An elderly Chinese woman who has two large pots, which she carries with a pole balanced across her neck.

One of the pots is perfect and always delivers a full portion of water.  The other has a crack in it.  At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.  But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

One day after 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, the blemished pot spoke to the woman while they were at the stream.  ‘I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house’.  The old woman smiled, ‘Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?  That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.  For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.  Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.’  (from http://www.guy-sports.com.)

Prayer: God who knows us better than we know ourselves, open our hearts and minds so that we may see through your eyes.  Amen.

Today is the last in the series of talks we have been having concerning a personal relationship with God.  We have considered entering a relationship with God, hearing God’s side of the conversation, the fact that we are church and that as such, we need to be able to judge or discern whether or not the voice we are hearing is in fact God’s voice.  God has given us several tools to use.  We started with the church, local and universal and then looked at the Scriptures, our collective history and our ability to reason, being mindful that our natural reasoning is insufficient to understand God’s ways.  Today we are going to very briefly take a look at experience.

We use the word, “experience” in two very different ways.  One points to an event and the other to an going process.  So, it is, that our experience is made up of various experiences.

Under the category of experience, let’s be mindful that there is a very real sense in which experience points to all of the other tools God has given us to help us discern God’s voice.  We can consult the experience of those found in the Scriptures, of those around us, of those that have gone before us and the reasoning each employed to help them decide.  Take for example those who experienced the events on the Day of Pentecost that marks the birth of the Church (Acts 2: 1-21)

When that rag-tagged group gathered in that room that day, they had no idea what was about to happen.  But they knew that sooner or later something would definitely happen because Jesus had instructed them to stay in Jerusalem (Luke 24:49) until the Holy Spirit came upon them.

Beforehand there was a lot of uncertainty, but once it happened, even though they had never had an experience like this before, they had no doubt about either their experience or what it meant.

Because they knew the Scriptures, because they knew their history, they knew that during the Exodus, the foundational event in the nation of Israel, they knew that wind and fire were physical manifestations of God’s presence.  They knew that in days long ago when the Spirit of God came upon a prophet, often some type of ecstatic speech was part of the experience.  They reasoned that since the languages they were speaking was in reality the native languages of Jews living in cities across the known world, visiting Jerusalem for the feast, that Jesus wasn’t messing around when he commanded them to take the Gospel to the entire world.  (Although, it did take a few more experiences for them to understand that the entire world included the non-Jewish people as well.)  They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was present with them and that the Holy Spirit was very powerful; more powerful than their very human fears and weaknesses.

Like I said before, they consulted their community, the Scriptures, their history and reason and concluded that whatever this very new experience was God stuff.

They did not ignore their experience.  They acted on it and when they did, they saw confirmations of what they had concluded – that God was at work in and through them.  This leads me to what I most want to say to you.

First, any experience we may have, means nothing if it does not compel us to action.  If we believe God is saying something to us and we do not act on it, that whole enterprise is a waste of God’s time and energy.  As well, we don’t remain where we are in our evolving relationship with God.  We take a step back because we have said, “No.”

Second, experiences should change us, whether that be in our understanding of God, of ourselves, of others or of the various relationships in which we are engaged or our actions and attitdues.

Third, God’s definition of success is faithfulness, not a favourable result.  After Peter gets up and preaches, some 3000 become followers of Jesus.  Peter had a very successful day.  However, God also called Jeremiah to speak on God’s behalf and the result was exactly as God told Jeremiah before he spoke his first word – nobody paid any attention.  Just because God asks us to do something doesn’t mean we will see the result we might be hoping for.  Nor does not seeing the result we were hoping for mean that the exercise was a waste of time and energy.  We don’t know the ripple effect that comes into play once we set out to be faithful to do what God has asked.

Fourthly, as we walk with God carrying on the conversation, we become more aware of and accustomed to God’s voice.  This helps us to both better recognise God’s voice and to have greater confidence in our ability to hear and understand God’s voice.  However, we can’t gain experience if we never step out and take action.  Like with many things, some of the best lessons come from what appear to be failures.

