When We Pray: Hearing God | Part 6

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening Church.

Great to be with you.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

My name's Ryan.

We're absolutely thrilled to have you join us today.

And today we're concluding our series, When We Pray.

We've been in a, this is part six, a six-part series of When We Pray.

And we said this, it's not if you pray or you should pray, but there's just this reality that there's a natural human instinct.

We all pray at some point, at some time, even if you don't believe in God or not, you do send up good thoughts or something to connect to a being beyond yourself.

And we've been talking about like how do we pray?

How do we learn to pray?

Like we have this longing to connect and go, like, okay, when when we pray, does it actually matter?

Does it affect change?

And there's something instinctly we know it's powerful and effective, yet it's it's a mystery to us, isn't it?

It's like, how does it work?

Is it magic or something?

How does that work?

And and did I say the right words to get God to move on my behalf?

And we've been wrestling with these questions, like, how do we pray where we actually experience the presence and power of God in our life?

Don't you want that today?

Don't you want, like, okay, as I begin to stop and to communicate and commune with God, like I experience his presence and power?

Or how do we pray in a way that is actually life-giving, soul-shaping, where we experience our Heavenly Father deeply and profoundly.

You and I were created for a life-giving, soul-shaping relationship with our Heavenly Father.

And here we we said this right at the outset, uh, week one.

Just as communication is the foundation for every relationship.

Like if you want to have a great relationship, you gotta learn to communicate.

Prayer is the primary pathway upon which we experience intimacy with God.

And over the last several weeks, week one, we talked about the basics of prayer.

Uh week two, we um talked about contemplative prayer, being still and knowing he's God.

Week three, uh, Ashley talked all about intercessory prayer and how do we like intercede on behalf of other people.

Then we talked uh week four on unanswered prayer.

What do we do with that?

Last week, Dave, our new exp and Robbie talked all about singing prayer, like what we just sang, and and those are uh prayers in song forms, and how do we connect with God through singing?

Today we're gonna talk about hearing prayer.

Hearing prayer.

Like, how do you hear God when you pray?

Like if prayer is the primary pathway to intimacy with God, fundamentally we kind of think of prayer like talking, or at least maybe that's the way I've thought about it a lot, is I'm talking to God, and yet it's a two-way street, isn't it?

If you're gonna do communication, it's talking and listening.

And and by the way, there's no like spouse's elbows to your mate, like, yeah, listening.

See, you're supposed to listen, communication.

But how do we listen?

How do we hear the very force of God?

How do you you maybe you came in today and you're like, I need to hear from God, I need a word from God, I need direction from God.

I've been looking and searching, and I'm longing and hoping, and this relationship or this work issue or what's going on at home?

Like, I need a word from God.

How do I hear from God?

Like, does God still speak?

Like we talk about these stories and hear it in like the Bible times, does he still speak today?

And if he does speak, how can you be sure he's speaking to you?

How do you know it's like his voice speaking and directing to you?

And so we just want to wrestle with this.

It's like, how do you, you know, not just talk to God, but actually hear God talk to you?

How do you not just have a conversation that's a one-way street, but actually hear God talk to you?

Uh, today we're gonna look at probably the most famous passage in all of the Bible of God talking to a person.

Uh, even if you don't have a background uh when it comes to God or Christianity, you've probably heard about this story.

And here's the problem about hearing about a story from many of us is we I think we often draw perhaps not the right conclusions.

They they lead us astray.

And uh in fact, we're gonna discover five foundational truths today of how to encounter and hear the voice of God from a person who encountered God, a guy named Moses.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Exodus chapter three?

Exodus chapter three, verse one is where we're gonna be at today.

And Moses, a little background context, he's the great leader and liberator of the Israelite people.

They were in bondage and slavery for 400 years.

God raises up Moses, he is a prince of Egypt.

He uh tries to fulfill his calling in a bad way, literally murdered, not good, uh, and then flees for his life.

