Learn to Listen – 5

Learn to Listen – 5

Subject – His Voice

By Rick Welborne

1 Samuel 3:9-10 (NIV)
⁹  So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
¹⁰  The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." 

Psalm 29:4&11 (NKJV)
⁴  The voice of the LORD is powerful; The voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
¹¹  The LORD will give strength to His people; The LORD will bless His people with peace. 

--Because Psalms 29 talks about the voice of God being like thunder, and breaking trees, and dividing fire, all we hear it saying is, God speaks with His strong outside voice. 

--We miss two of the most important verses in this chapter; four and eleven. His voice is powerful but also majestic. He is strong but He gives strength and peace to His people.

--My interpretation of that is: God’s voice is custom fitted to each individual based on what your need is. If you need strength or peace, He will speak that into your life. He speaks our language.

--Translation – God has the ability to speak into our lives, not just what we are doing wrong and correcting us but He finds what is right about us and celebrates that with us. His voice is kind.

Appreciative inquiry – instead of focusing on the wrong in someone’s life and trying to fix it, you identify what’s right and try to replicate it. It’s playing to people’s strengths. It’s catching people doing the right things and celebrating what you want to see more of. It’s bragging about people behind their backs.

--This is not my sermon today but it needs to be said. Stop finding fault in others and then, sharing those faults with everyone you can. You hurt the body of Christ and break the unity of the church.

Matthew 7:2-3 (NIV) ²  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
³  "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 

--We struggle so much to understand each other and we don’t actually hear what someone is trying to say. Why? We hear everything thru the filters of our history, personality, ethnicity, and theology.

--So many ears. There are American ears, southern ears, northern ears, Spanish ears, Puerto Rican ears, Mexican ears, Catholic ears, Protestant ears.

--There are republican ears, democratic ears, male ears, and female ears. Just because we attempt to speak the same language does not mean we hear one another. 

--We get hurt and we even get angry so many times because we don’t understand what the other person is saying. If we could pause and consider the other person’s heart, we would calm down.

--Thankfully, there is a God Who is big enough and Omniscient enough to speak a language we each can understand. 

1. God is Bigger than Big.

--If creation reveals anything to us it is that God is bigger than big. Theologians call this transcendence. 

--Earth is larger than Mars, Mercury, and the moon. But it is much smaller than Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter. Jupiter is 1,321 times larger than earth in terms of volume.

--But it is 10 times smaller than the sun. The sun is really a small dwarf star. Arcturus, an orange giant, is 26 times bigger than the sun and produces 200 times more energy. 

--Antares, a red supergiant, is 10,000 times brighter than the sun. And we are not even out of the Milky Way galaxy. To us, Earth seems huge. Not so much. 

--This is a reminder of how incredibly small we are; it’s a reminder of how incredibly big God is. He doesn’t exist within the space-time dimensions He created. Stop putting four-dimensional limits on Him.

2 Peter 3:8 (NLT2) ⁸ But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

Batterson – We have a hard time thinking of God in anything other than four dimensions, because that’s all we have ever known. And we try to create God in our own image rather than allowing Him to create us in His. What we end up with is a god, lowercase g, who walks and talks an awful lot like us. 

--How much happier would all of us be if we were to allow God to take His hammer and smash our small world. We make ourselves the center of the universe. Sad when God is Creator. 

--How wonderful it is to discover that God is bigger than big, but that is definitely intimidating if that is our final analysis God.

--There is a theological counterbalance to His bigness.  It’s called the immanence of God. God is closer than close. He can hear the slightest whisper. 

Psalms 36:5-6 MSG 5 God’s love is meteoric, His loyalty astronomic,                                                                 6 His purpose titanic, His verdicts oceanic, Yet in His largeness, nothing (no one) gets lost.

--God is great not just because nothing is too big; God is great because nothing is too small. God doesn’t just know you by name; He has a unique name for each one of us. He speaks our language. 

2. God is Big Enough.

--In His book A Mile Wide, Brandon Hatmaker shares about his first trip to Ethiopia. Working with Steve Fitch, the founder of the Eden Project. Deforestation had devastated parts of Ethiopia.

--Generation after generation had stripped the land and made it barren. The project was to restore the forest by planting trees. A hundred million of them.

--As Brandon boarded the plane for his trip, he had second thoughts. He didn’t like flying and he didn’t want to leave his family. He wondered if what he was doing would make a difference.

Hatmaker – God, I’m sorry. I’m trying, but I just don’t get it. I don’t want to be on this plane. I feel like I am wasting time and money. If this is important to you, will you please overcome my ignorance, doubt, and blindness? Will you connect the dots and show me what I am missing? Amen.

--After his prayer a 30-year-old man sat next to him on the plane. He asked Brandon why was he going to Ethiopia. He said he was going to plant trees. 

--The elderly lady asked the Ethiopian man something in Amharic (Why was he going) and he answered in Amharic. She literally stood and began to wave her hands in the air like somebody cared.

--Brandon asked what was going on. The lady said that she had prayed for 38 years for God to forgive her country for destroying the forest and to send someone to plant trees. 

--Before he knew what was happening the lady was laying hands on him and praying that God would use him in a miraculous was to bless her country. God is big enough to hear our prayers.

Psalm 37:22-24 (NLT2)
²²  Those the LORD blesses will possess the land, but those he curses will die.
²³  The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.
²⁴  Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand. 

--Think about this, you very well could be the answer to someone else’s prayer. Brandon was the answer for this lady. When you reach someone who is lost, you are answering someone’s prayer. 

3. God is Closer than Close.

--Before Holy Spirit filled or gifted or stirred or convicted or sealed or revealed or reminded, we finding Him hovering over the surface of the deep.

Genesis 1:1-2 (NKJV)
¹  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
²  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 

--But can I tell you Holy Spirit is hovering over our lives the way He hovered over creation. He still speaks light into darkness. He still brings order out of chaos. He still makes beauty out of ashes.

--The Hebrew word paniyum describes where God is. In regard to time He is there the split second before and the split second after. In regard to space, He is at the place in front and at the place in back.

--He every sense of the word, He is Immanuel – God with us! He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Listen to A.W. Tower explain paniyum.

A.W. Tower – God is above, but He’s not pushed up. He’s beneath, but not pressed down. He’s outside, but not excluded. He’s inside but not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside all things embracing and inside all things filling.

--So what is this saying to us. Holy Spirit is hovering. Holy Spirit is whispering. Holy Spirit is breathing into you the same breath He breathed into the dirt that became Adam. Are you listening?

--Listen and be amazed…Hebrew scholars believe that Yahweh—or without the vowels, YHWH—is synonymous with the sound of breath. YHWH.

--On one hand, the name is too sacred to pronounce. On the other hand, it is whispered with each and every breath we take. It is our first word and our last word, and every word in between. 

--It has been estimated that we take approximately 23,000 breaths every day. God is as close as the breath we breathe. We say His Name YHWH 23,000 times a day. YHWH, YHWH! 

Revelation 11:16-17 (NKJV)
¹⁶  And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God,
¹⁷  saying: "We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, The One who is and who was and who is to come, Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.

YHWH, YHWH, YHWH!

--Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!