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Knowing God's Will #3: Hindrances to Listening, Part 2
by The Rev. Clancy Nixon
April 24, 2005
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, VA
There is a Manhattan Transfer song that goes like this: Bill will sing it for us:
Operator, Information, give me Jesus on the Line!
If only it was as easy as dialing Zero, and we could all get a direct line to listen to
the Lord. Oh, we're pretty good at talking to God. The problem for many of us is in
hearing God clearly, regularly, and confidently. Have you ever had the experience of
telling someone how the Lord guided you, and they say this to you: "Oh, so you have a
direct line to God, do you?" Raise your hand if you've heard that one. Behind this
question is the assumption that it is presumptuous in the extreme for anyone to assume
that he or she can hear God better than some other people. The question tells us more
about the speaker than about the person accused of presumption. This question typically
comes from people who have no real relationship with God. Thank God Abraham,
Moses and Jesus lived their lives in response to God speaking to them. Conversation is
the normal way God has relationship with people. Speaking and listening are normal
parts of any relationship with a person. Christians believe that God is a person - three
persons, to be exact. The truth is that if we are in Christ, we do have a direct line to God.
It's like a cell phone: Heaven has issued a "cell phone in the spirit" for every believing
Christian. Not all of us are aware that we have this line to God; not all of us know how to
access it; not all of us use our God phone regularly. But if you are filled with the spirit of
God, you do have a direct line to God - no need to go through Mary or an angel. The real
deal is that Jesus is on the line.
The reality is that there are many hindrances to listening to God. The first
hindrance is that if we don't have the Spirit of God in us, if we are not born again, we
can't hear God clearly, we haven't been issued a phone yet. Second, if a person is stiff-
necked and rebellious, he doesn't want to hear God, since he has already decided to
disobey anyway. He never picks up the phone. A third hindrance is unbelief: some
people lack faith that God wants to speak to them personally. Some have had bad
teaching in church that suggests that God used to speak that way, but that he just does not
do it like that any more, since we now have the Bible, or the Church to speak to us. It's
like God stopped calling people, and there's no spiritual phone. Listen carefully: the
Bible does not teach that; the Bible teaches that we should expect to have the same kind
of conversational relationship with God as those in the Bible did. Remember our memory
verse form last week: John 10:27 "My sheep hear my voice." John 10:27 A fourth
hindrance is fear; we can fear that if we listen to God we are crazy, because crazy people
hear voices. The phone is ringing, but you don't answer it, because you don't have caller
ID - you're not sure who's calling. We learned that when we are in doubt, we need to
check out what we think God is telling us by running it by our mates, our accountability
partners and our pastors. The important thing is to try it, to slow down and listen, and
begin to trust that God will speak to you.
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So, as your pastor, I'd like to ask you: How is it going? Are you doing it? Are you
getting good stuff? [pause] When you do hear from God, I want to encourage you, tell
someone you trust about it. Unless God tells you not to share it with anyone, tell your
husband, tell your wife, this is what I hear God saying to me. As you do that, several
things will happen. You'll be able to hear confirmation from another believer of what you
hear in your spirit. If your mate is not a believer, or if you are not married, you'll need to
find someone else to tell. If your mate is a believer, telling them how God is dealing with
you will skyrocket your spiritual intimacy with your wife or husband. Guys, most wives
I know would love to hear their husbands tell them how God is dealing with them in their
quiet times. They long for it and pray for it. I know that it gives Ginger the greatest
sense of security when I tell her how God is dealing with me.
This week, I have been praying over the words of a prophet from Zambia named
Pastor Dennis, who spoke to Ginger and me with an insight that he could not have known
in the natural. He had words from God for us, for other local pastors, and for the region.
He said he was jealous of us, because he sees God bringing a great revival of salvations
and healings to Loudoun County, and not to his home in Zambia. This revival will only
come if we pray and fast far more than we are now doing. I'll be speaking more about
all this soon.
In my preparation for this sermon series, I have been reading several books, including
Leanne Payne's book Listening Prayer, and Dallas Willard's book, Hearing God. I want
to encourage you to buy Leanne's book we have several copies for sale for $16 in the
hallway. Leanne is one of my favorite authors. This is a great introduction to this topic
and to Leanne's writings. Dallas Willard wrote about Dwight Moody, the evangelist.
This is Willard: Moody had had a visitation from God that transformed his
preaching. After that experience, he did not preach any differently; he did not present any
new truths; yet hundreds were converted. In his day, Moody was a constant sense of
wonder because the effects of his ministry were totally incommensurate with his obvious
personal qualities. He was of ordinary appearance, uncultured, unordained by any church
group. One of the greatest preachers in England in 1874 observed Moody for four days
in Birmingham to learn the secret of Moody's power. When his observations were
complete, he told Moody that his results were most plainly the work of God, for he could
see no relation between him personally and what he was accomplishing. That is what I
have been praying this week; that God would give me a "Moody anointing" for Apostolic
results, so that people would see God, be saved and healed not through any natural gift I
may possess, but by his power and grace alone.