And fifth and lastly, just because asks us to do something does not mean it is intended to last forever.  Most things have a time and season.  So, it is important that when God asks us to do something, that we remain open to God telling us that time is up.

Next Sunday, we are going to do something that came about as a result of one of our numbers suggesting something.  It was a conversation that I believe God highlighted and so, I decided that this needed to be done even though what we are going to do is probably not exactly what Clarence had in mind.

Assuming we do a relatively good job, I already know that some will like what we do, some will very much dislike what we do and some will like some of what we do.  And that’s ok.  That’s life.  What I also know is that regardless of how well or how terrible we do, it can only get better if more get involved.

Prayer: Give us ears to hear your whispers, the wisdom to use the tools to help us know what whispers come from you and the determination to do as you ask.  Amen.

We have been looking at “Entering a personal relationship with God” and proceeding on the basis that no real relationship can exist without open and honest two-way communication taking place.  We have talked about how God often speaks to us using that “still small voice” that comes from within as well or by causing something we are reading, hearing, seeing or participating in being “highlighted” so that it stands out, taking on a greater significance for us than normal or by God placing a burden on us to do something good that perhaps we would not normally even consider doing.  But, of course, there was the caution that just because we might initially believe God is speaking to us about something, does not necessarily make it so.  God has given us tools whereby we can judge or “discern” God’s voice.  To date we have considered the community of faith, or “church.”  Following Christ is not a lone wolf enterprise.  We are church.  We have also considered the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments or Hebrew and Christian writings and how they were collected according to a set of rules or a “canon” which in turn causes them to be a “canon” or set of rules of faith and life.  Last week we took a look at the fact that we belong to a faith tradition with a history that involved a lot of controversy and as a result we can learn from past mistakes and accomplishments.  Today we will give some thought to “reason”, the ability to come to an understanding of our faith and how it works in the real world.  But once again, we have a problem because some things about our faith are not reasonable, at least, by regular human understanding.  Take, for example the reading from Acts 16:16-34.

But before we go there, let’s pray:  God whose ways are far above our own and whose ways are so different than ours, teach us your thoughts and your ways.  Amen.

It is perfectly reasonable that an earthquake would shake loose the prison doors but how could an earthquake cause the chains holding the prisoners fall off?  Not only that, consider the jailer.  He was responsible, upon penalty of death, for the security of the prisoners and when he discovered the doors open he assumed they had all escaped and was going to do the so-called honourable thing and commit suicide.  But Paul stopped him.  So far, so good.  But what happened next?  The Jailer takes Paul and company home.  Why?  Allowing an escape is one thing but helping one happen is far more serious.  What did he think would happen when his commanding officer found out?  A slap on the wrist?  This story is not reasonable?

When I was young there came that day when I asked my parents for a BB gun.  Guess what my mother’s answer was?  “No, you’ll put an eye out!”  She didn’t even have to think about it.  This seems to be the tag line for adolescents of the late 1950’s.

At first look, her reasoning was not logical at all.  If I had a BB gun and shot it, assuming I pointed the BB gun away from me, how would I have ever damaged my eye?  And even if I was too close to my target and the BB bounced back, given the relative size of my eyes to my entire body, what are the chances?  Slim to almost none, right.  But, putting her fear aside, almost none does not equal zero.  As small as the odds were, this very thing must have happened and probably more than once.  Her words were one of the catch phrases on my generation.

Another, seemingly unreasonable conclusion my mother carried with her to her grave was that if I was not feeling well, it could only be due to one of two things, lack of sleep or irregularity.  Absurd right?

But, just a second.  Medical research tells us that adolescents and teenagers require more sleep than adults and that sleep is vitally important to brain development, physical development and emotional well-being.  Medical research also tells us that because we are much taller than our ancestors; our intestines are longer meaning that the food we digest sits inside of us for longer periods.  Since what is left in our colon is, by its very nature septic, there is a greater chance of various types of infections and cancer.

