Greg Ford - Listening to God
We're gonna talk about listening to God today, which let's just be honest, it's confusing. It's not super clear. Sometimes church folk, you know, they make it over simple, you know? "Hey, I'm trying, man, I just don't know what to do in this situation. What should I do"? "Well, have you prayed about it"? "Yeah. I did pray about it". "What did the Lord say"? "I don't know, man. I'm trying to figure that out, you know? I don't know. I've been like, looking in the clouds. I didn't see anything, you know? I don't know. I mean, I didn't hear an audible voice. Like, what do you mean"? And let's be honest, there is a tendency to miscommunicate. Okay?
My wife and I both speak the same language. We both speak English. I know the nuances of her face. I know what this wrinkle in her forehead, I know exactly what that means. I know what the pregnant pause means. I know all of that. Okay? So, body language is part of communication. Eyes are a part of communication. All of it is part of it. And we miscommunicate with each other who we're with all the time, how much more of God who we're not necessarily looking at his eyes or his forehead or where his body language, how much are we gonna miscommunicate? There is, it is gonna happen. That being said, it's not hopeless. Okay?
I want us to take an approach to hearing from God that sits in the tension of the fact that this is a mystical thing, that this is a supernatural thing, but at the same time there is logic to it. And we can sort of understand the parts of it a little better that will help us to become more receptive. I was recently in Washington D. C., Shaylyn and I were there couple weeks ago. We spent some time with actually some friends of ours. Part where we helped work on this church planning thing together. A guy by the name of Mark Batterson, he, and his wife, Laura, are friends with and Shaylyn and I. We were there, we spent some time together. And Mark wrote, he's written several books, but he wrote a book called "Whisper".
The book, "Whisper", the entire book is about listening to God, the languages of God. In the book, he outlines seven things that are ways that God speaks. And today, we're not gonna talk about all seven, but we're gonna talk about one and how it affects the other six. The first one is scripture. God speaks through scripture. The next one is desires, which can be tricky 'cause you're like, "Well, this desire I have, is this me? Is this my flesh? Or is this a God given desire"? It talks about that in the book. Doors, which is another one. Okay? Door opens, "God, is this your will"? Okay? 'Cause an open door could be an opportunity but it could be a distraction, or it could be a temptation.
So, what about doors? But God does use doors. Then dreams. People, that's the next one. That's a big one. God uses people, but how do I discern? Promptings. And the last one is pain. I wanna start, and this is where we're gonna spend our time today, is looking at the scripture. I think it's really important the way that we frame our relationship to the Bible. And sometimes, as a Christian or a follower of Jesus, you're like, "You know, I don't wanna be ignorant".
So, we kinda take this academic approach to the Bible, which is, in a sense, appropriate, because I wanna learn as much as I can from an academic standpoint. But the Bible is not a textbook alone, it is actually also a text message. It's a communication tool that God uses. It says in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true, to make us realize what is wrong in our lives". That in real time, in 2022, I'm trying to figure out what's wrong in my life or I'm trying to find out what is true, that the Bible inspired by God is useful or relevant to help me do that in real time. "It corrects us when we're wrong". Hey, I know you're a grown up. I know you're mature. I know you don't want anybody sonning you, but there are times that we all need correction.
Come on, let's be humble enough to admit that. We need correction, all of us, all of us. Grandma, grandpa need correction. Mom and dad, everybody needs correction. And sometimes, you may struggle to receive it from other people, but what if you were in your Bible, you came across something the Holy Spirit illuminated, and it brought to your attention, not for the purpose of shame but for the purpose of correction. And you walk away going, "The Lord spoke to me today. I gotta make this change". And so, 2 Timothy 3 says, "The Bible will correct us. It teaches us what is right". And then look at this, verse 17 says, "God uses it, God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work".
