in God’s will means that we turn over control to Him.  He determines what we need and He gives us that.

The big question is, do you want “that”?

Dr. Willard states “we can be solidly in the will of God and be aware that we are, without knowing God’s preference in regard to various details of our lives. We can be in His will as we do certain things without our knowing that he prefers these actions to certain other possibilities.”

The way I read that, we are in His will and not our own.

This makes perfect sense in that famous prayer we pray from Matthew 6:9-13 “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” How many times have we said this prayer by rote in church and never even thought it means that we are praying for God to take over.

Yet Dr. Willard further says the “hearing [of] God makes sense only in the framework of living in the will of God.”

We have choices: to live in His will or not. Many don’t want to try to please God. They want to please society or themselves. They pursue many gods other than the God. Yet that is not what God wants for us.

To hear God and do what He asks is to live the best life on earth we can.

Lest we go too far with this and you break out the ten commandments and get obsessed with following every one of them “to the letter”, Dr. Willard cites 2 Corinthians 3:6 “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life..” One can do everything that God commands and may still not be living in God’s will.   There is such a thing as trying to work too hard to be perfect and failing. The spirit factor comes into play here. Christians who are hearing from God and doing His will are not just following a set of rules; they are flowing in God’s Spirit.

The “rules” are expected of us but the response of the spirit to God’s urging is where God wants the growth to occur. That’s where people in the Bible got their inspiration to be more than they thought they could be. God told Moses he could lead even though Moses complained he could not speak. David did not have what it took because he committed adultery but God used Him nevertheless.  Paul murdered Christians and Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles. Thomas had to have supreme evidence and doubted until he had it.  The resurrected Jesus provided that evidence and Thomas became a missionary to India.   Abraham was too old to be the father of a great nation, but God used him as a father to establish a covenantal relationship between Israel and God.

The list goes on and on.

What distinguishes all these Bible characters [they certainly were not perfect rule followers]? They talked to God, they listened to God and they did what God asked of them; they were not afraid of flowing in God’s spirit.

So let me ask one more time.

Is This a Book You Really Want to Read?

To take Dr. Willard seriously, you have to understand that God wants us to live in His will.   To take God seriously you will have to understand that God rules.  To grow as a Christian, you have to let the Holy Spirit lead.

And recognize that we don’t have control of all this, God does…

“God spoke to me.”

“The Holy Spirit put it on my heart.”

“God revealed this idea to me.”

If you have ever been around Christians, you may have heard expressions like these. They refer to “hearing” from God.

At my church, I had a venerable woman come to me one day and she informed me that a decision she had made was the direct result of God giving her a message.   Another person told me that she had picked her successor in a Sunday School classroom based on God “putting that person’s name on her heart.”

What do you think when you hear Christians say such things?

Do you believe these messages are real?

Do you think the person who says this is crazy?

Are they trying to manipulate people and their views of various situations by using a Divine reference?

And if you doubt them, are you a cynical person, by wondering about the truthfulness of what they are saying?

Dallas Willard deals with these issues and many more in his book Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God.

How many times have you had to make a decision and you needed some direction? What if we could telephone God and say “God, what would you do?” Would that not be cool? Then we could certainly move forward with certainty.

Or would we?

What if God told us something we did not want to hear? What if he asked us to sacrifice and it was a sacrifice we were not willing to make?   What if He asked us to give up something that is dear to us? What if we had to make a change and we know that change is going to make us very uncomfortable?

But we have called on God…

And God has answered us…

Shouldn’t we obey?

Maybe asking for God’s advice is easy. Maybe even hearing the advice is easy.

It is that doing part that is hard.

And then there are those indecisive people, even if God sends them a decision. Sometimes they are referred to as “overthinkers.”

You know what I mean. Some people never make a decision without doing what is commonly called “second-guessing” it. My Mother had my Dad’s pick-up truck in her possession when Dad died. She needed a car but I had serious doubts that she would ever use a pick-up truck. She asked my advice and I told her: I would sell it.   It cost extra money to insure it. It was not being used and as it sat in the garage, it was going to deteriorate.

It took her a long time to sell it, but eventually she did.

Five years later, at least 10 times a year, she brings up the feeling that she should not have sold the truck.

She is second guessing, third guessing, fourth guessing etc. her decision.

We worry about the consequences of our decisions and of course, there will be some. There always are. Some of us may have paid heavy prices for bad decisions we have made in the past. That makes us very leery of making any decision any day.

Sometimes I think the exception to all this vacillation is younger people. Young people, it seems, tend to worry little about their decisions. They have a lot of the “if it feels good, it must be right” attitude.

As we get older, maybe we have made a few bad decisions based on “if it feels good” and we are more hesitant to rely only on feelings.

But decisions have to be made nevertheless and some of their decisions turn out to be bad ones.

Maybe the opposite of a younger person who relies on their “gut” is the indecisive person. Have you ever been to the grocery store with an indecisive person? They stand in the canned vegetable aisle and ponder the wondrous selection of green peas available. They read labels, they look at the prices, they look at the brands etc. and eventually they pick a can of green peas.   It takes forever.

Would it be good to pray in the grocery aisle and ask God to help us pick out the peas?

I guess so.

It would be convenient.

It would save time.

Maybe it would keep us from thinking so much and having so much anxiety.

But do we want to bother God with such triviality?