So, even though my mother’s logic was perhaps based in fear upon either some old wives’ tale or urban legend and even though her logic does not express a universal truth, in the end, her reasoning was not as unreasonable as first thought.

Now back to the passage in Acts.  This passage only starts to become reasonable if we conclude that Paul and Silas were not in prison because of a dispute with a merchant of divination.  They were there for God’s purposes.  God’s purposes included setting free the young woman who Paul exorcised.  God’s purposes also included the jailer and his household; that they might come to faith.  God’s purposes included Paul and God’s promise that he would stand before kings.  God’s purpose included what may have seemed like an earthquake but was in reality a direct intervention of God, setting the captives free.  God’s purposes even included the magistrates who gave word at first light to set Paul and Silas free, thus freeing the jailer from certain death.

Isaiah 55:7-9 in the New Living Translation is rendered

7 Let the wicked change their way
and banish the very thought of doing wrong.
Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them.
Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously.

8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts”.

And in Romans, we find this instruction: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:2 NLT)

It doesn’t make sense to our natural minds that in order to gain life we must lay our lives down, to be important, we must be the lowliest of servants, or that God is the supplier of all our needs and so the more we share what God has given us the more we will receive to share, or that even we are the hands, feet and mouth of God.  In our time and place if we admit to hearing God’s voice we could be subject to some questions regarding our sanity.

The fourth tool that God has given us to learn to discern or judge what voice is God’s voice, is reason.  But this “reason” is more than just simple human logic.  Simple human logic deals only with what can be seen, but God’s logic incorporates things that cannot be seen and connections that we cannot even begin to imagine – “butterfly effect”.

When we look at the Acts passage with normal human eyes, what we see is nonsensical.  When we look at Acts 16 having adopted God’s reasoning, we see the hand of God at work, not only in the lives of Paul and Silas but possibly in our own.  How many times has God saved us from harm that we do not know about?  How many times has God asked us to do something and promised us God’s participation and empowerment but have not acted upon that voice because what is being asked in unreasonable in our limited human reasoning?  How many times have we been save embarrassment or harm because we decided that the voice we are hearing is asking of us something that violates the higher thoughts and higher ways of God – the sanctity of life, the dignity of the human spirit and pre-existing human relationships, of seeking justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God?

God birthed us into a family, the church, where we learn to understand and live out God’s ways.  God gave us the Scriptures as to use as guide for faith and life.  God gave us a history so that we might learn from the wisdom of our family over the centuries and avoid making the same mistakes over and over.  God gave us human intellect so that we can figure out why we do what we do or should do or should not do.  But God also shares with us God’s reasoning that, even though we may never fully comprehend, can be incorporated into our pondering of our life in Christ and our life in this world.

Next week, the last tool we will talk about in connection with discerning if the voice we are hearing is God’s voice – experience.

Tom Holmes 16 04 30

For the last few weeks, we have been considering our personal relationship with God.  We have talked about entering a relationship with God, and hearing God’s side of the conversation.  But hearing that voice doesn’t always mean it is God who is speaking.  God has given us several tools we can use to discern or judge as to whether that voice is God’s or not.  Two weeks ago we looked at we are called to be church and how we can assist one another.  Last week, I spoke to you about The Owner’s Manual and how the scriptures didn’t just happen.  It took time and an agreed upon set of criteria or a standard to decide which of the many pieces of literature belonged in a special class of writings we have come to know as Scripture.  I also suggested that to best understand what the words are saying, we also need to have some idea of what the main messages of Bible are as well.  I guess, I left you a little confused so, we will spend a few moments trying to get a better handle on the difference between the “words and the message.”

Prayer: God who seeks us out, open us to what you would have us learn and then how we should act.

So, going back to last week, perhaps there were two items you may have found confusing.  The first one is a small point, that of the term, “soiling the hands.”

