Tag: still small voice

Book Plunge: Hearing the Voice of God Chapter 3.2

What about nudges?

So I goofed a little. I apparently got ahead of myself with chapters and one section was the introduction so I am calling this 3.2. Awkward, but what am I to do? I make mistakes.

So Newton now says the second way God speaks to us is by an inward nudge, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. He turns to Romans 8 and at least this time gives some surrounding context to verse 14. Unfortunately, none of this addresses the point.

He talks about being in services where he knew something was not being said right and he couldn’t show it, but that little nudge told him what was being taught was wrong. The problem is, I can’t exegete an experience like this. I have no context and then what about the times that nudges come and everything is actually right, or at least right enough? There might be something wrong, but it’s not heretical. Newton gives no measure for this. It is easy to accept a test when you accept all that agrees with you. Mormons do it regularly with the burning in the bosom.

Naturally, the next passage he goes to is the still small voice of Elijah. Do you know how many other passages refer to the still small voice?

None. Not a one. No other prophet says anything. Jesus says nothing about it. Paul says nothing. No apostle speaks anything about it.

But this movement has banked so much on this verse.

Never mind that in the very passage, the still small voice says NOTHING and later God speaks to Elijah in an audible voice as he had just as when the narrative of the aftermath of the showdown with the prophets of Baal started. This is not to be taken as a normative passage. It is our modern hubris that insists that this event that happened to Elijah is supposed to be just like what happens to us. Strangely, that never includes having food be miraculously prepared for us.

He then goes to Proverbs 20:27

The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord
    that sheds light on one’s inmost being.

Newton then says this means the Lord will use your spirit to give you guidance. What? Does my spirit know something that it is not telling me? The idea really here is that God is capable of searching us and knowing our inmost hearts. It is not about God giving us guidance. It is a message of warning that God knows our inmost being.

I wish these people who spoke about how we need to treat the Scriptures so seriously would follow their own advice.

Now this next part is amusing really:

But someone may say, “How can I know when I am being led by the inward witness? Can you give me an example?” Well yes I can. One very specific experience I remember along this line happened when I was a younger minister of the Gospel, just learning some of these things. I was at a church service on one of our family islands. A minister had preached, and afterward walked to the back of the church. This particular church had wooden pews. The minister slowly walked up to the front of the building touching each pew as she walked up. Then she said something to this effect, “If you did not feel anything when I touched your pew, something is wrong and you need to come to the altar.” Immediately, somewhere down on the inside of me, it seemed like someone was ringing a doorbell. I heard something, not with an audible voice, just a strong inward knowing, an inner witness. I heard, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Newton, Sheldon D.. Hearing The Voice of God: Discerning God’s Voice From All The Other Voices (pp. 16-17). Sheldon D. Newton. Kindle Edition.

He then goes on to say that

When I got back home, the Spirit of God, through the Word of God showed me that He never judges His relationship with us based on physical feelings. Our walk with God should be based upon His Word, not upon how we feel. Feelings change. The Word however, remains the same.

Newton, Sheldon D.. Hearing The Voice of God: Discerning God’s Voice From All The Other Voices (p. 17). Sheldon D. Newton. Kindle Edition.

And yet, what are we judging what God is speaking with here but an inward nudge? Also, I would not need such a nudge myself to know that what this preacher was speaking was nonsense. You just had to know your Bible.

He then tells a story about how a man was waiting at a red light and when it turned green had a nudge that told him to not move. At that point, a car sped through running the red light. The problem is again, I can’t exegete an experience. Even if I accepted this, why should I take it as normative? My claim has never been that God cannot speak. It is that it is not to be normative.

Next time, we’ll see what Newton has to say about the conscience.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: God Doesn’t Whisper

Is God whispering to His people? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Buy this book!

Seriously! What are you waiting for? Buy this book!

As I kept going through this book, I was thinking “I wish I could put this in the hands of every evangelical Christian out there!” The problem pastor Osman is speaking about is one that is present throughout the church. It is the idea that God has a will for your life and He is trying to tell you what it is and you need to be listening for it.

Osman goes after this entirely and he has done his homework looking up the claims of people who teach this and reading their books. I have read books like this here as well and every single one of them is just awful in this area. Pastor Osman is much more thorough than I am in this.

Bonus too! This guy is a pastor! I treasure that because so many pastors seem to fall into the groupthink on this. So many people are making disastrous decisions with their lives and not following proper wisdom for following an unbiblical pattern of decision making.

