Latest / Beyond the Sermon / How to NOT Hear God's Voice: Conversation

Transcript

How to NOT Hear God's Voice: Conversation · Beyond the Sermon

• 0:00
  You're listening to Beyond the Sermon podcast, the First
• 0:03
  Methodist Church in Collingswood, NJ.
• 0:05
  On our podcast, the goal is not just to share the sermons we've
• 0:08
  preached, but to go beyond the sermon and talk about what we're
• 0:11
  learning and what God is doing in US and in our community.
• 0:15
  You overlooked one of the most important parts of that story.
• 0:19
  Everyone's got questions about and or.
• 0:22
  No Ewoks. In the Bible, yes.
• 0:26
  And you're just going to breeze over it like it's nothing.
• 0:29
  I mean, I didn't want to. I didn't want to.
• 0:33
  There's a whole generation of young kids who have no idea what
• 0:36
  I'd be talking about. What?
• 0:37
  Are you talking about Star Wars is still coming out with movies
• 0:41
  and some of them still are on indoor really and they even have
• 0:44
  like Disney plus kids Star Wars for why all right young.
• 0:50
  Audiences. Well, I apologize.
• 0:52
  So, favorite Star Wars movie? Oh, Empire Strikes Back. #5 Why?
• 1:03
  Thank you. The most character development
• 1:06
  in that part of the arc of the story of Luke struggling
• 1:11
  between, you know, further training versus helping his
• 1:15
  friends. He begin to see really like the
• 1:19
  insidiousness of the Empire and all that kind of stuff with the
• 1:25
  double cross with Lando and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:28
  I think it just, you know, A New Hope, the original Star Wars
• 1:33
  movie, it's kind of like fairy tale ish almost, you know, And
• 1:38
  then I think Empire Strikes Back kind of gets a lot more real.
• 1:43
  Solidifies the world and humanizes it.
• 1:46
  Slash more like in the storytelling of the characters.
• 1:50
  If we're talking modern ones, Rogue One.
• 1:54
  Yeah, the modern ones, I enjoyed them all.
• 1:57
  I'm not one of those haters like the is a waste of time.
• 2:00
  Don't put them out like I I really enjoyed all of them.
• 2:03
  But for me, none of them were really distinct enough that I
• 2:06
  could tell you one from the other.
• 2:09
  The writing, the characters, the action, like it's all great, but
• 2:13
  none of them really staying out. I as a kid, because they were
• 2:19
  the 123 were coming out while I was a kid.
• 2:24
  Yeah, you were out of college. I remember the second one being
• 2:30
  incredible, graphic wise, action wise, all the droids, all that
• 2:34
  kind of stuff. No, Darth Maul was the first
• 2:37
  one, right? First one.
• 2:38
  Yeah, there was like an hour and a half wasted in the first part
• 2:41
  of that movie, and then that cool fight with Darth Maul.
• 2:46
  But. But I think #3 for me, was was
• 2:51
  my favorite as a kid. I think, I think you make a good
• 2:54
  case where I think 5 would be a close second.
• 2:58
  Yeah. But #3 for me, it was just like,
• 3:00
  it's all come to this. Like even though I knew 456.
• 3:04
  And then it's like the bridging of the two and just the
• 3:10
  intensity of the good and evil all clashing.
• 3:17
  But some people were good, some and you see like this transition
• 3:21
  Into Darkness and. So here's my question for you.
• 3:26
  Did you see the original trilogy before you saw the prequels?
• 3:33
  I'm 99% sure, yes. OK, I, I was very, I want to say
• 3:38
  the episode 1 came out when I was like 7 or 8 years old.
• 3:42
  What year did it come out? Like 2001?
• 3:45
  It wasn't. That late.
• 3:49
  Let me see 1999. Sorry.
• 3:53
  OK, so, so I was like 4 or five years old when that came out and
• 3:59
  then. I was in like 9th grade.
• 4:04
  Yeah, Oh my gosh, that's so funny because I was so young and
• 4:07
  I didn't know people back then. I just realized now that that
• 4:10
  was Liam Neeson with the long hair and everything.
• 4:14
  I just somebody else and a younger version.
• 4:17
  I've only seen him older. Yeah.
