Talking With God

Why Conversations?

Conversations are the foundation of our relationships. They are how we know about how we know about the world around us how we are reformed to what is important to us.

They in our homes, in our schools, in lines, stores cars. Anywhere where there are people conversations are happening.

Conversations are givens. We can’t avoid them.

So we know we have them and we know we have them all the time. But we don’t often talk about how we have them. But how we have conversations matter.

Conversations are powerful, and we can’t take them for granted.

Proverbs 18:21 ESV

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

We have to assume we are going to talk to other people

It is a given .

As Christians we can turn what is given into what is gift.

We are going to look at four different kinds of conversations over the next few weeks. These conversations are base units of conversations we are called to have in the church and with others.

This year we can begin to look at how we are having conversations with ourselves and with others. That becomes how we have life giving conversations that finds life with Jesus at the center.

We want to be a church that has better conversations. Conversations that offer life. Conversations that offer guidance and wisdom. Conversations that are generous, that are based in forgiveness, that are gracious, that are true. Conversations that correct and navigate Conversations that lift up and provide better means of walking with Jesus.

Because they happen all the time they are a means of how we are shaped and formed as people

Conversations are a good form of understanding how we are being formed, because we cannot control them. We cannot always manipulate them toward our. That’s why they are given. There are things that we often have to receive. You and I both found ourselves in conversations that we have not wanted to be a part of. Or we’ve begun conversations that we recognize take a strange turn early on. You begin talking about New Year’s resolutions, and end up talking about how you found yourself lost at the end country road your Buick sedan in 1994.

So we turn conversations that are given into gifts.

Imagine a gift that is given to you. It’s something given with care and with love, but it’s not something that you necessarily know what to do with. You love deeply the person who gave it to you but don’t love as much the gift itself.

What do you do? Because of your love for the person who gave it, you reinvent the gift and find a use for it.

You don’t re gift it, you don’t throw it away. You receive it and define a use for it. That is overaccepting.

So we want to view Conversation as a way for formation. Formation of self to Christ and formation of better community. Conversations are the tool through which we will use to lean into formation in Christ in formation with each other and community. It’s also how we can tell how we’re doing.

Conversations are the single unit of relationship. You have conversations with people you barely know, you have conversations with people that you’ve known on all your life. So what I wanna talk about over the next few weeks is not just how to have better relationship, relationships, but to drill down into something much more daily. The conversation.

Conversations can be immediate feedback of how we are being formed.

We’ve had conversations where we responded in wise and helpful ways . We’ve also had conversations where we have walked away and wondered, what just happened?

These moments can be helpful feedback on how we are being formed.

Jesus gives us immediate feedback in our conversations, even in conflict as an example of Matthew 18.

It’s a basic unit of how we love God and others.

If you want to measure something you take out a tape measure and you use inches to do so.

Conversations are the inches of discipleship

They are immediate feedback of how we are doing

How will be look at conversations through a formational Christ following lens?

this isn’t just about how people have conversations. This is about how redeemed people in Christ have conversations.

I want to introduce an idea called

Overaccepting

Over accepting is reinventing the gift. Over accepting is a theater term where we don’t reject what’s been offered to us, and we don’t blindly accept what’s been offered to us, we learned to receive what’s been offered to us as a gift of a much larger story. But that we understand that every conversation happens within a much larger story in the gospels .

Overaccepting is where one sees what is given to us as a gift. Maybe not always a gift that we’ve asked for, or a gift that we even wanted. But it’s more than just given, in the larger frame of the our even when we didn’t ask for them.

How do you navigate givens to gifts by not blocking and not accepting. The third option is overaccepting. We don’t block and dont blindly accept. We receive as a gift and then reorient to a better story.

Our conversations happen within a larger story. Even things like the greeting are not just saying hi to one another, it is about “passing the peace.” Meaning the peace that we receive from Christ is the peace that we offer to others. Peace as a reality then is the larger story in this small act during our service.

Our conversations as Christians then always have the opportunity for God interaction. God interacts with us as possibility in every conversation.

So even when we converse with one other person, they’re still a third-party. And we want to respond faithfully to that third-party as we over accept conversation conversations that we appreciate in conversations that are difficult.

Here’s how we will look at overacceptance

Improv

Improv is a comedy challenge where a group of people are given a prompt on how they will act as a group but are not given a script. The group then acts out on the prompt with each other.

Conversations are real life improv. We have a prompt, but we don’t ever have a script. So we have to learn to act on the prompt and for Christians. We have particular prompts that we utilize in conversation conversations.

Improv will use different kinds of games to work out conversations. One of the games that they use is called “yes, and.” Someone makes an opening statement and then every statement following that conversation must start with the statement, “yes, and.”

Take the opening statement:

“The river is full of fish.”

Someone then has to respond with a “yes, and.”

“Yes, and one of them is enormous.”

and another, “Yes, and he’s swimming toward us.”

and another “Yes, and he looks hungry.” “Yes, and we are trapped in this boat.” “Yes, and he looks more like a whale than a fish.” “Yes, and now the motor won’t start.” “Yes, and he’s about to swallow us.” “Yes and I just remembered that this boat is also a plane.” “Yes and lucky for you I just got my pilot’s license.”

that’s what yes and is about. It carries the conversation further. It doesn’t reject the doesn’t blindly what’s been given. It over accepts with a yes ajd

We are going to take a look at conversations over the next 5 weeks. But we will look at conversations from the “yes, and”

That our conversations are never ends. They are yes ands. When we understand Gospel interaction there is always opportunity for God to interact with us, even in our daily conversations.