Christians required that any document to be considered for status as scripture need to be “God breathed” or inspired.  That is when reading them they somehow had to draw the reader closer to God.  They had to be special.  Reading them had to have the ability to be used to cause a change in people.

The Jewish requirement was that any scroll considered as “scripture” as opposed to just good reading material had to leave reader with “soiled hands.”  This was a term used in reference to be “ceremonially unclean” which, in turn meant, they were not fit to enter the temple to worship until they had “washed’ their hands, like they would before meals, etc.  What this term actually meant at the time in relation to the writings is lost but I suggested what I thought was a very reasonable possibility: reading the sacred writings people often came away with a sense of being unclean before God.  Isaiah 6:1-6 recounts Isaiah’s call and Isaiah finding himself at the very throne of God, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.”  Isaiah goes on to describe many things but perhaps the most profound thing was his own reaction, not to the various heavenly beings but to the holiness of God, “5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone!  Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts.”  In Isaiah’s eyes, he was anything but clean in comparison the God.

The second and probably far more important issue where confusion remains is about looking past the words to find the message.  Let me first say that the words are very important and that the goal of this exercise is not to “discover” some hidden meaning.  Rather, we are simply looking for the overriding themes of scripture.  Our brains can sometimes use the text to open our eyes and sometimes to close them.  As we come to understand the main messages of the Bible, we can better understand some very difficult texts.

Genesis 1:1, 2 reads, “1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The messages of these verses are that God is (The existence of God is never debated in scripture.) and that God was concerned for and involved in creation, even before any formation takes place.

As we carry on in this chapter, we also discover that God is the creator of all that is, that God is a God of order, that God creates order out of chaos, that since all things have their origin in God, all things are sacred especially life.  We also discover that of all life, humanity has the most intimate relationship with God.  God spoke all things into existence except of humanity.  In creating humanity, God paused and considered.  God intended to create humans very much like God’s self.  In the creative act, God formed the human with God’s own hands and then God breathed or “kissed” life into the human.  It was only then that the human became a living being.

When we continue into chapter 2:18 where God says, And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”  The text has been used to says that God took the first female out of the first man, thus the female is inferior to the male.  But since the first human somehow included both genders, what the message here really says is that God was always mindful of and in pursuit of what is best for humanity (as a whole, male and female.)

Of course, just because we see what might be a theme or a message behind the text doesn’t make it so.  They need to be repeated to be taken seriously.  John 3:18, along with many other passages, repeat this same concern of God for humanity.  Now, if we remember this message when we read the passages where the Children of Israel enter the Promised Land and are ordered by God to wipe out the indigenous peoples we are less likely to understand God as a cruel war mongering megalomaniac and more so as a loving God who had to make a hard choice.  Let’s say, for just a moment, we discover a tumour somewhere on our body. After going to see a doctor and a biopsy is done, doctor tells us we need to have it removed because that lump is malignant.  Although none of us like the idea of having surgery, we know that if we do not have that tumour removed, eventually it will consume our bodies and we will die.  The inhabitants of that land were a cancer that either needed to be eradicated or allowed to continue on and destroy the nation God had called into being to be God’s Immanuel, the face of God on earth.  We should also keep in mind that even though the details are not recorded, God gave those peoples over 400 years to change their ways.  See: Genesis 15:16, Lev. 18:24–27; Deut. 9:4–5; Amos 2:9

And now for this week’s consideration.  “Following in the Footsteps” refers to the fact that Christianity is religion that has a history.

Some would suggest that the Christian faith began on the Day of Pentecost following Jesus’ resurrection.  Others conclude that its origins date back to Jesus public ministry.  Personally, I believe Christianity begins in Genesis 3 as God is pronouncing God’s judgement on the serpent “…And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”  What follows through the entire Old Testament is preparatory to Jesus’ coming and is made real in the Gospels.  But it doesn’t end there.  It is a work in progress in the rest of the New Testament and in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Church Fathers and in the lives of all that came to name the name of Christ.  Like the story of creation, the early church was very chaotic but instead of taking 6 days to bring order, because was using people as God’s instruments, it has taken more than 2000 years and we are still not there yet.