And he's been spending 40 years in the wilderness, and he's been tending sheep, got married, had a family, and really, if you if you just kind of look at this and back this up, here's a guy with the best pedigree, the best education, and clearly had a calling on his life, and he's been wasting it in the wilderness for 40 years, far from where he was designed and what he was called to do.

And that is exactly where we pick up the story today.

Exodus chapter 3, verse 1 says this.

Exodus 3:1

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness.

And he came to Horeb.

It's a mountain range.

You'd know the specific mountain, Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.

There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within the bush.

Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up.

So Moses thought, I'll go over and see the strange sight.

Why the bush does not burn up?

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses.

And Moses said, Here I am.

Before we dive into the five foundational truths, would you just pray with me to invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us?

He wants to speak to you right now in this moment.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this moment.

We thank you for this time to gather and to worship and invite you to have your way to get me out of the way.

And that you would speak to every single person who is listening, that there would be an openness and receptivity of their heart and a responsiveness to your word.

And so we invite you in this moment to speak in Jesus' name.

And all God's people say.

Amen.

Five foundational truths for hearing God.

The first one that we must know if we're really going to develop understanding how to hear from God is this God is closer than you think.

God is closer than you think.

Now, I think when we read this story, we would kind of draw the conclusion that God is farther than we think.

Because where was Moses?

He was on the far side of the wilderness.

And we go, like, well, maybe to like really hear from God, I gotta do a pilgrimage.

Maybe I can only hear from God on Sundays when I show up at church, that I have to find some holy place and somehow, you know, then be able to hear from God.

And the truth and the reality of this moment is actually God is far closer than you think and realize or recognize or understand.

See, the text and the way it is set up is Moses on this far side of the wilderness.

It's not so much saying that he had done this pilgrimage to the mountain of God.

In fact, it was named the mountain of God afterwards, not before.

It's that Moses was actually far outside his calling.

Moses was in a season of wandering.

Moses was going through a period of life from the outward perspective, we would say wasted.

Wandering.

In fact, he's so far from home.

And here's the truth that Moses was on the far side of the wilderness, but he wasn't far from God.

Moses was far outside his calling, but he wasn't far from God.

Like there was no place he could go or where he could turn, that God was not already present and active and working.

See, God was closer than he thought.

There's two big theological ideas we we gotta understand here.

And the first is the transcendence of God, the second is the imminence of God.

The transcendence of God says that God is wholly other and distinct from creation, existing independently of his creation, that he's completely other.

He's not a part of creation, he is outside of it.

He created all that we see and understand.

He is great and beyond it, and in his transcendence, he is imminent.

Meaning that God is present in all of his creation in a personal, intimate way while remaining distinct.

See, there is no place that you can go that God is not already present.

There is no path that you can walk down upon which God has not already been there to meet you right where you're at.

In fact, the psalmist, Psalm 139, would say it this way great psalm to actually lean into the entirety of it.

But he says, Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

Answer.

Answer.

Nowhere.

Thank you.

We'll get it by the end of the night.

If I go up to the heavens, you're there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you're there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

God is closer than you think.

Dallas Willard in his book, Hearing God, he's a famous philosopher and wrote uh extensively on spiritual formation, says how hard it is for us to come to an adequate conception of the lowliness of God, of how his greatness is precisely what makes him able, available, and ready to hear and speak personally with his creatures.

See, I think for many of us, we wandered in and we feel like we're on the far side of the wilderness.

Because you wandered in with doubt.

Maybe you're deconstructing your faith.

You wandered in with anxiety and fear and discouragement and depression.

You wandered in, and last night you did some things.

It was a Halloween party, and you're like, hello.

Um, I wasn't planning to go there, and I wasn't planning to do that, and I wasn't planning to wake up there, and I feel way far from God.

In fact, I feel so dirty in this moment, and I just am here because a friend said, Would you come?

And I showed up.

So you may be on the far side of the mountain, but you're never far from God.

God is closer than you think.

He is ever present, and the moment you turn, you'll realize he was always there.

