GOD SPEAKS: QUICKENING SCRIPTURE

November 21, 2010

I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.
– Psalm 119:15

PART 1
Identify the Current Issue

God speaks to us in many ways. We learned that His language is Christ and that all things were created through Christ and hold together in Him. Last week we look at how God speaks to us through object lessons, or parables. We know that God speaks to us through scripture, and we’ve studied many well-know passages over the past few months to learn what God communicates through His word. The Bible addresses many things outright, such as standards for holiness, how we are to approach God and how we are to treat each other. When we need to hear from God on an issue or situation, we really should look at what God has already said on that subject from the Bible. There will be times where we need to hear God for a specific situation. God will sometimes take a passage of scripture and quicken it to us for our specific situation.

Perhaps you have had this experience: You are reading a passage you have read many times in the past. But this time it suddenly comes alive and you have an in-depth understanding of what it means. You see things in it that you had never seen before. That is probably the Holy Spirit quickening scripture to you because He is trying to communicate something to you. He likes to do that.

PART 2
Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: God is the source of our help. He watches over all parts of our life.

Psalm 121
1I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? 2My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. 3He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; 4indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand; 6the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. 7The LORD will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life; 8the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Teaching point two: We are commanded to meditate on God’s word and commit it to memory.

Joshua 1:8
Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Psalm 119:9-16
9How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. 10I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. 11I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. 12Praise be to you, O LORD; teach me your decrees. 13With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. 14I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. 15I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. 16I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.


Teaching point three: God uses the Holy Spirit to recall His Word to our conscious mind.

John 14:26
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said to you.

PART 3
Apply Your Findings

Break up into small groups for discussion.

Pause for a moment and think about a question you have for God about something in your current situation. Read through each of these passages by yourself. Once everyone in the group has finished reading the passages, discuss what God has said to you through the quickening of scripture.

Psalm 16
1 Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”
3 I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.
5 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,
10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Proverbs 6:16-19
There are six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to him; Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood; A heart that plots wicked schemes, feet that run swiftly to evil, The false witness who utters lies, and he who sows discord among brothers.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Galatians 5:19-25
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

Matthew 5:3-12
[Jesus said] Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Joshua 24:15
[Joshua said] If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

Jeremiah 31:3-4
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt.

Matthew 22:34-40
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

GOD SPEAKS: OBJECT LESSONS/PARABLES

November 7, 2010

Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. – Psalm 25:4-5

PART 1
Identify the Current Issue

God speaks to us in many ways. We learned that His language is Christ and that all things were created through Christ and hold together in Him. Last week we look at how God speaks to us through out circumstances. Today we are going to look at how God speaks through object lessons. Object lessons happen when we see something in the natural world, and then God shows us how this illustrates a spiritual principle. Jesus used a lot of object lessons, called parables, when He taught. For instance, He said that faith is like a mustard seed. The tiniest of seeds grows into a huge tree, where the birds of the air can rest in its shade (Mark 4:32). The mustard seed is a truth from everyday life. The corresponding spiritual truth is quickened to us through the Holy Spirit. In this case it was: Even the smallest faith, when exercised, will grow into something spectacular and solid as we see God's faithfulness come through for us. Mark 4:33 goes on to say that "with many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand."

An object lesson is when the Holy Spirit takes something in the natural world and then quickens us "to understand." Sometimes these truths are simple and at other times they are profound.

PART 2
Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: God uses natural things to reveal divine plans. All of nature (natural law) is derived from God (spiritual truth).

Psalm 19: 1-6
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
5 It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

We learn from this passage that God speaks, or reveals Himself, through His creation. Interestingly, in verse 3, we read about "no speech ... no words ... no sound." This further supports the idea that God speaks to us in ways other than audible words.

What are some of the ways that you "hear" God through creation?

Have you recognized His magnitude and sovereignty in a way that would be hard to put into words?

Have you understood His love of beauty, especially a beauty that we can see and appreciate?

Just look at the turning leaves. What possible reason is there for them to be so beautiful other than that it pleases God, AND that it pleases God that it pleases us.

Teaching point two: Jesus taught in parables to make difficult things easier to understand.

Mark 4:33-34
With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

Here we see the Jesus taught everything using parables, or object lessons. However, we also read that he later explained the parables to His disciples. So where are we to turn for an explanation of object lessons?

Teaching point three: God uses all things for our good and helps us when we do not have words.

Romans 8:26-28
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

When Jesus was lifted up into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to continue to teach us. It is through the Holy Spirit (who works in many ways) that we will understand the deeper, spiritual significance of object lessons.


PART 3
Apply Your Findings
Break up into small groups for discussion. Read through each object lesson, and listen for a deeper, spiritual teaching. Pray before you start, and ask the Holy Spirit to open your mind and heart to "hear" the Word of God for you today.

