Continuing in my current rabbit hole of learning more about prayer in the life of a follower of Jesus, I came across this message by Tyler Staton, from which I have taken so much that I wish to pass onto you. If you haven't read my blog before, this is the sort of post where I share a kind of 'review' message, which simply means I am bringing to life and highlighting some incredible thoughts that I have learnt from someone else! The writings below are not all of my own but motivated and influenced by a figure in Christlike leadership that I have been learning from recently.
This message is part 1 of a two week series on the topic "Hearing God" where Staton is speaking on Hearing God in the personal life of a follower of Jesus, which can also be spoken of as Discernment.
He begins by sharing two stories, which speak of two different people and their families radically obeying the voice of God as they follow Him answering their specific prayers. These stories (or testimonies if you will), empathise with a range of people, highlighting those who have stepped into a season of undeserved blessing on the heels of following God’s voice, and another for the people who have been tossed with suffering after obeying God’s lead.
It brings one to think of their own journey and moments where they have,
Cried out before the Lord, and then waited with baited breath.
Or landed up hurt by the misuse of voice of God by a figure in authority.
And also been enlivened by hearing the warmth of the still, small whisper along their journey of faith.
We have not lived if we have not walked both stories of blessing and disappointment. But this points the question: “How can you trust a God that speaks to you with a smile on His face even if He goes on to lead you off a cliff?”
The truth of learning to listen to and live by the voice of God is equally the most powerful, painful and dangerous aspect of Christian spirituality. Nothing matters more in our faith than learning to discern the voice of God and yet little else can evoke such pain, abuse, delusion and deception.
John Cassian, a fourth century monastic saint spoke of growth in prayer like one becoming a prudent money changer. A money changer becomes familiar with both authentic and counterfeit coins so that they can immediately toss out the worthless and keep the real thing.
This is our prayer life.
So familiarising oneself with God's voice that recognising the counterfeit competition is effortlessly discerned.
Staton terms Discernment as: the practice of attentively listening to God amidst the complexity of a sin nature and a fallen world.
We'll look at this in four parts:
Whispers (from God)
Lies (from the deceiver)
Distractions
Discernment
Whispers (God’s whispers)
Looking at the encounter on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, Staton focuses in on this verse,
As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther.
Luke 24vs28What exactly was Jesus’ intention with ‘going farther’ ? Was He trying to grasp their pity and the offering of a dinner invitation or was he truly content to leave them without their ever realising who He was? One could speculate either way if this were an isolated event in history. But this is not an isolated event, it’s a major Biblical theme!
Looking back to the Old Testament in the book of 1 Kings, we read of Elijah’s big moment on Mount Carmel where God’s power and presence was openly made evident. But it’s that very event that causes his need to flee for his life. Climbing Mount Horeb, (the very mountain Moses ascended to meet with God) one could imagine the cries building within Elijah as his body burned with exhaustion. Going on a pilgrimage like this to Holy ground isn’t ordinary, it’s not normal. You do go on a journey like this for a regular prayer time, you go to meet with God and to meet with him boldly.
And yet we find this result:
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
1 Kings 19vs11~13This “gentle whisper” can also be translated as “a still small voice.” But what’s remarkable is what God announces to Elijah in his instruction… “for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Rewinding even further back to Moses
“Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.”
Exodus 33vs21A peak moment out of the entire Old Testament, and God is just passing by.
Even Job’s account of God’s power and grandeur is alongside the same tendency of passing by:
He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.
He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.
When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him.
Job 9vs8~11Even within the New Testament, we can look at Jesus walking on water:
Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them.
Mark 6vs47~48Was Jesus really willing to pass by his disciples in the boat in the storm and meet them on the other side of the lake? Which could also prompt us to ask, was this the only time he walked on water?
Come back to Luke 24. Jesus was resurrected that morning, and He goes on to spend the first ever Resurrection Sunday educating two of His disciples on the entire history of prophecy from Scripture that He had just fulfilled because it all points to Him. And they don’t even recognise Him! As they reach Emmaus, Jesus continues, as He often would do, as if He were going further. However, after their invitation for Him to stay, it is only far later in the evening when He breaks the bread that their eyes are opened to actually see him.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
John 1vs10It seems that it was not only the world who did not take Jesus for who He truly was, but all those who saw Him resurrected and did not recognise Him.
The greatest and most understated tragedy of all time is this very one of our Saviours so identifying with us that we mostly miss him in our very midst.
A whisper is hard to hear and easy to ignore and yet it remains as God’s native language. We tend to miss Him right in our midst not because He is in our ordinary, not because He is far off and extraordinary. Despite our frequent recollection of this very fact in all of scripture, we continue to seek Him out in the fire and the wind and the earthquake and forget His whisper. We still attentively climb to our special places, people and events, when all along your road, He is about to pass you by. When He speaks that most profoundly is in the ordinary and non-climatic moments because He is in on your everyday life.
So why doesn’t He just yell!
We could just ask this, why doesn’t God just loudly speak into our life. And we’d quickly remember that when He does speak in loud and obvious ways, it doesn’t result in great effectiveness. Look at how Elijah’s fire spectacle turns out. Or how about the subjective interpretation of Jesus’ miracles or even the persecution that followed the tomb that lay wide open… Maybe God whispers because He is intimate and not evasive. Maybe, the louder a voice like His becomes, the more polarising it becomes. Maybe the louder His voice is heard, the easier His power is twisted by people who turn it for their own illusion of control. Maybe in whispering, God get’s what He wants most with you, to walk with you and know you as a friend in your everyday life.