• 4:19
  Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, so I was
• 4:21
  little. I believe my dad made me watch
• 4:25
  the first three and then we went back.
• 4:28
  OK. Because I remember being very
• 4:32
  aware of the other 3, so I don't know why I'd be like, Oh yeah,
• 4:35
  there's three more movies and that memory would hold without
• 4:38
  seeing them. Yeah.
• 4:39
  See, because you have to. You have to.
• 4:41
  Yeah. And I think that's why I
• 4:43
  appreciated 3 when it came out more because you know where it's
• 4:47
  going. And so seeing like, Oh my gosh,
• 4:50
  this is how things ended up the way they were and all that.
• 4:54
  Kind of stuff. This is my same issue with
• 4:56
  people who start reading Chronicles of Narnia with The
• 5:00
  Magician's Nephew. Isn't that the first one
• 5:02
  chronologically? Yes.
• 5:05
  You do the, you do. You do the original order.
• 5:08
  You do the author order. Yes, I couldn't.
• 5:11
  Why not I? Mean to be fair.
• 5:13
  Same thing. My mom made me read through it
• 5:16
  when I was like 7. We had like the CD set to listen
• 5:20
  to it in the car. I was not smart enough to
• 5:22
  remember all of the things that happened and then down the road
• 5:26
  connected all back with with that.
• 5:30
  So I had to do a chronological. No.
• 5:32
  For my brain, I'm sorry. And you know, I don't read, so I
• 5:35
  never went back and like. Read it.
• 5:37
  It's not the same thing. It's years.
• 5:39
  It's literally hundreds of years apart.
• 5:41
  Some of the gaps. How's that the same thing?
• 5:45
  Because it tells one story, introduces you to the world, and
• 5:48
  then you go back and you get so much of the development.
• 5:53
  What you're saying is the same thing as the Star Wars stuff.
• 5:55
  Yeah, OK. I thought you meant like it
• 5:57
  doesn't matter. It's the same story overall.
• 5:59
  So I'm saying gotcha, Gotcha. Issue with Narnia people with
• 6:06
  people who watch Star Wars in numerical order.
• 6:10
  Gotcha. Fair.
• 6:11
  OK, I can, I can understand that to a degree for for that first
• 6:16
  instance and then he keeps hopping around for Narnia.
• 6:20
  That's true. And I I don't see as good of a
• 6:24
  case for the rest of those jumps.
• 6:26
  But anyway, as long as you watch the BBC Chronicles of Narnia
• 6:32
  series, I think I have the cassettes in my office.
• 6:35
  I think they're the cassettes, OK.
• 6:38
  Magic 1-2 and three right? Yup.
• 6:41
  Where? Every animal is a human in that
• 6:43
  animal suit, so they're all the same height and you can see the
• 6:46
  zippers on the back. Nice.
• 6:49
  Incredible last piece anyway to your.
• 6:53
  Yes, I I did not explain the biblical connection to Star Wars
• 6:57
  in. My service and was it
• 6:59
  intentional? That's another question for
• 7:02
  another time. Was it intentional on?
• 7:05
  George Lucas. It's George.
• 7:07
  Lucas like, like did the name signify like, does that world
• 7:11
  relate to something from the story of and or we see in
• 7:13
  scripture? That's a deeper dive for later.
• 7:16
  Yeah. So someone else please research
• 7:19
  that and get back to us with your sermon talking about how
• 7:23
  not to hear from God, slash how to hear from God.
• 7:27
  At the end, close up. What I think many could take
• 7:33
  away, yeah from this is if you're impatient, go to a
• 7:38
  medium. Was that your intention?
• 7:41
  And that was not my intention. That was not my intention.
• 7:45
  Why would that be a no go? Because I, I believe that
• 7:50
  mediums do have access to power and it is not godly power.
• 7:57
  And you know, there's a reason that Saul had banned all the
• 8:03
  mediums and spiritists out of the land of Israel.
• 8:07
  And it's because it's all backed by demonic power and false gods
• 8:11
  and all that idolatry that Israel was supposed to root out
• 8:15
  from the land. Yeah.
