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The Desert Fathers Series | The Letters Series | Following God in Low Seasons
According to objection 3, the gifts were integral to demonstrate the power of the Spirit through the early church, but is no longer necessary for today because the church has been established. Once the church was established, the miraculous working of the Holy Spirit present in individuals was not necessary for continued church growth. The strategy of God changed. This wouldn’t mean that the ability of God to heal had ceased, but the metering out of a gift through individuals ceased.
Anyone who is attempting to grow in their understanding of the movement of the Holy Spirit in re-creating mankind will run into those who have a very different view of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. A deep dive into this issue is not at the heart of this series, but an overview of some of the common arguments will be helpful and appropriate.
The gospel is not responded to in the head, it is responded to in the heart. It is not mental assent to a particular set of ideas (though that is an aspect of Christianity), rather, it is a life-changing encounter with the Spirit of the living God. If Christianity was primarily about engaging with a particular set of doctrinal beliefs, it would have been said that Christ dwells in the mind. But it does not.
As we come into the realization that God is not some distant God, but that He is near, and that He longs to speak, we begin to make room to hear His voice. And to hear His voice is to be transformed, it is to sense the in-breaking of His presence into our everyday, mundane lives. To hear His voice is to acknowledge the nearness of His heart.
In the beginning, the very first action of God is recorded as Him speaking. The entirety of the creation story in Genesis 1 is laced with the voice of God. If you are to take the Genesis story at face value, you would have to come away with a belief that the Being who created all is one who speaks. And then, on the sixth day, God creates man and woman in His image. How does He do this? By speaking.
Teresa of Avila, a contemporary of John of the Cross, and the Doctor of Prayer in the Catholic church, wrote extensively on how to hear the voice of God, mainly by looking at the effect the inner hearing would have on the heart. She echoes the sentiment of John of the Cross, that it requires maturity to weigh the voice of God.
In her seminal work, Interior Castles, Teresa has the soul moving through seven stages of purification. It is not until the sixth stage that she even begins talking about hearing the voice of God. Why? Because peace and quiet must settle into the inner life before the voice of God can be easily discerned.
The labor of the spiritual life (service, silence, solitude, prayer, etc…) over time settles the heart into extended quietude. AS we discipline ourselves to approach God, we set our mind (the form of our being) upon Him. The result of this focus is that peace begins to reign in the inner life. (see our course series on Preparing Your Heart)
'You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You.’ Isaiah 26:3
Experiencing the voice of God sweeps us up in the grand narrative of Christian history. When God speaks, he forms and shapes the inner substance of our lives. Scripture and the historical writings of church history bear this out.
Theologians, mystical authors, devotional writers all share this common theme, when God speaks our inner reality is defined. Amma Sarah (4th century) called man, “a little world in himself,” and said that his inner life, “…contains all the elements which go to complete the universe.” If our inner life is a universe, then when God speaks the planets and stars take shape. His voice clarifies the rough edges of our interior.
The Lord was addressing deep insecurities in my life. Each morning His quiet whisper would assure my unsteady heart. As I read and studied scripture, I found myself identifying with the moments of deep insecurity those men and women experienced. The quiet whisper of God to Elijah became my new normal.
There was no earth-shattering revelation.
No incredible visitation.
No supernatural prophecies or visions.
It was just my heart resonating with the tenderness of His heart.
In scripture and throughout history, the voice of God has been written of as a distinctly powerful forming element shaping our humanity. From the underlying insecurity of Abraham to the illumination of the passionate pursuit of David, the voice of God has given resolution to the deep-seeded questions that plague mankind throughout history.
