The God Who Wants to Be Heard

Jesus Christ is the Eternal Word.  He, and He alone, is the source of new life to you.For you to have new life, he must be communicated to you.  (Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, Jeanne Guyon, Chapter 14 Silence.)

Here I see a strong basis for practicing silence before God.  I have not really thought about this particular significance of Jesus being called the Word in John 1.  Perhaps above all things, Jesus needs to be heard to be received.

Hearing has a strong place in the Bible.  The creation is spoken into existence.  Could it be that such communication from God was meant most of all to be heard?  Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God!"

The Shema of Israel begins with "Hear, O Israel!"  The word is also translated "obey."  Is it possible we find ourselves trying to obey without first hearing?  Perhaps this is what Jesus was driving at when he said, "Why do you call me 'Lord,' and do not do what I command?"  Perhaps the first command is listening more than professing.

If we are to be saved by the Word made flesh, it may be the first thing we need is a listening ear.  If we are going to hear him, we may need enough silence to do so.  Perhaps regeneration or new life comes through silence before God.  In order to confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts in the Word, we need to be able to hear him first, even if only faintly.

SILENCE THAT HEARS

Here is how to acquire this habit of silence.  First of all, forget yourself.

 Perhaps I will lose some people at this point.  The idea that any person could actually do anything to effect or further their own salvation is unthinkable to some people.  If it is the idea that silence itself has such an effect, I would agree wholeheartedly.  But to say that God will deliver us apart from our cooperation is to deny the one who calls out, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"

Silence that hears is first a form of self-denial.  It is not a form of self-abuse!  It is laying aside the voice that chatters incessantly about me.  It begins when my attention shifts.  That shift must first be away from myself if I am to truly hear.

This is not surprising.  Any person who has practiced silence for the sake of careful listening knows that one of the greatest barriers to hearing is planning a reply even as someone is speaking to you.  With this kind of anticipation is the judgment that you already understand what the person is saying before they have said it.  Not only does this leave out important details and information, it signals to the person that you do not really care what they are saying, only what you will be replying.

Perhaps this is how we are with God.  Silence can help us to escape our tendency to answer God before we know what he is saying.  Perhaps we may find ourselves able to hear him out instead of putting words into his mouth.

WAIT ON GOD

Second, listen attentively to God.

This is the other side of the coin of listening.  I do not stop by merely forgetting myself.  I must continue on into attention to God.  We are given this assurance: "Wait upon the Lord and he will renew your strength."  Within the attentiveness to God is the grace he gives for us to hear him.  Sometimes it is in the raw sense of his presence.  Sometimes it is in a special circumstance that reassures us of his care.  Others have been assured through visions, dreams, and angels.  His strength will come to us.

When we can forget ourselves for a while, we find he is not far from us.  What keeps God distant is our continuous plague of self-absorption.  It is not enough to remove attention from ourselves, though.  We must wait on God.

The mind is a slippery thing.  You think you have a hold on it and it slides away into another stream of thoughts and anxieties.  The streams of the mind are formed, like trenches dug and used.  If the prevailing stream is of what I want, the mind continually slips down that trench.  The good news is that this stream is not very deep or strong.  There are much greater torrents that can capture the mind.

THE GOD I WANT TO HEAR

This is one of the ways the Bible can help us.  It is a great torrent of grace for the tranformation of the mind.  It blocks fruitless thoughts and pours out new springs of thought and hope.  Through reading, study, and praying the Bible I find myself in awe of God.  Often awe is accompanied by profound silence.

At the heart of silence is a God who wants to be heard and a God whom I want to hear.  Without this knowledge firmly planted in my belief, silence will only be a strain and an exercise rather than a doorway to a life-giving, deeply loving relationship.  Without this knowledge the Eternal Word will remain a nice idea rather than the source of life.

The Sacred and Supernatural Way of Jesus

It is to the Lord Jesus you abandon yourself.  It is also the Lord whom you will follow as the Way; it is the Lord you will hear as the Truth, and it is from the Lord that you will receive Life.  (John 14:6)  If you follow Him as the Way, you will hear Him as the Truth, and He will bring life to you as the Life.  (Guyon, Jeanne; Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ)

I had always thought that when Jesus explained himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, he was stacking metaphors to emphasize what he said next: "No one comes to the Father but by me."  What Jeanne Guyon wrote made me take another look at this verse.  I began to think that Jesus may have given these metaphors in order to give his disciples a path to follow him while he was not physically present.

Jesus is the Way.  He turned away people who would not follow his way, calling them to humble trust (Matthew 8:18-22).  Although Jesus told his disciples to respect the authority of the teachers of Israel by doing what they said, he warned them carefully not to do what they did (Matthew 23:2-3).

The Sacred Way of Humility

The humility of Jesus is best described in Philippians 2 as one "who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."  Just as Jesus entered human life, bringing God into every corner of human existence, so each disciple brings Jesus and his Father into each part of their own human existence.  We must not stand above or apart from our own lives, trying to grasp at something other than what we are given.

Within the stream of Christian tradition, we begin the way of humility with the call to Sacramental Living.  It starts small, perhaps with church attendance or Bible reading or habitually helping others for Jesus' sake, but like yeast in a lump of dough, it spreads and has effects far beyond its apparent quantity.  Sacramental living uses ritual and everyday life to grow in Christ.  Humble means for the humble way.

The Supernatural Way of the Spirit

The faith of Jesus, his utter trust in his Father, seems most amazingly obvious in his statement, "Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)  Human beings we intended to act with power far beyond themselves.  With a trust like Jesus, we find that the finger of God comes to lift burdens, cast out demons, and heal the sick in ways that are not explainable by normal human activity.


Within the stream of Christian tradition, true humility leads to deep trust and power.  This is life directed and empowered by the Spirit of Christ.  Those who follow Jesus must follow him in the Spirit.  We begin and finish with the Spirit.  Jesus explained how in the life of his disciples the filling of the Spirit would cause many things to happen, like seeds growing into plants all by themselves (Mark 4:27-28)  We are meant to do all things far beyond our own capability.

Wide and Deep and High

Sacramental living spreads the presence and work of Christ horizontally through one's life - wide.  The way of Christ may start in church, but it will spread into family and work.  The rituals and everyday practices become doors through which Jesus can enter life.  If they become too important in themselves, however, such practices lead to a constricted and dry life.  They must be jars to be filled and used instead of bricks to be labored over and made into walls.

Spirit-empowered living expands each part of life higher and deeper, giving it a vertical dimension.  At first it may seem life lightning striking out of nowhere, but then as trust deepens, so the higher ways of the Spirit become more evident and understandable.  Although disciples of Jesus follow him in the Spirit, they must never lose their grounding in everyday life.  Power without humility intoxicates the mind.  Daily living with rituals and practices keep power from overwhelming us.

The way of Jesus is a way of humble trust.  It is grounded in daily life and meaningful practices, where human life exists.  It also expands and explodes all human definitions through a dynamic life in the Spirit, who deepens our trust in God by his every action.  The way of Jesus is both sacred and supernatural.