First foundational truth for us to understand and hearing God is God is closer than you think.

The second one is God is in the everydayness of life.

God is in the everydayness of life.

I don't know about you, but when I read this story, especially for so long, I'm like, I want my burning bush moment.

Right?

Like, where's my burning bush moment?

Where's and then I thought, you know, that would be kind of weird actually in my neighborhood if I saw a bush burning.

Would I really stop?

You know.

But we want something spectacular, don't we?

We want it big, we want it extraordinary, we want, we want something that's like like Ryan.

You know, it's like, whoa.

And the truth and the reality for us to understand is God is in the everydayness of life.

Moses was a shepherd for 40 years.

He traveled those deserts and those plains and those barren wasteland.

Do you know how many burning bushes he saw over the course of 40 years?

A lot.

It was a common sight.

Uh, lightning would strike, and uh you would see burning bushes because of that.

In fact, because of the arid climate there and how hot it was, uh, bushes would even spontaneously combust.

That's crazy, okay?

And so it wasn't an extraordinary sight.

It was an ordinary sight that Moses could have easily missed.

The burning bush was an ordinary, everyday.

Think about this moment that would have been easy for Moses to overlook, but to pass by and go unnoticed.

I like how poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning said it.

The earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush a fire with God.

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

A while ago, I was listening to this podcast at Ferris, um, Tim Ferris podcast, not a Christian, by the way, and some crazy stuff on there, uh, for those who are like, oh, I'm gonna go listen to that.

Uh, but he he interviews high-performing uh people in every discipline.

Uh, and he had this line that caught me, and he was talking about beauty.

He said, Beauty, it's um it's not hard to find, but it's easy to overlook.

And how true it is with God.

The ever-present one.

Not hard to find, but easy to overlook, and we miss him because we don't stop and behold the burning bush and have curiosity of what is it and why is it, what's happening there.

And we miss God's activity in our everyday life because we're not aware and attentive that He's actually working and moving in those moments with us.

Like God is in the everyday dailyness of life.

Uh, when I was in college, I remember reading um Oswald Chambers, My Umost Forest Highest.

And I was looking for it this week and I couldn't find it anywhere, like where it literally said this.

Really cool though, is I flipped through pages and um like I saw different things about my relationship with Jenny.

We're dating at the time.

I'm like, Jenny said, I love you.

I like wrote all this at the top of the uh thing, and like we talked about marriage, you know, exclamation point, um, you know, all these like things.

It was very sweet.

And I'm sending her pictures, you know, spamming her phone with all these different pictures.

But Oswald Chambers talked about expecting God and how often we miss God because God doesn't show up in the way we expect him.

And he gave this picture, and the picture was simply this like often we expect God, and imagine you're in a house and we're looking at the front door and we're expecting him to go through the front door, and so our eyes are focused on the front door, and yet God came in the back door and been present the entire time.

And I think that's so true for us is that if God doesn't show up the way we think, the way we want, the way we expect him, and then we think he's just not showing up.

And he's like, I've been here and I've been working and I showed up the entire time.

And his point was just make room for God.

Just make room for God.

Expect him to show up, and then have eyes to see, okay, God, you're in the everydayness of life.

Hearing God, five foundations, God is closer than you think.

God is in the everydayness of life.

Foundational truth number three is God longs to speak to you.

God longs to speak to you.

Just as God longed to speak to Moses, just as God longs to speak to the Apostle Paul, Elijah, God longs to speak to you.

It wasn't just for one person back then, it is for you and me today.

And so I want to take a moment and just unpack a few of the ways that God speaks to us.

Like, how does God speak to us?

How do we begin to hear his voice, know his voice?

And this is by no means exhaustive, but it is a good start.

How does God speak to us?

The first way is God speaks to us through his word.

Like he wrote it down.

Like, God, just speak to me, please.

And he's gone, I did.

Like we so often go, God, would you speak to me?

And yet we're not in his word.

He's gone, I wrote you a note.