• 8:18
  And I think there's also in, in modern times, a combination of
• 8:23
  legitimate mediums and charlatan mediums where, I mean, you can
• 8:27
  look online and people have like debunked methods and stuff that
• 8:31
  they use to psychologically, yeah, manipulate you into
• 8:36
  thinking that they know more about you or something else than
• 8:38
  they really do. And so like using mentalism,
• 8:42
  which isn't supernatural, Right, Right.
• 8:45
  Right. But then there is the
• 8:47
  supernatural. And I know of Christians that
• 8:50
  have, my aunt went to 1 and it said that grandma still loves
• 8:54
  her. So then we went and spent
• 8:55
  $150.00 to hear the same thing. And it's drawing your hope
• 9:03
  towards something in someone else.
• 9:05
  Yeah. And taking it, diverting it from
• 9:08
  God, whether it be from the person you want them to tell you
• 9:11
  about, or thing they want you to tell you about, or just anything
• 9:15
  that comes from them so that you can feel more certainty about
• 9:20
  something. Or or it tries to get you to to
• 9:23
  trust it to lead you further astray.
• 9:27
  After the service, Dick Escher came up to me and told me if I
• 9:31
  ever preach that sermon again I should tell this story.
• 9:35
  And he gave me this story from his own life, so I don't think
• 9:38
  he'll mind me sharing it since he told me to preach it.
• 9:42
  He said that when he was in high school he was dating a girl who
• 9:46
  got saved through this church. Her family wasn't really
• 9:49
  Christian at all. And when he was wrestling with
• 9:54
  whether to follow his plan to go into the Navy and become a
• 9:58
  printer, have a career in the Navy versus this called
• 10:02
  ministry, he was starting to feel he was talking about it
• 10:06
  with this girl's dad one day. And he said, oh, well, let's
• 10:11
  pull out the Ouija board and see what kind of guidance we get.
• 10:15
  And they did. And the thing starts moving
• 10:19
  around the Ouija board. And Dick's sitting there like, I
• 10:22
  don't know, I'm not moving it. So it must be this, this guy
• 10:24
  moving in, He said, I bet it's going to say go Navy or
• 10:28
  something like that. And he said as started to move
• 10:31
  around, it's spelled out with poor spelling all across it.
• 10:36
  Seek first your Jesus. Seek first your Jesus.
• 10:40
  And he was so freaked out. He's like, well, that that seems
• 10:43
  like it could be God's leading. So he called up his his youth
• 10:49
  pastor because they are the source of all wisdom and
• 10:52
  understanding for teenage kids. OK.
• 10:59
  Calls up his youth pastor and says this is what happened.
• 11:02
  What do I do about he's like that's how they get you because
• 11:05
  you trust for that's how they get you that it starts by giving
• 11:08
  you something that seems right and seems to lead and and.
• 11:13
  Then you keep going the. Direction.
• 11:15
  And then you begin to trust in that wisdom, in that guidance,
• 11:19
  and that's when they begin to take you.
• 11:22
  I agree. And that's I think what's what's
• 11:25
  scary is people are just and have been looking for the easy
• 11:29
  way. Oh yeah.
• 11:30
  And that's what I think connected also really well with
• 11:34
  Angela's testimony of like the healing doesn't always feel, the
• 11:40
  healing process doesn't always feel as great.
• 11:44
  And maybe the continuing in sin may feel better in the moment.
• 11:49
  Sure, but the healing is always well worth it and better in the
• 11:54
  end. When?
• 11:56
  When? Because you laid out the sermon
• 11:59
  series. Yeah, well in advance, because
• 12:02
  we've well established your or whatever you want to describe it
• 12:07
  as. Was this scripture and story
• 12:11
  always marked for this section? Yeah, I think I started with the
• 12:18
  scripture, like I've, it was one of those scriptures I felt like
• 12:21
  God was leading me to. And at first I wasn't quite sure
• 12:25
  what to do with it because it's not a good example.
• 12:28
  Like it's not, you know, it's not what we hear God speak to
• 12:34
  Ananias and Ananias did what he said and here's all the good
• 12:37
  things that happened because Ananias obeyed, you know.
• 12:40
  Yeah, the scripture I think started it and then kind of
• 12:44
  said, well, what would it look like?
