Following on from the Bible study’s discussion on hearing God’s voice and being guided by the Holy Spirit, I have been pondering on the voices we hear (you have to do something while swimming… it’s a lonely sport!)

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterised by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness, often manifested by auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganised speech and thinking. And yet there are always different voices vying for our attention every day, even if we don’t class ourselves as mentally ill or schizophrenic! What are those voices? How do we discern between them? How do we learn to train ourselves to be godly?

Our own voice, our own thoughts
Though we may not talk to ourselves in an audible voice, there are thoughts running through our minds all the time which shape our beliefs and actions. We have a soundtrack going on in our minds constantly, sometimes turned down so low we fail to recognise it. Generally speaking, depending on our personality and upbringing and the different circumstances we face, the voice can be saying good things or bad things, true things or lies.

There are basically two extremes we can fall into with this voice. The first is to have an over-inflated opinion of ourselves, believing ourselves to be pretty good, not really in need of much change, rather like Prince Edward in the film ‘Enchanted’ who, when asked if he liked himself, says smugly “What’s not to like?” Paul warns against this attitude when he says “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment” (Romans 12:3) If our voice is always raising ourselves up and putting other people down, there could well be a problem.

The other extreme is to have too low an opinion of ourselves, a “Woe is me!” mentality, a false humility, poor self-esteem, no regard for ourselves at all. People with this kind of ‘voice’ typically run themselves down all the time, never believing they can do anything good at all. This voice can seem very persuasively spiritual, since humility is a Biblical concept, but there is a world of difference between true humility and the insincere, needy, desperate-for-affirmation lowliness of never believing yourself to be worth anything at all, when God clearly values us, despite our sins and failings, enough to send Christ to die for us.

Other people
Every day other people say things to us and about us and it can be hard to distinguish between truth and lies here as well. If we are fortunate, we have people around us who will build us up and encourage us whilst also being truthful. All too often, though, the voices of others confirm either our own arrogance or our own desperation; they tear down rather than building up. As Casting Crowns vividly say in their powerful song ‘Voice of Truth’,
‘But the waves are calling out my name and they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times I’ve tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me time and time again:
“Boy, you never win,
You never win.” ‘

In addition to the voice of people we actually know (friends, family, colleagues, neighbours), there are all those other voices out there: celebrities, advertising, authors, actors and so on. It can be hard not to be bombarded by all these voices, all telling us different things, all clamouring for our attention.

The enemy
Christians have an enemy, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. Peter tells us “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Pet 5:8) One way that he seeks to devour us is through that insidious voice, sowing seeds of doubt, discouragement and despair into our minds. Just as he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden, asking that apparently innocent question, “Did God really say…?”, the devil asks uncomfortable questions and seeks to undermine faith and trust at every opportunity. His voice can be very persuasive and seem very truthful, but ultimately we have to understand that he is a liar and the Father of lies (John 8:44) When he lies, Jesus says, he is speaking his native language. We have to learn to discern those lies, to weigh up what we hear and not be deceived. When the devil used God’s own Word to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus could defeat his lies by the truth, knowing the full context of the Scriptures, knowing God’s will and heart for his life so that the plausible-sounding words did not divert Him from doing the Father’s will.

God’s Voice
Finally, the voice we need to hear and long to hear is God’s voice. We have the promise that His sheep will hear and know His voice (John 10:16). We have the assurance that God’s Spirit will lead us (Rom 8:14) Several times in the early chapters of Revelation comes the phrase “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Rev 2:7, 11) Clearly, God can and does speak to His people – in dreams, in visions, in impressions, in words, in an audible voice at times. Moreover, because of the very character of God, we know that what He says is true. He is truth and what He says is true. He is good and what He says will do us good. He is love and what He says is said out of love.

That’s not to say that it is easy to hear God’s voice or that what He says always makes sense to us! (We can waste a lot of time trying to make sense of it at times!) But as we pray, meditate, read God’s Word, and ultimately learn to listen, we will hear that Voice of Truth, telling us a different story, telling us ‘Do not be afraid!’ (hundreds of time in the Bible) and we can learn the joy of fellowship with the Spirit.

Casting Crowns say
“Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth”

We have a choice as to which voice we listen to. That’s what training ourselves to be godly is really about. May we learn to listen more to the Voice of Truth than to all the other voices calling out to us.

