2. What Hearing God is Not

Paradox of Hearing God

Consider the misunderstanding of what it means to “hear God”

At once, we feel that hearing God is a vital part of Christian life and yet we don’t know how to go about hearing him.

All human troubles come from thinking wrongly about God

The wrong view of God will lead us to act in fear or without responsibility.

Cf. Responsibility and creativity as keys to the relationship with God (ref. Matthew 25)

The parable of the talents - he who took initiative was celebrated by the master

There is initiative on both sides of a conversational relationship

Some downfalls of hearing God

God communicates in many different ways - we can forget this and only seek him in one way.

Dreams, visions, scriptures, physical world, other people

The desire to control is one of the primary ways that we fail to hear God (i.e. we come to scriptures with our own image in mind)

Cf. Responsibility and creativity as keys to the relationship with God (ref. Matthew 25)

The parable of the talents - he who took initiative was celebrated by the master

2. We desire to hear what we want to hear - or, we come with wrong motives

Sometimes, we only seek God for guidance rather than cooperation

3. We misconceive of the nature of God - that is, we tend to think God is ‘way off somewhere’

God’s way of being locates him wherever you are: he is not far from us, in him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17)

4. We develop a “message a minute” sense of God speaking

Hearing God is not about getting ‘a word’ or a verse - it is about developing our character by being with God.

Cf. the way Bonhoeffer was looked down on by academics for making spiritual formation

Read: Eric Metaxas on Bonhoeffer

NOTE: In superstition, there is no natural connection between what you are trying to manipulate and what you are hoping to come out of it. (That is, there is no clear ‘way forward’ in our praying when we are praying superstitiously - there is no way of cooperation with God in superstition.)

Remember the difference between mechanical and personal processes. God works through persons - and thus, there ought always to be an ethical/formative element in our prayers.

“Stepford Wives”

When you surrender initiative, you make prayer meaningless. Prayer becomes something for you, but not a cooperative, conversational relationship with God.

Of course, if we believe that prayer has no vocational element, we won’t pray.

Cf. the low turnout to prayer meetings!