Like those days when Jenny and I were dating, when I'm writing on the my utmost for my highest, like my little love notes, I guess at the top.

She was in Sweden.

I was in Chicago at the time.

We would write each other notes back and forth.

I still have those notes to this day.

Because my wife, the love of my life, wrote them.

God wrote us a note.

God speaks to us primarily and fundamentally in his word.

If we're not in his word, we won't know his voice and his leading in other areas of our life.

Because you won't know what is his heartbeat and what is actually true.

He speaks to us in his word.

2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, training, rebuking, and correcting so that the person, the servant of God, might be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God speaks to us through his word, and God speaks through his spirit, the Holy Spirit of God.

Like the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives and dwells inside each of us.

In 1 Corinthians 2, 10, the Apostle Paul says it this way: the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, for who knows a person's thought except their own spirit within them?

In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

We have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God.

Now listen to this, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

The Spirit communicates with our spirit, and verse 16 says, But we have the very mind of Christ.

This is where we talk about the still small voice of God.

This is where we talk about and understand that inner voice, the whisper.

Elijah wandered onto this same mountain a few hundred years later.

He was completely exhausted, uh, discouraged, uh, clinically depressed, and he needed a word from God.

And we do just so want the extraordinary, and God shows him in the ordinary, and he shows up onto this mountain, and I and I love the way God shows up, and it says, first, this mighty wind tore through.

And it says, God was not in the wind.

And then an earthquake rumbled through Tuesday, earthquake.

Anybody feel the earthquake?

Yeah, it's amazing.

I was in the car.

The last couple ones have been in the car, which I'm like so frustrated at.

Um, aside, this is totally off topic, but um the uh like non-Californians, you guys are freaked out because of earthquakes.

It's weird to me.

I don't get it.

Like you go and like, oh California, all the earthquakes.

I'm like, really?

Like the last major one we had was 89 in this part of the world, right?

That's pretty good.

I don't know about you, but tornadoes, nah.

And they seem way more frequent.

A side over.

Okay.

God shows up and the earthquake rumbles through.

Says he's not a The earthquake, and then a fire tears through.

And then the text, if you're reading in the NIV, says a gentle whisper.

In the Hebrew, it's a silence.

It's the silence.

It's the gentle whisper of God.

That God speaks to our spirit.

And he moves, and it's the gentle prodding.

Some of you might think of it and you might hear someone say, Why I just felt like I had this nudge of the Holy Spirit.

And as you begin to respond to those nudges or those promptings, you begin to clarify his voice in your life.

See, if you have a thought that's for someone else's good, that is contrary to what you would naturally desire, and it requires faith, chances are that's the spirit of God and not your spirit.

And as you become aware of that and recognize it in partnership with the word of God, then you begin to experience the daily guiding and leading.

Dallas Willard again says this: God usually addresses individually those who walk with him in a mature personal relationship, using this inner voice, showing forth the reality of the kingdom of God as they go.

How does God speak?

Through the Word of God, through the Spirit of God, the still small voice.

He also speaks through other people.

God uses other people.

I'm praying that God is using me right now in this moment to speak to you.

And there's other people in our life that God uses and he brings a word.

That's why 1 Corinthians 12 says this that now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

To one, there's given through the Spirit a message of wisdom for somebody.

It's another message of knowledge by the same means of the Spirit.

Like God uses other people.

I'll give you an example over our time in Mexico with our high school ministry one morning.

I was wrestling with God.

I felt like I had a word from God a little over a decade ago about dreams and things he put on my mind and heart that he wanted to be a part of.

And I'm looking at a decade later and I'm like, none of it.

And then I'm just kind of like, come on, God.

I thought I heard from you, but maybe it's just me.

And if you're not about that, I'm okay.

And I was having a little bit of a gripe fest, but also a surrender fest.

Like I'm frustrated here, but if I don't want to be a part of what's not what you're not a part of.

