Hearing God's Vocie - Trying Times

But if not

We want things to work out. Some of us are “list people” and work hard to accomplish goals. Maybe you’re more relational and a good day for you is filled with interruptions and conversations, you enjoy your life being filled with others and not just duties. Either way we have things we desire to happen. This ability to plan, hope and dream is a gift from the Lord. We talk to God about are plans. We intercede when our hopes are being deferred. We often ask God “what is going on” when dreams are shattered. A little research and I discovered that losing sight of our goals is a source for unhappiness. We plan so that we will be happy. But not everyone gets to plan their lives. Maybe your life seems to be like that.

In Daniel 3 we find the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. In a short time these men go from daily life to making a life and death decision. We all have those days when a critical situation arises and we need to hear from God. Sometimes it is an accident, at other times a relationship is falling apart, every now and then we must make a life and death decision. On what will we make that decision? When our “to do” list won’t help, when our happiness is jeopardized, when our heart is conflicted, what will we do?

On this day Shadrach and his friends made a decision based on who God is and didn’t focus on the situation of their lives. These men choose to listen to God from a perspective that did not calculate what they should do based on who they were, but based upon who God is. This type of listening is difficult, but possible. Hearing God in moments when our lives, our dreams, our happiness are at stake do not come easily and are possible because we have grown into hard decisions. These men wanted God to rescue them, but if God did not come through for them, they were still going to trust Him. These “but if not” decisions all seem hard, but when we look back over our lives we understand how God has helped us grow.

In the beginning of their captivity the king offered his new servants rich food and wine. Those who live in the palace get to enjoy the blessings of the palace. A conflict arose over the dinner table, who hasn’t faced that situation. Not wanting to eat the delights of a king the boys chose vegetables to eat. This early choice appears to be one of life and death again. Now living under the rule of the King, these boys had lost their right to choose, to be free. Issued an order to eat and find happiness in the delights of the Kings world was conflicting with their understanding of God and the clean direction of what God was requiring of them. Sound familiar? Which one of us does not need to hear from the Lord so that we follow Him and not live for the enjoyment of this world and its King? Like these men of old we too feel the pressure to choose. But each choice is also a building block, a step in a direction. Hearing and obeying God over the dinner table will train us for hearing and obeying later on. It is God’s grace that we grow. Grace allows us to face today as today and tomorrow as tomorrow, giving us time to be what God calls us to be as we walk daily with Him.

The boys, now men, stand in defiance of the Kings order to bow and worship. God has been faithful to them, God has delivered them, sustained them. These men have grown in God and now are able to inquire of the Lord being more mindful of who He is than in who they are. Like living sacrifices they are able to hear God and push aside all those internal voices that would have them seek their own happiness, reasons this situation away or proclaim triumph when none was promised. The response of their hearts and voices was “God was able to deliver, but if not…. “

Many of us fail to hear God because we have already chosen the outcome. Maybe we have hidden under the table a few selfish delights and never learned to fully trust the Lord? Maybe we have trusted God in the past but now find ourselves in love with what we have, not able to see how God might call us to give up our positions, prizes or prosperity. Our own desires cry out to us and confuse or conceal the voice of God. Reason seeks to rule by looking at the situation and drives us to consider the outcome. We are pressured to have faith for deliverance but have no faith for the fire.

What does it matter if we are not mature? Why do we need to put these conditions upon ourselves? Can’t we just live in the love of God and not pressure one another to be perfect? Who is perfect anyway? These and other questions of the heart and mind will arise and will need to be answered. We are all working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are all in need of understanding what happens when we fully obey God and what happens when we seek to enter into the Kingdom of God with as little self-denial and suffering as possible. But I want you to know that we can lose our ability to hear God’s voice if we train ourselves to discern His voice based on our happiness, desires and conditions. You can use the “name of the Lord” to walk away from the Lord, claiming that God would never require you to go through such an ordeal. In eternity you may find that you went around a great many things that God wanted to take you through. That your life was lessoned by your choices of self-preservation and that the relationship you could have had with God was never taped into.

What follows ten quotes from a verity of people that may help us to see what trusting God looks like from different perspectives. While our world admires people of integrity it also promotes not being one, but instead living for self and pleasure. The result of a life wrapped in the world is that we cannot hear God’s voice; we often hear our own and call it God. But that does not need to be the case. Check out the quotes and see if one speaks to you about living a life of trusting God to deliver you, but if not, still following Him.

     “It is our darkest moments that we must focus on the light.” -Aristotle Onassis

     “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” -Bruce Lee

     “You cannot dream yourself into character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.” -Henry David Thoreau

     “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” –Aristotle

     “You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.” -Abraham Lincoln

     “Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” – Albert Camus

     “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” –George Eliot

     “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” -Winston Churchill

     “Adversity introduces a man to himself.” –Unknown

“And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

I don’t want to oversell that idea that happiness and fully obeying God are mutually exclusive, they are not. Our greatest happiness comes in living a life of fulfillment, in doing what we were made and called to do. That fulfillment does not happen without focus and sacrifice. We truly must know the difference between the fleeting pleasures of this world and the pleasures to be found in Christ Jesus. For me it helps to focus on scripture and the following passage is one that speaks to me of both the process of maturity and the passion to see it through. I also want to share a link to an article about The Law of Sacrifice by Brett & Kate McKay. I think this article gives some insight into the focus and sacrificed needed to follow God. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego we live in a world that is not our home and yet we can find great joy and happiness in living the lives God has called us to.

As a spiritual discipline you may want to list some pleasures of this world that you enjoy and when those pleasures are being over consumed. What kind of fast could you engage in that would strengthen your relationship with God and yet allow you to complete your requirements in life? If you looked back over your life can you see where God has empowered you to trust Him? How have you used what God has accomplished in your life to encourage and strengthen others?

Php 3:7-16 NASB But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; 16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

The whole point of hearing God, regardless of our personal condition is a part of many followers of Christ today. The persecuted church, martyrs for Christ Jesus, and missionaries are a few of those who face hardships and challenges. What would it be like to know Christ Jesus is such a way that knowing Him was a treasure far greater than all the things of this world?