In keeping with the respect for oneanother on this site, and so as not to divert anothers topic, I thought I would ask how do we experience God. When I say experience, I mean -
How God reveals to us his will through the Scriptures,
How God leads and guides us thorugh the Holy Spirit
Etc, etc, etc, I personally believe in the authority of the Scriptures, and believe that the Holy Spirit can talk to us outside of the Bible, for example Paul writes “That all of Creation speaks of God” I love getting out in the wilderness, sitting on a rugged mountain and reflecting on God and admiring his scenery and allowing my self to be regenerated.
I also believe that the Holy Spirit can lead and guide us in telling us to do specific things, such as go and say something to a specific individual.
Which also comes under the authority of the Scriptures, as The Holy Spirit spoke specifically to Phillip twice to go out to the desert road and then climb up onto the chariot
A very interesting question you raise Craig. I concur with Mike on all of his experiences except the second one. I have never heard an audible voice (or the kind of burden that Craig mentioned in the other thread here ). Note, I’m not saying that can’t happen, I just don’t know, I’ve never experienced it.
For me the most common one is “through wise and knowledgeable people”. God has instructed, counselled and disciplined me through pastors, elders and other Christians (including people on this website) many times. It has been the most evident display of God acting in my life.
This is my post from another thread. I don’t have time now to take up the issues that have just been raised in this thread, but I think this post is relevant and helpful.
Craig Bennett wrote:
Part of living out our christianity in public is in listening to what the Holy Spirit bids us do.... A strong urge came over me to say to this man “Though you are going through a hard time now, God knows and has a plan for your life” I prayed earnestly “Lord if this burden is not from you, take it away from me” the burden only intensified so…
I wonder how effective or ineffective our evangelism is because of us hearing or not hearing the Holy Spirit.? and perhaps obeying or not obeying him.
craig
Craig,
I’m not convinced that that is the way that God guides or the Spirit works.
Quote:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. Heb 1:1-2 [esv]
It is not that God cannot work through giving us strong urges or dreams or visions and what not, however there is no need for God to work like that. God’s word is final, complete and sufficient in Christ Jesus. In the past he has spoken to us in many and various ways… but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son… Jesus. God’s final and complete word to us is JESUS.
God can speak to us in these ways.
But he doesn’t need to. God has spoken to us by his Son.
As far as the Spirit is concerned… well the way that God speaks to us today is by his Son through his Spirit in the Scriptures. We cannot separate the Spirit from the Word.
We cannot expect God to work in other ways. He may, but he doesn’t promise it, and we shouldn’t expect him to guide us in ways other than the work of his Spirit through the Scriptures.
I think as I interact with many Christians they seem to be waiting for some type of nudge from God to get up and evangelise… what more do we need than seeing the plans of God revealed to us (illuminated by the Spirit) and knowing of the salvation that Christ Jesus has purchased for us?
Craig… I think that it was a great thing to talk to that man… but the thing that should motivate us is not some strange and vague feeling… but a strong conviction of the gospel, the power of it to save, and the desperate state that that man was in.
Why are we waiting for opportunities to land in our laps? Why aren’t we on about the lost? If we really love people we will share the good news of Jesus with them.
Craig… and others if you haven’t read it… Guidance and the Voice of God is a must read. I have read many Christians books and some that are much more difficult to understand and in depth… but this would have to be the single most helpful book, outside of the Bible, that I have read and continue to recommend to young Christians. It’s available through Matthias Media ()
This is a topic that I think needs to be discussed carefully because semantics can often interfere with the quality of discussion. I’ve found over the years that you can often get into a heated debate with someone over a statement like, “I hear God speaking to me” only to find that what they really mean when they say that isn’t as raving, off-the-wall pentecostal as we might first assume. By the same token, I’ve had discussions with people who claim to only take what they read in the bible as the voice of God, totally rejecting even a hint of subjective experience in the process, yet in reality they are reading the scriptures with very strong personal biases. I question whether they really have heard God at all, rather than merely their own inner thought processes.
By and large I agree with the things that dnm has written. However, I am left wondering where that leaves all of the left-brained non-cognitive people out there who really struggle with knowing things through mere written words. Isn’t this why Jesus used parables, for instance, to create pictures so that people who learn and understand that way can also hear God’s voice? (And, by the way, so that rational cognitive thinkers might actually miss the point.) Isn’t this why we have the sacraments, to present to us living pictures of salvation, to help us understand at a level beyond the mere words? Yes, the words are vital and all claimed knowledge of God must be tested against the objective revelation in the Scriptures, but doesn’t the Bible itself point to other ways in which God gets through to His people?
