WHEN GOD SPEAKS TO US, ARE WE LISTENING? (PART 1 OF 4)

We should NEVER allow the things in our past (failures,
bad decisions, sinfulness, etc.) to prevent us from asking
God to speak to us, and listening to Him when He does.

We might have the question, “Why does God speaks to us?”

God speaks to us for reasons that are purely His own
(and are for our benefit):
    – He loves us and wants to have a relationship with us.
    – He wants to walk and talk with each of us, just as He
      did with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
    – He loves us and wants us to love Him in return.
    – He gives to us and wants us to give back to Him.
    – He shields and protects us from evil and His desire
      is for us to trust Him in ‘all things’.
   – He provides all that we need and He desires that
      we depend on Him as the source of our total supply.
    – He’s our Father, and we’re His children, so He wants us
      to have a joyful, loving, and fulfilling relationship with Him.

Specifically, in His love, God desires that we might comprehend
His truth about who He is, who we are, and the relationship He
desires to have with us. He wants us to be conformed to His truth;
applying His truth to our lives in ways that transform us to an
image that more closely resembles the image of His Son.
And lastly, He longs to communicate His truth to others.

Now, let’s take a brief look at each of these:

Comprehend
God has given to all believers a divine person (the Holy Spirit),
who lives within us to help us receive and understand His truth.
The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, and He communicates
to our spirits the truths that God wants us to hear.
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what
God has freely given us. (1 Corinthians 2:12).

Conformed
It’s not enough that we comprehend the truth, we must be conformed
to the truth as well. As we read and meditate on God’s Word, we will
come face-to-face with ourselves (our deficiencies, our errors, our
fault, our strengths, and the talents He has given us). We might say,
“I’m not like Jesus…but I want to be.” In these moments, we know
God is truly speaking to us because He always calls us to become
more and more like His Son.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
(Romans 12:2)

Communicate
Finally, God has a desire for us to communicate His truth to
others. He doesn’t give us His truth, His blessings, and His
love us so that we will hoard them, but so that we will share
and extend His love, truth, and blessings to others (and when
we do, God can effectively use our efforts to draw others
closer Him and His Son). When God prepares the heart of a
person to hear from Him, He will use other believers as His
venue for communicating with them. We might feel awkward
and unqualified to be used in this way, but whenever God wants
to use us, we can be confident that He will provide all that we
need to accomplish His purpose.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)

God desires to speak to us in order to show us what He’s like;
He wants to reveal Himself to us. He knows the more we see
Him for who He is in His fullness (as our loving Father and
Creator who desires only the best for us), the more we’re
going to want to spend time with Him. The more we spend time
with Him, the more we’re going to want to become like Him.
The more we become like Him, the greater our witness in the
world. The greater our witness, the more others will begin to
hear His voice, and the more enriched our loving relationship
with Him will become. God doesn’t save us and bless us so that
we will become ‘lazy’, but so that He can actively use us to
accomplish His purposes. We should never overlook the value
and honor of being used by God.