Tag: A Word for Wednesday

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And God Said

Taking advantage of a long college weekend, a friend and I drove to Kentucky to hike in Mammoth Cave National Park. We joined a tour and wound our way through the cave until, 140 feet below the surface, we entered the Rotunda Room, one of the largest open areas in this massive underground network. After a short talk, our tour guide requested we turn off all lights and to be completely silent, so to sense total darkness. It was, in a word, scary. After seemingly too long a pause, the ranger pierced the silence with his voice and asked someone to light a match. The soft glow from this one small source sparked as much amazement as relief, for it reached the entire room.

“In the beginning,” we read, “God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”1 In the complete absence of light, this must have been a blackness the extreme of which humankind has never known, suffocatingly frightening were we to experience it. What, then, did God do to dispel such darkness? He spoke. “‘Let there be light,’” He said, “and there was light.”2 King David marvels with us at the thought, “The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created, He breathed the word, and all the stars were born.”3 When there were no earthly creatures to hear Him, God yet spoke. Though there were no tympanic membranes vibrating from divine soundwaves, still God spoke, and what He commanded came to be.

What, then, do we make of One who speaks something into nothingness, only for nothingness to yield that something in return? What kind of power must He wield, and what kind of wisdom must He possess? Regarding His word, the Lord promises, “it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”4 For God speaks more than opinions, more than ideas, more than answers to the demands of others. God commands in authority and creation obeys Him; He judges in understanding and His pronouncements are established.

And just as God dispelled with a word the darkness at creation, so also does He speak light and life into the deepest caverns of our soul. Of Jesus through whom God created all things, John writes, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”5 God does something no one else can do: He speaks light into our darkness. How amazing! What a relief.

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”6

Lord Jesus, how can we thank You for speaking light into our darkness, and life into our soul? We, in turn, speak Your praise, for You are worthy. Amen.

1 Genesis 1:1-2
2 Genesis 1:3
3 Psalm 33:6 NLT, emphasis added
4 Isaiah 5:11
5 John 1:4
6 John 8:12

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Good News Worth a Listen

Several of our executives gathered for a seminar on how to interact with the news media. The instructor cautioned that reporters are looking for attention-grabbing soundbites and are trained in “gotcha” questions in order to get one. Both the interviewer and interviewee know tight news program schedules only allow for a 15-second exchange, so it becomes a game, the former trying to elicit an eyebrow-raising quote, and the latter trying not to provide one. A key seminar take-away, then, was to know how to respond with a comment related to an entrapping question, rather than answering it directly.

The religious leaders of Jesus day were fluent in “gotcha.” It must have been a normally reliable dialect, for despite mounting failures to entrap Jesus through insincere interrogatories, they kept trying. In one such encounter, a group of Sadducees asked Jesus, if a married man died and his wife married the next oldest brother, and if this pattern continued down to the seventh brother, whose wife would she be in the resurrection? It was a taunting question, for this sect did not believe in life after death, and everyone knew it. How then did Jesus respond? First, He exposed the faulty premise to their question. “You are wrong,” He asserted, “because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”1 Then He spoke foundational truth: “As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”2 Yet the Sadducees clung to their defeated narrative, and rather asking Jesus about this hope, they “did not have the courage to question Him any longer about anything.”3

Jesus once asked the Jews who gathered to hear Him, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.”4 Therein lies one of the most common challenges to hearing God: Our flesh wants to hear what its “itching ears want to hear,”5 and rejects all other soundbites. But God’s thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours,6 and He would have us listen for them. “It is the Spirit who gives life;” said Jesus, “the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”7 God’s Word is good news—news we can trust. Tune in to the Spirit and hear for yourself.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak . . .”—John 16:13.

“Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.” 8 Amen.

1 Matthew 22:29-30, emphasis added
2 Matthew 22:31-32
3 Luke 20:40 NASB
4 John 8:43, emphasis added
5 2 Timothy 4:3 NIV
6 Isaiah 55:8-9
7 John 6:63
8 Psalm 85:8

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Obstacles to Hearing God

“For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it.”—Job 33:14

A few years ago, I underwent some medical diagnostics, which included a hearing evaluation. Speech reception thresholds were where they should be, word recognition was “excellent,” and sensorineural hearing loss tested within normal limits, albeit with one notable exception: I had experienced “mild” loss in two of the measured sound frequencies. It just so happens that these two outliers were higher-pitched frequencies, specifically those common to female voices, so this mild hearing loss has occasionally served me as a credible (and convenient) defense. (“Honest, honey, I didn’t hear you.”)

God speaks in many ways, and over time His people have heard Him through each of them. This is not to suggest we hear God whenever He has something to say; perhaps most often when God “speaks in one way, and in two,” we do not “perceive it.” Why is this? How can we possibly miss the authoritative Voice that spoke creation into being and us into His image? What forces divert our attention, and which noises clutter our thoughts in confusion?

There are several obstacles to hearing God, and it is crucial that we recognize them as they confront us. Our “flesh”—that part of us that is prone to sin and opposed to God—has its worldly cravings, and these “desires of the flesh are against the Spirit.”1 So, tuning out all desires but our own comes naturally to us, and conversely, we are susceptible to ascribing our self-serving thoughts as being God’s will. These temptations are deliberate, for spiritual warfare is real, and Satan, our adversary, is an active schemer2 who will do anything to deceive us,3 even if it means disguising himself as “an angel of light.”4 He would confuse us, in his cunning, and lead our thoughts astray.5 Then there is outright rebellion against God and the brazen refusal to hear Him. God grieves through the prophet Jeremiah: “I spoke to you, speaking again and again, but you did not listen, and I called you but you did not answer.”6

Yet there is no obstacle that can prevail against God. “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world,”7 assured Jesus mere hours before His arrest. Born of God through faith in Christ, we, too, are overcomers.8 His Spirit lives in us in truth and works through us in power. Then like our forebears in the faith, may this be our resolve: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”9

Obstacles confront us; watch for them. Truth is on our side; listen for Him.

“Speak, for Your servant is listening.”—1 Samuel 3:10 NASB

Father, draw us near to You, that we would know Your voice, hear Your voice, trust Your voice, and obey Your voice. In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 Galatians 5:17
2 Ephesians 6:11
3 2 Corinthians 11:3
4 2 Corinthians 11:14
5 2 Corinthians 11:3
6 Jeremiah 7:13 NASB
7 John 16:33
8 1 John 5:4
9 2 Corinthians 10:5 RSV