God uses the Bible to speak to you about the work that he has for you to do. Hebrews 4:12 says this, "The Word of God is alive and active". It's not just a textbook, it's a text message. It's not just a classroom, it's a conversation. He says, "It's sharper than a two-edged sword, it penetrates into our dividing soul and spirit, and joints and marrow," and look at this, "It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart". It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. As you're in God's word and you're calibrating to his heart, your attitudes could be exposed. "Ugh, my attitude needs a change. My heart needs to change".
And so, this is what Bible does for us. God uses the Bible in that way in conversation. The scripture has a way of God speaking very specifically through it, and it doesn't just say the exact thing, you know, to everybody, every season. Like, for example, you may be reading a scripture today and God will speak something to you based on where you're at in life, based on how mature you are, based on what information you could even accept today, and it might be situational. Ten years from now, you read the same scripture and the Lord brings a dimension to it in your mind that you didn't see ten years ago.
This is why we never ever ever ever develop a "Been there done that" attitude about the Bible. "Check box, did that... Okay, yep. I know that one. I know that..." No. You come back to it with an open heart and let the Holy Spirit illuminate something because you might be ready for something you couldn't have seen five years ago. You've lived five years, man. You've been through some stuff, man. You've walked through, you're a different human, and so God's speaking the same word to a different person, you're not the same person you were. And so, you gotta be open to that. Okay, how do we do this?
I shared this technique called "Lectio divina". I did this a couple years ago, but some things are worth bringing back up. I wanna bring this back up to you. This is a process that if you'll apply this, consistently, it opens up a conversation with God. It gives God an opportunity to get a word in edge wise, or to illuminate some things in your mind and heart. So, it's five questions as you're reading through the scripture that will help this become conversational. The first starts with this. What does the text say? Who's writing this book? And who are they writing it to? And what is the context?
This is really important. This is why I would encourage you, there's nothing wrong with getting verse of the day, you know, Bible app, or whatever you're on and it just throws you a verse of the day, okay. Isaiah such and such. Psalm this. Ecclesiastes that. That's great. But if you don't really understand the context, you could grab a verse and think it means something it doesn't mean if you knew the whole context. For example, if I just showed up in your life tomorrow at 3:00 P.M. and I listened to three sentences of your day, at 3:00 P.M. Tomorrow, I might draw a conclusion about what you said, and what you meant, and who you are, and what that means for me.
Then, you would say, "Well, you didn't hear what I said this morning". No, you don't understand, this conversation we're having, this was our 8th conversation. This is not our first one. We've been talking about this eight times, so I'm talking different than it is, but I might draw all kinds of conclusions not knowing context. You ever walk in, somebody in your family's watching a show, they're watching something, it means very little to you, where you're just taking, you don't know the characters, you don't know what happened last season. You don't know.
So, I would encourage you to develop a systematic plan of studying the Bible. For example, read through James. And don't just plunge into James 1, go figure out who in the world is James and who's he writing to, and what's going on. And don't just jump into James 3 because James 1 and 2 has something to say about James 3. You'd read James 3 differently knowing what was said in the first two chapters. So, to make space in your life for a systematic approach, 'cause I'm gonna tell you, I think some of the really warped thinking comes from people who isolate a scripture really knowing not much. And so, they know just enough to be dangerous, just enough to yell it at folks and become jerks for Jesus. Ever met one of those?
You're like, "I don't know if that's what he meant by that". So, you don't wanna fall into that, you don't wanna fall into that. And this is how we keep ourselves safeguarded from just falling into our presuppositions or our confirmation bias is we study it first, we have to know the context. So, what does the text say? The second is, "What does the text say to me"? Okay? So, now that I know it in its proper context, what is it saying to me? Let it talk to you. First is reading, the second is meditating. Little side note, I hope this message is just nothing but encouraging so I don't want to, I'm not trying to discourage you but I wanna caution you from creating aggressive, quantitative reading goals, Bible reading goals.