Listen to the song here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaVg0cWkgAw

The Bible study moved on to Romans 7:1-6 last night, looking at the extent and limits of the law – the ‘long arm of the law’, as Garry put it! The extent of the law is that it only applies to those living; Paul goes on to explain the difference between a woman who marries another man while her husband is alive and one who re-marries on her husband’s death. In the first case, the law of marriage still extends to her and she is therefore an adulteress (Rom 7:3); in the second, the law of marriage has ceased to extend to her and she can re-marry legally.

Just as Christ died for us and we died in Him (ideas explored in Romans 6), so therefore we have been freed from the long arm of the law. Christ’s death has seen the law satisfied or fulfilled; the demands of the law have been met (it can only reach the grave!) But that does not mean we now live in anarchy. We are still, in many ways, following the law – led by the Spirit of God, however, not by a fearful compulsion that by following the law we succeed in ‘earning’ our place with God. As one commentary put it, “while the law still fulfils its function of guiding us to know God’s moral standard, we are free from enslavement to it as a way of righteousness.”

The law could be compared to a map, guiding us to a good destination, but putting the responsibility on us to use it wisely to reach that destination. God’s Spirit is a little like a Sat-Nav, actually speaking to us to guide us to a good destination. The Holy Spirit speaks, directs, instructs and corrects us and we are motivated to follow by the new law written on our hearts (Jer 31:33)

Listening to the Spirit – a topic developed later on in Romans – is not as easy as perhaps listening to the persistent (and sometimes irritating) voice on a Sat-Nav, however! Our own voices can also be heard; the enemy also speaks to us, whispering words of doubt and discouragement. How do we learn to recognise the “Voice of Truth” which guides us?

1 Tim 4:7 urges us to “have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.” Training requires effort, hard work, perseverance and determination. Romans 7 reminds us that there is no such thing as absolute freedom; we will serve either the flesh or the Spirit; we will either ‘bear fruit for God’ (Rom 7:4) or for death. (Rom 7:5) Sometimes what God says us to us may seem ridiculous, challenging or dangerous (think of Hosea, urged to marry a prostitute or Gideon, told to reduce his army to the paltry number of 300 men, or Abraham, told to sacrifice his son, even though God abhorred child sacrifice). It takes practice, training, wrestling to discern God’s voice and often we will need to seek corroboration, asking for confirmation, even as Gideon did with his ‘fleece’. God is not afraid of our questions or doubts or our need for confirmation; the only thing that angers Him is our downright disobedience.

As we grow in faith and in our knowledge of the Shepherd, we learn to recognise His voice. (John 10:1-18) We want to please Him. The Holy Spirit gives power to obey God, a power the law by itself could never give. We have a new way of serving, “the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” (Rom 7:6)

We have been released from the law so that we may whole-heartedly serve God!

Yan Handley preached from Ephesians 3:19 last night, talking about ‘being filled to the measure of all the fulness of God’. We were challenged to enlarge our vision of God, seeing Him as He really is. That kind of revelation of God will always change us. Revelation brings transformation: think of Isaiah in the temple, gazing on the Lord (Isaiah 6), being transformed from a compromising priest to a compelling prophet; think of Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9), being transformed from a religious bigot to a radical believer; think of John on the island of Patmos (Rev 1), being transformed from an exiled missionary to an elated visionary. The revelation of God brings transformation.

God has a provision of abundance available for our lives. The land the Israelites were given was a ‘land flowing with milk and honey.’ Jesus talked about ‘life in all its fulness’. Life is about so much more than the abundance of our possessions (Luke 12:15). God crowns ‘the year with your bounty and your carts overflow with abundance’ (Ps 65:11); as Malachi says, God will open the floodgates of heaven to pour out blessing on those who honour Him; the blessing of God is ‘pressed down, shaken together, running over’ (Luke 6:38).

The blessings of God are abundant, like a banquet (Song of Songs 2:4, Ps 23:5). The table prepared for us is prepared ‘in the presence of my enemies’. The enemies of fear, doubt, insecurity, failure, frustration and torment can seek to rob us of God’s blessing, but His blessings of deliverance, joy, peace and rest are available to us. He is the great ‘I AM’ and is able to reward all those who diligently seek Him.

In order to approach God and receive His blessings, we need:
1) Passion
2) Priority
3) Purity

1) Passion
Ps 37:4 urges us to ‘delight yourselves in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.’ Matthew 5 urges us to hunger and thirst for righteousness; we need that thirst for God which Jesus talked about in John 7. As the deer pants for the water, so our souls must long for God with the passion of an intimate relationship.

