Dallas Willard - The Still Small Voice and Its Rivals

[Music] i like the words that simply say you are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in god's great universe now in this session we're going to be more specific and practical about what it is like to be spoken to by god and needless to say this causes a lot of trouble and we want to try to really be helpful with this it is true that there are various ways in which god speaks to people but they all have in common one thing and that is each contains a message and sometimes people need to be addressed in one way or another in order to get the message but often the way they are addressed what it brings the message confuses the meaning and the more dramatic the way the message comes the more difficult it is to get the meaning right and this is uh this causes a lot of grief because you have people who think that the more dramatic the message is somehow the better the meaning is but the the teachings of the scripture and um i'm sorry i don't have time to spend a lot of time on this but the teachings of the scripture is plain that the less dramatic the form the message comes the fuller is the content and the more advanced if you wish is the condition of the person who is receiving the message so if you are if you study the life of moses and abraham and jesus you're going to see that that's true and so one phrase comes to be used about the usual form of the message and that is still small voice it's actually difficult to translate that passage in first kings 19 13 that is in the old version put in terms of still small voice and it could be no voice at all it could be just a thought or it could be a whisper and the passage is very instructive because you can hardly imagine more dramatic events occurring in which there was no voice right and earthquakes are on our mind today that's pretty dramatic but the question is always what does it mean right so if you were to step out here on the mountainside and find a bush that was burning and not consumed and you heard there was nothing said what would you take it to mean funny bush it's the voice that matters and we really have to pay attention to that and we can learn when god is speaking to us in our thoughts because the form it will take always is in our thoughts and if you have a pink elephant talking to you you'd better get the thought that comes with it because that's what matters the elephant does not matter and so don't start a pink elephant movement now in your outline you see a reference to the three lights and i need to talk with you briefly about that and then we want to move on to how you learn to identify the voice the voice of god the three lights are not adequate for one thing they tend to be limited to guidance and we've already said that the conversation is not just about guidance the three lights are not adequate to understand the conversational relationship with god now having said that i want to say they are important the three lights are circumstances what's happening around you impressions of the spirit which in themselves are not easy to read and then passages from the bible and the idea you will find this in a wonderful author but named f b meyer that i greatly appreciate the secret of guidance is his book and he says when the three lights line up then you can know that that's god's will and i encourage you to be worried to be worried about that because in many cases the circumstances are not going to give the indication of what you should do sometimes the indication is precisely you ought to disregard the circumstances in full speed ahead right and how would you know whether or not they were an indication of how you should go well the impressions of the spirit would come in but then you have the problem of identifying those and passages from the bible are obviously important but when you're seeking guidance you are always seeking more from the bible than it says because if you want to know whether or not to go to denver the bible doesn't say anything about denver right so you have now what i would say is that while these are not a mechanical sort of indicator as they are often presented they are factors that you would consider in forming a responsible openness to god's teaching you should not disregard circumstances you should not disregard impressions of the spirit and you should not disregard passages in the bible but you need to recognize that these three lights are not indications of god speaking to you they may be there but without god's voice you cannot rely on them they will not substitute for communications uh with god study is a part study the bible that's great you ought to do it you ought to be sensible you ought to be sensitive and you could even say that these are conditions of responsible judgment but they will not substitute for the voice of god coming to you in a way that you will learn to recognize and i have never taught on this material in a group where many people in the congregation did not say to one another or to me i recognize that i didn't know that what that i didn't know what that was see one of the things that i mentioned earlier and needs to be emphasized is you do not automatically know it is god who's speaking to you and here you need to take seriously the story of little samuel who was spoken to by god and he thought it was eli and it took eli a little time to figure out what was happening and then he instructed samuel and what did he instruct him to do he instructed him to speak back speak lord for thy servant heareth now that's the beginning of one of the most famous conversations lifelong in earth but little samuel didn't automatically recognize it now then after that he recognized it and the how you how you learn to recognize the voice of god coming to you and it it will usually take the form of a special type of thought and we want to turn to that now you will learn to recognize by experience that's how you learn you do not learn by getting a bunch of signs that you can put on it and test test it you learn by experience like you learn by experience the voice of others that you are familiar with in that case of course we're talking about the sound of the voice now it's very important to understand the role of the bible in this a very wonderful young man named scott hillborn a presbyterian minister who's now located i think in south carolina makes this comment 90 of god speaking to me comes in class time as he called it with the bible while i'm reading the written word 90 of it is not about what to do but to enlighten and to encourage me