Not as Hard as You Think

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. (James 1:5-6)

This past week, the third week of this DTS, came complete with everything from amazing breakthroughs to daunting challenges. As our leader Cheyne Hosking says, "those who come to DTS aren't usually the spiritual elite" – thus the challenges. Everyone comes in needing to grow; everyone has issues that need to be worked out. All of us –staff and students – are on a journey together, and the journey often isn't easy. It requires heart transformation, which really only God is capable of doing, so we have to trust Him a lot.

The focus of last week was hearing God's voice. This theme come out in lectures, where Cheyne was teaching, as well as in our Go stream class and our times of intercession on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Hearing God's voice is one of those things that most students hope they will be able to do on DTS but come in very uncertain of how they will hear or if they will be able to at all. And it's true, hearing the voice of God is a challenge (I myself have a long way to go to hear easily and clearly in all situations), but it really isn't as difficult as you might think. Here, the students progressed so far in just one week that by the end even those who are still unsure about God started hearing His voice.

The preconception that hearing God's voice is very complicated (and maybe only for really mature Christians) is maybe one of the biggest obstacles to actually hearing from Him. Before I came on my DTS, I so doubted that I would actually be able to hear from God that I rarely asked Him questions or listened for an answer. Half the battle is simply listening to God and expecting an answer from Him. Besides that, it's also important to understand that it's not like listening to people. You probably won't hear in a way that you're used to – you're hearing with your spiritual ears, not your physical ones.

We started the week by looking at why it's important to hear God's voice. We determined that at the most basic level it is an expression of humility – we are admitting that we were not designed to be independent of God, that we don't have the complete ability to know what's best for ourselves. Thus we invite his blessing and input into our situation as we listen for his Voice. We found that He speaks in many different ways; some of the most common are his still, small voice (1 Kings 19:9-18), impressions, T-bone thoughts (sudden thoughts contrary to your train of thought), visions/pictures, and the Scriptures.

Next we looked at the different things that hinder our ability to hear from God. These are things like negative pre-conceived notions of God, unforgiveness or bitterness (toward God or others), feelings of inadequacy, disobedience, busyness, distractions, and quite a few more. Pretty much all of these stem from a few root sins: doubt, unbelief, pride, and independence. So, we went through a time of confessing the things that hinder us, asking forgiveness (if necessary), and praying for God to take those things away and help us hear. That was a really important step, and from there we were ready to look at the more practical issues of hearing such as discerning God's voice versus our own, understanding how God speaks through Scripture (both generally [gk. logos] and specifically [gk. rhema]), and knowing the different things that God speaks (like words of knowledge, words of encouragement, prophecy, etc.). Cheyne also taught some things to pray through in order to prepare to hear from Him. They're called the 4 S's:

1. (Thanks) – this isn't an "S" word, but it's really important for getting our hearts right before God. The Bible tells us to "enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! (Ps. 100:4)"
2. Sin (Psalm 66:18, Isaiah 59:2) – confess and repent of any known sin, and ask God to reveal any unknown sin in your life to get rid of it.
3. Self (2 Cor. 10:59) – pray for God to remove distractions, to help you "take every thought captive" and hear His voice, not your own.
4. Satan (John 8:44, James 4:7) – In the authority of Jesus, tell Satan to be silent and go away ("Resist the devil, and he will flee."
5. Spirit (John 16) – Welcome the Holy Spirit in to speak and guide you into truth and relationship with God.

Finally, we did lots of activities to apply what we learned. For example, we did activities where each person listens to God for a word from God (encouragement, prophecy, or the like) for another person. In one such activity, everyone gets into to two lines with the same number of people in each. One of the lines (we'll call it line 1) turns its back while the other line (line 2) shuffles around until each person is standing behind someone in line 1. Then everyone in line 1 asks God for a "word" for the person in line 2 standing behind them (they don't know who the person is). Then, before line 1 turns to see who's behind them, they share whatever they received. Everyone did actually get something from God (whether a phrase, a sentence, an impression, or a picture), and every time it's amazing to see how many of the "words" are perfectly applicable and wonderfully encouraging to the person they pertain to. It would be really uncanny if we didn't know that God was speaking.

So, if you are pretty sure you're unable to hear God's voice, I'm telling you that's not true. God can speak to you, and He wants to speak to you; in fact, He's probably speaking right now. You just have to "tune in to radio Jesus" and listen to the words of love and encouragement that He has for you and those around you.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ....For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:18)

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

That's the gist of what I wanted to share about last  week, but there is one more important bit of information that might interest you. I think it official now: around the beginning of October I will be leading an outreach team to the island nation of Vanuatu. It will be a small team of six (4 students, 2 staff, including me), but I don't think will at all determine what we'll be able accomplish. We will likely spend most of our time in the capital, Port Vila, where we have an outreach base, but hopefully we will all be heading to some more remote locations on another island to serve the villagers there in a practical way. To serve in the way we would like, we will almost certainly have to raise some more funds – I'll let you know the details of that soon!

Thanks once again for you continued interest and support!

Cheers,

Danny Boy

The sunset the other day (click to enlarge)

A view of Mt Maunganui (taken up the hill from the base)