[Q] Object Lesson 1:

When weeding the your flower garden, you notice large clumps of weeds. You are discouraged because it seems like it will take forever to get rid of them all. You almost give up, thinking it’s not worth the effort. Before you give up, you decide to pull one clump of weeds up. When you grab what look like several weeds, you find out that they are all connected to one root. Even better, that roots are shallow and the clump is easy to pull up.

[Q] Object Lesson 2:

When cleaning out the overgrowth in your back yard, you see several shoots of small trees. When you bend down to get rid of them, you find that they are growing from a stump that you didn’t dig up last year. You think about it and realize that you did the exact same thing last year and will be doing it again next year unless you dig up the stump. Clipping the small shoots will only get rid of them for this season.

[Q] Object Lesson 3:

When pruning a large shrub in your backyard, you notice several dead branches, many of them tangled together. You begin to clip them off the shrub trying to find where each dead branch connects to the main trunk. As you clip, you realize that you’ve clipped off a live branch by mistake. Fortunately, your friend who works at the Botanical Gardens is supervising. She tells you not to worry – the live ones will grow back.

[Q] Object Lesson 4:

Law of Conservation of Energy: Matter is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes form.

GOD SPEAKS: Circumstances

November 7, 2010



Last week we studied the language of God and found that it could be Christ. So what does that mean and how does that help us hear God? For one thing, it greatly expands the available "words" God can use to speak. The Colossians passages pointed that ALL things were created in Christ and have their being in Him. If the language of God is Christ, then what would it look like to consider a wider vocabulary for God that than the audible, spoken word?

In class we did a variation on this lesson, but for the purposes of the blog, I'm including the original lesson from which I got the material. The purpose of this lesson is to consider how God can use circumstances to speak to us.

Ways God Speaks To Us
Lesson 6
God Speaks Through Divine Coincidences
By Teresa Seputis

Divine coincidences are where things just happen to fall together in such a way that the hand of God is evident in your circumstances. As you sit back and look, you can see that God has been orchestrating events to lead you into the center of His perfect will. Sometimes this can be fairly simple and sometimes it can be quite elaborate. Sometimes the leading of God is very clear as the events are unfolding. Other times His plans may seem very elusive and unclear until they have been accomplished.

Here is an example that a pastor from Cleveland shared at a conference. He was in the midst of putting together a book on the spiritual heritage of the greater Cleveland area. He had been praying for the Lord to give him revelation along these lines. One day he took his car to the shop for routine maintenance. The mechanic's name was Milan. He dropped the car off and went home. He called to see if the car was ready, and inadvertently misdialed the number. Someone answered and he asked, "Is this Milan?" The person replied, "No, Milan is another 20 minutes down the road from here." They hung up. The pastor thought that was odd, then realized he'd misdialed. But he had discovered that there was a place called Milan not from where he lived. So he redialed, got the mechanic and found his car was ready. On the way to pick it up, he stopped at a traffic light. The car in front of him just happened to have a bumper sticker on it that said, "Milan, Ohio."

The pastor began to wonder if maybe God was trying to tell him something about Milan. First a mechanic by that name, then coincidentally misdialing and being told Milan is a city, then the bumper sticker for Milan -- all within a few hours. So after he got his car, he drove to the city of Milan. When he got there, he happened to encounter someone who told them how the city had been founded by a Christian community and that there was an old library from the city's founding fathers. When he went to this library, he found several important documents that helped him with the research he was doing on the area. God had used the coincidences about Milan to get him to that city to allow him to find the little out-of-the-way library that contained these documents key to the research he was doing.

Let me share a story from my own life. I got a phone call from a friend who is a Christian businessman in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He owned a company and the company was facing a crisis. He called me to inquire of the Lord regarding his company situation. I shared what the Lord gave me, prayed for him and then we got off the phone. Just as soon as I put the phone down, I felt prompted to go there and be with him in this "time of crisis." I did not know if that was my own heart reaching out to him or if it was a prompting from God. Then this silly idea hit me, "I wonder if there is a seat sale." So I called the airlines and ended up on hold for a very long time. While on hold, I decided I should figure out the dates to ask for when asking for a fare quote. I looked at my calendar. I was pretty much booked solid with trips for the next three weeks. I finally flew home from the last of my back-to-back trips on July 15. So the earliest I could get there was July 16, a Monday. I wondered how long I should stay and decided a week felt right. So I decided to fly home the following Sunday, July 22. Coincidently, July 23 was my Mom's birthday, so I had to be home for that. So the dates I chose were based on the coincidence of my schedule.

Just after I'd come up with the dates, the ticket agent took me off of hold. I asked if they had a seat sale by any chance. "Oh. I am sorry, we have seat sales only between a few destination cities at the moment, so chances are very high that it won't be the cities you want." So I shared that I wanted to fly from San Francisco to Ottawa. "You won't believe this," the agent said, "but we do have a seat sale for those destinations, but today is the last day of the seat sale and it is almost completely sold out." The fare was exceptionally low, only a couple of hundred dollars. I asked her to try the dates I'd selected. She said she'd try but I should not get my hopes up because the computer said the fares are all sold out. I was on hold for a few minutes while she checked. "You're not going to believe this," she said, "but I have precisely 1 seat available on each of those two dates. I checked the seats on flights on several other dates just out of curiosity and they were all sold out. But the dates you want are available and you are getting the last seat at that fare on both of the flights."