It puzzles me even more when my fellow Protestants do this. Aren’t we the people who claim that we are people of the book? The Bible is our final authority? We only go with what the Bible teaches? Despite that, we have bought into an idea that is not even taught in the Bible and is our own form of extra-biblical revelation that is to each of us and has us playing a guessing game with the will of God.

It reminds me of what my ex-wife used to struggle with as she would have a dream and the next day be thinking about it all day. She would ask me “What do you think it means?” I always said the same thing to her. “Honey. If you spent as much time trying to understand what Scripture means, which you know comes from God, as you do trying to understand your dreams, which you don’t know come from God, how much better off you would be.”

What does Osman deal with? Still small voice? Yep. Feeling a peace about it? Yep. Being led by the Spirit? Yep. Open doors? Yep. My sheep hear my voice? Definitely. Every biblical distortion out there, he interacts with.

At the same time, there seems to be nothing personal against the people who hold to this methodology often. There is no doubting that many people who hold to this are sincere Christians and think they are doing good. However, sincerity is not enough.

The only section I really disagreed with him on was Muslim dreams. I am entirely open to Muslims having dreams that lead them to Jesus and the difference I think is that these are dreams that are JUST for that purpose. They are not meant to help the Muslim in day-to-day decision-making. Osman and I can debate that hypothetically, but we do agree on the general premise of day-to-day living.

Also, Osman is a cessationist, but that is not necessary for his position. I am not one. I think Craig Keener has presented tremendous evidence that miracles are taking place today. I am open to the possibility that God can speak today if need be, but it needs to be tested and checked and it won’t be something done subjectively. If God speaks, it will be clear. We won’t have to wonder if it’s Him speaking.

Please. Buy this book! Read it and learn it!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge Part 1: How Then Should We Choose?

What do I think of Douglas Huffman’s book published by Kregel? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This book is a counterpoints book with three different authors (Or in the first case a group of authors) discussing their views on decision making and the will of God. You have the traditional view, the wisdom view, and the relationship view. I haven’t heard of the last one until now so I will see what I think of it when I get there, but going on, I hold to the wisdom view.

The first view presented is the traditional view also known as the specific-will view. In this case, which many of us grew up with, God has a specific will for your life and you need to find it to get God’s best. This includes where you go to school, who you marry, and many other decisions. This chapter is written by Henry and Richard Blackaby.

There is a lot of wisdom here, but the oddity is that it comes mainly when they actually talk about using wisdom instead of their view. The case for their view I did find extremely weak. I suspect the reason many evangelicals hold to it is tradition and also, it makes the emphasis be on us. Our natural proclivity is to self-centeredness.

The Blackabys write on how God spoke in the past to people like Moses, and indeed He did, but most of us don’t have bushes catching on fire in front of us without burning up and even in the text itself, it regularly says that God spoke to Moses like He did to no one else. If the Blackaby view was true, why was Moses even needed at all? Couldn’t all the Israelites in the wilderness experienced the leading of God and known what to do?

That is a key weakness of the position. It looks at the exceptional times and presents them as the normative times. We know about what was said to Moses. We don’t know beyond what the text tells us what Joe Israelite thought, aside from the time where they begged Moses to NOT have God speak to them and this was after God spoke to them from the mountain.

I also notice that when examples are given, it is examples of someone who made the decision, but I don’t see what happens after they make it. Maybe what they thought God was leading them to do turned into a disaster later. I remember Greg Koukl talking once about how he was not looking forward to Christmas one year and he was driving praying for a good Christmas and the next thing he noticed, the truck in front of him on the back said “Xmas4U” on it. Yes! Confirmation! God heard his prayer! The traditional view worked! Koukl thought so.

So he went and had a great Christmas.

No. Wait. He says he ended up having a miserable Christmas that year.

The comparisons of how God speaks are also not the same. In the times of the prophets, they were certain God had spoken to them. Now if you have the experience of Isaiah where God calls you up into His heavenly temple, yes, you can be sure God is speaking to you. What do we have instead? Inner impressions and a still small voice supposedly. Those are way too vague.

How many times have you gone to bed very anxious about something and when you woke up the next day, the anxiety was gone? Happens to me several times. Should I be heeding that nudging every time of anxiety? Should I see that strong impression as God telling me something?