2) Priority
God has to be first in our lives. We need to keep Him as the ‘centre and substance of our being’ (see Ps 16:8, 11). Jesus was very clear about our need to have God as the first priority in our lives:
“seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6:33)
So often we get our priorities muddled and try to get the ‘other things’ sorted first; Jesus tells us that we need to put God first and He will then sort out all the ‘other things’ that are essential to life.

3) Purity
Compromise and impurity will inevitably affect our relationship with God. Ps 24 talks about the need for “clean hands and a pure heart,who do not put their trust in an idol or swear by a false god” (Ps 24:4). Jesus told us that the pure in heart will see God (Matt 5:8). There is no substitute for purity of thoughts, motives, attitudes and behaviour.

When we make God our passion and priority and have purity in our lives, we can be an effective witness to the power and provision of the Lord. We have to admit our need, believe His promise and respond and receive from God in faith.

Stephen preached this morning from Matthew 13, looking at the parable of the mustard seed and the parable about yeast. Both these parables show us the difference that an apparently small, insignificant thing can make. A mustard seed, Jesus says, is the smallest of seeds and yet when it grows, it’s the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, providing refuge for the birds which perch in its branches. Similarly, yeast doesn’t seem the most elaborate ingredient in bread-making, but it’s that tiny amount which makes the loaf rise. Small things aren’t necessarily insignificant!

It’s easy for us to think big and to feel overwhelmed by that. 2011 is the year of the census – we’ll soon be overwhelmed by statistics about the British population and a whole plethora of other information which makes us feel reduced to a bunch of numbers. But Jesus reminds us in these parables that God works through people, one at a time, and that nothing we do for Him is so small that it goes unnoticed. We can make a difference – to our families, to our friends, to our neighbours, to our locality, to our world. Everybody matters. We can all make a difference.

This sermon made me think also about other foods. Some of the foods I cook look plentiful at the start of cooking and seem to reduce to nothing by the end of it – spinach and rhubarb being good examples of this! We don’t want to be all mouth and no action (as they say in Yorkshire!) – better for us to live wholeheartedly before God, trusting Him to work through us, than to live arrogantly, promising much but fulfilling little.

On a lovely sunny day in April, what could be more pleasant than being outdoors? Well, I’m sure these people can think of a whole host of other things they would have preferred to be doing this Saturday, but they generously gave of their time and effort to try and solve a problem we’ve had with the drains. There are a lot of practical jobs associated with church buildings and many of them are not at all glamorous!





Some enjoying food while others keep working!

When we first started meeting in the new building, I preached on the dangers of anticlimax, for there is usually a ‘low’ that follows any ‘high’ and we can be in danger of thinking that there is something wrong if we aren’t always feeling on top form.

Many of you know that I have been in training for the Swimathon event, a sponsored swim to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care (and many thanks to all of you who have sponsored me for this!) Today was the actual sponsored swim and I managed the 5 km swim I had set out to achieve. I even have the medal to prove it! But funnily enough, rather than feeling any great sense of achievement, I felt a strange sense of anticlimax at the end of it. “Is that it?” perhaps best sums up my feelings. All those weeks of training, all that extra mental toughness in true Thomas the Tank Engine style (‘I think I can, I think I can’), all that imagining and hoping and wondering… all gone. I’ve done it. And instead of feeling elated or any great sense of achievement, I just think ‘Now what?’

Life can be like that more often than we like to admit. Garry has just bought a new motorbike. He’s been dreaming of this moment for months and months and has talked of little else for the past few weeks. This week he’s been like a child waiting for Christmas! But at times maybe the anticipation and the saving up and the waiting and hoping are more exciting than the reality. When we’ve got what we want, sometimes we don’t want it any more…! (Not true of Garry, I hasten to add!)

The human heart is restless, always wanting more. If we think things will satisfy us, there’s always something bigger, better, shinier out there to tempt our hearts and lead us astray. We need to learn patience and contentment and the joy, perhaps, of perseverance.

Hebrews 12 tells us to run with perseverance, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2) We need to have that long-term vision and the stickability that will not depend on the highs and lows of feeling or mood or circumstances but on the reality of God’s word. Paul tells us in Romans 8 “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” May we learn to wait patiently for what we do not yet have and may we be thankful for all we do have, not moving on restlessly to the next quest for something new, but learning contentment in God.