Is That Enough?
I recently shared with a friend how I sometimes
verbally (out loud, mind you) invite the Lord to join me in the
front seat as I’m driving around in my car. I know that as a
believer the Holy Spirit indwells me and He is always present.
However, this invitation is probably more for my sake because it
makes me consciously imagine Him as a passenger, and I talk to Him
just as if He were physically sitting beside me.
My friend, who is desirous of an actual spoken word
from the Lord asked me, “But, is that enough?”
I was fairly speechless by the question because my first reaction
was, “Why wouldn’t being in the presence of the Lord be enough?”
As my friend went on to express why she asked that
question, I began to see her point. Christians are striving to have
a “personal relationship” with the Lord beyond the relationship
we’re granted at the point of our salvation. Therefore, we tend to
measure the quality of the relationship we have with our Savior
against the relationships we have with close family members and
friends.
Referring back to my car illustration, my friend
described what she finds missing in that personal relationship. As
she and her husband drive together in the car, their conversations
aren’t one-sided, as we often feel when we pray and talk to the
Lord, but the relationship she has with her husband includes two-way
conversations. She also shared an illustration of getting lost one
day en route to pick up a family member from an unfamiliar airport.
After a quick phone call to her husband who instructed her on how to
get back on the right road, she wished she could just as easily get
directions from the Lord when she feels lost in her decision making.
She certainly understands that God communicates with us through
Scripture, through other believers, through His creations, and that
we may have a sense of a message within our hearts as we read the
Bible or pray about a certain matter. But, my friend has read the
personal accounts in Scripture where God has given direct
instructions to individuals such as Noah, Moses, Joshua, the
prophets, etc., and she has a heart's desire to experience that type
of verbal relationship with the Lord herself.
So, as I described my invitation for the Lord to
join me as I fellowship with Him in spirit, her question “Is that
enough?” was to challenge me. Was it enough just to be in His
presence? If there was any possibility at all that I could have a
two-way conversation with the Lord, or at the least hear Him speak,
wouldn’t I want that? Wouldn’t that be better than what I’m
experiencing now? I have to hand it to my friend, what she asked is
a great question. No wonder I was left somewhat speechless in how to
respond.
After thinking her challenge over, I’d be lying to
say an actual conversation with the Lord wouldn’t be absolutely
glorious and forever memorable. However, I’m not troubled by the
unlikelihood of that ever happening.
As I look at the verbal communication between God
and the men and women of the Old Testament, most of those encounters
were to pass on divine or supernatural assignments for God’s kingdom
work, or to relay messages to His chosen people. Other than the
relationship God had with Adam and Eve in the garden prior to their
downfall, we have no scriptural indication that God’s communication
was ever for the purpose of engaging in friendly conversation or
fellowship. Even with David, whom we have come to know as the “apple
of God’s eye” and whose writings portray a phenomenal relationship
between him and his God, the direct messages he received from the
Lord were communicated primarily through prophets.
However, when the incarnate Son of God dwelt on this
earth, His ministry included engaging in friendly dialogue. After
His ministry became public, Jesus spent three years on this earth
personally teaching the people, His disciples, and His soon-to-be
apostles through face-to-face, real-life conversations and messages.
As His earthly ministry neared its end, Jesus explained to the
disciples in the upper room that He had asked His Father to provide
them the Holy Spirit to serve as comforter/counselor and teacher,
and that He would replace Jesus in the active, day-to-day spiritual
role in their lives. Once Christ’s work on earth was completed, He
would no longer be the earthly God-ordained spokesperson. It would
be the Holy Spirit, Who began His earthly role on Pentecost and
continues it to this day.
To look again at Jesus’ comments to the disciples,
He didn’t say He was praying to His Father to only send a companion or
buddy. He was praying His Father would send a comforter/counselor
and a teacher. The Holy Spirit’s role was to be active, meaningful
and productive within the life of a disciple, not passively
indwelling each believer just for the heck of it.
The fact that He has been given the name “spirit”
indicates that He is not in a fleshly, bodily form as Christ was, so
His communication style would not be as a human’s, but as a
spirit’s. In addition to that, He is omnipresent. He can be present
everywhere and throughout the entire realm of His creation at the
same time. That allows Him to communicate with multitudes of
believers throughout the world simultaneously.
As the Scriptures move along chronologically and further away from
Jesus’ earthly ministry, the references of one-on-one conversational
encounters with the Lord diminish, and future interaction and
communication from the Godhead are attributed to the work of the
Holy Spirit and angelic messengers. Even though there is biblical
evidence that the Lord personally taught and discipled Paul after
his conversion, Paul attributes any further instruction he received
as being from the Holy Spirit.
During the establishment of the church and
law-to-grace transition in Acts, several of the apostles were able
to carry on conversations and receive verbal messages from God-sent
messengers. (See note below.) However, when I think of the biblical
“big guns” like Peter and Paul who finished out their ministry in
quite a different style than when they began, changing over from
face-to-face encounters with the Messiah to receiving divine
messages through the Holy Spirit, (and from what we know through
Scripture, those messages had solely to do with ministry and
evangelistic efforts), it makes me question if I should have any
expectations of a spoken word outside of those parameters.
