when window cleaning isn't enough: ch. 7 of "Hearing God"
I have
been reading through “Hearing God” by Dallas Willard. He has gone through the
different ways that God speaks to people, and focuses on how incredibly
ordinary the people that God spoke to in the Bible were. They doubted, they
were not sure it was God speaking. They didn’t always like what God said. God
does not speak only to saints. However.
In Chapter 7, he revisits the core of why God speaks to some and not
others (or, rather, why some people hear
him and others do not)
Willard is
talking about the process of Christ cleansing us from our sin: “Christ through
his word removes the old routines in the heart and mind- the old routines of
thought…and in their place he puts something else: his thoughts, his
attitudes, his beliefs….We now have the character
to which listening for God’s voice is natural” (p.200).
Maybe I am
the only one to be struck by this. I was hoping that hearing God was just a
matter of cleaning the windows a little, and finding a quiet spot somehow. But
it is not just the windows that are dirty. The inside of the house- of
ourselves- needs to be gutted and remodeled to be more like Christ.
It is
fruitless to try so hard to strain our ears to hear words when we do not follow
the words God has already given us through the Bible. Of course, God speaks to
whoever He wants to. But let us not have the audacity to assume there is some
kind of shortcut to hearing God. That we don’t have to go through the hard work
of letting God change our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions for the very
self-seeking satisfaction of hearing God. Let us instead bravely do what we are
called to do, and let God change us.
There is no
time to waste. The situation in Ferguson
has been too heavy on my heart for me to even write about (see the link to
Jennie Allen’s post on the LiveOak Facebook page). There are countless other
examples of how badly the world needs us to be more like Christ. Choose
whatever breaks your heart the most, and ask God how you need to change. If you
are bold enough, let me know how it goes!
Beth Kropf
Beth Kropf
8 comments:
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