And then I had this uh gal, we're in this worship service, like tap me on the uh shoulder and I go, um, yeah, and she says, Do you speak Spanish?

And I go, Absolutely not.

No, I don't speak Spanish at all.

I a little bit, I'm great at ordering, fantastic at ordering food, but that's about it.

And so she spends the next like 10 minutes typing in her Google Translate, and then hands me what she typed out.

This person that doesn't know me, that we don't even speak the same language, had written some of the very same words and themes that I had just written two hours earlier in my journal.

Like God speaks through other people.

And there are things and times where as you're praying for someone, he gives you a word of encouragement, a word of wisdom.

He might give you a picture for them.

Now we gotta be so careful with this as well.

Because we can abuse that, and it's been abused in the church.

God told me that you're supposed to marry me.

Like, no, I didn't.

And if he did, hold that to yourself until after you get married and tell the story, and it's awesome.

The other way feels like manipulation.

In fact, my friend Judy does this so wonderfully.

She'll often be praying for me, and she'll like have a word, and she writes it on a three by five card, and she'll go, Ryan is just praying.

This is just a word that God was bringing to my mind, and I just want to give it to you.

And you take time and you sit with Jesus and whatever's from him, you know, allow him to bring that to the forefront.

Like, not somehow I have a word and I'm gonna drop this on you, but this is what I believe God was working in me.

Far be it from me to know that I actually heard completely, clearly, and understand it fully, but I'm gonna give to you and let and trust that the Spirit of God's gonna speak and work in you.

And God speaks through his word, God speaks through his spirit, God speaks through other people in our lives, and then he uses creation.

The psalmist says it this way: Psalm 19 says, The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of his hand.

Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they reveal knowledge, they have no speech, uh, they use no words, no sound is heard from them, yet their voice goes out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.

And haven't you had that moment where you stand with this incredible, you know, ocean view and beach and the majesty of God and his transcendence and your finiteness, or you're in his creation, and his gentle whisper then wraps you up in that moment.

And his profound love for you overwhelms you as you think about how great he is and yet close he is at the same time.

And he uses his creation to speak for, declare his glory, and to speak to us.

There's many other ways that he uses speak to us.

The final one I'll do is he uses visions and dreams.

There's things you see this throughout scripture, that he uses visions and dreams to speak to us and to tell his people some special things.

You know, um, the way God speaks actually to my wife often is God gives her a picture.

She's very artistic and visual, and so God will give her a picture.

And for me, I'm pretty cerebral and I'm got my journal.

God often, you know, is in his word and kind of dropping some things to me uh that way.

Here's one of the amazing parts is God meets us in the way he made us, and that he meets us individually in that way.

You know, recently, um, and so grateful, um we've all become aware of what's happening in Iran right now and the tragedy and the incredible rise up and the injustices that are happening there.

Um and, you know, some very close friends here in our community, uh, that's their home, and their hearts are broken, and and yet at the same time hopeful that justice and uh Jesus' way will prevail through all of the heartache and tragedy.

And what's amazing is uh my friends, they've they've been serving and bringing Jesus to uh not just Iran but Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, and one of the things that doesn't catch the headlines is the spread of the gospel in these countries.

And there are so many people coming to know Jesus because he shows up into a dream.

In these closed countries where they don't have access to the gospel, and Jesus just shows up at them.

And you're seeing the church grow and spread in incredible ways in Afghanistan and Iran, through and under incredible persecution.

And Jesus shows up and he makes and meets people profoundly.

And so, how does God speak to us through his word, through the Spirit of God, through other people, through creations, visions, and dreams?

But the question then is how do you know it's God speaking to you?

Right?

How do you know that dream was God?

And how and not just like, man, that was weird.

That's different.

That hit different.

Like, how do you know that?

Uh, Joyce Huggett in her book, Listening for God, she's an international bestseller.

This is uh old book, she wrote, If you believe God has told you something, ask him to confirm it to you three times through his word.

Like he'll never contradict himself.

Get back into his word.

Do I see alignment here through circumstances?