Many of us have read the book and/or seen the movie of Peter Marshall, “The Man Called Peter”, who was chaplain to the US Senate. Did he or did he not hear God calling out to him when he nearly walked over that cliff that evening? He says he did and it was a wonderful life-changing decision that followed on from that, to enter the ministry. Who are we to come out and say that he was really a fool for hearing voices, because that doesn’t happen? (I’m not saying, dnm, that your comments have gone that far, but am merely pushing the argument to the extremes that some people might push it.)
The reality is that many Christians, solid sound evangelical Christians, have at times experienced God, heard His voice, beyond the mere cognitive means of reading the Bible. That shouldn’t surprise or shock us because we have a relationship with the living God, not with a book. He tells us what to expect from that relationship in the book, but the relationship is with the author.
That said, I also think we must tread very carefully and not go reading every subjective impression that we have as God speaking to us, especially when another person is involved. Thinking that God wants me to go and say something very specific to someone, especially when I don’t know them or know anything about their circumstances, is unwise in my view.
I don’t think that the situation with Philip in Acts contradicts this at all. That was a very rare situation - in the sense that if all Christians were to expect that sort of inner prompting then you would expect all the apostles to respond like that a lot of the time. They don’t. The typical driving force behind the acts of the apostles is their strategy for taking the gospel out in accordance with Acts 1:8 and “wisdom”. “It seemed good to us ..” is a common reason given for the things they did. Furthermore, however Philip got to be speaking to the Ethiopian eunuch, what he said to him was the gospel. It wasn’t some specific thing miraculously revealed to Philip, but a conversation that arose out of the fact that the man was reading from Isaiah. Philip took something he knew about the man and worked from that.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that God never gives us insights into other people or their circumstances that we can share with them. But those insights will come out of having a relationship with them and knowing a bit about what is going on in their lives at the time, rather than out of a vacuum.
How God reveals to us his will through the Scriptures,
How God leads and guides us thorugh the Holy Spirit
Hmmm. What if that’s not necessarily the way in which I would describe my experiences of God? I suppose, yes, I believe in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but I wouldn’t call it a main focus… More like we are working together and I trust that the way I go is the right way; if it’s not, I trust that it will somehow be revealed that it’s not the right way, usually by failure. I guess that is largely how I “discern” the will of God for directions in life.
In terms of spiritual direction, I guess it’s the process of applying the meaning of passages to one’s own life. I find I can’t handle reading great chunks of scripture (haven’t been able to for several years), and I focus better if I take a parable, or miracle or some other excerpt from the gospels. I guess God can be experienced in this way - usually for me in the surge of disappointment that I am not the way I was meant to be, followed by the backwash of despair in ever being able to live up to the model set for us. Rather than focussing on the negatives raised, they become the matter of prayer…
However, I’d say scripture is not the main way in which I experience God. He is much more evident to me in a cloudy day, or a perfect autumn day (like today: sunshine, blue skies, light breeze, green grass *mmmmm*). He’s in other people too - but in order to catch him I need to be looking for him…
I guess one of the main and most direct ways I experience God is in the sacraments.
I don’t think I really want to discuss the substance of WHAT I experience of God. Alot of it is quite scary - and we wonder at the weirdness of OT prophesies and the book of Revelation!!!
Part of how I experience God is through using the gifts of the spirit, and one of the gifts that I am sometimes used for is in the prophetic word, and I would like to share with you what i felt God was saying on Good Friday night.
To set the mood,
Today I have been to church and then went land hunting with my wife and two of my children. I have always been a man of the land, though rover the last few years I have been of it. The ties to the land runs in my blood, and tonight I was reflecting on how you can take the boy from the bush but can’t take the bush from the boy.
Then I felt the Lord had this to say, which I am sharing with you now.
Malachi 4:6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.
To our men of the land.
Tonight I felt the lord had me say this. Men you are in relationship with the land, sometimes you hate it, sometimes you love it and sometimes you wish you could pretend it’s no longer even there. You wrestle with it, to draw the best it can give, you nurture it, you till it, you fertilise it, you seed it, you cull and weed and burn and spray, you even water it when there is water to give, and then you harvest it.
The harvest depends on the amount of nurturing you give it, and on the amount of water it receives.
Guys you can work hard from sun up till sundown working the soil hard to give it its best and it will give you its best it can give you with all the hard work you put into it, but the true harvest depends on the water, the life giving, thirst quenching water, the water that brings healing, the water that brings life, the water that sustains life and even produces new life.
Men of the Land listen to what the Lord would have you hear him say, you work hard for your families, you work hard for yourself, and the words you speak to your family, the words you speak to your self can be like words of water or poison. They can either build up or burn down, they can encourage your wives and sons and daughters to bloom and to blossom and to bear much fruit or they can spray over them like toxin and cause them to wither and die.