"Imma read through the Bible before June. Imma gonna read, imma gonna get there. Come hell or high water, I'm gonna read 17 chapters a day, and I will get through them", but it's like, "Bro, don't. Calm down. It's 66 but it's a lot. It's a lot". And if you read it like that to just get to the finish line as fast as you can, you might miss the chance to slow down enough to have it read you. Slow down. You might spend a minute reading and you might spend an hour listening, and you might, by the end of that hour, just begin the listening process, 'cause I've started to listen, "God, what are you saying to me"?
And God may open a conversation with you that doesn't open and shut in the same day. And I'm telling you this is the deep learning. Deep, deep learning because this is going from just academic to transformational renewing of the mind. God's speaking. This is divine. Listen, let's not reverse engineer it and take it apart so much that we miss the divine nature of it. We gotta sit in that tension. Understanding the logic but at the same time, letting God do his supernatural work. So, "What does the text say to me"? That's meditating on it. The third is praying through the text which is "What do I want to say to God"? "What do I want to say to God"? This is prayer.
So, I read it in its proper context, I thought about what it's speaking to me and now I pray something. "God, I got something to say to you now". And then, after that, this is the fourth, which is contemplation, which is "What does God want to say to me"? Let him talk back to you. And then, the fifth is action, which is "What should I do? What do I do now"? 'cause we wanna be doers of the word, not just hearers. So, here's a aiming point. I think every good message, I think every good scripture, I think every good lectio divina, every time with the Lord will lead you to changing the way you think or changing the way you act, or both. And sometimes, the Lord may just start with how you think. I want you to begin thinking differently. And sometimes, it may be a brand-new thought.
"I've never thought like this before. I'm gonna start thinking this way". But sometimes, God uses it to recalibrate you to something you already know but you veered away from. The current of life's pulled you away. You know better. And sometimes, through the word and through contemplating, and meditating, and praying, and reading, and all of this, the Lord's like, "Remember that"? And you're like... by his rod and his staff, he pulls you back in line, and you get right back to realigning yourself with God's word, and God's values, and God's truth. But sometimes it's a brand-new thought. And sometimes connected to those thoughts and beliefs are now new behaviors.
"What do I do"? Hey, don't read so fast. Okay. You read the coffee cup verse, take a sip. Cool, alright. "Let's go check box. I'm going to work". No, no, no. Take the time to wrestle it all the way to the ground. "What do I need to reshape my thinking? What do I need to change in my doing"? I wanna show you, this is something from just, this is from my personal time with the Lord. How God used this in a specific in my life. So, I go, "I'm gonna study Colossians in my own time. Let the Lord work in my heart. Ask the Lord to speak to me".
So, I go to Colossians. One of the things that I noticed in my study of Colossians before I started reading Colossians is that Paul wrote this letter to people he didn't know. He had never met them before, which just reading the context of the book, it quicken my heart because it's something I've been struggling with. Okay? I grew up in a church, it was a small church. Everybody knew everybody. The pastor knew everybody. Pastor was meeting everybody's needs. Running around, doing this, doing that, doing the other thing. And our church, it's different context. Our church has grown. We have four services. We have a lot of people. So, I am now, we have people online. People literally all over the country who are giving me the opportunity and the responsibility to be their pastor, but I don't know them.
So, I'm the weird position that I'm pastoring and leading people I don't know, and I haven't met, and I can't keep up with it, and I can't meet everybody. So, I've been in this feeling of angst like, I've been struggling 'cause I'm like, "Man, how do I do this well"? Because I don't want to be the limit on the church where I go try to run around and you know, I'm not, human beings are not scalable, so if I run around try to do everything and know everybody and meet everybody's needs, and be there, and do all the teaching, and all the counseling, and all the this, if I do that, you burn yourself out. You can't do it, so you gotta delegate and train and raise up infrastructure, do all this stuff which is tough.