and you i would imagine every one of you have had that experience with the scripture where suddenly uh it is not the words on the page it is something that you find far different from that they're related to the words on the page uh we like to say the words on the page leaped or the words leaped off of the page and grabbed me so the bible is really very central but when that comes you're going to learn you will you again i know that many of you have already learned to recognize that and you know that this is now god speaking to you now there are three factors in the voice that i want to mention now when i say the voice i'm referring to thoughts that come to you there may be a voice it may be the voice of another human being it can come in many ways but you learn to recognize that and you will find that you will hear a certain tone and i think that is one of the most important things for us to uh identify there is a tone or quality for example it has a certain weight to it a certain weight it impresses you and this is connected with the point about the spirit of the voice but weight i think is the best term that i can use to indicate this confidence it comes with confidence it comes without thinking it up you don't think it up um very often you are quite surprised by it both in terms of it showing up and what it has to say you don't sense it as something coming from you and not from any other person though some other person may be speaking uh i want to give another quote from e stanley jones here on this point um here's what he says he was he says perhaps the distinction of the voice is this the voice of the subconscious argues with you and tries to convince you but the inner voice of god does not argue it does not try to convince you it just speaks and is self-authenticating it has the feel of the voice of god within it you experience it because of the weight of the person who is speaking now you can't separate that from the spirit the spirit is peacefulness joy there is a sweet reasonableness to it there's good will it is a warm but firm presence in your life this is described in james 3 17 and elsewhere in the bible that you had discussions about what what it's like uh what the voice of god is like james 3 17 describes the wisdom that is from above the wisdom that is from above one of the phrases it uses is easy to be entreated it is not the voice of a bully the spirit that comes with god speaking is not something that is going to run over you and that goes with a few comments i made earlier about gideon and so on if you don't if you're uncertain you ask you ask for more light more talk more conversation if you're uncertain being uncertain does not mean you lack faith so don't run from it embrace it and say please speak to me more speak to me again the final thing i mentioned content is absolutely important there are a lot of things you know that god is not going to say now this is where the bible sometimes can cause you problems and you have to distinguish the principles of the bible from the periphery of the bible so if you find a passage in the bible that says women should not have short hair right now don't sit up at night and worry about that okay one of my old mentors wrote a book called bobbed hair bossy wives and women preachers and needless to say he was again him so i wouldn't i wouldn't be too concerned about a voice that came to me and wanted to enforce that but if a voice came to me and said you can disregard the bible well [Music] i think i hear something that i've heard before in that voice and it is not the voice of god if a voice were to come to me and to say i could hate my neighbor or it was quite all right for me to despise a certain class of people i would know on the basis of the content that that was not all right if it were to come and make some statement degrading of jesus i would know the same thing the important thing here is keep to the principles in interpreting the word or the voice of god to you in terms of the bible keep to the principles rule of thumb that i use is if the bible says something once don't worry about it if it says it twice think about it twice if it becomes a fundamental principle then use that as a guideline to understand what comes to you as the voice of god so if you have a passage that talks about being baptized from the dead well you compare that to the rest of the scripture let me make a statement here about this because it i know that you are people who reverence the scripture what you want to believe from the bible is what is taught on the whole on a fair interpretation that interprets the bible by the bible what is taught on the whole and you should receive that as god's teaching to be respected and used as a standard for everything else that you have now having said that you learn to know the voice of god by experience since you are not infallible you don't become someone who is telling everyone what to do because of what you have heard uh use in humility you may share what you've heard if that's appropriate but hearing the voice of god does not make a pope of me and i have to accept the fact that while the one speaking is infallible i am not the voice of god is not a fix-all it doesn't solve all of our problems it isn't meant to and in many cases we are expected to proceed in our conversation and in our life and deal with problems for which no solution is proposed so don't we don't want to think that we have to wait and follow the voice of god and not act and not think and not consult with others and be guided by that the voice of god is holistic it serves the purpose god wants it to serve we learn to recognize it by experience and we can become very comfortable with it but we don't force it to solve our problems it is after all a conversation and a conversation is not something you want to try to force let me stop there and we'll go back and look at some of these points that we've touched on briefly and try to go into them a little more deeply [Applause] thank you you are very gracious i'd like to take you to numbers 12 for a few moments to drive home something i had said about the primacy of the voice numbers chapter 12 and you're familiar with this story i think because this is the story where moses's brother and sister became jealous of him and um god come god sort of calls them out in front of the tabernacle to give a little lesson here and uh so numbers 12 uh it's talking about moses and this is one of the most important statements to understand about moses because if you didn't have it you might not think he was this way but it says