Listening to God

Amen.

So we're in this series called Prayer.

And so we uh week one, we talked about what it meant to talk to God, and and I'll I'll come back to that in a second and review that just a little bit.

And then last week we we the title was How to Talk with God.

And so today it's it's it's about how to listen to God, how to listen to God.

And this is a let me just give you a little picture of a usual set of circumstances in the butcher household.

In the butcher household.

And so Jill and I, we're not quite empty nesters.

We still have an 18-year-old son that's in the house.

Um, but but we're by ourselves a lot because he he's he works and he's got friends and and he loves doing his thing.

And so a lot of times Jill is trying to give me the rundown on what's happening with the family schedule.

And so she'll start talking to me, and I'm not looking at her.

I I I it's probably one of two or three things.

I've either got my nose in a book, or I've got my nose in a screen, or there's no telling where my mind might be.

I'm praying, right?

I'm praying.

I've got my nose in the presence of God.

And so, um, now I will tell you this that my in my family there there is a hereditary issue with a loss of hearing.

My dad struggled in his older years to hear.

I mean, he he really did.

And then my older brother, uh Butch, has hearing aids, and my mother, um, she can't hear anything with or without the hearing aid sometimes, and and I know that it's coming.

I know that it's coming.

But I think that I'm also struggling with this thing called selective hearing.

Have y'all ever heard of that?

Um, I think my kids struggle a lot with selective hearing, but sometimes I struggle with selective hearing.

And so Jill knows that I struggle with selective hearing.

So she'll say, she'll say, Russ, she'll start telling me stuff, you know.

We got this, we got this, we got this on this day, and she'll say, hey, hey, hey, look at me.

Look at me.

I am like I'm five years old.

I mean, there is a five in my age, but it's it's not alone.

But she's talking to me like I'm five.

Look at me, look at me.

Are you listening to me?

Are you listening to me?

She'll say, I'm, and I can't overemphasize this.

I'm telling the God honest truth, guys.

She said, Are you listening to me?

And I turn and I'm listening.

I really am.

I've turned away from whatever, and I'm listening.

And she'll say, Friday night at 6 o'clock, we've got to be somewhere.

Saturday night, we've got, you know, we've got this.

Sunday afternoon.

So she gives me the list.

So I don't know if any of you struggle with selective hearing or have anybody close to you with selective hearing.

You don't have to even look at them right now, but we all struggle a little bit.

Now, we're we're talking today about listening to God and this idea of prayer.

We we looked at what it what it meant to talk to God, um, and then we we looked at what it meant to talk with God.

Today we're talking about listening to God.

Just before her death, Mother Teresa made a rare TV appearance on 60 Minutes.

And if you don't know who the Mother Teresa is, look her up.

But she at one point in the interview, the journalist asked her a question When you pray to God, what do you say to God?

And she was just quiet for a second.

And she says, I don't say anything, I just listen.

I don't say anything, I just listen.

And this might seem very odd because listening prayer is something that many followers of Jesus, especially probably in modern days, modern times, we don't understand it and we don't practice it.

We don't understand it and we don't practice it.

Until probably up until, I mean, really probably eight or ten years ago, I went through a um, probably 12 or so, I went through a period where I was discipled by um a man from England, and Mike Breen was his name, and he discipled me in what it meant to practice listening prayer.

What it meant to just sit and listen to the voice of God.

Dr.

Gary Bashears from uh Western Seminary, um uh shout out to my uh one of our elders, Jared, who went to Western Seminary out on the West Coast.

He says this.

He said, Learning to hear God's voice is the single most important task of a disciple of Jesus.

Learning to hear the voice of God is the single most important task of a disciple of Jesus.

So would you would you stand with me and let's pray for the Holy Spirit to speak to us as I read this passage out of John 10, verses 2 through 5.

John 10:2–5

Come, Holy Spirit, would you say with me, Come, Holy Spirit?

Let's say it together.

Yes.

And I'm gonna read this.

I'm gonna read this.

Verse 2, John 10.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him and the sheep listen to his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he was brought out all his own, when he is brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.

But they will never follow a stranger.

In fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

Father, speak to us.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Let's say it again together.

Come, Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Have a seat.

Have a seat.

Jesus is talking about those that are his sheep.

