Mary Williamson, a pediatric nurse in Kirbyville, Texas, once neglected to tell her new patient, a little boy, how his hospital room intercom worked. Soon his light flashed. She called his name and asked what he wanted. There was complete silence. She repeated herself. After a long pause he said, “Jesus, I hear you, but I don't see you. Where are you?” Mary says she couldn't wait to get to his room and give him a hug (Mary Williamson, Kirbyville, TX, Today's Christian Woman, "Heart to Heart”).
How often does our Lord long to get to His children and give them a hug, but they don’t even hear him, much less see Him. God loves to reveal Himself, and He is constantly sharing His secrets, but many believers are oblivious.
They’re so busy listening to all the other voices in the world that they’ve lost the art of listening to God. In fact, many believers fail to recognize His voice even when he does speak. Maybe, that describes some of you.
So how can you learn to recognize God’s voice? How can you discover the art of listening to God? How can you get in on some of His secrets? If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 2, 1 Corinthians 2, where the Apostle Paul tells us how.
1 Corinthians 2:1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God [literally, the mystery of God or the secret of God] with lofty speech or wisdom (ESV).
Paul says, “I didn’t use lofty speech or wisdom when I proclaimed God’s secret to you.”
1 Corinthians 2:2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (ESV).
That’s God’s secret! Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, which a simple-minded person can understand. However, most people fail to recognize it because it is so simple. Paul used simple words to explain the simple message of the cross, but he stumbled over his own words.
1 Corinthians 2:3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling (ESV).
Paul had been persecuted, imprisoned, and/or run out of town in every other city he visited before he got to Corinth. He was a scared, simple preacher, but with a powerful message.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (ESV).
I like what Warren Wiersbe says about this. He says, “[Paul’s] preaching was a demonstration, not a performance.” Paul’s preaching demonstrated the power of God to change lives. It showed the power of God to bring human beings into a right relationship with God AND with each other.
So if you want to know God’s secret to repairing broken relationships, then overlook the complicated formulas and flashy presentations, and…
LOOK FOR GOD’S SECRET IN A SIMPLE PACKAGE.
Watch for it to come from simple people, who know and love Jesus.
In 1976, the year Jimmy Carter was elected president, the Southern Baptists invited him and two others to speak to the 17,000 delegates gathered at their annual convention. Each had a five-minute time limit.
Billy Graham spoke first. A truck driver spoke second. He had very little education, but he found himself sitting beside the next U.S. president as Billy Graham spoke. He told Carter that he had never given a speech in his life and nervously confessed, “I don't think I can live through it. I just can't do it.”
Well, after Billy Graham gave his powerful talk, the truck driver rose to speak and stood silently before the audience. He took a glass of water that was handed to him and mumbled into the microphone.
“I was always drunk and didn't have any friends. The only people I knew were men like me who hung around the bars in the town where I lived.”
The truck driver went on to describe how someone told him about Christ. He became a Christian and wanted to tell others about the Lord. He felt comfortable in barrooms, so he decided to talk to people there. The bartender told the new Christian he was a nuisance and bad for business, but 14 of his friends became Christians as a result.
Reflecting on the speech, Carter writes, “The truck driver's speech, of course, was the highlight of the convention. I don't believe anyone who was there will ever forget that five-minute fumbling statement—or remember what I or even Billy Graham had to say” (Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength, Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith, Times Books, 1997, pp.71–72).
God loves to do that sort of thing. He loves to use uneducated, unpolished speakers to deliver His message. That means God can use you!
For several months, Beverly Hamilton tried to lead Sharon, a co-worker, to the Lord. One day, Sharon asked, “How does God speak to you?”
Hesitantly, Beverly answered, “Through Scripture and prayers. He... he...” Then her mind went blank, and Sharon left.
It never failed—every time Sharon asked about God or salvation, Beverly would answer her question, then become tongue-tied. She felt like a failure at witnessing.
But one morning, Sharon excitedly told her, “I accepted Jesus last night. Thanks for not preaching when I asked questions. Everyone else told me too much at once, and I became confused. You simply answered my questions” (Beverly Hamilton, Today's Christian Woman, “Heart to Heart”).
That’s how God likes to deliver His secret. You can stumble and stutter like Moses. You can be as scared as Paul. You can mumble like a truck driver or have your mind go blank like Beverly. But God can still use you to impact the lives of people for eternity.
In fact, God loves to wrap His secret in plain vanilla envelopes. So overlook the flashy, polished presentations, and look for it in a simple package. Then…
FIND GOD’S SECRET IN A SIMPLE MESSAGE.
Discover God’s mysteries in a plain thought.
Paul said, in vs.2, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
Paul skipped over complicated formulas for the simple message of the cross. That’s because only the cross brings man and God together. Only the cross brings people together in one body. Only the cross repairs broken relationships.
In Colossians 2, Paul declares that he struggles greatly to see believer’s hearts “knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Colossians 2:2).