The traditional view has many people fearful of making the wrong choice so many times that they tend to get stifled in their pursuits. While the Blackabys do encourage going to Scripture, too many times we focus on our own experience instead of Scripture. I remember my ex went through a lot of times where she was paying attention to dreams wondering what God was telling her. I told her, “If only you spent as much time trying to understand Scripture, which you know comes from God, as you do dreams, which you don’t know come from God.”

Next time we look at this book, we will discuss the wisdom view. I’m on that chapter now and I do agree with much of it, but there are some criticisms. Stay tuned.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Seven Signs That God Has Someone For You

What do I think of Wes Raley’s book published by V Books? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Ah. Marriage. I remember the days when I was single which looking back now after eight years of marriage seem like a distant memory. If you asked me what it’s like to be a bachelor now, I honestly couldn’t tell you. My life has been so radically changed by marriage that I can’t imagine going through life without my Allie by my side.

But I do remember that when I was single, it was the constant cry of my heart to have a woman to share my life with. If you had told me on July 24, 2009, that a year from then I would be standing at an altar pledging lifelong love to a woman, I would have laughed in your face most likely. Not going to happen. No prospects. Women just don’t want a nerd like me.

Now I try to encourage other men who are single and in the same boat in many ways. Some are older than I was when I married. It’s a hard path. So when I saw Wes Raley’s book being advertised in Kindle email deals and advertised for free, I had a lot of red flags. I’m very cautious about people talking about signs and the like, but I thought I would check it out. Free after all. Right?

Fortunately, it’s a short book. I had it read in an hour. I can say I am thankful Wes found someone and that he is writing to help others who have the same struggle we both had at one time. That being said, I don’t think his book treats Scripture properly and thus will not help and could do more harm than good.

My wife and I both know people who wanted to find that special love in their life and never did. We are speaking about people who are already dead. I try to encourage guys they can find someone, but I do not seek to speak for God.

I also don’t think there is anyway from Scripture to know the mind of God in if He has someone for you or not. I also think it’s false to talk about that special only one that you need to find. For most people, I think there are a multitude of people you could marry in the will of God. Here are some requirements to look for. They have to be someone who is a Christian and someone who is of the opposite sex and someone you can live the rest of your life loving and they can’t be a close relative.

If we go with the one that you have to find, that leads to chaos. Suppose you marry the wrong person. You’ve messed up then. No big deal. Right? Wrong. Not only have you married the wrong person, so have they, and what about the people you two were meant for? They can’t marry the right person so if they get married, they marry the wrong person and what about the people they were meant for? On and on it goes. Congratulations. You have screwed up God’s plan for humanity by your choice.

So let’s go through what Raley says.

He starts on a bad note by saying “Faith is often opposed by human reasoning.”

I’m not sure what other kind of reasoning we could use, but it’s not good to start with this kind of statement. It is true that Scripture says our faith does not rest on human reasoning, but saying it is not the foundation does not mean it plays no role in the structure at all or is often opposed to it. Many of you know that in my writings, I stress that faith is trust in that which has been shown to be reliable. If God has shown Himself to be reliable, it is quite reasonable to trust Him.

Raley then says that if our faith rests on anything other than God’s power, we risk living in a perpetual doubt to avoid being disappointed, but isn’t a life of doubt and unbelief already a disappointment? At this, I wonder what is meant by God’s power. I mean, I have faith that God could pick up my apartment complex right now and hurl us to the sun if He wanted to. He has that power. I don’t think that He will. I don’t think it so much that I’m not falling to my knees begging that it won’t happen.

I also think that our faith should not rest so much on what God could do, but on what He has done. He raised His son from the dead. It’s not about what God can do in my life. God can dispense with me at any time. It’s about what God did in Jesus and if God did what He did in Jesus, I can trust that as He said, He is working all things together for my good, even if they are not good themselves, as Romans 8 says.

Raley goes on to say that He believes God has written His promises to us on our hearts. Many people might think that that’s nuts, but it matters what God thinks and what He has promised. Indeed, what matters is what God thinks and has promised, but what Biblical mandate do I have to think that God has written His promises on our hearts? Scripture says His law is written on our hearts, but nothing about an individual mandate for our lives.

We move on through examples like Abraham. Yes. God did wonders in Abraham’s life, and while He can do such, we have no basis for thinking that we will be treated like Abraham. God spoke to Moses, but not to Joe Israelite wandering in the wilderness, and there were plenty more of them.