Jesus is talking about those that are his followers, those that are truly his sheep.

Um, one of the most famous Psalms is the 23rd Psalm, and the very first line in the 23rd Psalm says, the Lord is my.

Yes, you know it.

The Lord is my shepherd.

It is personal.

And so Jesus is talking about his sheep, and the word picture that he's giving his disciples is this idea that his sheep know his voice.

His sheep know his voice.

I've been in three different places where I have seen shepherds lead their sheep.

So when Pat and Joy had gone to Romania, I remember going to a village with them, and in that village in the evening, they would bring in all the sheep from the field.

All the sheep would come in from the field.

All the shepherds, different shepherds, bringing all their sheep, putting them in the same pen together.

So the next morning, how do the shepherds know which sheep are theirs?

And how do the sheep know which shepherd to follow?

They just call them.

And the sheep know their shepherd's voice.

And I'm telling you, you watch it with your own eyes, and it is something to see.

I've been in Africa, and they they shepherd sheep in Africa, and they bring them all in the evening.

They bring them all in to the pens in the evening.

Very different in different places.

In Africa, the shepherd had a little wooden recorder-like, you know, flute-like instrument.

And so the next morning he would play a song on his instrument, and the sheep would follow him because they recognized the song of the shepherd.

I've been in Israel.

And the shepherd there, they would sing a song.

They would sing it.

I wish I could sing that song, but they would sing a song.

All these different shepherds bring all their sheep together, and they would leave out early in the day, and the shepherd will sing his song, and the sheep know the voice of the shepherd, and they know the song of their shepherd.

And so Jesus is saying, My sheep know my voice.

My sheep know my voice.

Luke 10, 39.

We see this beautiful picture.

Mary and Martha.

You know the story.

Mary and Martha are in the house, and Martha's very busy.

Where do we find Mary?

She, verse 39, she had a sister.

Martha had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.

This is what a disciple would do.

It would sit, a disciple would sit at the feet.

He or she would sit at the feet of the rabbi and listen to his teaching.

And so this idea, it's not original to Jesus.

It's all the way back through the Old Testament.

One of the most ancient prayers of God's people is called the Shema.

Shema, the Shema.

Now you might read it and you would say, Shema, but the correct pronunciation in the Hebrew is Shema.

Say it with me.

Shema.

I probably don't even have the quite the right, you know, little kind of to it, but Shema.

It's Shema.

It's almost like you're spitting at somebody.

It's out of Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 6.

Deuteronomy 6:4–6

It's very common for Jewish people, even today, to take the prayer.

It's right here out of Deuteronomy chapter 6, and they put it on tiny little scrolls, and they would put it in a little encasement on their doorpost, or they would put it in little boxes called phylacteries on their forehead or wrapped around their wrist, because that was the command.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

But here's what the Shema says.

It says, verse 4, listen, O Israel.

Now your translations might say, here, hear, hear, O Israel, but the New Living Translation, listen, O Israel.

The Lord is our God, the Lord is alone, or the Lord is one.

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength.

You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today.

So let's go back to verse 4.

It says, listen, O Israel.

Let's just, let's just, let's, let's say that with passion together.

Listen, O Israel.

Let's say it together.

Ready?

Listen, O Israel.

And so the first word in this passage, it's listen or hear or heed.

And you think it means just listen, just hear, just hear.

But no, the word actually has a deeper meaning.

It's not just listen, it's listen and obey.

Take heed.

Obey.

It's like a parent telling their child, don't, are you listening to me?

Not, and you're and the question, and you know, have you done what I've asked you to do?

Are you listening?

Did you hear me?

It's the voice of Jesus to his disciples.

Listen and obey.

A disciple is one who is listening to the voice of Jesus in order to go out and make disciples, obeying his great commission.

This is easy to do.

It's not easy.

We live in a culture where we're so inundated with secularism, expressive individualism, where it's all about you doing you.

You just follow your own dreams.

Well, let me tell you something.

That is not the voice of Jesus.

Just do whatever makes you happy.

Don't pay attention to those religious zealots who are trying to control you or conform you.

No, we're not trying to conform or to control anybody.

We're simply wanting to listen and obey to the teachings of Jesus.

That's our heart.