Dr. Willard says in his preface that we have been created to receive messages from God, yes maybe even messages about pick-up trucks and cans of green peas. Who is to say that the truck or the can of peas is not important in God’s scheme? None of us really knows.

Yet we insist that only the most serious messages come from God…you know those messages about who to marry, whether to take the job or not, or if the surgery is necessary.

Dr. Willard says that the message will not matter if it is not truly God’s will that we do it. “Hearing God makes sense only in the framework of living in the will of God.” In his book, Dr. Willard will be discussing the Holy Spirit and how God’s messages come to us via our “Helper” and we also will be discussing God’s will.

Won’t it be nice to know God’s will for our lives?

Really? I’m not so sure…

Again, what if His will is not what we want?

It is reassuring to read our author’s words as he ends the preface: “My hope is to leave you with a clear sense of how to live confidently in a personal walk that is complemented by an ongoing conversational relationship with God.”

Think about it.

Don’t you want that?

There are lots of choices in that grocery story…lots of green peas.

info from Wikipedia

Willard was a longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985. Willard attended William Jewell College, and later graduated from Tennessee Temple College in 1956 with a B.A. in Psychology, and from Baylor University in 1957 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion. He went to graduate school at Baylor University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy with a minor in the History of Science in 1964. Willard taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1960–1965. Since then he had taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he served as Director of the School of Philosophy from 1982–1985. He had also held visiting appointments at UCLA (1969) and the University of Colorado (1984). In addition to teaching and writing about philosophy, Willard gave lectures and wrote books about Christianity and Christian living. His book The Divine Conspiracy was Christianity Today’s Book of the Year for 1999. Another of his books, Renovation of the Heart, won Christianity Today’s 2003 Book Award for books on Spirituality and The Association of Logos Bookstores’ 2003 Book Award for books on Christian Living. Willard believed passivity to be a widespread problem in the Church (loosely summed up in his phrase “Grace is not opposed to effort {which is action}, but to earning {which is attitude}”). He emphasized the importance of deliberately choosing to be a disciple of Jesus Christ (someone being with Jesus, learning to be like him). An important outgrowth of the choice to be identified as a disciple of Jesus is the desire to learn about activities that aid spiritual transformation into the likeness of Christ.

Our book we are studying is: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God Intervarsity Press…available at Amazon, Christian Book Distributors, kindle, paperback and hardback.

Some of you who read this blog know that the summer of 2015 has been the summer of the sick mothers for David and Susan Carter.

The beginning of this summer saw my mother confronted with a breast cancer diagnosis. The news about that was as good as it could be. Her cancer was low grade and after it was removed, she was so well that she did not have to endure other follow-up treatments.

The middle of this summer saw my mother-in-law suffer heart problems. She had what she thought was persistent indigestion and that resulted in a diagnosis of artery blockage leading to two heart bypasses.

Why am I telling you this?

There is a lesson here.

This will be my last entry about Pastor Francis Chan’s Crazy Love. As I think about the book, I can relate it to seeing elderly relatives recover or not recover from illness.

I have written about my Dad before. He passed in 2011 of several problems related to his heart. I saw Dad give up.

His passing was not fast. He struggled daily but put forth little effort to keep himself alive. I wanted him to get up and be the active Dad I always knew.

He sat.

He lived for television.

I kid about it now, but his only exercise was using his thumb on the remote control.

I wanted him to want life.

I wanted him to walk and get better.

But Dad did not want it.

My wife is faced with a similar situation now.   She is trying to get her mother to do the basic things a person has to do to recover from heart bypass. Eat, walk, get busy with life.

Susan wants her mother to want to live. But the big question is, does she want life?

The title of the last chapter is “The Crux of the Matter.” Crux means the decisive or most important point at issue.

The crux of Crazy Love has been for me, do I want more God?

God wants me, but do I want Him?

Am I determined to work out my salvation with fear and trembling or am I going to be distracted by worldly concerns?   Do I want to commit or am I going to give in to fear? Am I going to have as a life goal, a life of comfort instead of a life of sacrifice? Am I going to hoard my resources instead of give them away? Will I shrink the next time I see someone in need and not offer help?

Do I want God?

God can’t want me to want Him. My wife can’t want me to want Him.

I have to want Him.

The world is filled with Christians who “talk a good game.”   People who are not Christians see that and realize that it is just that, a game. These talkers are not doers and their lack of doing is what is sending out the strongest message. As a person who has studied communication the largest part of my adult life, I realize the power of body language. People believe what you do more than what you say.

To make others believe you, you have to take action.

I have written about this repeatedly in relation to the Holy Spirit. It is there in all of us, to guide us to do the right things in life.

But we have to listen.

We have to act.

God can send us messages but are we receiving them?

The last years of Dad’s life, I was encouraging him to walk, eat well and just get up out of his recliner. That’s where he lived. It got to the point where he would not walk anywhere after he knew he would get a motorized chair.

Is it a stretch to say that Dad was not receiving my messages or if he was, he disregarded them.

He did not want to walk, eat well or get out of his recliner. He wanted to live for his television set.

What would it take for him to take action?

Dad had to decide he wanted to live.

He never got to that point.

What do we need to do as Christians?

Crazy Love is a book that tries to get us to care about God, to take action, to want to live in Christ.

Pastor Francis Chan can write a thousand books and we can read them. Pastor Chan can deliver a thousand sermons on You tube and we can listen to them.

None of his thoughts about God will really relate to me until I want to have a stronger relationship with Him.

When I want it, change will happen.