This is the 3rd message in the series called, "Kairos".
Big Idea: We don't want to miss the prompting of God. But, what is that like? And why in the world would God use pain?
A good pilot does what it takes to get his passengers home.
A good example of this is the story of a flight when the attendant told everyone to take their seats because of impending turbulence. It was a rowdy flight; the folks weren’t quick to respond; so she warned them again. “The flight is about to get bumpy. For your own safety, take your seats.”
Most did. But some didn’t, so she changed her tone, “ladies and gentlemen, for your own good take your seats.”
When it seemed like everyone had taken their seats they heard the voice of the pilot. “This is the captain; people have gotten hurt by going to the bathroom instead of staying in their seats. Let’s be very clear about our responsibilities. My job is to get you through the storm. Your job is to do what I say. Now sit down and buckle up!"
Just then the bathroom door opened and a red-faced man with a sheepish grin exited and took his seat.
Good pilots do what it takes to get their passengers home.
So does God. So here’s a question for you… “How far do you want God to go in getting your attention? If God has to choose between your eternal safety and your earthly comfort, which do you hope he chooses?" Don’t answer too quickly. Give it some thought.
God does what it takes to get our attention. God will whisper, God will shout, God will touch and tug. He will take away our burdens; He’ll even take away our blessings. If there are a thousand steps between us and him, he will take all but one. He will leave the final one for us. The choice to listen is ours.
God’s goal is not to make you happy. His goal is to make you his. His goal is not to get you what you want; it’s to get you what you need. And if that means a jolt or 2 to get you in your seat, then be jolted. (Max Lucado)
A father told the following story about his son.
My son, was five or six when he began asking me, "What does God's voice sound like?" I didn't know how to answer.
A few years later, the boy went off to his first junior high camp. In the middle of the week, the father went up to see his kid. He learned that the boy had started to assault another kid but had been held back by his friends. He was unrepentant, wanted to leave camp, pulled together his stuff, and shoved it into the car.
The dad asked him for a last talk before they drove away. They sat on two large rocks in the middle of the woods. "Son," he asked, "is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?"
"Yes," he nodded.
"What's the voice telling you?"
"That I should stay and work it out."
"Can you identify that voice?"
"Yes," he said immediately. "It's God." It was the moment he'd waited for.
He said, "do you realize what just happened? You heard God's voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that's happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize Him."
The father said, “I will never forget his response: "Well, I'm still not doing what God said."
He explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey His guidance, his heart would become hardened, and his ears would become dull. If he continued on this path, there would be a day when he would never again hear the voice of God. There would come a day when he would deny that God even speaks or has ever spoken to him.
But if he treasures God's voice, however, it comes to him—through the scriptures, through his conscience, through the inner prompting of God—and responds to Him with obedience, then his heart would be softened, and his ears would always be able to hear the whisper of God into his soul.
The boy chose to stay. If he had chosen differently, he would have begun the path toward nominal discipleship. Perhaps he never would have rejected the faith overtly. He might have even chosen to be a faithful attendee at a church and been by everyone else's estimation a good man, but he would no longer be a close Jesus-follower.
I want you to hear the voice of God! I don’t want you to miss it… I want you to have a conversation with the Almighty. I’m hoping that throughout the series you’re becoming more aware of the voice of God.
Are you starting to hear the voice of God? Do you find that when you read the Bible that you are beginning to understand that God is trying to get your attention? Do you go throughout your day and find yourself, with ears to hear the voice of God through people? Are the 2 connecting to each other?
My decision to go into ministry was a combination of several different things that God did in order to get my attention. My heart was being transformed because of my renewed desire to become a disciple. Internally, I was wrestling with my decision to become a policeman and I was wondering whether or not God had other plans. Plans for me to go into the ministry.
And if that wasn’t enough, we travelled to Michigan and spent time on the campus of a Bible college and university and during a meal I remember being overwhelmed with what I believed was the power of the Holy Spirit trying to get my attention. I remember turning to AJ and saying, “I think God is flashing my life before my eyes.” I remember turning to her and saying, “I think God wants me to go into the ministry.”
I remember reading from Ephesians 4:11-12 “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.”
Shortly after that, I remember travelling with AJ (my wife) and seeing a billboard… Yes, literally it was a sign… That had the same passage on it!
I remember her response so clearly, “Well… We better pray about that!”
Discerning the voice of God requires an internal clock that perceives his promptings. And it’s our reaction time to those promptings that leads to supernatural synchronicity: being in the right place at the right time with the right people.
Where in the 3rd part of the series called Kairos. It refers to the opportune time. Chronos is quantitative; it counts minutes. Kairos is qualitative; it captures moments. Chronos time may be measured in minutes, but life is measured in Kairos moments. Discerning those moments is part of hearing God’s voice. Hearing him means discerning…
…The holy moments
…The critical moments
…The teachable moments
...The defining moments
Learning to discern God’s promptings takes practice. It’s like learning a new language. You don’t always pick up on the nuances at first, but if you give it some time, you get better at hearing those subtle whispers. God sometimes has to prompt us over and over again so that he can get our attention. And he often does it by using various ways.
If you’re anything like me, it takes God a few times to get your full attention. He often speaks to me in more than one way because I need more than one kind of prompting in order for me to pay attention. And for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake, God is gracious enough to give 2 or 3 or 4 confirmations.
Let’s take a look at the apostle Paul.
Acts 9:3-11
3 As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?”
5 “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked.
