How to Have a Personal Relationship With Jesus Christ
Relating to God through the Scripture
John 10:14-18, 27
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."
… My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
“My sheep hear me and they know my voice.”
Can be a recipe for lack of assurance – not so sure that we do hear Jesus’ voice.
Just as animals need to be “imprinted” with their mother’s voice, we need to learn God’s voice in our life.
The most obvious place to learn what God’s voice sounds like is the Bible – every word is “God-breathed”
2 Timothy 3:16-17
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Often we read the Bible to learn about God, or to learn about the Christian life. It is our main text when doing theology. We may use it as a discernment tool when we feel like God has said something to us, because we know that God will never contradict his own word. But, what about hearing God’s voice in the scripture?
The Bible is not just an ancient text written in a dead language. It is living and breathing…
Hebrews 4:12 (New Living Translation)
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.
We don’t just learn about God in scripture, we can hear his voice in scripture.
There is nothing wrong with reading the bible in order to be informed about God and his ways. I would say that the more that we know the scriptures, the more God has to work with as he is speaking to us through it
M. Robert Mulholland, Jr. in his book, "Shaped by the Word" makes a distinction between reading the Bible for information, and reading it for formation.
In reading the Word for information we seek to master the text, to get what we want out of it, so that we can speak to the situation that we find ourselves in.
An extreme example of this is the little boy spread out on the floor with his Bible in front of him, and he says to his sister, "Would you please be quiet, I’m trying to find a passage to back up my pre-conceived notion!"
In reading the word for formation we seek to have the text master us.
Informational reading often seeks to find the objective universal principle, whereas formational reading seeks to hear subjectively what God is saying directly to me through this passage.
David and Nathan after David’s sin - (1 Sam. 12) – tell the story David and Bathsheba, Uriah
2 Samuel 12
The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
"Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!
David exegetes the passage well "All rich men with lots of sheep should never steal their poor neighbour’s only sheep for their parties - on penalty of death, or at least they should pay back 4x as much"
- a wonderful universal principle!, but David misses the point of the story until God hits him over the head by saying to him "That man is you"
Reading the Bible for formation or to hear God’s voice is reading the Bible in such a way that allows God, through his written word and through his Spirit to shape us as the potter shapes the clay.
1. Read it!
Slow down.
small portions
- one story, one verse, one word
Buddhist says of Christian worship, "They do not breathe"
Often the same way with Scripture and prayer
Preparation - breathing in good and out bad
Chew your cud. “eat this book”
spiral as opposed to linear
- like musing over a love letter - letter returned with corrections!
Wait before the text.
Author reading through the lectionary - Exodus story
- a plague a day. "God what are you saying?!"
- silence
- finally after days, "You are Pharaoh"
"No not Pharaoh, maybe Moses, a taskmaster, the Israelites, but not Pharaoh!"
"You are Pharaoh" - enslave his gifts for his purposes and not God’s...
took days to hear God’s word
Be open to mystery
don’t try to solve all the problems of the text
“Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with you appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word.”
It is very much like that when a person comes to the Bible. One must first of all listen to the Word that the Bible speaks, putting aside, for the time being, such other issues as whether the Word is credible or congenial or consistent or significant. By all means, if you will raise these questions, but, first, listen to the word. – Wm. Stringfellow p. 169-170
Practical Suggestions
Pray
Begin your reading by asking the Holy Spirit to bring the Word alive for you
Sacredspace.ie
Ask God what he saying to you
Start with the Gospels –
2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
John 1:18
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
Pray the Word back to God use Ps 1 as example
Meditate on Scripture: – simple repetition,
Be aware of harmony or dissonance something in the reading that strikes a chord, or something that causes you to wince
- go back to it over and over again until you know that it is time to move on.
Use your imagination Joan of Arc – accused of the voice just being her imagination: “of course it is, That is the way He talks to me!”
a. in the scene - spectator
b. one in the scene - participant
- ask Jesus a question
- examine you own thoughts or feelings about the situation
-
Ask God where we are in the scriptures – my surprise to be told that I am Elijah in the desert
Listening to God
Scripture is the clearest way we have of hearing the voice of God. As we learn to hear him through scripture, we can recognize his voice in other places in our lives.
My sheep will know my voice. Become accustomed to the voice of the father.