When we get to Scripture, it starts with James 1:5. If you lack wisdom, ask God who gives generously to all? God doesn’t want us guessing! What could go wrong? I mean, maybe, and let’s just take a purely hypothetical situation, you could say that this verse gives you a basis to go out in a field and kneel down and ask God what denomination you should join. What could go wrong?

What’s really going on in James? The wisdom being asked for is not something about personal knowledge. It’s about understanding suffering. The church was going through suffering and James is saying if you lack the wisdom to handle suffering, ask God for it. He’ll give generously. It’s not treating God as a personal answering service.

By the way, if we go with this and we are supposed to say that God tells us that we are to have someone in our lives, what do I need seven signs for? If you need seven signs after that, that is not faith. That is a lack of faith. Gideon didn’t even need seven signs.

It’s not a shock that Raley also uses Jeremiah 29:11 about the plans that God has for us. Never mind that this was said to the nation of Israel and the you is the plural nation and this was a nation that was going into exile in a foreign land and most of them would not see these plans fulfilled in their lifetime. No. Just take it and individualize that.

Now we could interpret this and say, “Just as God knew what He was doing when He let Israel go through suffering, so does He know what He is doing when He lets us go through suffering.” We could then take passages like Romans 8 and show God will work this for our good. It is improper hermeneutics though to take this passage out of its context and apply it to us in this way.

Raley then goes to Romans 12:2 and says if we transform our thoughts, we can know God’s good and perfect will. Isn’t this a great promise? By renewing our mind, we can find out God’s will.

Well, no. The text doesn’t say we will find it out. It says we will know. Second, we have to ask what is meant by will. Let’s suppose God has willed a day when the return of Christ will take place. Does this mean if I renew my mind, I can know that day? Doubtful. Does it mean I can even know the day God intends for me to die? Also doubtful.

What it means is the moral will. I can know how I ought to live rightly in relation to God and my fellow man. It is again bad hermeneutics to read individualism into the text.

Raley says believing God has the best in mind for you is the starting place of discernment. No. The starting place is to learn how to think properly in your mind and then apply your thoughts to Scripture rightly.

I do not want to list the seven signs really. Why? Because I still realize he wants to sell books and I don’t want to spoil a plot. It’s free for now, but maybe it won’t be in the future. I will speak to some bad Scriptural usages.

Raley uses Psalm 37:4 about trusting in the Lord with all your heart and He will give you the desires of your heart. Yet is this verse talking about that? In the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, John Walton says about this passage that in the Ancient Near East, this was about seeking God’s answer on a particular omen. It wasn’t about one’s own desires but about a specific desire.

Raley also uses 1 Kings 19:11-12 and Elijah and the still, small voice. It’s interesting that no one ever records anything this voice said. Maybe it wasn’t a voice but a gentle wind instead. Also, when this was done, Elijah went and spoke to God and God spoke to Him. This was not in a still, small voice. This was also one time in the Bible. If Elijah’s experience is to be mandatory for us all, perhaps it’s also mandatory for us all to expect a flaming chariot to take us to Heaven or to be able to expect fire to rain down from Heaven on our enemies at our command.

Raley also asks that if we ask God for this and we feel peace in our heart and confirmation, not to ignore this. Again, this brings us back to something like the Book of Mormon which uses the exact same test. Many times if we are making the right decision, we will NOT feel peace about it. The right decision can be scary.

 

At one point, Raley uses James 1:17 about every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above. Yet keep in mind Paul says there was given to him to keep him from being conceited a messenger of satan. Paul pleaded for this “gift” to be taken from him, but he was told it was for his good and Paul gave thanks in the end.

Raley is right that in Matthew 7, the Father wants to give us good gifts, but the gifts there given are staples of everyday living. I might as well say “A billion dollars would be a good gift. Surely God wants to give that to me.” There could be any number of reasons God doesn’t bless me financially. There could be any number of reasons God doesn’t give someone a spouse.

Finally, we are told to trust in God’s love for us. This isn’t a sign, but I definitely agree. If God blesses us with a spouse, rejoice. If He doesn’t, rejoice also. If God gives you one, it is for your good and theirs. If not, it is also for your good.

In the end, none of this is backable by Scripture ultimately I think and works better with our individualism in the church. I fear someone could get this and get false hope as well as start making Scripture more all about them. If you want a spouse, just go out there and seek one, but still live your life and serve God the best that you can where you are. Please don’t take Scriptural promises out of context and make them about you. We have too much of that today in the West already.

In Christ,
Nick Peters