You’d think that knocking Saul off his horse on the road to Damascus would have been enough of a sign to turn him into Paul? But Saul’s stubbornness or inability to identify God needed more than that.
And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! 6 Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
God actually had to go so far as to speak with an audible voice from heaven. And then strike him blind.
7 The men with Saul stood speechless, for they heard the sound of someone’s voice but saw no one!8 Saul picked himself up off the ground, but when he opened his eyes he was blind. So his companions led him by the hand to Damascus. 9 He remained there blind for three days and did not eat or drink.
(Not sure if I will keep this section on dreams)
Now we tend to think that God doesn’t do those kinds of things anymore, that God doesn’t speak to us through dreams or visions. That’s not true.
Emmanuel was a Shiite Muslim and so prayer was part of his religious routine. When he prayed, he felt as if no one was listening. A friend gave Emmanuel a Bible, telling him that Jesus wanted to talk to him, so Emmanuel asked Jesus to reveal himself if he was real. That’s exactly what happened. Emmanuel had a vision of Jesus and heard his voice. He put his faith in Christ and then had to flee his country because his life was in jeopardy. That’s how he met his future wife. God whispered to Emmanuel that she was going to be his wife despite the fact that they didn’t speak each other’s language. The day after they were married, Emmanuel was miraculously able to speak and understand the Kurdish language! No, that’s not a typo! Amanda became sick, one night a light came into their tent in the refugee camp and Emmanuel heard a whisper that help was on the way. The next day 2 women showed up saying that God had sent them. The doctors were unable to solve her problems but Amanda had a vision of Jesus standing by her bed putting his hand on her head and praying for healing. When she woke up, her symptoms were gone. This couple is now training to be the first Arabic-speaking pastors of a church in Thessalonica Greece.
Acts 9:10-12 10 Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord!” he replied.
11 The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas. When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now. 12 I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.”
God even went so far as to use two visions: Saul had a vision of Ananias while Ananias had a vision of Saul. Eventually, it led to Ananias praying for him and Paul receiving his eyesight back. God was making absolutely sure that Saul heard his voice.
But there are times when you don't even look at your Bible. You ignore your desires and when God uses people to speak to you, you don’t respond. God might be trying to get your attention in many different ways and you can ignore them all.
"But you cannot ignore pain, can you?
Pain can actually be a gift from God that he uses for his glory and our good. He uses it to get us out of addictive behaviours. He uses it to get us out of adverse situations. He uses it to get us out of abusive relationships.
(Optional)
• Without pain we would ignore problems that could kill us, like the pain of an inflamed appendix.
• Sometimes the greatest joy follows the worst pain, just ask the mother of a newborn.
• Few people inflict more pain on themselves than athletes, but the pain is forgotten in the thrill of victory.
God uses pain to get our attention when we’re in the middle of life’s most difficult moments.
• Pain can be a professor of theology.
• Pain can be a marriage counsellor.
• Pain can be a life coach.
• Nothing gets our full attention like pain.
Pain is part of God’s sanctification process." (Mark Batterson. Whisper: how to hear the voice of God. Page 173)
The Bible is a book about real people with real problems who experience real pain. There’s one book in the Bible that is the epitome of pain and suffering. The book of Job. Job lost his family to a catastrophe. He lost his wealth and his health. Worst of all, he lost hope. He was a defeated man and eventually ask God to end his life.
But in the middle of all of that, he spoke these words: “At least I can take comfort in this: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One.” Job 6:10 (NLT)
another translation says it this way…
Then I would still have this consolation—my joy in unrelenting pain—that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.
You can get through just about anything if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. For a follower of Christ, there always is.
But here’s a caution.
Don’t be so focused on getting out of the difficult circumstances that you don’t get anything out of them. God often uses our difficult circumstances to change us. Take some time to listen to what God might be saying during those tough times.
Job endured an enormous amount of pain and yet he was able to say that there was joy in the pain. The Bible says that God blessed the last part of Job’s life more than the early part.
I can’t promise that our lives will be pain-free, and I wouldn’t promise it if I could. But I can promise that he who began a good work is going to carry it to completion. I can promise that his presence is full of joy.
Pain is part of the curse, but that doesn’t mean God can’t redeem it, recycle it, and speak through it. It’s a difficult language to learn and we mustn’t forget that we have a suffering saviour, who endured the cross for the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2).
The most excruciating pain that Jesus went through was not his torture or even being nailed to the cross, it was the full weight of sin on his shoulders. He who knew no sin became sin for us, and one thing sustained him: you! Our sin put him there, but his love for us kept him there.
Are you listening for God’s voice? Are you listening for the promptings? That restlessness of spirit, a surge of adrenaline, when you feel the urge to respond. No one is better at that than the Holy Spirit. Okay yeah right see tomorrow by Jim
When God prompts you to pray, pray. When God prompts you to serve, serve. When God prompts you to give, give. God is setting you up, but you have to obey the prompting. In your obedience-whether it’s praying, serving, or giving-might just be somebody else’s miracle.
I made a pretty bold statement at the beginning of the series. I said that what we perceive to be relational or emotional or spiritual problems are in fact, hearing problems. We’ve been defeated by the voice of conformity, the voice of criticism, the voice of condemnation, and the side effects include loneliness, shame, and anxiety.
But you are an image bearer of God. It’s his voice that knit you together in your mother’s womb. It’s his voice that ordained all of your days before one of them even came to be. It’s his voice that began a good work and his voice that will carry it to completion.
Is God’s voice the loudest voice in your life?
The answer to that question will determine your destiny!
Source: Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God, by Mark Batterson. 2017