here the man moses was very humble more than any man who was on the face of the earth and that is perhaps the surest way for god to speak to you is to be humble because that way he knows that you're not going to misuse it but others were not humble and verse two he's miriam and aaron are sort of criticizing him and they start picking away at him about who he married he married a cushite woman and they said verse 2 has the lord indeed spoken only through moses has he not spoken through us as well and the lord heard it now this is deeply indicative of some of the problems that didn't begin to arise when god starts speaking to people or more generally perhaps in terms of of the gifts that come among people peter wagner wrote a book years ago called how to have a healing ministry without making your church sick and actually that's a big deal and when the action of god through gifts begins to move in a group i mean if the fruit is not there there's going to be problems it's only the fruit that makes the gifts good and tolerable and actually the gifts help the fruit too they're meant to go together but in this case suddenly the lord said to moses and aaron and miriam you three come out of the tent of the meeting that was the tabernacle basically and it was the meeting place between god and the people of israel and the lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood in the doorway of the tent the lord preferred clouds because they're formless and it's very hard to worship a cloud and he said hear now my words if there is a prophet among you i the lord will make myself known to him in a vision i shall speak with him in a dream and if you have experience with people who at least seem to be experi using or working in the gift of prophecy you will notice how indeterminate many things they say are now it isn't always like that but prophecy always or most often will come into the rather vague and indeterminate way now that's the character of a vision and the character of a dream if you have a vision or you have a dream they always require interpretation they are not self interpreting now why would that be think about it not so with my servant moses he is faithful in all my household with him i speak mouth to mouth not just a way of saying i talk to him he talks to me right i speak with him mouth to mouth even openly and not in dark sayings and he beholds the form of the lord now you see here the preference for statement clear statements that do not require further interpretation that's the nature of the still small voice it comes not in the form that needs to be interpreted though it will have implications and so on but the meaning is clear on the face of it okay now in some forms of visions and dreams you get some statements sometimes if an angel appears to you like he did to many people in the scripture and he gives you statements that's the equivalent of how the still small voice might come to you but you see here that the difference in your position in life before the lord or with the lord determines how the message comes do you know that jesus almost or arguably never had a vision isn't that interesting paul had visions right but paul wasn't jesus he was a way up there but he wasn't in the position where there could be simply clear communication without any colorful phenomena attached with it now think a moment why would this be true why would it be true that the individual that is closer to god would have the clearer communication given to them and i think it has to do with a number of factors one is god does not have to get their attention why doesn't he have to get their attention because they're already paying attention right they're engaged in that interchange that way of interacting and being together that characterizes the conversational relationship another thing that's troubling here is that perhaps they're not in tune with what god wants done moses was totally in tune with what god's done god once done miriam and aaron were in tune with what they wanted done right and so god got their attention and manifested himself to them in a way that he didn't need to get the attention of moses what are we to make of that well if we have a vision and it turns out to be of god we should be thankful for it we should not feel inferior we should not say to ourselves i must be spiritually inferior or god would have just whispered right we just give thanks to god for how he comes the presence of the bible in our lives again the bible allows us to have an appropriate distance from what god is saying so that we can grow closer to what he has in mind for us god's ways of dealing with us are the ways that he knows our best for us but i do believe that we should look forward to the time when that conversation is a quiet constant regular interaction as is appropriate for our information for our guidance for our usefulness in ministry and in living with understanding as we do the work that god has placed before us and i think that that is primarily something that is related to our work and our families but the intimate relationships so we go back to the great commandment love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind with all your strength and then you relate that to love your neighbor as yourself how do you do that you're only going to be able to love your neighbor as yourself if you are living in a conversational relationship with god uh once again we've already said he's not going to tell you everything to do but as needed you will have the experience of god speaking so that you will be able to love your neighbor as you should you won't be able to figure that out on your own because what your neighbor needs is often going to be something you don't know so you need to be told in many cases how to relate to your neighbor what if your neighbor is your enemy well that's a special case sometimes that's true and we need to be taught some time back i was in ireland uh in a community where your neighbor might have just killed your son or your daughter or burned your house down or something of that sort and i was talking about this and about loving your neighbor as yourself and that gruesome puzzled looks like how do you do that if your neighbor has done something awful to you and instead of saying well you just do it because jesus said i ask a question back is anyone teaching you how to do that and of course they weren't no one was teaching how to do that see we have to be taught and we have to get through things like well if i love my neighbor what does that mean does that mean that i let them do what