Kairos – Hearing From God Through Our Desires And People Series

Did you ever play that game where you asked the question, “What would you do if you won $1 million?" What would you do? I asked my dad that question when I was about 10 years old. He looked at me very seriously and said “Martin, if I won a million dollars I would go to work, stand in my chair and pee on my desk.” Now…I know that my dad was trying to be funny, but have you thought about that question seriously? A question like that…It makes you think!! It gets to our perspective on life and it gives us a glimpse of our desires.

In the early years of the Head Start program, there was a study that involved 1600 children who were tested in a wide variety of categories, including divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to generate creative ideas by exploring possible solutions.

If I was to ask you to come up with as many uses for a paperclip as possible, the average person can rattle off 10 to 15 uses. A divergent thinker can come up with about 200.

In that long-term study, children age 3 to 5 scored in the genius category for divergent thinking. 5 years later… This number dropped to only 32%. 5 years later again it was down to 10%... what happened? Where did divergent thinking go? And what does that have to do with hearing God’s voice?

Most of us lose touch with who we really are and what we really want. Instead of following our God ordained desires, we tend to be more concerned about what people think rather than what God thinks. We even go so far as to think about what other people think we're thinking. It’s often the fear of people that keeps us from hearing and listening to the voice of God. We let expectations of others override the desires God put in our hearts.

I read again the story of Jesus healing a blind man just recently. He asked the blind man a very thought-provoking question. “What do you want me to do for you?” Why would he ask that question?

It’s because Jesus wants to know what we want.

If I took a poll in this room and asked each of you, “what you would want Jesus to do for you?” I bet 9/10 would have a hard time answering that question. What are the desires that God has put in your heart?

Which leads me to another thought… If you wanted to talk about the Godly desires that are brewing within you, would you have someone that you trust that you could talk to about something like this? Do you have someone who you can contact to test your thinking? To test what you believe the desires of your heart are? Could they help you sort out God’s call in your life? Would they be able to give you godly wisdom and insight?

What if someone came to you asking for that kind of godly wisdom and insight? What would you do if someone asked you to invest in them? That you would be for them…

• Spiritual mother or father

• spiritual grandmother or grandfather

• a mentor, friend

Would you be able to rely on your relationship with God in order to give that kind of direction?

Over the series, we’ve been trying to get at the heart of how God speaks to us. I call it a Kairos moment. A moment in time when God tries to get your attention. Chronos is sequential-past, present, future. It’s linear, moving in one direction. Chronos is a human construct. It’s how we humans measure time, but God exists outside of the space-time dimensions he created. So we have to be very careful not to put him in our clock, in our box.

Last Sunday we talked about how God gets our attention most often when we read the Bible. It’s his words to us, it’s the most common way that he speaks to us. However, it’s not the only way God speaks to us. Today I want to talk about how God uses our desires and how people can play a role in being the voice of God to us.

I want to share with you two Scriptures that will help us understand this concept of how God speaks to us through our desires and how he uses people to help clarify and sometimes, be God’s voice to us.

Romans 12:6-8 (NLT)

6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7 If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.