Words have the power of life and death, men of the land listen up, many of you feel that you are like wells run dry that you are like dams with a little muddy water left in them that you are like the garden tank hose with no pressure, that you are like a cloud with no water, that you are running dry with nothing else to give.
Men of the land listen up; it is when you are this dry you need to turn to the source of water, the source of living water which is there only for the asking, every one who drinks of the water of the Lord will never thirst again, indeed it will become like a well in you, a spring that flows up to eternal life.
Who is this source of living water; it is none other than our lord and savoir Jesus Christ. Who beckons and calls, “Come to me all who are heavily burdened, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”
I ask you, over this Easter will you allow Jesus to refill your tanks?
Scripture - I love placing myself in a situation and meditating on it - as well as digging out the occasional concordance and Bible dictionary.
Hymns - from the poets of old who communicate doctrinal truths in a way instantly recognisable and digestable.
Friends / Priests / Teachers - others as my example
Taking part in a Baptism Service [as a member of the congregation] / Partaking of the Eucharist - as Nunc Dimittis wrote, the Sacraments communicate to me the eternity of the Church and the eternity of God and His promises through Christ.
Praying - tough for me to pray, but I feel myself drawn to God as I pray, especially if I use a Prayer Book [I’m using an Orthodox one at the moment: praying the Compline [Night] service prepares me for rest and gives me great hope and joy.
Nature (to an extent) - the wonder and diversity of it all; I can glimpse some attributes of God and rest in His creation
That’s all I can think of for now [and my sister’s fiancé wants to use the phone! ;-)]
[quote author="Craig Bennett"]Part of how I experience God is through using the gifts of the spirit, and one of the gifts that I am sometimes used for is in the prophetic word
Craig, over the years I’ve heard many people say that they have a “prophetic word” and I have seldom agreed with them. Often they speak either nonsense or something as bleedingly obvious as the astrology columns in the papers. I was thus prepared for the worst when I read your post the other day, but I want to tell you that I found it very encouraging. As I understand it, one of the meanings of “prophecy” is when someone is able to take God’s revelation and apply it to a contemporary situation. Francis Schaeffer provides many great examples of prophetic work in the things he wrote about where our Western society was headed, for instance. (What ever did happen to the human race, by the way?)
That is what your homily did, I believe. God does work through things like droughts to challenge people, to break down their sense of independence, to remove their false confidences in the things of this world. He isn’t always the big friendly hander out of nice things that many Christians seem to portray Him as being. The extent of our sinful rebellion against Him is such that sometimes He has to use strong measures to shake us up. But into that He is always then speaking the words - “come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”.
You have seen that there is a spiritual challenge to the rural communities of Australia - indeed to all of us - in the drought. You have called people to turn to Jesus.
[quote author="Rev 19:10"] For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
This is why the apostle Paul urged the Corinthians to especially be eager for the gift of prophecy (1 Corinthians 14:1), as this is what builds the church - by proclaiming Christ and the gospel.
I must admit I was kind of nervous about posting it here as a prophetic word. You may ask why I call it prophetic?
It’s because I had a burden to write it, and it was written in a couple of minutes, God’s spirit had quickened me, if I was to write it myself, out of my own knowledge of God it would have taken me hours or even days.
I thought I would open this thread up again, and share what the Lord has been speaking to me about.
over the last few weeks and especially tonight the lord has been talking to me about his being a Father and how there is a wound that runs deep within Australia of many being fatherless and that wound is reflected in our churches and across this nation of ours. He has been talking to me about how Australia has roots that run deep of fatherless-ness right from the very beginning of Australian settlement, a wound that caused much wounding of the original inhabitants.
Australia was settled by many children ripped from the care of their parents and sent out here without a father, many men were ripped from their families and sent out here causing an issue of fatherless-ness where they left.
This wound was what was behind the killing of many aborigine men in the land, again causing the issues of fatherless-ness to increase, and then this wounding was the root cause of what caused the men of this land to then rip many aborigine children from their families and caused another deep wounding of fatherless-ness,
This wounding on the nation was again compounded by the various wars across that our nation was involved in, where many men were killed or in action while their wives gave birth back home, causing an issue of wounded-ness in these children of being brought up with no father, during world war one may of our men who went to war never came back and the same with the second world war, those who did come back found it hard to be a father to their children and the cycle was growing worse and worse. Then the Vietnam war came and men went to war and caused much heartache and brought home much heartache, and as a result again many children increasingly were being raised up with no father.
Again we are at war, this ugly issue of Fatherless-ness is again increasingly raising it’s ugly head, only the spiritual stronghold behind this is worse, fathers are abandoning their children in many ways, one is through abortion, another is to leave their families and there kids for a life of their own, and the 3rd issue is that men are opting out of father hood altogether, deciding not to have families, deciding not to have children at all.