• 12:45
  Kind of to invert it a little bit, kind of screw tape letters,
• 12:52
  you know, in a much more rudimentary and less polished
• 12:57
  way than CS Lewis did, but kind of that sometimes hearing things
• 13:02
  from the opposite perspective gives clarity on the real truth
• 13:07
  of it. Yeah.
• 13:08
  One more what was the finale? One more responding to God's
• 13:11
  voice. That one might be the hardest in
• 13:17
  execution. Could be, could be.
• 13:19
  Depending on the thing not not for you.
• 13:22
  Not preaching. I'm saying living it out.
• 13:24
  No, for sure, Yeah. But even in preaching because
• 13:27
  spoiler alert. But you know, like I don't want
• 13:31
  to end just with listen and obey.
• 13:34
  Nike just do. It just do it yeah, like what's
• 13:38
  that actually mean and how do we actually do that in life?
• 13:40
  Because listen and obey just sounds so trite sometimes, like,
• 13:46
  well, you just got to hear God and then you just got to do it.
• 13:48
  And there is a truth to that. Yeah, there's a big truth to
• 13:51
  that. But I think it oversimplifies
• 13:54
  what that response actually looks like.
• 13:56
  Because I know in my own life that there have been plenty of
• 14:00
  times where I've had to, where I've heard God's voice and I've
• 14:04
  had to wrestle through before I could get to the point where I
• 14:09
  could follow Jesus. And that's the.
• 14:13
  The simplified version is why I love Wedding of Cana.
• 14:18
  When Mary is telling the servants to listen to Jesus and
• 14:24
  she says listen to what he tells you to do and do it.
• 14:27
  Yeah, I was like, wow, that's pretty straight to the point
• 14:30
  with a walk. Yeah, Jesus.
• 14:36
  Mary just laid it out in the first for the first miracle to
• 14:40
  occur. And so.
• 14:42
  But yeah, and so amazing that she actually is the one who
• 14:46
  discerned that Jesus's time had come.
• 14:51
  Jesus still thought his time hadn't come.
• 14:53
  He says. He hears her asking.
• 14:55
  He says, well, what do you want me to do?
• 14:57
  Why are you concerning me at my time?
• 14:58
  My time hasn't come. And Mary looks at him in my
• 15:03
  mind's eye, looks at Jesus, looks at the servants, looks
• 15:08
  back at Jesus and says to the servant, just do whatever he
• 15:12
  tells you to do. Yeah, and that's great.
• 15:15
  Like at first it almost seems like she's and I think in both
• 15:19
  manners from from our reading it, from our culture and our
• 15:23
  language, it's they're both being disrespectful to a degree
• 15:28
  of the Jesus saying woman. Like that's how I read it.
• 15:33
  And that's not the context and connotation.
• 15:36
  It's a very respectful way of saying woman.
• 15:40
  And then with her, when the Son of God says it ain't time and
• 15:43
  she's like it, it's time and we like you don't tell the Son of
• 15:48
  God when it's time. But apparently when he's also
• 15:51
  your son, you do when. He's your son, but also in the
• 15:57
  the Jewish context is the doubling down is viewed as an
• 16:02
  like an intensity of faith. It's not a just in this case,
• 16:07
  it's not a disrespectful you're wrong.
• 16:09
  I'm right. It's the I'm showing my faith
• 16:13
  that this is right by doubling down.
• 16:16
  And I think it could also be a great lesson in which if you go
• 16:22
  back to your sermon where you mentioned the the divine credit
• 16:28
  card, the John Thompson metaphor where Jesus fully human, fully
• 16:35
  God, but didn't the argument is didn't use his divine powers
• 16:40
  right. While on earth.
• 16:43
  He was living in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 16:45
  And though he was capable of doing it, he emptied, not fully
• 16:49
  emptied, but yeah, yeah, emptied himself and and worked within
• 16:53
  the Holy Spirit power. And so within that, it's
• 16:57
  sometimes the Spirit gives someone else the message for you
• 17:03
  and your direction and where you should be going and how God
• 17:08
  wants you to move. And so I think that scene can be
• 17:10
  a great example of that where if in that case, Jesus is walking
• 17:16
  closely with the Holy Spirit, it's not that Jesus had an
• 17:19
  imperfect relationship with the Holy Spirit like, well, Jesus,
• 17:23
  if you did done this or that, then the Spirit would have told
• 17:25
  you directly, but that as the Spirit was at work and those
• 17:29
  around him as well, that Mary, you know, could share that this
• 17:34
  is the time and Jesus trusting her spiritual discernment as
• 17:40
  well. And I think that's something I
• 17:42
  touched in a sentence during my last sermon about the so many
• 17:48
  people in church history. Cool you get into that.