Like, like God, you've called us to move and you called us to maybe change a job.

It are you gonna begin to lead me and show different ways that you've set things up as I'm taking steps of faith?

And through other people who may not know, uh, who may know nothing of the situation, where where you begin to go, okay, I'm not just going to run and just go like, I heard a word from God.

In fact, I get that sometimes.

Especially young people uh will often come to me and like, God told me.

I go, well, that's fantastic.

But when you say, God told me, and this is what you're doing, you've now closed yourself off to the community of God of speaking into and bringing wisdom and any other things that God might want to say through his people.

Instead of God told me, you go, you know what, I'm really sensing God is leading in this direction.

Would you pray with me?

And I love for you to discern with me and help me discover is this really the path he has for me?

And you begin to do this journey in community.

Five foundational truths.

God is closer than you think.

He's in the everydayness, God longs to speak to you.

Number four, God will not compete for your attention.

You ask the question if God is closer than I think in my everyday life and longs to speak to me, why don't I hear him more?

Right?

Why don't I hear him more?

Because he's not going to compete for your attention.

Remember, think about this.

I mean, this picture, Moses is seeing hundreds of burning bushes.

He's at work, he's doing his nine to five.

And he's probably got a couple sheep that are just annoying them.

You know, they just keep wandering off.

And then he sees this side over here, and here's what had to happen.

He had to not just see it, but he had to actually take steps toward it.

He had to stop what he was doing, stop his work, not just take a picture, post it on Instagram and say, Oh, cool, burning bush, hello.

But he had to turn and actually begin to move in that direction.

And did you notice it wasn't until he got there that God spoke?

And so often the reason we don't hear from God is we don't create space for God to speak.

The whisper of God, the still small voice, he will not compete for our attention.

And we have our so many things clamoring for our attention, the busyness of our lives, the constant like draw to our phones, the hectic pace that we live at, and the noise of our life is louder and louder and louder and louder.

And the still small voice of God is still consistent and constant.

We just don't hear it.

Dallas Willard again said this.

He said, first of all, the fact that we do not hear God does not mean that God's not speaking.

God will not overrun us.

We must be open to the possibility of God addressing us in whatever way he chooses, or else we may walk right past a burning bush instead of saying, as Moses did, I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned.

See, I think there's a few reasons we don't hear from God.

I think um I think one, we have hearing problems.

Two, I just think we have hearing problems.

You know, um men as we get older, we naturally lose our higher frequency of hearing.

And women, as you get older, more commonly you lose the lower frequency of hearing.

And so the older you get as a couple, you actually hear each other less.

In some marriage, I know it.

No, Ryan said, my low frequency.

We got to tune into the frequency of God.

And we have so much noise in the background of our life, so many things that are keeping us busy and inwardly dispersed and distracted.

And that noise is turned on, and we we just can't hear the gentle, the quiet whisper, the promptings of the Spirit of God.

See, I think we just have a hearing problem.

We gotta go, you know what?

The noise is too loud.

I gotta turn down the noise, I gotta pause, and I just gotta stop for a second and just actually allow God to speak.

And we don't want that because the minute you quiet the noise, you recognize the noise inside it.

Right?

The noise inside of you.

That's the reason we keep the noise on, is we don't want to hear the noise inside of us.

The bur the burbling, the whatever.

As it bubbles up, bubbling is the word.

Because we want to drown it out, because then we recognize the ache of our soul, and God says, that's the reason I want to speak to you, to meet you and meet the very ache of your soul.

But as long as you keep the noise on, you'll never hear from me.

First, we just gotta say we've got a hearing problem, we've got to turn down the noise.

I think the second is we have selective hearing.

We have selective hearing.

We actually hear from God what we want, but not really what we need to hear.

I mean, truth be told, we don't really want to hear from God.

Because we're afraid of what God might say, what might God might ask.

And we're going like, no, it would be nice, but I don't know.

I I just might have to change my life.

I just might have to respond.

I just might have to adjust.

