Archives For Hearing God

What Is Spiritual Malnutrition?

April 9, 2013 — 16 Comments

A few years ago a client came into town for a series of meetings. He asked for a restaurant recommendation, and I suggested my favorite restaurant, The Gandy Dancer. The next day he came to my office Menuand raved about the restaurant. He was going to recommend it to every one of his colleagues.

I asked him what he’d ordered. “Nothing,” he said, he’d been too busy. But he had “stopped by and studied the menu, and everything looked incredible.”

I thought he was nuts.

But I’m beginning to think that most of us believers are equally “nuts.” We read the menu and miss the meal. We nourish our Christian lives by feasting on a cardboard menu of untasted truths.

The cardboard menu is a link to a spiritually nourishing banquet, but too often we simply chew on the cardboard. Is it any wonder our lives look like cardboard-cutouts?

Frankly, cardboard is neither life-giving nor nourishing. Even with a dash of salt.

The Christian life is more than the menu         Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Christianity, Experiencing God, Getting glory, Justification by Faith, Satisfaction, Significance, What does it mean to believe? , , , , , ,
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Is It Ever Okay To Seek An Experience of God?

March 26, 2013 — 23 Comments

When I was thirteen years old, I had an “experience” of God. It happened in a small, circular prayer meeting with about twenty other teenagers.

I began to shake. Every nerve waiting and prayingseemed electrified, hyper alert, or aware. I felt alive and bubbling over, a kind of euphoria. I sat, I shook, and then I prayed, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” The experience lasted for close to an hour.

I wasn’t sure what had happened. But I liked it. I asked God for more of it. In prayer times and prayer meetings I’d pray, “Anoint me again; let me soak in that some more.” But that exhilaration didn’t come back very often.

Let’s skip ahead forty years to last week. I had just returned from a retreat. I was tired and perhaps a bit crabby. The next morning something happened again. I felt stirred and moved. I somehow sensed the reality of God.

My prayer time lasted four hours.

But this experience was different     Continue Reading…

In Beliefs, Beliefs of the Heart, Christianity, Experiencing God, God's Love, Growing in intimacy with God, Hearing God, Wonder , , , , , , ,
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What My Train Set Taught Me About Transcendence

January 2, 2013 — 38 Comments

My kids and I used to have a small Lionel train set in a corner of my tool room. Ten years ago we dismantled the small set with dreams of a bigger and better train set in a newly created basement room called the Train Room.

We dreamed of the perfect train layout with switches, freight yards, and realistic scenery; with a moving crane, sawmill, draw-bridge, and coal dump; and with cities, tunnels, mountains, and farms. It would fill the new 15 by 18 foot Train Room.

Our quest for perfection derailed us. We dreamt of glory, and for ten years we did nothing. We ran out of steam. The Train Room became the junk room, a closet in which to hide things that belonged nowhere else.

Dad - train setIt also stored the dusty train set that we dismantled ten years ago.

The day before Christmas, my kids suggested we re-assemble the train set in the new Train Room. We cleared the “closet” out (never mind where all that junk went), we put the table up, we rewired the accessories, and we set the trains back on track once again.

It was a blast. Doing something adequately was far better than doing nothing perfectly.

Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Calling Driven church, Christianity, Desire, Getting glory, Hearing God, Parable of the Talents, Pursuing an Inner Life, Risk , , , , , ,
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My Journey into Learning How God Gives Direction

July 23, 2012 — 32 Comments

I used to be a partner and employee of a successful software company. Eight years ago I heard God tell me to leave it. But he didn’t tell me where to go.

I asked five friends for help. We met and prayed together monthly for a year. In the end we all agreed I should leave; and we had no idea where I should go.

So I left the company and prayed more earnestly for direction. In fact I pleaded.

I heard nothing. Silence.

Have you ever felt this same desperate desire for God’s direction, longing for a word?

Let me tell you what God did for me. Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Christianity, Desire, God's Love, God's Direction, Guidance, Hearing God , , , ,
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Today I Heard God Tell Me, “You Dah Man”

July 16, 2012 — 32 Comments

Years ago I worked with a man who had an insatiable desire to impress. When he gave presentations, he never used a one-syllable word when a four-syllable word was at hand (or at least on the shelf). When he told me of his client visits, he eulogized his eloquence and waxed lyrical about his wisdom.

Self-acclaim obscured clarity; self-admiration overshadowed expression; and self-tribute was always the topic. When he did something well, he made sure you knew it.

You may know someone like him.

I’m not sure what got me thinking about him today, but my mind kept replaying past scenes of his self-praise.

Later on I read the story of the prophet Nathan addressing King David after David’s adultery. Nathan tells the story of a rich man with many flocks stealing a poor man’s deeply beloved and only lamb. David was enraged at the injustice. Then Nathan said,

“Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7, KJV).