There is that word, “mystery,” again—same as we have here in 1 Cor 2). Christ is God’s mystery. Christ is God’s secret, and Christ unifies people in love through His death on the cross, even people who hate each other.
That’s the point of Ephesians 3, which talks about Christ bringing Jew and Gentile, people who were bitter enemies, together into one body. There it says, “This mystery”—there’s that word again—"This mystery [or secret] is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6).
The secret of God is the secret of unity through the cross of Christ. How do you bring people together? How do you mend broken relationships? You mend them through the message of the cross. You unite people through the message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. That’s the secret!
It’s a simple secret, but it is so simple that most people miss it. World rulers certainly don’t see it as a solution to the problems they face. Paul says…
1 Corinthians 2:6-8 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (ESV).
Mature Christians understand God’s simple secret, but world rulers don’t have a clue. That’s why they crucified Christ to their own shame, but to our glory. Their inability to discover God’s simple secret brings them to nothing. It nullifies all their efforts.
In 1997, I had the opportunity to go with several men from our church in central Kansas to a Promise Keepers’ event in Washington, DC. There on the mall between the capital and the Lincoln Memorial, we joined a million other men from all walks of life to seek God’s blessing on our families and our nation.
At the same time, President Clinton was in a meeting just off the mall, where he and other national leaders were discussing problems of race relations and racial reconciliation. Reporters testified that President Clinton left that meeting frustrated, because they were unable to make any meaningful progress on the issue.
I tell you. All he had to do was look out the window, and he would have found the simple answer. There we were, a million of us—rich and poor, republicans and democrats, black and white, Hispanic and Native American, men from every race—on our knees together at the foot of the cross.
The simple secret to unity is the cross, missed by rulers all over the world.
An author in Leadership Journal put it this way: “If we or the world could be saved through human kindness or clear thinking, Jesus either would have formed a sensitivity group and urged us to share our feelings or would have founded a school and asked us to have discussions. But knowing the ways of God, the way of the world, and the persistence of human sin, he took up the cross, called disciples, gathered the church, and bade us follow him down a different path of freedom” (Leadership, Vol.10, no.4).
It’s the path of the cross. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). The secret to world peace is the way of the cross. The secret to peace in your own relationships is the way of the cross. It’s the way of self-sacrifice, and it’s a way that most people miss. But for those few who find it, it leads to unimaginable glory.
1 Corinthians 2:9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (ESV).
No one can imagine all that God has for those of us who love Him.
Just a few years ago (2018), Jen Wilkin wrote about a time she was at a party where the host brought out Pictionary for the evening’s entertainment.
Ready to wow the room with her skills, she glanced at the word on her card: “Difficult.” She had played Pictionary for years and had never had a word that hard. Her mind went blank.
Nothing seemed to rhyme with it or illustrate it. The timer ran out, and in utter frustration she said, “How ironic that my word was ‘difficult’!” Holding up the card as proof, she realized she had accidentally drawn not a card for game play but the instruction card listing each of the categories for different words. Difficult, indeed. She spent 60 seconds trying to illustrate an abstract idea, trying to draw the undrawable (Jen Wilkin, “Heaven’s Riches Aren’t the Point,” Christianity Today, September 2018, p. 25; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s what it’s like trying to describe all the good things God has prepared for those who love Him. They’re indescribable, unimaginable, worth way more than any sacrifice we make here on earth. It’s part of the mystery, the secret that awaits every believer.
Do you want to get in on that secret? Then first, look for it in a simple package. Second, find it in a simple message, and third…
FIND GOD’S SECRET IN A SPIRITUAL MESSAGE FOR SPIRITUAL PEOPLE.
Find it in the spiritual realm, not the psychological. Discover it by listening to God’s Spirit, not your own mind.
1 Corinthians 2:10a “…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit” (ESV).
God has revealed His secret through His Holy Spirit. So if you want to know God’s secret, you must listen to God’s Spirit. Pay attention to the Holy Spirit, who dwells in every believer.
1 Corinthians 2:10b …For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
The Spirit of God knows the very mind of God.
1 Corinthians 2:11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (ESV).
Just like you know your own thoughts, so God’s Spirit knows God’s thoughts. And you, who know Christ, have God’s Spirit dwelling within, so you have access to God’s thoughts, as well.
1 Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God (ESV).
We can understand the mind of God (at least what God chooses to reveal to us), because we have the Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual (ESV).
Or better, “explaining spiritual truths to spiritual people.” We who have the Spirit of God can understand the secrets of God, but only if we learn how to listen to the Spirit of God.
The movie, Ray, is about the life and trials of the late composer, pianist and singer, Ray Charles. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that there is a scene where Ray, as a blind 10-year-old, enters his home and accidentally trips on the side of a rocking chair. He falls, yells out in pain, and calls out to his mother for help. His mother steps forward, stops, hesitates, and takes a step back.
Ray, lying on a rug on the floor, continues to cry for his mother's help, but his mother silently goes back to her work. Ray hears men chattering and a hen clucking. He stops crying, looks around him, and slowly gets up. He hears more people talking, a cow mooing, and metal clanking. He looks into the direction of a kettle of boiling water.
