Communication with God

Communicating with God is probably the most difficult task for us, His children. In order to be successful in the message receiving and sending process, we have to be intentional about building our information base in Him through reading and following His Word in the Bible. Jesus came to us as God’s Word and we must take Him seriously.

The law and the prophets of the Old Testament add to our base of understanding, and Jesus clarified and simplified God’s expectations of us in His Gospel. Coaches of sports teams usually tell their players that the most important thing in their training for success is working hard on the fundamentals of the sport. As Christians seeking a relationship with God, we must work hard on the fundamentals of our faith.

God’s Word in the Bible is our training ground as we seek to turn a one way conversation into a two way conversation. God communicates to us through His Spirit, but if our fundamentals are not developed, the sending and receiving with God is full of interference.

There are several instances in the life of Jesus where the disciples and others around Him actually heard God communicating with His Son. As in John 12:30, “Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine.” Jesus is in constant communication with God, He wanted us to know that communication on some level was possible. For us, that is the work of God’s Holy Spirit.

Even when we think we’re interacting with God in our prayers and our listening, we can still mess things up. Going back as far as Abraham we have been tempted to do God’s work for Him. In Genesis 15:4, God promised Abraham a son, but Abraham and Sarah took things into their own hands and instead of waiting for a spirit planted son in Sarah, they engaged Sarah’s slave Hagar to sleep with Abraham and give birth to a son.

In ignoring God’s promise, Abraham and Sarah created an issue that lives with us in today’s world. After they were gifted by the birth of a son together as God had promised, the Ishmael vs. Isaac tension began and continues to play out in our world today. Yes, even Abraham and Sarah took a break from the fundamentals of faith and got off of God’s track for them.

Our challenge is to build up our fundamentals in faith and wait for Gods friendly nudge in the direction of His Will for us. We can recognize it as His Will for us when we don’t see it as something we can control and carry out without His help. It is like going out on a weak limb for Him with the confidence that He will not let it break.  

I can remember many times in my life when I felt led by God to help someone in a particular situation they were in. Most times I have taken the risk that my action would be accepted for what it was and not viewed as my having a personal ulterior motive in doing it. Even when we feel led on a path for reconciliation in a personal matter, we must only do that which feels God led and not cave into the, “Oh, I can fix it” posture.

God’s leadership in our lives flows through His Holy Spirit. As hard as we try to hear what He is telling us, we humans can sometimes misunderstand His communications. This should not stop us from seeking God’s leadership in our lives. We’ll miss the mark occasionally, but our batting average will stay high as long as we don’t give up and we keep working on those fundamentals of our faith.

We must keep attentive to those Godly nudges through His Spirit. If we feel we are being led and not trying to lead, most times that limb we crawl out on will be sturdy enough for God’s work. In 2^nd Timothy 3:16-17, we are reminded: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”