I enjoy reading Christian fiction, and there are
several popular Christian authors who generously sprinkle direct
communication from the Lord to the characters within their books. In
some cases the messages are spoken to comfort the character, but
sometimes the messages are intended as advice. The voice and words
the characters hear are within their minds, but the authors write
the script as if the voice they hear is so real and so believable
they look around wondering, “Who said that?” “Where did that come
from?” I’m sure this gives many readers the sense that this type of
communication is a common occurrence for Christians. I have to
admit, that aside from Scriptural insights and the Lord’s responses
to prayers, this is certainly not common to me. I do have thoughts
and insights that I attribute to the Holy Spirit, and in my
commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:18 I share a rare experience of
sensing God speaking to me about His Word. But, I don’t hear a
divine voice in my mind directing me in my decision making, nor have
I heard this stated from others within my Christian community.
Also, the friend I referred to earlier has heard a
number of folks in her church testify, “The Lord told me to do
this…” or “The Lord told me to do that…” In some circumstances, what
they attribute as a message from the Lord is in direct violation to
Scripture; so, obviously, whatever voice they heard, it was
certainly not the voice of God. He can never go against His own
Word.
However, as people read and hear fellow believers
testify about “hearing God,” it’s understandable how we can become
confused about how God speaks to us and our expectations. And, when
we hear others tell of God speaking to them so clearly and
frequently, it tends to make us question the relationship we have
with the Lord if we aren’t privy to similar encounters. In other
words, it can cause us to ask, “Why isn’t He talking to me?”
Looking back to the apostles who were commissioned
to carry the Good News of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the
world, any future God-given communication they received after
Pentecost that’s been recorded in Scriptures was solely about
evangelistic efforts, prophecy or instructional letters to the
churches. Nowhere does any communication allude to them receiving a
verbal message beyond what was for the furtherance of the Kingdom of
God.
Before going any further, let me inject this
disclaimer. Because the Bible provides us limited insight on the
Lord’s communication style with the apostles, no one (and that
includes me) can be dogmatic that He would never speak to someone
other than for the reasons I’ve mentioned above. God can choose the
when, where, why and how He communicates with each and every one of
us. Because our gifts and callings are different, as is our own
ministry, He will communicate in the style that is most effective,
and that will be different for each and every one of us.
We need to keep in mind, too, that the self-centered
and self-focused society in which we live can have an effect on our
spiritual lives, as well. Many of the words and sentiments in
Christian music, books and “feel good” messages from popular
Christian speakers focus on OUR joy, OUR happiness, OUR feelings and
OUR blessings. This can’t help but have an influence on some
believers to become more focused on “self” rather than Christ. We
have put aside the John-the-Baptist theology of “He must increase
and I must decrease” to an “it’s all about me” theology. We have
become wrapped up in ourselves, and we tend to expect God to be
focused on our wants and wishes.
Lastly, we have to consider the example the
incarnate Jesus set for us regarding His communication with His
Father. If there was anyone who walked on this earth who should have
heard the spoken voice of God relaying instructions and guidance as
He walked city streets and hillsides as He ministered to the lame
and brokenhearted, it should have been Jesus. On a number of
occasions Jesus refers to doing the will of His Father, so He had to
have acquired that information in some way. However, we’re not made
privy to how that was done. While it’s possible that His
God-in-the-flesh status allowed Him to know the mind of God without
any communication or spoken words, we also know Jesus regularly got
alone to pray. So, even if He knew what actions His Father needed
Him to carry out without any verbal instruction or spoken words,
their relationship still necessitated time together. There was
obviously the need for Jesus to know God’s mind and heart at times,
otherwise, why did He need to spend hours on His knees in a garden
talking to His Father about what He would soon endure on the cross?
Considering that Jesus felt the need to get alone in
private prayer and fellowship with God, how much more is my need to
get alone with God in the same manner. I must confess, however, that
my prayer life is an area in which I struggle and deem inadequate.
For that reason, I think if I were to occasionally hear the voice of
God directing me in my decision making as the need arises, I would
be less prone to seek Him out in private to know His heart. After
all, the expectation that I would hear His spoken word whenever I
needed advice in how to proceed in a matter would certainly override
the need to spend time in prayer. While I’d like to think my
relationship with the Lord is strong enough to overcome that desire,
I think I would be kidding myself to think it wouldn’t affect my
relationship with Him.
I know without a doubt that the Holy Spirit, the
third person of the triune God, indwells me. That gives me great
comfort and confidence in my spiritual standing with the Father. I
know that there is no place too high, no place too low, no place too
quiet, busy or noisy where His thoughts and wisdom aren’t always
available to me, either through His teaching or through the Word.
But He will let them be known to me on His terms, not mine. He is
not a genie in a bottle that I can conjure up whenever I have a
need. To do that is disrespectful of WHO He is, and focusing,
instead, on WHAT He can do for ME.
Most importantly, though, it is through the Holy
Spirit that I can personally approach the one to whom all creation
will one day bow down at the mention of His name. In spite of His
royal position of sitting on the right hand of the God of the
universe, I can approach Him as a child approaches a daddy, and
invite Him to share a ride with me. Knowing that this sinful,
wretched soul has an audience with the Lord of lords and King of
kings, and that I can fellowship in His presence anytime I take the
time for Him, what else do I need? I can say with all honesty,
“Nothing. That is enough!”
Note: Acts 5:19; 6:10; 8:26, 29 & 39; 10:3-48;
11:1-18; 11:28; 12:1-10; 12:23; 13:2, 4; 16:6-10; 18:9; 20:22; 21:4;
22:17-21; 23:11; 27:23.
Top |
