discernment – Page 2 – Heather C. King

Welcome back Bible study friends! I’m glad to see you here for week 2 of our time together reading Priscilla Shirer’s Discerning the Voice of God. Some quick notes before we begin this week:

Thanks so much to all who shared in last week’s discussion. I learned so much from you!

Some of you were still getting the book as of the end of last week. I want to reassure you that there is time for catching up and no need to feel overwhelmed. These posts of mine will fall at the beginning of each section. That means you can start the week’s reading on Monday morning and post comments whenever you feel ready (or as you feel ready) all week long. You can also easily go back to old posts by clicking here: Online Bible Study.

The comments can be short! You don’t have to answer every question and certainly not all at once unless you want to. If you only have time to write a sentence or two, that’s perfectly fine.

Here goes week two!

My Thoughts

My family used to have several Magic Eye books, each page filled with bright colors and wavy lines. If you stared long enough and in just the right way (they say don’t cross your eyes, but I usually did), then a 3-D image would pop off the page for you to see.

I occasionally managed to manipulate my eyes and the book and see the hidden pictures. What I’ve never been able to do, though, is stare at a close-up photograph of an object and decipher the whole image from just a tiny piece. (Like the pictures along the side).

In the same way, most of us can see the amazing, gloriously evident work of God in our lives. When He’s big, awesome, miraculous, life-changing and writing words on hearts in neon, we notice. We see the “Magic Eye” pictures of God.

But it’s much harder when we look close-up at the images of life to determine the big picture view. What exactly are we looking at? A cornflake? A spider web? A temptation? God’s will? A trial? A blessing?

We can’t tell because we can’t walk far enough away from our daily lives to scan the entirety of the picture—past, present, future—and see the true image that God sees.

Oh, how simple this faith-walk would be if the magic pictures always popped off the page for us, if the 3-D image of God’s plan was ever before us, magnificent, amazing and clear. This is what we so often ask for. We look for signs and wish for physical manifestations of our Mighty God.

Priscilla Shirer says:

We want God to show us His will in a tangible way–a sensational way . . . What we want is for God to speak today the same we He spoke in Old Testament times. It seemed much easier to discern God’s voice back then (p. 45).

While God is ever-creative and able to speak to us in any way He chooses, since the time of Christ’s ascension:

the primary way God has spoken to His people has been through the person of the Holy Spirit, who confirms God’s written Word and applies it to our life. The Holy Spirit and the Bible go hand in hand (p. 50).

We so often overlook the powerful gift of the Holy Spirit living in us! Do we truly understand what it must have been like not to have God with us and in us all the time, whenever and wherever we went?

In the Old Testament, people traveled to a physical building where God’s Spirit dwelt and the Holy Spirit “only came to specific people at a specific time in order to achieve a specific task. When that task was accomplished (or when those people sinned or rebelled), the Holy Spirit withdrew” (p.49).

We feel jealous of those who saw God intermittently. Sure it was unmistakable and flashy, but it was not ever-present. Wouldn’t those same people be jealous of us, having the very Spirit of God with us at all times, guiding and directing us in our moment-to-moment lives?

Even when we cannot see the big picture, we can trust that the Spirit within us does and He’s leading us in the way we need to go. There’s power in the presence of God if only we learn to listen.

(I’ll post the answers to the pictures at the bottom of the page.)

Walking Through the Book:

Chapter 3: A Marvelous Voice

On pages 48-50, she walks us through primary ways God has spoken over time:

Old Testament: The person of a prophet confirmed usually through a visible sign.
The time of Christ: The person of His Son confirmed through miracles.
After Christ’s ascension: The person of the Holy Spirit confirmed through God’s written Word, the Bible.

That’s not to say God cannot or does not ever use miraculous means to speak to us today. As she notes, though, “if God chooses to speak in miraculous ways today, these ways do not lay the foundation for us to hear from Him. Rather they just provide confirmation of the messages we receive through the Holy Spirit’s leading and the guidelines of Scripture” (p.51).

We must always go back to God’s Word as our touchstone of truth.

Chapter 4: A Guiding Voice

Because we fellow-Bible study participants aren’t all from the same denomination, we might disagree about some issues, like how and when we experience the Holy Spirit. Let’s not get distracted by that discussion because on the foundational, salvation-dependent doctrinal issues we have agreement.

Here’s what we do know: the Holy Spirit within us allows us to hear God’s voice and understand His truth more clearly (p. 57).

She also notes that “our human conscience is not the voice of God. It isn’t infallible” (p. 59). Our moral guidelines and consciences can be deceived and deformed.

Over time, though, as we transform into being more Christ-like, there is an agreement between our conscience and the Holy Spirit (p. 67). Eventually our conscience becomes a method our “control tower” uses to direct our “pilot” as we make decisions. “He is steering us into God’s will” (p. 61).

This transformation by the renewing of our minds is gradual. “So, as you listen to your Spirit-led conscience, we must always confirm what we hear” and as she notes, He will graciously confirm it (p. 62-63).