I ended up arriving in Ottawa three weeks after the crisis started. That particular crisis was over, but I went anyhow since I had the airline tickets. I arrived on Monday evening. Tuesday morning a new crisis hit and God had me there for that situation. I was able to give the word of the Lord and minister personally to a some key people because I happened to be there at the "right time." It all seemed like coincidence, but it was really God leading through circumstances.

Look back over your own life and I bet you will be able to find some times when God lead you through divine confidences. The things just happened to fall into place to get you in the right place at the right time. It is one of the ways God really enjoys leading His people. In fact, this happens so often that some people have coined phrases to describe this such as "God opened a door." Another popular phrase is, "When God shuts a door, He always opens a window." This refers to God leading His children through circumstances. He can stop things that are not right to do and He can make opportunities for things He does want us to do. There are many scriptural precedents for God leading us through divine coincidence. Let me share one with you.

God used coincidences to lead a young Saul to Samuel to be anointed as king. You can find the story in 1 Kings chapters 9 and 10. Saul's father owned a herd of donkeys that were missing, so he told Saul to take a servant and go look for the donkeys. As they looked for the missing livestock, they just happened to come to the city where the prophet Samuel was, so Saul decided to ask the prophet if God would tell him where the donkeys were. God had already told Samuel that He would send Saul to him and that he was to anoint him as king. But, from Saul's perspective, God did not send him to the prophet to receive a message from God. He was just looking for the missing donkeys, and coincidentally there happened to be a prophet in one of the cities where Saul searched, so Saul decided to ask the prophet if God would tell him about the donkeys.

There are many other biblical examples of God leading people through what looked like a series of coincidences but was really the hand of God. This is one of the ways that God speak to us and leads His children.

The Language of God

October 31




What language do you think God speaks? Most likely a verbal language and your mother tongue particularly. For me, that is English. I expect God to speak English to me. It has never crossed my mind that it should be any different, that it would be different if He spoke to me in French? After reading the New York Times article "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?", the implications for perception imbued by different languages became clear to me. But what does that have to do with God? Does it matter whether God describes a bridge as a “she” or an “it”? Probably not. But it did cause me to consider the effects of language in a broader sense. Is language just verbal? Why do we expect God to speak in words anyway? Does God have a cosmic mouth –fitted with teeth and a tongue by which to speak to me? Obviously not, so it follows that limiting God’s language to a verbal language, much less English, might have serious implications on my being able to hear God and converse with Him. Maybe this even accounts for why some many people have a hard time hearing from God, if they hear from Him at all.

So, back to the original question, one that we must answer to hear and understand Him, what language does God speak? As with any theological question, the best place, and the most direct place, to start is with the Bible, interestingly for our discussion also called the Word of God.

In the very opening of the Bible, in Genesis, we encounter God as He creates the world – the cosmos, all matter and life as we know it. As you probably remember, God accomplishes all this by speaking what are related as verbal words, “Let there be light” and so forth. So from the very beginning of the Bible, we get the idea that God speaks English (or the language of the translation we are reading) words, and we, logically, assume that if God is speaking to us then it will be is a similar fashion.

Genesis 1
1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light day, and the darkness He called night And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

However, if we think about it, at the beginning Christ was not incarnate and flesh had not been created, so there is no way that God actually spoke audible words from a fleshly mouth. He clearly spoke words, but we would do well to widen our understanding of “spoke” and “words”. That’s all well and good, but what does this practically mean? Expand it how?

If we look at the Hebrew word used for “said”, we find “amar”, defined as:

to say, speak, utter
1. (Qal) to say, to answer, to say in one's heart, to think, to command, to promise, to intend
2. (Niphal) to be told, to be said, to be called
3. (Hithpael) to boast, to act proudly
4. (Hiphil) to avow, to avouch

The first definition is the one of most interest here. It includes more than physical speaking of words, expanding the idea toward intention not necessarily tied to spoken words. So what could that mean?

I propose that look at the prologue of the Gospel of John, at the divine logos, the word that was made flesh in Jesus and see what we learn.

John 1:1-14
The Word Became Flesh
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. 6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

What we learn is that the was a divine word before there was a human word, incarnate in the flesh, and that it was this divine word that was present with God in the beginning. We also learn that this divine word was/is Jesus.

So, is there more about this? Let’s look at Colossians.

Colossians 1:16-17

16For by him [Christ]all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

From this passage, we learn more about the word God spoke. On first read of Genesis 1, we might say that God created everything by speaking verbal words. However, when we look at Colossians we see that God created all things by speaking a divine word, and that Word was and is Christ.

Wow.

The language God speaks is Christ.

More on what the means practically next week.