Last week we talked about “canon” – a set of criteria used to define what belonged as scripture.  I also said to you that once a list of items, or in this case, a set of writings were collected that met those rules for belonging, those writings in themselves became a “canon.”  In this case, the scriptures became a set of rules for faith and living out that faith.

Not only did Church Councils have to decide what was best to describe as Scripture, but what those Scriptures meant.  Often, this was the result of people attaching very different meanings to the words of Scripture.

People have died fighting for statements of theology that most of us could care less about today.  People have laid down their lives living out what they have understood as God’s mission in their time and place.

Every cause of dissention that exists today has existed since the very early days of the church but we don’t know that or do we know just how destructive some of the personal beliefs we hold are because, in a very real sense, we live as though our faith is a product of our time.  It isn’t.  We stand in a long line of people, of groups, of missions, of institutions, of denominations that have met many of the same struggles we face today.  Some have entered the fray with the sword and others with grace.  The history of the church is such that I can fairly safely say that when she has thought herself to be all important, she was brought to her knees.  When she remember that God and God’s love extended to humanity was all important, she flourished.

Initially, the church was organic in nature with very little structure.  Followers of Christ relied on the Voice of God, the power of the Holy Spirit and working together to accomplish God’s purposes.  As time passed and as various challenges were met, the church became increasingly more institutional.  With increasing institutionalization came greater opportunities for personal influence and power, something many of us find very difficult to resist.  It didn’t take long before the “Church” existed for itself.  However, each time this happened, something else began to stir.  God would remind a person or a small group of people of who they were in Christ and as they began living out that calling, great reforms ensued and the church was steered back on course.

To sum it all up, yes times have changed but Christ has not and neither has the human condition.  Through the Holy Spirit, Christ has been present with the church urging her to remember what was right and what was wrong; urging her to remain clean while extending the love of God to those who are anything but; urging her to be and act like the Bride of Christ not bridezilla.

As we walk the path of faith, we will encounter all kinds of things that we simply do not know how to handle.  Not all, but certainly many of the answers to the past.

From time to time, a supposedly “new teaching” will start making its way like wild fire through the church.  Chances are, if you look in the past you will find this “new teaching” has surfaced many times before and each time it was discounted because it did not line up with the Scriptures.  It did not meet the requirements of the canon. For example the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe Jesus to be God but rather an angel.  Was this understanding something brand new in the mid 1800’s?  No, that line of thought surfaced very early in the life of the church and was a contentious issue for a couple of hundred years.

Looking back at history also gives us insight into how to handle current problems.  One of the recurring themes of church history is that when the church thought itself to be powerful it was actually very weak and that revival happened around going back to the basics.  Allowing the love of God towards humanity to be lived out requires far more rules.  That power is found in humility and heartfelt prayer.  The Gospel is far more effect when it is freely shared than when it is held hostage by the so-called elite.

God has given us tools to help us to determine if the voice we are hearing is that of God’s Voice or another.  God has given us a family, the church.  God has given us a written record, the scriptures.  God has given us a history.  None of these should be our sole source of advice.  They are intended to work together along with our ability to use the not so common sense that God has given us that we will consider next week.  None should be isolated, Why?  Because it is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to lead us in to all truth and the Holy Spirit works in and through our church families, in and through the words and messages of scripture, in and through the lessons learned and not learned from the past and yes, in and through our ability to reason.  To put it another way, the Scriptures are our canon, our rule, our standard for faith and life.  Our family is intended to helps us to understand both the words and messages of those sacred writings, and our history demonstrates for us what goes right when we hear God accurately and do as God asks and what goes wrong when we pay heed to our own selfishness, the selfishness of others or our let our fears interpret faith.

May God grant us the wisdom to use the tools God has given us to better hear and discern God’s voice and then to put Gods plan into action.  Amen.