Are you in the right position to hear from God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So Newton gives a lot of the usual steps to hearing from God such as spending time in Scripture so you can better discern God’s promptings. (Geez. Maybe you could just study the Scripture so you can know what God has already said.) One step he takes is to say that if you need an immediate word, spend extra time in Scripture, prayer, and quietness. He then cites Psalm 46:10 with “be still and know that I am God.”
Which says absolutely nothing about hearing from God.
The passage is instead describing Israel being at war and when their tendency is to rush headlong, they are to wait. Be still. God is God. God will defeat their enemies.
He also says if you are unsure if God is speaking to you, ask for confirmation. Never mind you could just as well ask “How do I know the confirmation is from God?” The only person I can think of right off in Scripture that needed confirmation is Gideon and he’s not the best example. One could say Hezekiah, but that is because Hezekiah was told he will die and then told he would live. He needed to know for sure which word was going to take place.
If anything else is saddening in this, it’s that when you get to the end, you find out that Newton is a bishop. I cringe at the thought of what people in high authority are actively teaching in our churches. The idea of hearing the voice of God has become such an evangelical creed and it blows my mind as this is taught nowhere in Scripture.
Instead, what we have is a list of things you can do and not a list of how you can study the Scriptures and know them better. When this happens, people take their own impressions and ideas and dreams as if they have divine authority and wind up building a little canon in their own selves that is based on their experience. There is enough self-centeredness in our churches. We do not need any more of it.
For those who still think this is in some way even remotely biblical, I urge you to return to Scripture and do a thorough look and ask yourself some questions about what you are reading.
While God did speak to people, was it ever the majority of the people?
If not, then why do I think I am one of those exceptional people that
Why do I never see this commanded by Jesus or Paul?
Why do I not see anyone in early church history talking about this?
Why do the medieval thinkers stay silent on this?
Why did the Reformers say nothing about this?
To claim that God is speaking is a serious claim and I fear too many of us are making it far too lightly. It won’t affect our salvation from what I see, but we will be judged for it. Remember in the Old Testament that if a prophet wasn’t from God, they were to be stoned.
Should we take His word any less lightly?
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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