• 17:52
  But even just recent in churches where people use and abuse the
• 17:57
  phrase God told me, whether it be God like the guy, I still
• 18:03
  can't tell if it was a skit or not, that got on the stage of
• 18:08
  the church and said God told me why wife was in the room.
• 18:12
  And so I went to JC Penney, and I got a ring.
• 18:15
  And so if you're ready, I'm ready.
• 18:21
  Wow. Oh, so cringy.
• 18:24
  Hurt to watch. And it never showed anyone
• 18:27
  going. Yeah.
• 18:30
  But then, you know, leadership and other people in church using
• 18:34
  that phrasing to manipulate volunteers into doing things,
• 18:38
  manipulate different directions for churches to go.
• 18:42
  That was really out of selfishness and pride rather
• 18:45
  than God actually leading. And so one of the things in my
• 18:49
  limited experience, that's a very common theme when other
• 18:52
  people are sharing about God for my life is it does not benefit
• 19:00
  them me following through with whatever.
• 19:04
  And sometimes it's to the contrary where in regards to
• 19:08
  like mission and works like we know that we'd be losing you or
• 19:13
  we like whatever it might be, but we'd rather you be faithful
• 19:17
  and go with where God's leaning. And so have you ever had any
• 19:21
  personal encounters with mediums or Ouija boards or terror cars
• 19:27
  or any of that kind of stuff? No, that stuff creeps me out.
• 19:30
  Yeah, yeah. No, I get even.
• 19:34
  Even when Dick was telling me that story, I got the GBGB's.
• 19:38
  Yeah, Yeah, I don't. I don't like to mess with that
• 19:42
  stuff. I've never felt a draw to you
• 19:45
  to. Do it.
• 19:46
  I didn't know like, like what they catch your story.
• 19:48
  Like if you had years that would have, you know, tried to put
• 19:52
  well, that's and that's why you homeschool.
• 19:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man.
• 20:01
  So you told us on the podcast last week, which, sorry, it only
• 20:07
  came out on Tuesday. That's my fault, I forgot to
• 20:10
  edit it before I left for Cuba. But you told us you were going
• 20:13
  to Cuba. Yeah.
• 20:14
  And that God, you know, you'd seen how God was.
• 20:17
  The ripples of you're saying yes to God had gotten you there.
• 20:21
  And I just wondered if you had like a 32nd something you you
• 20:28
  noticed or you felt like God was saying to you while you were
• 20:32
  there in Cuba since we've been talking about how we hear God.
• 20:37
  30 seconds, you jerk. 5 minutes. After I talked to you for like
• 20:41
  45 minutes about it yesterday trying to give you the shortened
• 20:46
  version. All right, if you're like,
• 20:47
  minutes. No, no, I don't want to edit 5
• 20:50
  minutes. Yeah, I got to visit a mission
• 20:57
  church gentleman, Javier, who him, his wife and his one year
• 21:02
  old, Jeremy. He was alcoholic, using drugs,
• 21:10
  was in a gang, didn't even go into high school and came to
• 21:16
  Christ, felt called into leadership, did small groups
• 21:21
  did, started up this like, house church and like lives in the
• 21:27
  back. You know, it was a outhouse and
• 21:29
  one room for everything and the small little plot of land and
• 21:34
  then one room that they asked the government to build a garage
• 21:38
  because you can't build a church, build a garage.
• 21:41
  And that's their sanctuary, this little one room sanctuary.
• 21:44
  And to see and hear how God has used him use their ministry, the
• 21:51
  faithfulness, even though his they had like, I don't know if
• 21:56
  his a literal thing that happened while he was sleeping
• 22:00
  or if he was dreaming that happened of like rats nibbling
• 22:04
  at his feet. And then there's like his wife's
• 22:07
  cared of frogs for whatever reason, she's like, but they're
• 22:10
  big frogs and like right next to their property is a tons, tons
• 22:13
  of frogs. And just hearing how God's used
• 22:18
  him to start this church here with people walking like 2 to 7
• 22:24
  miles to come to his little house church.