But then, it's weird as a pastor 'cause you're like, "But man, I wanna do this right. I wanna serve people. I wanna have the right heart. You know what I mean? I didn't go to Bible school to be a CEO. I went there to be a pastor. How do I do this right"? So, I've been wrestling with this, and I come across Colossians. Paul's writing this letter. He's pastoring people who he doesn't know. I'm all ears. I'm like, "Lord, what are you gonna", now, I get, my heart starts doing this 'cause I'm like, "God's about to speak to me".
So, now, I open up Colossians 1, I start reading verse 3, it says, "We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ". By the way, if you didn't know context and you just read that, "We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God," and you didn't know he's writing this people he knows of, but he doesn't actually know, it wouldn't mean the same thing to you. Just knowing that little fact opens your mind up in a different way. So, I start thinking about that. So, here's what now... What does the text say to me? And what does God want to say to me in all this?
Now, the question comes in my mind, "Greg, how much are you praying for these people you don't know? Are you really even praying for them"? I had to think about that. I'm like, "You know, I really don't". I was praying, I pray for my wife, and I pray for my kids, and I pray for my family, and I pray for our staff, and I pray for my friends who are going through a hard time, and when somebody tells me about their problem, and I say "I'm gonna pray for you," I actually do. It's not a placeholder. I'm like, "Praying for you, bro". No, if I tell you I'm praying for you, I'm going to pray for you. But what about these people in other places who I've never even seen, I'll probably never come in contact with, am I praying for them? So, the fact that Paul was praying for people he didn't know spoke to me. The text spoke to me.
So, he says, "I pray for you and I give thanks to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For we have heard of your faith in Christ and your love for all of God's people". Paul was encouraged and inspired by the stories, and by the testimonies of what God was doing through people he didn't even know. God's speaking to me through that text. Verse six. "The same good news that came to you is going out all over the world". Now, think about this. Paul's writing this in a time where proliferating the gospel came through very slow means. It was happening on foot. It was happening on ship. It was happening riding a camel. It was a slow thing. And yet, it was the beginning of the fulfillment of Acts 1:8. "You'll receive power. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. You'll go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth".
And so, Paul is just beginning to experience this and to taste this. And so, I thought about what that must have been like for him to take something that was so concentrated in Jerusalem and then see it go into the ends of the earth. And he said, "We ask God", oh, oh, let me back up. So, I'm thinking about Paul doing that, but then I'm thinking about the joy. I'm thinking, "Don't get so frustrated at the fact that this is so out of your control that you don't take joy in the fact that the gospel's proliferating, that it's going places and doing things that you can't see". And then he says this in the next part, he said, "We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and give you spiritual wisdom and understanding".
I'd read that in other seasons, and I didn't hear what I heard this time which was that we ask God to give you complete knowledge. We ask God to give you complete knowledge. We ask God to do what God does for you instead of us trying to do God's job for you. We do our job, God does, he goes, and we ask, "God, God, God, would you give complete knowledge, would you give wisdom and understanding"? Okay? What am I gonna pray for these people who I don't even know? I'm talking to somebody right now who I don't know but is listening right now. What would I pray for that person? What do I pray, "God, would you". You. It's not about me.
God starts speaking to me going, "Hey, Greg, I was doing pretty good before you got here. I'll do just fine after you're gone. We're gonna partner together for a season, but don't get it twisted of what's yours to do and what's mine to do". So, I pray, "Lord, would you give them wisdom"? And now, "God, would you lead them according to your word? God, when they're in your word, would you speak through, God, would you talk to them? Lord, would you give them what they need when they need it, Lord"? And so, Paul is praying this prayer incessantly for these people, asking God, asking God. And what's he doing? Is he's asking God to do this, he's also calibrating his own mind and heart to know what's his role and what's not. Okay?
