Truth is Still Truth

It is part of God’s process of maturing us to bring us into situations where we must either trust Him or abandon Him. None could deny that Abraham was forced into such a crisis when God told him to sacrifice his only son – the son of promise. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham reasoned in his heart that God must keep his first promise and therefore must raise him from the dead (Heb 11:17-19).

It was a prolonged period of running for his life which was the young David’s long protracted crisis in which he was brought daily and perhaps moment by moment to trust in God his deliverer.

It was Daniel the prophet hearing the king’s proclamation that none could pray to any but the king or suffer the lion’s den who resolutely opened his windows towards Jerusalem and prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – who then endured the terror of being thrown into a den full of lions and the thrill of God’s merciful deliverance.

Whether Jacob, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Noah, or you – the Crisis of faith is defined best by that word: Crisis.

These memories are written for our instruction and for the building up of our faith. Since there is not one of us here this morning that has not experienced some Crisis of our faith, or who will at least be certain to face such a crisis in the future; would it comfort you to witness another and to see its resolution from God’s perspective?

This week as we come back to Luke – we arrive just in time to witness a crisis of faith in the person most of us would consider the least likely to suffer such a setback: John, the cousin of Jesus, called, “the Baptist”. Please read with me from the Gospel of Luke 7:17-23.

I grew up hearing my dad say things like, “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times!” Can you relate? The fact was – my dad probably did tell me a thousand times; but I was born with an innate ability to ignore what I didn’t want to hear, because I understood as well that if I heard something – I was responsible to either obey it or reject it. I didn’t really want that burden.
Of course the other side of the issue wasn’t just ignoring my dad it was being unable to hear him. I always had the stereo on, or the TV or whatever else and though he might be speaking well enough, and even if I might be interested in hearing what he had to say – I couldn’t hear him because of the distractions.
I wonder sometimes if that isn’t the reality for many Christians when it comes to hearing the voice of God. There are some who are afraid perhaps for some reason and that fear or maybe even for others that rebellion keeps them from even wanting to hear God speaking. For others it may not be fear or rebellion it could simply be that there are so many distractions in front of us that it never gets quiet enough inside our minds to hear God calling out to us in the pages of the Bible, which is seldom read and less seldom studied. And yet for others it may simply be that they don’t know what God voice sounds likes.
How does God communicate to us? Dreams? Sometimes. Audible voice? I’ve never heard God speak out loud. The Spirit’s prompting to your Spirit? This is usually where I hear God speaking first.
Of course there are two rules when it comes to hearing God’s voice. (1) God will never communicate something to you that will contradict his word. If it doesn’t match the scriptures – it’s not God. (2) If you want to hear you have to listen.