• 22:28
  And some people they, it's so swampy in there.
• 22:31
  I guess that's why the frogs are there.
• 22:33
  People wear like rain boots to trudge through water to get to
• 22:36
  church. And he was sharing how there's
• 22:41
  this so in you might be more familiar with Santeria, which is
• 22:49
  like this combination of this African witchcraft idol God kind
• 22:54
  of kind of religion that then as Catholicism spread through the
• 23:00
  world, kind of blended in with Catholicism images and
• 23:04
  characters, but really focused more in on this stuff.
• 23:08
  And so there's a pilgrimage to this one idol that people crawl
• 23:15
  on their knees dragging rocks and chains and all that kind of
• 23:19
  stuff. And they go, right?
• 23:22
  It's the street in front of this church in his house that they
• 23:25
  go. So every year, December 16th and
• 23:28
  17th, they are crawling on their hands and knees, miles and miles
• 23:34
  and miles to go to suffer for the sake of this idol to help
• 23:39
  relieve supposedly they're suffering and him and his church
• 23:42
  people just spend the entire two days there evangelize and saying
• 23:47
  there's an easier way. His yoke is light like you don't
• 23:51
  he you don't have to suffer like this.
• 23:53
  He already suffered for you. And in my mind, I didn't I
• 23:56
  didn't say it because I didn't want it to sound insulting or
• 23:59
  diminishing of it. I was like, and they can't run
• 24:02
  away and you're walking on your knees, you ain't moving fast.
• 24:06
  Captive audience. And and they've had so many
• 24:09
  people convert and come into the doors and repent.
• 24:12
  And so it's just beautiful to see their resilience and
• 24:19
  everything is with the power outages and they're getting like
• 24:23
  10 hours of power a day ran sporadically randomly.
• 24:26
  So they've been trying to cook outside.
• 24:30
  Luckily, they're not in the city, so they have a little
• 24:32
  right, little outdoor space. So it's a little safer.
• 24:34
  And he has like this two chunks of Styrofoam with a plastic
• 24:38
  chair and this makeshift cooler that he takes out to go fishing
• 24:42
  and try and collect food for the family and stuff like that.
• 24:46
  But it's just on fire, giving everything for God and to God.
• 24:52
  And yeah, just really inspiring. And I was sharing so much with
• 24:57
  Scott, and there was so much that I witnessed and saw and was
• 25:01
  a part of that that didn't even make the conversation yesterday.
• 25:04
  Just. Yeah, really beautiful and
• 25:07
  saddening. Like, that's one of the things
• 25:09
  that came up so much in Cuba, and when I tried to describe it
• 25:13
  to the Cuban people, they agreed that those that I was with where
• 25:18
  there's this sadness and beauty simultaneously in a lot of what
• 25:23
  was going on. And so, yeah, be praying for
• 25:26
  them, the church for the country.
• 25:30
  It's been in tough times and then is in tougher times
• 25:34
  currently, but the church is growing and I don't want the
• 25:38
  worsened state to diminish the joy or the fervor of the people,
• 25:45
  especially those that can't get to church.
• 25:47
  With transport, like public transportation being shut down
• 25:50
  and stuff, that's not stopping a lot.
• 25:53
  People are still walking. 25 and Ida, Ida, old lady hitchhike 22,
• 25:59
  no, like 26 miles to get to church and God provided for
• 26:05
  that. But it's, yeah, there's a lot.
• 26:07
  Maybe we'll do a Cuba episode for a week that we're away and
• 26:10
  yeah, can share a little bit more because I'm like testimony
• 26:13
  time at church. I was like, I got too much.
• 26:15
  I got too much to share. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:19
  But God is good. All the time.
• 26:22
  All the time, God. Is good.
• 26:25
  Well, that's our conversation for today, but that doesn't mean
• 26:28
  the conversation is over. We'd love to hear your thoughts
• 26:31
  on these topics as well. To ask a question about anything
• 26:34
  we've discussed in this episode or to join the conversation, you
• 26:37
  can head over to fumccollingswood.org/podcast.
• 26:43
  Thanks for being part of this conversation.