The guidelines she gives us for discerning God’s voice (p. 63):

Look for the MESSAGE of the Spirit.
Search the MODEL of Scripture for guidance.
Live in the MODE of prayer.
Submit to the MINISTRY of Eli (counsel of a mature believer).
Expect the MERCY of confirmation.

Your Thoughts:

Can you give an example from your own life or in Scripture when God graciously confirmed His word?
Do you have “Eli’s” in your life—mature believers who give Godly counsel? How did you choose them and in what ways have they helped you?
Have you ever been confused by what God is doing in the here and now only to have Him reveal the big picture much later on?
What are some of your favorite quotes/Scriptures/passages from chapters 3 and 4 that you’d like to talk about?

What were those close-up pictures above? Some of you may be better at this than me and have been able to guess–a pinwheel and a flyswatter.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer for www.myfrienddebbie.com and worship leader. Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness. To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

I’ve found my calling, my true gift and talent—growing zucchini. So, I’m contemplating a new life as a zucchini farmer.

When we planned this mini-garden of ours, my daughters announced that they must grow and eat their own food. They wanted to plant and watch it grow, pick it with pride and then serve it up with dinner.

Not knowing how well we could produce food we actually eat like tomatoes and cucumbers, I planted two spindly little zucchini sprouts in the garden. I’d seen many fellow church-goers hand out this cucumber wannabe to worshipers leaving the sanctuary. “Would you like some? Please, take it home! We’re drowning in the stuff.” So, I thought this must be one sure-fire vegetable to grow in our garden in case our other plants didn’t do well.

I didn’t expect that much success, just a guaranteed one or two veggies that my daughters could pose with in pictures and be proud about growing.

And then this one plant grew to monumental proportions and began producing mammoth zucchini. I frantically began asking everyone I met, “How do you actually eat this stuff?” Because we didn’t eat it, not often anyway. I had no recipes for zucchini and whenever anyone said, “zucchini bread,” I stared at this zucchini the size of my daughter’s torso and wondered how that gets mixed up in a way appropriate for the bread pan.

Apparently others are having this problem. I’ve begun noticing little carts loaded down with zucchini and squash just pushed out to the roadside in front of people’s houses. These aren’t farmers trying to earn a living off their land. These are women like me who have run through the entire Food Network recipe book on zucchini and still have some to spare.

This zucchini overload has me asking one question—what’s the point? What’s the point of having abundance if you don’t use it? Sitting in my refrigerator or on my counter looking green and huge, this zucchini is pointless. It is designed and intended for nourishment. Unused, it will rot and go to waste.

My question extends out to issues of faith. What’s the point of spiritual gifts buried deep and hidden away? God gives them to us, perhaps we even cultivate and harvest them. Then we let them sit unused. Or perhaps we grow mystery vegetables in our garden, never actually identifying them. Yes, we have gifts, but not knowing what they are, we simply pick the fruit, place it on the counter and toss into the garbage the rotten results over time.

While building the tabernacle, Moses instructed the Israelites: “Come, all of you who are skilled craftsmen, having special talents, and construct what God has commanded us” (Exodus 35:10 TLB). That remains God’s desire—we apply our talents to God’s service, to the building of His ministry, His dwelling place, and His body.

What’s the Point of Knowledge?

Then there is also knowledge and discipleship. What’s the point of study without application and life change?

I’m a student at heart. To me, learning is fun simply in its own right. I never in my life sat in a college class and tuned the teacher out because, “it was a pointless class that I’d never need in real life.”

Thus, it’s tempting for me to study and study and study the word of God, writing notes and filling my brain with knowledge. There’s danger there, though. Danger that my focus will be on learning and not on my Savior. Danger that knowledge itself will actually become my god. Danger that I’ll fill my head full of fascinating facts and never once experience life change in the down and dirty parts of my heart that need cleaning out.

It’s why at the beginning of almost every Bible Study I look around the group and say the same thing, “My goal here is application. If we talk about not worrying and then go home and worry just as much as ever, we’re not achieving anything.” What we study must become what we do.

Paul wrote to the Colossians, a church that had fallen into the danger zone, pursuing knowledge and learning to the exclusion of God:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ (Colossians 2:8).

They had become so excited about gaining knowledge, they had failed to filter what they were “learning.” Not every book you read that quotes Scripture is actually scriptural. It takes discernment rooted in God’s Word to determine the difference.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul declared that people had devoted

“themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm (1 Timothy 1:3-7).

So, what’s the point? When we’ve written down the original Greek of a word in Scripture and we’ve taken notes on our favorite preacher’s sermon, when we’ve copied whole devotionals into our journal and highlighted our book . . . then what?

We grow. We know God rather than just know ABOUT God. That’s the point. Paul prayed for the Colossians that God would “fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives” (Colossians 1:9).

If we’re reading without changing, listening without growing, learning without transformation, then it’s pointless abundance–a garden full of unusable fruit gone to waste as it rots on the vine.