Until we come to trust that Jesus' word is a reflection of his goodness and his grace and his love for us, we understand the Heavenly Father is crazy about us like a father is toward a child.

That is the heart of our Heavenly Father.

So with that understanding in mind, how do we hear?

How do we listen to the voice of God?

There's no magic formula, but I want to give you, I want to give you, I want to give you six specific things.

They come out of a book by I got a Pete Grieg titled, How to Hear God, A Simple Guide for Normal People.

Now I'm normal people.

Are you normal people?

I am no different than you.

I'm not some super spiritual person that's, you know, head and shoulders above you.

It's not like I go up to a mountain every week and God gives me a message and I just type it out while my eyes are closed.

I am like you.

So here's the six ways we hear God's voice.

I'm just gonna give them to you, then we're gonna talk about them.

One is Jesus.

We hear God's voice through Jesus.

Through Jesus.

Number two is scripture.

Number three is circumstances.

Number four is desire or desires.

And number five is the prophetic, and all the Baptists are just got really nervous.

And number six is listening prayer.

Listening prayer.

So let's break them down a little bit.

Jesus.

Number one way to listen is to listen to Jesus.

Read through the Gospels, listen to the voice of Jesus.

Read what Jesus says in the Gospels.

Some Bibles even have the words of Jesus in a different color.

The color of red.

And so they're easy to identify.

But all through Scripture, we see how Jesus is in all of Scripture.

You go back to Genesis.

You know that Jesus was there?

Jesus is there.

There's a prophetic word about how Jesus will crush the head of the serpent in Genesis 3.15.

It is a prophetic word about the victory that we will have over the enemy through the life and the death and the burial and resurrection of Jesus.

All the way back in the beginning.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are found all the way through Scripture.

And Jesus is at the center of that.

Hebrews 1, 1 through 3 says, long ago, God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through prophets.

And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.

God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son, He created the universe.

The Son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command.

When he had cleansed us from his sin, you know what he's saying there is when Jesus was finished with his work on the cross.

See, they didn't take his life, he surrendered his life, he was beaten, he was crowned with a crown of thorns, he was mocked, he was spit upon, and he was crucified on a Roman cross.

Every bit of that was to provide for the cleansing of your sins.

He took it upon himself.

We call it the good news, the gospel.

It sounds ugly, but I'm telling you, it is beautiful because it provides for our forgiveness.

He cleansed us from our sins back to Hebrews.

He sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven because his work was done.

And Jesus is called the Word all through the New Testament.

The word doesn't refer to a book, it refers to a person, the logos, the word of God.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.

John 1:1.

John 1:1

So Jesus is the foundation for all of God speaking to us.

He gave us the great commission before he ascended to the Father.

He says, He says, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have observed, and I will be with you until the end of the age.

So this is the Jesus, the foundation.

The second way that God speaks is Scripture.

They're all of Scripture.

He speaks to the person of Jesus in Scripture.

Jesus comes and lives inside of us.

Scripture is what we should base our life on.

We see in Scripture where God speaks in an audible voice, like Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, or Jesus speaking audibly, giving the sermon on the mount.

But much of the Bible is God speaking through the minds and the personalities of human writers, and it's all basically summed up.

Listen and obey.

Listen and obey.

Herman Bebnik says this.

He says, Holy Scripture is not an arid story or ancient chronicle, but it's the ever-living, eternal, youthful word of which Hide now and always issues to his people.

It is the eternal, ongoing speech of God to us.

Is that how you think of this word?

Man, this is this is this is the holy word of God.

It says it right here.

Holy Bible.

Holy Bible.

What's the name of the book?

Holy Bible.

Written by Russ Butcher.

I'm kidding.

That's funny.

That's my name right there.

Just make sure I, in case I leave this copy, you know, somewhere I can pick it up and it's mine.

That's a bad joke.

Okay.

In ancient times, listen, in ancient times, monks created a practice, what we know now as in Latin, lectio divina.

And it's really translated as spiritual reading.

If you went through Lent with us, if you went through the period of Lent 40 days prior to Easter, we we went through a lectionary reading plan, and it was through one of the apps, and so so these these devices that are often uh very much uh controlled by the devil can be used for the glory of God.

Amen.

And so we we use them for good things, and so uh, but here's what is the point of lectionary reading?

