Sunday, September 13, 2009

Divine Communications - indulging our wills

Does God communicate with us today through visions or by directly speaking to us as He did in the Bible?

Certainly God worked through visions with people of the OT. Ezekiel, for example, had the vision of the dry bones in the valley. Old Testament visions were given to prophesy things to come down through the ages. It’s the same with the New Testament prophets like Peter, Paul, John, and the Lord Jesus himself. This was done so God’s children and the world would be made aware of the future, and of the power of God to precisely foretell. Always, it was to give God glory, and to call people to repentance.

And sometimes when God wanted to get His messages across, He did so Himself by speaking audibly. For example; when God wanted Samuel to be His prophet, He simply spoke to Samuel out loud (1 Sam 3). No, it wasn’t what Samuel ate that night—it was really God. And when God wanted Peter, James, and John to know that Jesus was truly God’s Son and that they should listen to Him, He simply told them in an audible voice (Lk 9:35).

But some Christians today seem to think God still communicates in this way and pray in order to indulge their wills. They earnestly ask God to lead them, yet all the while determined that He will lead them according to their own desires, even if contrary to His revealed will in Scripture. And then, when faced with the Word, they say: “But I have prayed a lot about it.” Some even challenge God, asking Him if this isn’t His will, to hinder it somehow. Such prayers are worse than superstition.

Unfortunately, there is a lot superstition among believers regarding prayer. How readily many “feel led,” look for “inner promptings” or listen for the “still small voice” in answer to their prayers. They say, “The Lord told me” this or that, or “The Spirit whispered to me” or “I could just hear Him saying.” And it can be regarding anything and everything, from 'what color to paint their house’ to ‘should they go on a trip or not.’ When asked, these people invariably say that no voice was actually heard at all, but that they merely took some feeling or impression to be, in some mystical way, a direction from the Lord.

God does speak to us through the Holy Spirit through the Word. But with the Word completed, He no longer speaks to us by visions or even by still small voices. Therefore, we need to be careful not to depend upon 'inner promptings,' knowing that by nature “the heart is deceitful above all things" (Jer 17:9).

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