To have better conversations with Gospel possibility means that we need to find our primary conversation with God Himself.

This morning we are going to look at a surprising conversation between God, a kid named Samuel and Eli.

God Gets Samuel’s attention: Scripture

Samuel was a kid who was growing up in the temple. It was the house where God was worshipped. In The Ot the temple worked differently. The people who served in the temple lived there. They provided ministry services day and night.

God spoke to Samuel. He was trying to get Samuel’s attention.

1 Samuel 3:1–2 ESV

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place.

Eli was Samuel’s mentor, he was teaching him the work of ministry. This was in a time when God spoke through prophets. They knew God was speaking through the law and through the prophets. But the voice of God was rare in those days. The Scriptures state that there was “no frequent vision.”

But the Lord spoke.

1 Samuel 3:4–10 ESV

Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, “Samuel!” and Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.”

God initiates the conversation. This is important to realize. God initiates the conversation, He is always the One to begin.

The Scripture begins with God speaking a Word into the world.

Genesis 1:1–3 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God’s very voice is the voice of action, it is creation. It is transformative and changes the very possibility of nature. It shifts atoms to form trees and form people.

The very voice that spoke creation into being is calling Samuel. And here is the amazing thing. The very voice that create s and makes also invites into conversation.

God could have shouted, He could have yelled. He could have demanded. He could have blinded Samuel. But He just called for Him. He called him into conversation, into relationship.

This is why conversations are important. If even the God of the universe could use the same langauge to create that He used to have a conversation with Samuel.

Conversation is always an invitation to participate. It assumes two people and that the means of speaking is shared. It is shocking that God Himself invites us into the conversation.

Our Lives are in Constant Reply to God

Samuel is not the only example of this. We see God converse with Moses, Jacob, the prophets, Peter, Paul, and many others. And God uses conversations to invite, to teach, to share, to speak, to change, to remind.

God always starts the conversation, we always enter in. When we speak with God, we are entering in halfway.

God’s word is deserving of us being laid flat, of us saying nothing less than a resounding yes. It’s actually absurd to say no to the goodness of God’s voice.

But the wild thing is that we can say no to God. We don’t want to but they way that He set up relationship with Him is through conversation. And that because of that we can opt in and opt out.

God still prefers acceptance of this absurdity as the primary means of communicating with people. God invites us in and prefers that we say yes to Him in replying.

Our lives are the constant reply to God.

Are you replying to God this morning?

If we are always replying to God then our lives are refections of our conversation with God.

That means we want to make that conversation our core conversation. .

He has not stopped communicating with us. And we are formed as we speak to Him.

We know He has not stopped speaking because of Christ entering our lives and giving His life for ours. God is speaking into your life currently. Christ is how we know that.

John 1:1–2 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Do you know that?

How do we know what He is saying? How do we grow in our conversations with others is to grow in our conversation with God.

To do that is to mimic Samuel’s reply from Eli’s instruction:

But to realize that our lives are a constant reply to God because He is the One speaking.

How do we live out the constant reply of God in our lives?

We recognize God’s voice

That means we trust the community and content we are already given. We look to the church and the Scripture. To know that God is speaking is to know that He uses the church and that His Word is the Scriptures.

If you want to know what God sounds like then you need to know the Scripture.

Join us this year in our Scripture reading plans. Read the words like you are having a conversation with someone.

The second follows Samuel’s response to God’s conversation:

“Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.”

We have a posture of openness

This is a posture that remains open to God speaking. And when we live open to God speaking, we are always in a position to respond.

we are in constant openness to redirected by God

That is the posture of someone faithful to hear and respond to God.

Speak like He speaks

When our conversations are with God primarily we begin to respond to the how He speaks and what He speaks like. We hear Him and turn to Him. And in doing so we begin to sound like Him.

We say what He says and how He says it.

And then we, even when we are talking to others, will reflect God’s conversation with us.

Our conversations will be a reflection of the work that God is doing. Our conversations will be a response to God’s voice and His work in our lives.

We will overaccept whatever we are given and turn it to gift.

Video of guy nailing to the beat of the band.

We may not sounds like the band, but we work with better voices. We speak as reflections of God because we have heard from Him and are responding like Him in the world.

We are in constant reply to God’s voice in the world. Listening, over accepting what is given to us, turning everything that we have into gospel opportunity.

Questions

Understanding Overacceptance

1. How does the concept of overaccepting challenge the way we typically approach conversations or gifts we find difficult to accept?

The Role of Conversations in Faith

2. In what ways can viewing every conversation as part of a larger Gospel story change the way we interact with others, especially during challenging moments?

God as the Initiator

3. What does Samuel’s experience teach us about recognizing and responding to God’s voice in our lives today?

Application in Daily Life

4. How can the practice of openness—echoed in Samuel’s response, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears”—be incorporated into our daily interactions with God and others?

Reflection and Growth

5. How do your current conversations—both with God and with others—reflect your understanding of discipleship and your relationship with Christ?