It's it's this idea of you reading a passage.

You don't need an app for this.

Just start.

Start with the gospel of John, start with the gospel of Matthew.

If you're new to the faith, start in the New Testament.

Don't go to the old yet.

It's okay.

It's okay.

You get excited, you want to go back.

One of my chaplain friends, who was the chaplain for the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

He led a baseball player to Christ.

And he told him, he said, do not go back to the Old Testament.

You start reading with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And so a week passed, and the baseball player was so excited.

He read the whole New Testament.

And he says, I gotta just keep going.

And he went back to the book right before Matthew.

And he says, he said, I know you told me not to read any of the Old Testament, but I read that that book titled Malachi.

I read Malachi.

It's this written by an Italian prophet.

I'm full of him today.

All seriousness, he he said, he said, he said, chap.

They called him chap.

What's a tith?

What's a tit?

What's a tith?

And he so he had to explain to him what a tithe was.

The word is tithe.

10%.

He says, we give 10% of everything you make.

And this player made millions of dollars.

He said, I'm supposed to give 10% of this to the Lord.

He said, that's what the word says.

And so a few days later, the player came back.

He said, Chap, tell me where to write the chap.

Man, I wish I could be a Major League Baseball chaplain.

Especially right now.

We're about to move into this building project.

And so I'm going to ask for some of you to give more than a tith, okay?

More than a tith.

And so here's what lecture, here's what spiritual reading is.

You read a passage, you read it slowly, and then you stop and say, Lord, speak to me.

And then you read the same passage a second time.

Trusting that God will bring word to jump out by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That God would speak to you.

Speak to you in a way where you listen and you know that this is leading you to something practical.

In that day or in that week.

Spiritual reading is what we're talking about.

Listening to the word, Hebrews 4, 12, the word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, able to divide between.

What does it say?

Bone and flesh.

Discerning the thoughts of our hearts.

The second way God speaks is circumstances.

Circumstances.

God is sovereign over the events of our lives, while at the same time he is completely sovereign.

He gives us a will where we are exercising our will, and in the same same sense, he at the same time there is the devil.

There's the enemies that we face, three enemies we face.

The devil, the world, and the human or sinful flesh.

And so we are exercising the measure of will that God has given us in the sovereign circumstances that He is working in.

And the devil is at work, and in the middle of all that, God is speaking.

God speaks through circumstances.

God speaks through circumstances.

And let me tell you something.

Sometimes God's will is only clearly seen in the rear view mirror of your life.

My perspective, so my brother, so I have an older brother named Butch.

We had a middle brother named Eddie.

Eddie passed away May 19th, 1992.

So in the middle of those circumstances, my perspective was why God, it was my prayer was lament, lament, just why?

No, no.

But my perspective now is different because it was my brother's death that I believe distinctly led to my father's salvation.

And my brother Eddie, he understood what it meant to take up his cross and follow Jesus.

I mean, he is, he directly influenced my faith.

Both of my brothers have.

And so do you see?

Sometimes God speaks to circumstances and we don't always see it clearly in that moment, but you will get perspective one day.

It might even be in heaven when you get the complete picture.

Paula de Arce says that God comes to us disguised as our life.

God comes to us disguised as our life.

Number four is our desires.

He speaks through our desires.

Now, this is, we got to be careful here because a lot of us have desires that are influenced by this secular culture.

They're influenced by the wickedness of our heart.

Jeremiah says 17, 9, the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked.

So how can God speak to our desires?

But but Psalm 37, 4 says, take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires.

So somewhere in between those two verses, God gives you holy, God-given desires.

And he speaks to you.

And so how does that work?

Let me just give you a quick example.

Just so we're we're we're getting ready to, we we've signed a contract with a design-build company to build an atrium and an auditorium and then remodel this building to meet all the needs of our children and student ministries that are growing like crazy.

And I'm telling you, some of y'all, the 9 o'clock, just to find, just to see what it's like at 11, come one Sunday.

It is fun at 11, isn't it?

It's fun.

It's packed.

It's crazy.

What's funny though is all of our kids come to the 9 o'clock service.

More kids at the 9 o'clock than at 11.

So God is leading us into a new direction, but it's a sweet time for me to remember what it was like when I first walked this property.