Then the lord spoke to me and said,
Men of the land
There is a deep wound in the men of the land, a wound that has been caused by fatherless ness, a wounding that runs deep into the very soul of Australia, a wounding that is festering and weeping, a wound that is gaping open and is ugly and is a wound that can not be left to heal on it’s own, it’s a wound that can only be healed by me. Men of the land, you need to turn to me and to come to me as your father, you need to lay down all your hurts, you need to lay down all your pretences, you need to lay down all your pride and come to me and allow me to be your father. Men of the land listen up, I am the father of all fathers, I have seen and I know the weaknesses and the failings of your own natural fathers, the very weaknesses and failings that were caused by them being wounded by less than perfect fathers, men of the land listen up, you cannot do it on your own, you can not continue to be independent, you cannot continue to pretend you are not hurting, men of the land, many of you are orphans, many of you have no father, many of you have never known a true father and for many of you wish that you never had a father. Men of the land listen up, I am the only perfect father, to the men of the church you need to get a revelation of me as your father, you need to get this revelation deep into your soul, deep into your spirit, and you need to bring about that revelation into your community. Men of the land listen up, your communities are hurting because of fatherless-ness, your children are hurting, your walk with me is hurting, men of the land turn to me,
Deu 14:29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
And
Psa 68:5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
Men of the land I am calling you to stop the curse in this land, I am calling you to me and for you to rise up and defend the cause of the fatherless and for you to turn to me, to seek my face and for the stronghold of fatherless-ness to be broken in this nation.
Men of the land listen to me, my son died for you, and through him I have called you to be my children, I have called you because of my son, come to me all you who are heavenly laden, cast your cares on me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, come to me and cast all your cares on me because I care for you.
Craig
Good topic and I thank you for the word you spoke. The land is important to me and the name Men of the Land speaks ot me.
I experience God in all sorts of ways and to be frank if I review them it sounds foolish. Perhaps this is what is implied when Jesus says things are hidden from the wise. (I have never tried wisdom, but wisdom tries me)
In prayer, but only occasionally have I felt this. I have learned to suspect that He is more present when I am unaware of Him.
In sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
In the presence of others, at odd times. Words from surprising places can be the words of God.
In day to day experience.
Sometimes at work, in counselling or in managing a crisis I have been led (that term is sooo laden I hesitate to use it) to do something that I think is silly, but works. Now I usually also think of this as intuiition. But to me it is all the same. If it is intuition only, then my sense of Gods presence at that moment makes the intuition sacred.
A couple of audible moments too. But I am suspicious of such things- but the rules for intuition apply, so it is all the same really.
In the bible, but rarely as I read, usually later in an ¨äha¨ moment.
In reading other works.
I’ve never heard an audible voice, or ‘felt His presence’, and I’m not even sure what that means.
Much of my experience of God is only recognised with the benefit of hindsight. Eg: A month or so ago I found myself in a really bad state mentally/emotionally after getting some bad news. The first thing I did was call a friend ask ask for some company. He came over and we talked, mostly about trivial matters, and it was a huge help to be reminded that I’m not alone. But when I look back on it I’m amazed that I thought to make the phonecall in the first place, and I put it down to inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Key moments when God’s reality, majesty and/or sovereignty become almost tangible to me include:
* when studying history, particulary its ironies and turning-points
* admiring creation for its beauty, grandeur or intricacy
* listening to certain pieces of classical music
* those moments of stunning revelation when dozens of seemingly unrelated fragments come together to form a profound whole
* prayer that is genuine and heart-felt (as opposed to prayer spoken for the benefit of those who are listening, or to make myself feel better)
* a really good sermon/talk (Phillip Jensen’s talks are especially good at this) or a really good Christian book
* when looking over the 110,000 words that I’ve written for my novel so far and saying “there’s no way I could have done all of that one my own!”
But he doesn’t need to. God has spoken to us by his Son.
Maybe the voice they hear is that of Jesus and not the father?
Anyway I have “felt God’s presence” but most of the time its the spirt griving in me when I need to feel guilt for doing something I shouldn’t of done.
I experience God mostly through trust, I think. When the things I see don’t align with what I know from the bible, so I need to trust what Jesus has promised. And all the little decisions and acts and thoughts that seem worthless in a worldly way that are little reminders that I’m caught up in an other-worldly relationship. And the joy of knowing that Jesus has won me over, and if I’m mistaken or brainwashed about him that my life is actually a failure, but that I’m ok with that because it means my salvation depends totally on him and his trustworthiness.
And in a more regular way, I experience him like I experience any other person - through conversation. Just plain old learning more about my Father in scripture, hearing him talking about himself and his plans, and then talking to him about those things in prayer, knowing that he is listening because of the cross and because his own Spirit is in me to let me call him Father.
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