Lies (deceivers lies)
As much beauty as there is in God’s Whispers, there is equally as much complication. If there is a God vying for your attention, you can bet there is an enemy contesting for your life. This enemy works in lies, he is the father of lies as it is. And the competition he has with God is the reason we face difficulty in hearing the voice of our Good Shepherd. While Jesus is good and loving, the deceiver is one who skillfully impersonates him with crafty lies.
How do we tell the voice of God from the deceiver in a rowdy competitive arena of your mind?
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
Psalm 42vs7God’s voice is the deep calling to deep because He is heard at the depth of the soul while the deceiver's lies appeal to the shallowness of the ego. As the human ego is widely bent by this world to place ourselves at the centre of the story, the lies will manipulate God’s power, dethrone Jesus and imposter the good voice of the Shepherd. When the ego becomes the ear through which you listen, you step into the risk of your spiritual life dissolving to one that is fixed around “me” and not “thee”
Saint Ignatious said: “It is a mark of the evil spirit to assume the appearance of an angel of light. He begins by suggesting ideas that are suited to a devout soul and ends by suggesting his own.”
satan, the father of lives, can even twist the desire for God’s presence and power into an inhibitor of spiritual maturity. The evil one will happily guide you into a brothel or a prayer meeting so long as he can strengthen your ego and starve your soul.
As he stumbles to tempt us into objective sins, he will instead turn our hunger for the Lord into personal thrill seeking.
Herein we find the key to hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit above that of the deceiver is not so much as to what the voice is saying but what the voice is doing to me as I am listening to it. God will nurse our soul while the deceiver massages our ego.
This brings us to the two fold topic of Practising Discernment alongside the the reality of Distraction.
Discernment and Distraction
As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him
Luke 24vs15~16Their being “kept” from recognising him indicated greater forces at play. Obviously a physiological hinderance (that being true in many who did not recognise Jesus’ resurrected body after have witnessed His execution a matter of hours previously), but far more than physical and emotional hurdles is that of spiritual distraction. When translating from the Greek, it highlights that there were forces holding onto their vision, their eyes were held onto, grabbed, even seized.
But the event is turned around as we read about later in the day…
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
Luke 24vs31The Holy Spirit, the active agent at play, is the one who opens our eyes and ears to witness Jesus and receive whispers from God. This being a gift given with grace, not an entitlement or a method to be mastered. A gift that must be asked for with discernment because of the distraction and complications against it in your life!
Dallas Willard said; "Grace is opposed to earning, not effort."
So how do we prepare to receive the gift of God speaking in our lives?
We allow Him to use our ordinary, everyday life to prepare us. If the Prophets needed training, then we cannot think ourselves exempt from it!
Before Elijah sees the fire fall or hears the whisper, we see him being taken through a series of events and moments where God teaches him to hear His voice. But even more interesting is that we see this voice lead him to that which is seemingly far detached from the greater schemes of the moment. What he’s led to appears unproductive, ineffective and even at times reckless and unimportant.
Why would we see God take him through such a great series of events to prepare this one man enough to know the voice of the most high? Because it was deep in his soul that dependance, trust and compassion were forming. It was through the ongoing small prompts where God was instilling His heart and power in Elijah. As it is with us as we learn to hear God’s whisper. We will walk through confusion and unproductiveness, we will feel inconclusive in the greater narrative and we will feel tested in obedience.
While Elijah’s later years enliven our faith, it’s these earlier years that challenge our courage. It’s here that we see God’s whisper as a combination of enlivening and terrifying us. It’s here that our souls will relate with His voice but we will feel nothing but risk.
But that is the place of realising that one will never reach a maturity of hearing the voice of God that is not equally as enlivening as it is terrifying, that there is all fruit and no cost.
It will never be all faith and no risk. It will always be a stubborn resilience to risk your own foolishness in the path away from comfort to follow the voice of God.
As Staton says in his old diary entry: “No one gets on with what God is doing by keeping human honour in tact. Dear God, if you want, You can embarrass me. I just want to learn to trust you more fully, know your voice more clearly.”
If you're intending on asking God for His fire to fall, you have to be equally as willing to trust His training. We must pursue in hearing His whisper above the clattering noise. And this is training, not a moment in time. It doesn’t begin with the great big questions of life but rather is found in the daily practice of learning to attentively and carefully hear clearly.
“The practice of discernment recognises and responds to the presence and activity of God, both in the ordinary moments and the larger decisions of our lives.” (Ruth Hayley~Barton)
Discernment is the prudent money changer.
So how does one practice hearing the voice of God?
The Prayer of Daily Examen (Or Daily Examen of Consciousness) is a prayer model that walks through these prompts that bring you to a place of recognising God’s whispers throughout your day.
Review the day with God (talk through your moments from waking until present)
Closeness to God (recognise where you felt and saw God's presence)
Farther from God (Speak about when you felt far or when you distanced yourself)
A simple request for the next day (key word here ~ simple)
Our hindsight of God’s activity and presence is always so clear. As you work to review what He has done daily, your eyes will be opened to recognise Him in the present. This teaches us to see him all along the journey and not just at dinner in Emmaus.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me
John 10vs14~ X ~
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