And so we have this selective hearing where we really want to hear from him, but we don't at all.

Am I tuned in to the frequency of God?

Do I want to be about the business that God's doing in my life and creating space?

God will not compete for your attention.

Finally, this is the great beautiful truth that I don't know we get in this passage on the first reading.

And I believe this is not just a truth for those of you who are far from God, but this is a truth that needs to sink deeply into our souls for us who are followers of Jesus.

God invites you into relationship.

God invites you into relationship.

Moses goes over to the burning bush, and then that's when God calls and he says, Moses, Moses.

And I don't know how you read that or how you hear that or what comes into your mind, but the repetition of name feels a little bit like I'm gonna get in trouble from my perspective.

If my mom's like, Ryan, Ryan, you know, it's like this escalation, you know.

Um, she never really used my middle name, so I just the double name would have been like, hello, you know, and and and yet here's what's so fascinating professor of Old Testament, um Douglas Stewart writes this in ancient Semitic culture, addressing someone by saying his or her name twice uh was a way of expressing endearment, that is, affection and friendship.

Thus, Moses would have understood immediately that he was being addressed by someone who loved him and was concerned about him.

God invites you into relationship.

Moses is on the far side of the wilderness.

And I don't know, I think this may be some of the reason we don't turn down the noise, is we're afraid of what God will say, afraid of what his first words will be.

And he calls them by name.

He knows his name.

He's like, I know you, Moses, and I know who I made you to be.

By the way, Moses means deliverer, and he's on the what far side of the wilderness.

He's not deliverer, he's a shepherd, shepherd right now, right?

And he says, I see you and I see who you're made to be, and I call that forth, and I call it forth with such affection and love and delight, and I call you into relationship.

See, I think we're afraid of what God might say.

You're a screw up, you're no good.

How could you have wandered so far?

What's wrong with you?

What were you thinking?

And God calls out his name, his identity, what's true of him, how he made him, and calls them into relationship.

God invites you into relationship.

Not into rules, not into somehow trying to work your way back to God.

He says, No, I'm present right now with you in relationship.

Moses' response was, Here am I.

Here I am.

And that's the posture, if we want to hear from God, is just simply here I am.

And the beautiful part about that is God was saying, Here I am, before Moses ever said, Here I am.

God was present, and today he's saying, Here I am.

And this is this is an incredible passage.

Uh Revelation chapter 3, Jesus is talking to the church in Laodicea to followers of Jesus.

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

This is what Jesus is saying to followers of Jesus.

Here I am.

I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I'll come in and eat with that person and they eat with me.

Here I am.

I long to be in relationships.

Not motivated by odds and duties.

I long to know you, to walk with you, to be with you, for you to experience my love, my great delight, for you to stop living out false identities and running and striving after all these things, but to have the security that your heavenly father knows you and he has called you and he has made you and he's created you.

And he says, Here I am.

And he says, the minute you begin to respond to that, he says, I lean in.

In fact, in that culture, in that day, to eat with somebody was the sign of full acceptance, a friendship.

I think for us as we start or close right now, is just simply maybe for the very first time, you didn't realize, like, God wants to have a relationship with you, and you would say, Here I am, and Jesus made the way.

He says, I'm standing right now, I want to have a relationship with you, and and you just go, Here I am.

Jesus, would you come into my life and make me new?

Would you meet me in this moment?

The reality is, as many of us, we like maybe the Laodiceans, and maybe like Moses, we are in our own wandering, in our own place.

And Jesus is still saying, Here I am.

I'm not down on you.

I love you, I'm for you.

Here I am.

And I just want to give us space as we close for you to respond to him.

For us to turn down the noise and tune into God.

And wherever you find yourself, would you just say this simple prayer?

Heavenly Father, here I am.

And then be still and listen for his voice and his prompting.

So you can sit back, you can relax, close your eyes, take a deep breath if you want.

And take a moment.

Here I am.

Would you bring that prayer and then just allow him to speak?

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