He Just Might be Speaking
Something that’s unchanging. This is a hard thing to find in the world today. It seems that change is all around us. Whole industries are evolving at a nauseating speed. Elections are twisting and turning countries around the world. And even relationships bring about their own surprises. There is an unchanging to be found – it’s found in the Person of Jesus – God Himself.
The message of the Bible is one of hope and love and faith. It gives us a direction and a reason, an intention even, for how to spend our time. I wonder if you can relate to this. I really believe Jesus for other people. But there are times when I find believing Jesus for myself to be challenging.
This isn’t coming from a place of doubt as to whether He’s real or not. No, I believe in the reality of God wholeheartedly. It comes from a place that questions circumstances – the changes of life. There are times when it feels like I’ve been forgotten in a way. Times it’s hard to hear His Voice.
I read something the other day that was paradigm shifting regarding these concerns. It was out of Dallas Willard’s fantastic book, Hearing God. Willard said, “it is worth reminding ourselves to read the biblical accounts as if what is described is happening to us. We must make the conscious effort to think that such things might happen to us and to imagine what it would be like if they were to happen.”
My hang-up was in the way I was reading the stories of the Bible. I wasn’t doing anything wrong necessarily, I was doing it more incomplete. I was recalling the biblical narratives and encouraging my friends with the truth. We were seeing God work too! I was, however, neglecting to speak that truth over myself too. Deeper yet, to expect that truth for me.
It’s quite easy to read the stories of Moses, David, the Prophets, and the Disciples and view them the same way we view professional athletes. Esteemed, untouchable, living a life we won’t ever have access to. We revere them because they’ve been met by the Lord in their own way.
Friend, you and I must never forget the words from the book of Hebrews, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). God is unchangeable. And this news is abundantly glorious. It means we can, as Willard exhorts, imagine God speaking to us like He did Moses. God can provide for me the same way He did my friends.
Simply allowing my mind to just consider the possibility that God might speak to me has opened up a whole new awareness as I go about my day. No longer is there a sliver of jealousy when I hear a testimony of God’s faithfulness from a friend. Now, there’s an encouragement because God could do that for me too.
I want to encourage you to ask the Lord if there’s a shifting in perspective that He might be imploring you to pursue. How would your day look different if you believed that God might speak to you? For me, it’s brought hope and excitement. In a world that’s filled with change, God doesn’t – take the faithful examples of those who have come before you, pause, look, listen – God just might be speaking to you.
