This week I sat down with my father in the faith and asked him about hearing God’s voice for ourselves. As per usual, John was insightful, humble and quotable. I’m honored to share with you, in these series of podcasts, my friend and mentor, John Brown.
This first episode looks at the foundation of our hearing. Is there scriptural precedent for the hearing of faith in contemporary, post-apostolic, times? I appreciate so much what John said in keeping balance with – and providing the safeguard against – the tendency of some to “hear” spurious words and count them as divine.
“The truth is, we cannot knowwhether or not it is God speaking – that is, His speaking ‘in the now’ – without the guidance of what has been written in His Word.”
Does God speak today? Can we know Him intimately with such intimate dialogue as saints of old enjoyed? Thank you for listening to this edition of The Pasture’s Podcast: I pray some of your own questions will be answered on the subject!
(Parts 2 and 3 will be posted on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, and you DO NOT want to miss them!)
Funny thing about rainbows, they’re actually circles, not half-arcs. Obviously they look like arches to us because of our limited perspective, seeing only half the story because the horizon kind of gets in the way.
My lovely spotted the colorful band stretched over the cemetery where our son’s body was laid to rest last Christmas as we made our approach. It was our thirty-first wedding anniversary and we wanted to share our celebration with our boy. Sandy often wants me to drive the long way around Mozley Gardens to pay respects to any of Graham’s new “neighbors” before we park at his marker, so I was poking along scanning the lawns out my driver’s side window when I heard her exclaim:
“Oh honey, look!”
I followed her graceful index finger as it stretched toward the windshield.
A bow of beauty.
The Sovereign had kissed our evening by finger-painting a swath of grace over our Gra-Gra.
Well, that’s all she wrote. We were undone. Verklempt. A wet mess.
In a good way.
“I know about the promise of God to not destroy the earth with floods,” my bride offered, “but what else do you think God is saying?”
I was already in that vein, the Bible teacher in me calling up the Revelator’s vision of God on His throne in His abode of heaven. Verse three says “around the throne” was a rainbow and a quick study suggests it’s a full circle, as rainbows tend to be.
A perfect circle.
No beginning, no end. No pause, no break. No altered course, but fulfillment and wholeness.
Eternality.
God said, “look up.”
We lifted our watery eyes.
“See My initials in sweeping, color-laden script?”
We indeed saw the stamp of Resurrection.
The “all things new” seal of Certainty.
We’re two still-grieving parents encased in the drama of loss, sighing at the memories and could-have-beens, making our repeated pilgrimage to the sacred stone…
BUT WE’RE
…gently carried all the while (yet again!) by everlasting Arms that scaffold our temporal home with rainbows to remind us
that Eternity awaits,
that these eyes only see half the picture,
that the Best is yet to be,
that the grace that pavilions us in these years of dust and ash,
will give way to Endless Dawn, forever illuminated by the Sun and Daystar of our souls, Jesus the Christ and Father of Lights.
That rainbow reminded us that His exhaustive archives of eternity and our place (and Graham’s!!!) in the Eternal Story is not a half-arc (half done), but a complete arc, and – my beloved fellow pilgrim – let it serve to tell you that God wastes none of your raw materials in preparing you for His Glory. All of it goes into the flourish of His finishing touches.
When we are invited into the “fellowship of His sufferings” and the “gospel of weakness” is preached to our soul and makes us its convert, and, like Job, we are left with hanging hands, questioning heart and smitten soul…we need to be able to face the most urgent questions of our lifetime.
IS GOD IN CONTROL?
and
CAN I TRUST HIM TO BRING ME THROUGH THIS INTO A BETTER PLACE?
The Psalmist said,
“it is GOOD for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn to trust Your ways.” Psa 119:71
He preceded that with this stunning piece of insight:
“YOU ARE GOOD, and You do good…” Psa 119:68 (Notice the order; we want to reverse those clauses)
Allow me to share some insights God showed me recently from Romans 8:18-39 – one of Paul’s strongest sermons ever.