they want to do how what is it to love your enemy is it to think it's okay that they did what they did no it isn't to love your enemy means that you do what is in your power for their good and sometimes that would be to oppose what they want that's what is involved in loving people now how you do that and what that means will be something that we need to hear from god about and if we don't hear from god about it we probably will in many cases not do what our enemy who is our neighbor needs now if you're raising children you know that you love them by not doing what they want to do on many occasions so we learn how to love as we stay in the relationship of listening as we we seek the voice of god we search for him in all kinds of circumstances and we have to keep that point that we've made over and over that hearing god never makes sense except when it is set in the context of a larger kind of life now i want to say a few things about how i do this and just hopefully it might be of use to you when i want to hear from god i very straightforwardly ask him to speak to me and then i watch i watch what's happening as i go through my days when i'm studying or talking with others or maybe in a waiting room reading a magazine or something i watch for that special kind of presence in thought to come to me so first of all you ask would you like god to speak to you about something and in this case we're talking mainly about direction the direction might be on the other hand in terms of understanding something not necessarily what you're trying to do it could be perhaps just enlightenment that you're seeking so you ask for it you don't understand something lord help me to understand this you need to teach you say what shall i teach and so it's a broad range of things but normally it comes up with reference to what should i do i'm seeking guidance and it's amazing how often we don't ask for it and i've had to take myself to task many times over my failure to ask for what i need but then when you ask you expect it and you watch for it and my experience is that it often comes when i'm i'm not really obsessed with that problem maybe i'm crossing a street or driving my car or something of that sort and i realize something is coming to me then i pay attention and if i'm in doubt i say lord would you make that clearer and it's been important for me to understand that that is not a reproach to god to say uh well i didn't understand what does that mean that's just the natural way we would relate to another person another human being if they don't if they say something to us and we don't understand it we ask for clarity and that's what i would do now if and i usually will put a limit two days three days say lord would you please let me know in the next three days such and such now suppose i am given nothing or at least so far as i can tell my next step is to say is there anything in me that is preventing you speaking clearly to me about this matter and then again i listen i don't just go on i set time limits on these things and i believe that that's what we should do because the lord is able to speak to us if he wishes to if there is something in my attitude or something i'm doing that would seem to prevent him speaking to me i expect him to tell me and that may come in various ways but i don't believe that god messes with our minds he's very clear he's very straightforward he's not mean he's not incapable and if he has something to say to me he'll say it that's my faith and i believe that i have found in practice that that works well now suppose after that there is nothing that i can identify as a word to the effect that i'm doing something i shouldn't be doing have an attitude i shouldn't have then i take that as god's indication that i should decide on my own that's something you may uh depending on your experience and background you may have some trouble with that but when god leaves you to decide on your own that is your assurance that he will be with you in your decision now if you have come to the view that i've been trying to press on you is that god is preparing us for a life of initiative on our own where what we want because sometimes when you say to god what do you want in effect he says what do you want and once again you if you're into raising children developing people you'll understand how important that is and if you have a a problem with that to where you think well god would never do that well then you need to rethink your theology because back of all of the things we've been discussing is that issue of our theology what are we thinking about god i know that god will be with me when he doesn't tell me what to do that his being with me is not a matter of him telling me what to do and if he doesn't tell me what to do then he's not with me his presence with me is known in different ways than just him specifying a course of action so you need to have a breath of understanding of how god speaks of familiarity and that will put you in a position to act and in other other things i haven't had time to say much about this uh or i think i mentioned it once it's so important that you all know what this is so that when other people tell you that god wants you to do certain things you will know how to respond to that the harmful authority that is exercised in the churches and beyond that in society you have to be in a position to know well enough what it is for god to speak that you can respond to people who are trying to lay harmful things on you and others in your fellowship and the only way you can do that is by having a confident knowledge of how god works even when he doesn't speak now that has worked well for me and i can recommend that to you on the basis of my experience and what i believe is the picture that comes out of scripture of god drawing people to maturity both in the old and in the new testament and it also fits in with what you can find out by reading the lives of those who have lived in the manifest presence of god and in all other cases it is a life lived in a conversational relationship that doesn't mean he's talking all the time no conversation is like that and then you can explore your own experience to test whether or not what i've said to you about the voice of god and how you come to know it and then how you live with it is true let me stop there [Music] you

Channel: Conversatio Divina

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Keywords: Dallas Willard, Renovare, Spiritual Formation

Id: 5-vh6Tgm6fc

Length: 44min 1sec (2641 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021