And so, then he says, okay, we'll go to chapter 2. This next thing hit me. Chapter 2:1-4 said, "I want you to know how much I've agonized for you". That word "Agonized" last time I read it jumped off the page. He's agonizing for people he doesn't know. God began to speak to me through the process of praying for people you don't know and for celebrating the fruit that you don't taste, and trusting that there's things happening that you don't see, and that you didn't do. "Hey, Greg, your job is to plant the seed. Someone else may water it but it's God that's gonna bring the increase. Keep straight on your role, pray for these folks".
As he's doing that, his heart is being connected to them in a way that's beyond just someone's a number or it's a stat or statistic, 'cause you don't agonize for a number, you agonize for a person. And he goes and he reads all the way through. He says, "I've agonized for you and for the church in Laodicea, for many other believers who have never met me personally". Verse two, he says, "I want them to be encouraged and knit together with strong ties of love". Can you feel his heart? He cares about these people. God's given him an affection, a soft heart for these people. He said, "I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ himself".
It's about Christ himself. Point to Jesus, not yourself. Verse three says, "In him lie all hidden treasures and wisdom and knowledge". It's Jesus who sets people free. Said, "I'm telling you this so no one will deceive you with well-crafted arguments". Verse five. "For though I am far away from you, my heart is with you. And I rejoice that you're living as you should and that your faith in Christ is strong". The words "Agonize" and "Rejoice" jumped out to me. So, in my reading through this, asking the Lord to speak to me, what does the text say? The context alone caused me to look at the text differently. The specific things that Paul said although written thousands of years ago, had direct application to me. God and I get into conversation of prayer and contemplation. And then, from there, now I've got some action steps.
"You know, I need to setup a discipline in my prayer time where I'm not just, have this prayer list of people I know. I gotta begin praying for these people I don't know. I gotta reframe when I start feeling this visceral feeling about this. I gotta put the word on it. I gotta put the truth on it. And I gotta recalibrate to this so that I don't just get sucked into the feeling. I've got, okay. This is how I'm gonna keep my emotions where they need to be. This is how I'm gonna remain healthy". And so, now, a plan starts to emerge in a conversation with God. And this is the thing, by not just reading the scripture but by having conversation, listening to God as I read the scripture, now all these other things start run through this, "Is this my desire or God's"?
Well, imagine if you keep allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate attitudes, and thoughts, and correct you when you're wrong, and show you what's right, and prepare you for the good work, you'll start to know when a door opens if that's a good work or it's a distraction, or if it's a temptation. The desire, you'll start to know the difference between your flesh and your spirit. The dream, you'll know the difference between, "That was just some crazy thing I've been thinking about, and it just somehow showed up in the rem cycle". Versus "This is... No, I think this is something that God is showing me". You'll start to notice these difference how it all runs through the filter of scripture, but the filter of scripture is more than academic, it's conversational.
You know, it says in Psalm 37:4, "Take the delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart". "Take delight in the Lord". Hey, if you just pull that on Monday 'cause it's a scripture of the day, "Delight in the Lord". You're like, "Oh, cool. Yeah 'delight in the Lord' and then the Porsche show up at my house. 'Delight in the Lord' and God sends some godly man with abs and money. Lord, does he know, Lord, you know my heart's desire, Lord". Now, okay, you gotta be careful 'cause what did the text actually say? What happens is when I delight in the Lord, how do I delight in the Lord? I'm conversing with the Lord. I'm making conversation. I'm in a relationship with God. And so, now, I'm hearing from him, his work is speaking, we're going back and forth in his word.
And so, guess what's happening? My heart is being connected to his. My values are aligned to his. His will becomes mine and now the desires of my heart are in alignment with him. If you will have conversation with God, let him speak to you through his living and active word, some of the desires you have now will wane, you won't even want that anymore. Some of the doors you've been praying for, you'll stop praying for because you realize, "You know, that's not the right door for me". How does that happen? Through the conversation, conversation with God. Aligning his heart to yours. So, the desires of your heart when they're his desires, they will come to fruition, they'll come to fruition.