Stretching out his arms, he walks toward a crackling fireplace and feels its heat, pulling back a hand because it is too close. His mother continues to look on, concerned with his every move. Ray listens intently as a horse and carriage go by.
Then he hears a cheeping grasshopper close by and walks toward it. He bends down and, fumbling a bit, encloses his hand on the grasshopper. Smiling, he picks it up and puts it to his ear. His mother is taken aback and gives a low gasp.
Ray says, “I hear you, Mama. You're right there.”
His mother now has tears streaming down her face. She tells him, “Yes, yes, I am.” She kneels in front of him and gives him a hug (Ray, 2004, directed by Taylor Hackford, written by James L. White and Taylor Hackford, DVD scene 13, 01:09:27 to 01:12:02).
Ray had just passed a major milestone in his life. He had just learned to let what others don’t normally hear guide him, and that’s what you need to do if we want to learn God’s secrets. You need to let what others don’t normally hear guide you. You must listen to God’s Spirit rather than the spirit of this world.
But in order to do that, you must be a spiritual person. You must submit to the Spirit’s leading when He speaks to you.
Spiritual truths are for spiritual people, vs.13 says, because…
1 Corinthians 2:14-15 The natural person [literally, the soulish man, the man who depends on his own psyche] does not accept [or welcome] the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them [i.e., experience them] because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things” [literally, he discerns or understands all things] but is himself to be judged by no one [i.e., no one understands him].
Spiritual people are an enigma to most people. They march to the beat of a different drummer. They’re in tune with the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of this age, and they have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ (ESV).
I.e., we who know Christ. We have the mind of Christ, so we have the ability to understand spiritual things, if we choose to tune into those things.
It is like those animals which “see” and “hear” things we humans can’t even pick up on. Bats detect insects by sonar. Pigeons navigate by magnetic fields. Bloodhounds smell things we could never smell (Philip Yancey, "Seeing the Invisible God,” Books and Culture, May/June 2000, p.8).
In the same way, spiritual people perceive things other people cannot perceive. They hear the Holy Spirit, who shares with them the secrets of God.
So how do you become a spiritual person in tune with God’s Holy Spirit? Well, it’s very simple. You simply live each day in dependence upon God’s Holy Spirit. You ask God to show you the way, and every time He does, you go that way. You live in simple obedience to the light God has already given you in His Word; and when you do, He gives you more light.
It’s like the man who came to know Christ through the work of the Salvation Army. After he came to Christ, he went to the Salvation Army citadel every day. Then one day he came home rather sad.
His wife asked him, “What's the matter?”
And the man said, “I've just noticed that all the people in the Salvation Army wear red sweaters, and I don't have a red sweater.”
She said, “I'll knit one.” So she knitted him a red sweater.
The next Sunday after he went to the citadel, he still wasn't happy.
His wife said, “What's wrong this time?”
He said, “I just noticed all their red sweaters have yellow writing.”
They were both illiterate, but she said, “Don't worry about it. I'll embroider some writing on for you.”
Now, she had no idea what the writing said. She didn’t know that the words said, “BLOOD AND FIRE.” So she copied a sign from a store window across the street.
When the man came back from the Salvation Army citadel the next Sunday, she asked him, “Did they like your sweater?”
“They loved my sweater,” the man replied. “In fact, some of them said they liked my sweater better than their sweater.”
You see, the words that she had embroidered on his sweater, copied from a sign across the street read, THIS BUSINESS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT (Stuart Briscoe, "Christmas 365 Days a Year," Preaching Today, Tape 135).
That’s what it means to be a spiritual man or a spiritual woman. It means that you live your life under new management. You live your life under God’s management. Stop doing it your way and start doing it God’s way. Tell me: Who is in charge of your life?
If you want to get in on God’s secret, look for it in a simple package, then find it in a simple, spiritual message for spiritual people. Submit to God’s Spirit and let Him lead you into ways you can’t even imagine right now.
The voice of E.T. (Extra-Terrestrial), in Steven Spielberg's film, was something of a problem. Technicians could not come up with a voice to match the appearance of the model star of the film. Spielberg’s technician, working on the film, happened to be in a store one day when he heard a lady talking to the shop assistant. Her voice was exactly what he wanted. He stopped her on the way out, gave her his card, and said “come for an audition.”
Mrs. Welsh used to be a speech trainer. But decades of cigarette smoking caused her voice to crack up, leaving her croaky and gasping for breath—exactly what Spielberg had in mind. And so Pat Welsh, an unknown American housewife, became part of one of the biggest money-making movies of all time (Legacy Staff, “The Voice of E.T.” Legacy.com, 2-11-15; Vincent LoBrutto, Sound-On-Film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound, Praeger, 1994, p. 146; www.PreachingToday.com).
Who knows where God will lead you if you let Him, no matter what your past or handicap?