There is a danger here, and it is another hindrance to listening to God. The danger
is that we can seek the experience of God, we can seek the blessing of God, more than
we seek the presence of God. If you come to God only when you want something, even
if what you want is for God's kingdom to grow, his name to be exalted; or if you come to
God primarily because you want the blessings he offers, then you are in danger of
treating God as a resource for your own self-fulfillment. That is not worship; that is
idolatry. There have been times in my life when I have treated God this way. Thomas a
Kempis said this: "A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the
love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables." We need to seek the
gift giver, not so much the gift. Seek His face, not so much His hand. Seek
relationship, seek to worship him, and he will pour gifts out on you.
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Spend time with God. Worship him in your car, in your shower, in your bed
before you sleep. If you are not hearing God, the first thing you need to do is spend more
time in God's presence. You know how when you have been in God's presence, say in
Sunday worship, there is a glow on you that seems to last for some time? You also know
how that glow wears off? You can call that glow anything you want; call it the anointing,
call it the glory of God like what made Moses glow - just know that the glow is of God.
You want more of God; you want more of the Holy Spirit in you; you want to be
refreshed in God's presence again and again. Amen? Your aim is to be like Jesus, to
hear God continually, to be drawn up into the very life of God. To want the things God
wants; to live the way he wants you to live. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, to "have
the mind of Christ."
Another hindrance is clutter. You may not have space or alone time. John
Wesley's mother Susannah had 14 children pulling on her apron in a very small home.
Her way of getting alone with God was to put a sheet over her head! Do whatever you
have to do to create space where you will have a minimum of distractions. Your room
for prayer may be too cluttered. The clutter in your mind can be worse. That is like calls
on your other phones. When you listen to God, put aside the agendas and things you
must do that will come rushing at you like a charging rhino. The way I deal with those is
to have a paper and pencil close by to write them down; then I can forget them.
Many mature Christians know that they have their spiritual cell phone; they do
hear from God from time to time, but the problem is that they are often not listening
when God calls. I'm not talking about a "Message a minute" thing- very few people are
able to hear that. You know how some people have two cell phones, one for work and
one for personal? Many Christians are very attuned to their work calls they have the
ringer turned up high on that one. But the spiritual cell phone, it's like that one is on
vibrate, or worse, the battery has died out. The cares of this life can crowd out your time
of listening to God. Maybe you have not remembered to recharge your God phone for
some time, so it stopped ringing a couple weeks ago. It's not that God has stopped
sending messages; it is that your receiver has stopped receiving them. I have found this to
be true in my walk. It is much harder for me to hear God clearly speak if I have not been
faithful with my quiet times recently. Working full time for God is not enough; I need to
take the time daily to listen to Him.
Another pitfall is to listen to God only when we want guidance for a decision we
must make. It's good to ask for advice and guidance. Even so if my sons were to listen to
me only when they wanted guidance, I would be worried about my relationship with
them. Some of you are calling 911 too often. "Help me, God, help me!" There is nothing
wrong with praying that prayer once in a while, but if dialing 911 has become a
prominent part of your prayer life, you are not spending enough time listening to God. If
you regularly dialed 411 for information, you would not need to dial 911 nearly so often.
Come to God and ask him to speak into your life in any way He wants to, not just for the
questions you want answered. Jesus is your King? Then check in with him every day to
get marching orders for the day. "Reporting for duty, sir! I await your instructions."
It's easy to have a quiet time where we study the Bible and say our prayers, and
still to neglect to spend enough time to listen to God. If you have not listened to God
recently, it takes more time to tune in, to find the right frequency for your God phone. It
varies for different people, but you may spend 30 minutes and still not hear anything. If
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that describes you, hang in there! Sometimes you have to wrestle with God for a long
time to get the blessing, like Jacob who wrestled with the angel. Keep at it until he speaks
to you. Sometimes you need to pray the price. Many of us have minds that race, our
schedules are so overfull that we have pegged that needle to the red zone on the RPM's
of our life, and we just need to slow down. Hear me: WE JUST NEED TO SLOW
- DOWN. Ramp down the RPM's.
In 1992, I longed to hear God speak to me in English. I had been baptized in the
Holy Spirit in 1990, and since then, God had given me visions, pictures, and dreams. It
was a whole new world for me, and I was very grateful. The problem was, that kind of
communication could be hard to interpret! Before I heard God for the first time in the
still small voice, it took me forty days straight of listening for God, with my pen in hand
and my prayer journal at the ready, thirty minutes each day and getting nothing. Even so,
those were precious times with Him, times of expectant faith. At the end of those 40 days
of wrestling, he began to speak to me in an unmistakable way. He called me his son.
Over and over, he told me he loved me, that I was his son. He told me very little else for
several months, except that he loved me. Believe it or not, I began to grow tired of that
message. I said to him, "Thank you that you love me. But what am I supposed to do
today? What do you want me to do with my life?" But he kept telling me he loved me;
he kept telling me that I was his son, because he wanted it to sink in deeper than I knew I
needed. When you listen to God, he is in control of the message.
If you are listening and receiving messages from God every day, typically it takes
very little time before you hear. That is where you want to be. Jealously guard your daily
alone time with God. William Shakespeare said this about friendship: "The friends thou
hast, their adoption tried, fasten them to your soul with hoops of steel." Make God your
best friend by fastening your quiet time to your soul and your calendar with hoops of
steel.
Let's pray.
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