I was trespassing.

Somebody else owned this property.

And I walked it.

And I went and stood under that big oak tree.

That's my tree.

It's where I'm going to stand on Saturday, Saturday evening, when my daughter and that hairy-legged boy named Birch.

He loves Jesus and loves her.

But, you know, they're not married yet.

So they're going to stand under that tree.

They're going to stand by that tree.

And I've been telling my daughter, I said, Abigail, that tree, you don't know what that tree means to me.

We're going to have a prayer garden around that tree one day.

And so we're going to keep that, hopefully keep that meadow, a part of that open where you can walk out there and there'll be a prayer garden, and you sit there and reminisce on how good God has been to church at the grove.

And he's not finished.

He's still working.

He's still moving.

He's still working through our desires.

He says, take the light in the Lord, and he'll give you your heart's desires.

My heart is to reach people far from God and to lead them to follow Jesus.

God, here's a rule of thumb, though.

God never speaks through your desires if it goes against his word.

Listen, you filter everything.

You filter everything through God's word.

That's why when a guy named Jeff several years ago came to me and he said, God told me I'm supposed to divorce my wife.

And I said, No, he didn't.

No, he didn't.

Well, that's what I, you know, that's what I felt like he was.

I said, man, that doesn't go with God's word.

Still doesn't.

Five, prophecy, dreams, and visions.

God speaks to us through one another.

There's this word prophetic, and I know some of you come that come from certain backgrounds.

You don't use the word prophetic.

You don't, it's not a part of our vocabulary, but God works in prophetic ways still today.

The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 4, 14, 3, says, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort.

And there's some of you here today.

You came in with a heart that's hurting.

Heart that's heavy.

And my prophetic word is that he will turn your morning into dancing.

Shannon, you hear me?

He'll turn your morning into dancing.

That's the word he gave me.

Me for you.

While I was set standing down here.

God spoke a word from through a man to my grandmother long long before my my brother and I were of age to do anything with professionally.

We were still young.

And I'm telling you, our family, our family heritage, I mean, there's a lot of baggage that's had to be unpacked.

Let me just say it that way.

And God spoke in a service to my grandmother through a man of God and said, ma'am, I don't know you, but God has heard your prayers, and your seed will do great things for the kingdom of God.

It's a prophetic word.

And listen, we we should be prophesying to each other like that.

I mean, listen, if you're walking with Jesus, there's nothing special about me.

You, God calls this, this what Paul says here is for it's for the church.

It's not for pastors, it's not for the ordained, it's for the church.

And lastly, listening prayer.

Listening prayer.

Listening prayer.

What is a listening prayer?

Greg writes about listening prayer.

He says, he says, and this is what we're gonna, this is your action step for this week.

It's where we simply sit quietly.

We maybe have read, we've read, we've we've we've read our our spiritual reading, we've read a passage, we've stopped, we've paused.

God speak.

We've read the same passage the second time.

But you know, that, you know, something I'm learning is I, especially as I read the Bible and I go back to the early days of the church and then to the desert fathers after the after the church became legal, these these men went out into the desert, and we we kind of frown upon them.

A lot of us have grown up to frown upon the monastic monk way of life, but one of the things they did is they they protected the word of God and they practiced some of these disciplines.

And so it wasn't one time a day, it was it was morning, noon, and evening.

You read about Daniel, Daniel ends up in Babylon.

Daniel lives up in Babylon.

Let me just tell you a little secret.

We're living in Babylon.

We aren't living in Jerusalem anymore.

We're in Babylon.

And so Daniel prayed in the morning, he prayed at noon, he prayed in the evening.

And so I can imagine him sitting quietly just before the Lord.

Saying, Lord, would you speak?

Would you speak?

So would you close your eyes?

Just close your eyes.

I just want you to I want you to listen.

Listen for the Lord to speak.

Say, Russ, it's so hard.

I'm so overwhelmed.

With circumstances, I'm I I'm I'm depressed.

I'd say, you know what, let's join with Elijah.

A prophet that struggled with depression.

After he wins a great battle against false prophets, he runs away afraid.

And in his depression, God comes to him, not in the earthquake, not in the wind, not in any natural disaster.

God comes to him in a gentle whisper.

So what is it that God wants to say to you today?