As I thought of my impression-needy friend, I heard God say, “Sam, Thou art the man” It was an arrow in the heart. (You’ve got to hear it in King James English) Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Calling, Christianity, Getting glory, Hearing God, Pursuing an Inner Life, Satisfaction, Strength to face the day , , , , , , ,
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I Long for a Calling Driven church

June 12, 2012 — 26 Comments

At a prayer group in 1988, I felt urged to pray over a man. As I prayed I felt God say, “If this man left this prayer group, it would make no difference. And that is a tragedy.”

Instantly I felt grief for this unappreciated man. I prayed, “Yes Father, it is a tragedy. I feel so sorry for him.”

Immediately I heard God respond, “No, his life is not the tragedy —I’ll take care of him. The tragedy is the loss to this body because he was not allowed to offer what I put in him to give. This body will never be what it could have been.” Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Calling, Calling Driven church, Guidance, Wonder , , ,
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The Wonder of the Ascension

May 29, 2012 — 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago Christians celebrated the Ascension of Jesus. Do you ever wonder why we celebrate the Ascension? I understand celebrating the birth of Jesus, and his resurrection, and even his death on a cross (if we understand what it means). But his Ascension? Yet after his Ascension, the disciples “returned … with great joy” (Luke 24:51). They celebrated the Ascension.*

When I was about ten years old, my father taught me how to sail our small sailboat. He taught me how to capture the wind, how to steer with a tiller, and how to “right” the sailboat when it capsized.

One day after another sail together, my father looked at me and said, “Go on, take her out by yourself.” The wind was rather strong; the waves were rather large; and my mother was rather terrified. I loved it. I took the boat out alone. The wind blew splashes in my excited face. I was a ten-year-old boy alone on the sea; I was Captain Hook, Christopher Columbus, and Sir Francis Drake all rolled into one.

That was one of the most memorable days of my mere ten years of existence. I still delight in the memory.

What does the Ascension have to do my solo sail? Well, quite a bit, actually. As I’ve reflected on the Ascension, here is what God is saying to me. Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, Doctrine of Ascension, God's Love, God's view of us, Hearing God, Significance , , ,
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Imagination, Intimacy, and Hearing God

May 1, 2012 — 2 Comments

I’m discovering that meditation is one of the most powerful ways to hear God. No, “powerful” isn’t a strong enough word. Meditation may be the most profound, deep, life-changing, heart-enriching way to hear God.

But there is a problem. I picture meditation—maybe you do too— as something kind of weird. It’s a person dressed in leotards sitting in an awkward position humming nonsensical syllables, emptying the mind, thinking of “one hand clapping.” It’s the mystic or the desert monk escaping from reality. It seems totally disconnected from real life.

But everyone is a meditation expert. We meditate all the time. We don’t know it because we call it something else, and we slip into it accidentally. Continue Reading…

In Addiction, Beliefs of the Heart, Desire, Growing in intimacy with God, Guidance, Hearing God, Pursuing an Inner Life , , ,
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To Be, or to Do, that is the question

April 24, 2012 — 10 Comments

God is speaking to me again—I resist this message—about Being before Doing. I mix them up. I bet you do too. It is so “natural” to work (do) those extra hours in order to feel (be) successful; or to “do” the dishes in order to “be” considered a good spouse.

Scripture doesn’t teach doing first; it teaches being first. We have to BE loved in order to DO love (1 John 4:19).

Despite knowing in my head that I need to “be” accepted first, I tend to believe in my heart that scripture is about my “doing” to get God to like me. It’s easy to read scripture like a Christian Aesop’s Fables, little stories that promote good behavior (doing). In other words, if I do these things I’ll be a good little boy (or girl).

This Aesop’s Fables view of scripture is so ingrained in my heart that any other interpretation of a passage feels heretical. Let’s look, for example, at the parable of the Treasure in a Field. Continue Reading…

In Beliefs of the Heart, God's Love, God's view of us, Significance, The Treasure in a Field , , ,
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Christianity: Will-Power or Desire-Power?

April 17, 2012 — 10 Comments

I know a man, a really good man, whose life is filled with drudgery. He dutifully cares for his wife and family; he dutifully pours out his life in service; and he dutifully attends to work. He resists opposing desires—like wanting to dodge a service he hates, or aching to “take it easy”—with willpower.

His life, he feels, is dull and empty. His life, he says, is “dreariness and doldrums; I go through the motions without a purpose.” Drudgery has been his life for years. He is joyless.

The driving force of his life—that which gets him out of bed each morning—is willpower, his determination to battle contrary desires. His joyless obligations rule his heart.

I feel sorry for him and his life of dreariness and drudgery. And, yes, he is a Christian. His joyless life unfortunately reflects the lives of many believers. It’s why many nonbelievers don’t like Christianity. They don’t want our dull life. They don’t want to become like us.

Yikes! The gospel is meant to be a transforming power of joy. What has happened to us? Continue Reading…

In Addiction, Beliefs of the Heart, Desire, God's pursuit of our heart, How can we be fulfilled?, Legalism, Pursuing an Inner Life , , ,
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