Crucified Hearts

Hearing God

I’ll begin with a quote from Dallas Willard:

“I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a device for securing their own safety, comfort and righteousness. For those who busy themselves to know the will of God, however, it is still true that “those who want to save their life will lose it” (Mt 16:25).

My extreme preoccupation with knowing God’s will for me may only indicate, contrary to what is often thought, that I am overconcerned with myself, not a Christlike interest in the well-being of others or in the glory of God.

Frederick B. Meyer writes, “So long as there is some thought of personal advantage, some idea of acquiring the praise and commendation of men, some aim of self-aggrandizement, it will be simply impossible to find out God’s purpose concerning us”

Nothing will go right in our effort to hear God if this false motivation is its foundation. God will not cooperate. We must discover a different motivation for knowing God’s will and listening to his voice.”

— Dallas Willard, in Hearing God, p. 28 (Kindle ed.)

Now, some of my own thoughts as I reflect on the words above.

The life setting for hearing God is communion with him in a relationship centered in love for Him as supreme and for our neighbor as we would for ourselves.

Close union and communion of the soul with God comes from trust in him as a child with his father, not from a mere collection of biblical facts about him. We may have an exhaustive theological knowlege, the most inquisitive minds, eloquent tongues, great persuasive powers, energetic service, or the most rigid obedience to his laws, yet fail to abide in a living communion with God.

The true experiential knowledge of God in a growing, loving relationship, can be ours through a daily submission of the whole heart and mind and body to him. This is a relationship identified by our loving oneness with each other just as the oneness of Jesus with his Father identified him as the true Messiah.

This is the promise He has secured for us by His grace in giving Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Our sincere prayers bring us into communion with him, not in their sincerity alone, but because we have an advocate, and intercessor, a helper and a friend at the throne of heaven (Hebrews 4.14-16; 10.19-22).

Our prayers which are the medium of communion with God, do not ascend to him in spotless purity because they passed through the corrupt channels of humanity. Yet they find acceptance and gracious answers are returned because Jesus Christ stands with outstretched arms to plead his blood, to plead the merits of his perfect righteousness as if it were ours, because it is ours by faith in him.

Mingling his merits with our personal conversations with God, our sinful selves are united in friendship with the Holy One, the eternal One. This is a union of purpose and of character with our heavenly Father. We are given the mind of Christ and just as God acts out of his being, we do what we do with others because of who we are in Him.

So we fulfill the law of Christ, bearing one another’s burdens in love, as we truly hear God sharing Himself with us, making us partakers of His divine nature.