Does God still speak?

Have you ever heard the voice of God?  Was it clear as day?  Were you sure it was from Him?  Did you feel His presence?  Did you know what you were to do now that you had heard His voice?  Were you amazed by His presence and the power of His words to you?  


We all desire to hear God, feel God, see God, experience God, to know God but He often seems so far away.  Will He speak to us?  Why can't we hear Him?  Where is He?  Is He alive? Is He real?  Does He even care to communicate with me?


If you have ever asked any of these questions please listen these words or read the article below!  If you want to hear God's voice and experience His presence and power He is not far away!


I hope you find this helpful in your journey to know God:

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples’ retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.”There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, “Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?”

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: “I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever.” Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by “come and see.” He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the “awesome deeds” he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear his very voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, he spoke again. “I keep watch over the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. At least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said, with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, “Never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me.”

I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. “I keep watch over the nations.” He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God.

Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites—this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind—and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

This is why I found the article in this month’s Christianity Today, “My Conversation with God,” so sad. Written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian University,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

I am sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, “For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear” (emphasis added). Surely he does not mean what he seems to imply—that only when one hears an extra-biblical voice like, “The money is not yours,” can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness ten thousand times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible.

I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, “Incline my heart to your word” (Psalm 119:36). “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Grant that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and our inheritance and the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:18; 3:19). O God, don’t let us be so deaf to your word and so unaffected with its ineffable, evidential excellency that we celebrate lesser things as more thrilling, and even consider this misplacement of amazement worthy of printing in a national magazine.

Still hearing his voice in the Bible, Pastor John

Death of a brother

Where is God in the midst of our pain?  Where is God when we lose a brother?  What happens to everything you have believed?

I found this story to be one of profound emotion and insight, the story of one man's loss of his brother and the questions that followed.

Read below:

In the Shadow of Mount Hood

Meeting God in the mystery of grief.

Frank A. James III | posted 10/05/2010 10:01AM

Midnight, it is said, is the portal between this world and the next and is somehow in league with chaos, death, and mystery. It is the moment of dark visitations. So it was for me in December 2006. My sleep was interrupted by a phone call, and I was instantly shocked into full consciousness: My younger brother was trapped in a snow cave on Mount Hood, and an unyielding blizzard prevented rescue.

The mountain proved to be Kelly's final adventure. Losing my brother on Mount Hood has been a painful reminder of my own spiritual fragility. None of us is immune to the heartaches and sorrows that inhabit this misbegotten world. Though I am a preacher, a professor of historical theology, and the provost of a theological seminary, I have found it agonizingly difficult to come to terms with my brother's death. It is one thing to talk about death in the abstract. It is entirely another to cope with the death of someone you love very, very much. The truth of the matter is that losing a loved one hurts down to the deepest parts of your soul.

I was the first to learn the news days later. Hearing those words announcing his death was like a blow to the solar plexus knocking the breath out of me, but telling the rest of my family was more dreadful. I had known heartache before, but this transcended every previous emotion I had ever experienced. My vision blurred. My feet were heavy and seemed to resist carrying me to the next room, where my family anxiously awaited the latest news of the rescue mission on Mount Hood. Kelly's wife, Karen, the children, our mother, three brothers and a sister—they took the news hard. I have never heard weeping like I heard that night in the village at the foot of the mountain. The Bible sometimes refers to "wailing" as an especially forlorn kind of weeping. That is what I heard that night—wailing. I hope I never hear that sound again.

Death is ugly, and we cannot—indeed, should not—try to make it palatable or explain it away with pious platitudes. Death is a cruel, brutal, and fearsome trespasser into this world. It is an intruder and a thief. It has severed an irreplaceable relationship with my brother. We shared the same story, and he knew me in a way no other person did. Kelly would no longer return my calls. Never again would I hear him cheerfully mock me as "Frankie Baby." Sometimes I see him in a dream, and I reach out to grasp him—but he is not there.

We are created for life, not death. Kelly had a shameless zest for living life to the fullest. When death strikes suddenly from the shadows or claws at us until the last breath, those left behind experience numbness and disorientation. Somehow we know in our hearts that it is not supposed to be this way.

An Honest Question posed from a Broken Heart

One question haunts me: Where was God when Kelly was freezing to death on Mount Hood? For me, it is not whether I should ask such a question, but how I ask it. One can ask the question in a fit of rage, shaking one's fist at God. Many of us, if we are candid, have done that. But once the primal anger settles to a low boil, we can—and, I would submit, should—ask the question.

I am not suggesting that mere mortals can stand in judgment of God or call him to account. God does not report to me. But an honest question posed from a broken heart is to my mind a good and righteous thing.

To ask this hard question is an act of faith. It presupposes a genuine relationship in which the creature actually engages the Creator. If God is my Father, can't I humbly ask why he did not come to Kelly's rescue? For me, to not ask this question would be a failure to take God seriously.

So, where was God? I don't know. i may never know. Perhaps the biggest challenge for my faith is to come to terms with what Martin Luther called the hiddenness of God—Deus absconditus. Contemporary christians are often uncomfortable admitting that God sometimes hides from us. But King David was unafraid to ask, "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" (Ps. 10:1).

As far as I know, God never answered David. Even more bewildering—God was not only silent, he also commemorated his silence for posterity. By including the Psalms in the Holy Book, God made his hiddenness a part of Israel's worship and preserved it for all humanity to ponder. It boggles my mind to imagine throngs of Israelites singing the chorus, "Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?"—year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. This must have been a gut-wrenching experience, and I suspect it was often sung with tears.

I am still trying to make sense of Kelly's death. I don't know why God did not rescue Kelly from the cold grip of the mountain. What I do know is that my relationship with God has entered another dimension—one more mystifying and more honest.

The Divine Gravitational Pull

Grief is a relentless predator. Those who have lost loved ones tell me that one never completely escapes it. Strangely, a part of me does not want the grief to stop, because the grief itself is a connection to Kelly. Yet another part of me is so weary from carrying the burden of a broken heart.

In the midst of our family tragedy, I made a peculiar discovery. One would think that grief and disappointment with God would lead to bitterness against him. In my nightmare, I not only prayed intensely in private but also publicly declared my faith and confidence in God on CNN—but Kelly froze to death anyway.

There is disappointment, sadness, and confusion, but oddly, there is no retreat from God. Instead, I find myself drawn to God. To be sure, he is more enigmatic than I thought, but I still can't shake loose from him. There seems to be a kind of gravitational pull toward God.

I am not the first to notice this gravitational pull amid the angst of divine silence. In Psalm 13, David calls out, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (v. 1). A few verses later, the same distressed David is declaring, "But I trust in your unfailing love" (v. 5). Even as he pleads with God to come to his rescue, David finds himself inexorably drawn to him.

It seems paradoxical that David would trust a God who hides himself when David needs him most. But as I have meditated on David's Psalms, I sense he had a different kind of relationship with God—one not many Christians understand. It is more mysterious than I had been led to believe. It is a relationship where simplistic spiritual formulas and religious clichés have no place. David's relationship with God combines brutal honesty with what Luther called a grasping faith. It is a relationship where disappointment is juxtaposed with hope.

One of the profoundly difficult lessons is that amid all the spiritual consternation in the shadow of Mount Hood, God has manifested himself in my grief. Somehow he is found in the disappointment, the confusion, and the raw emotions. This does not exactly make sense to me, and I'm quite sure I don't like it. But I have felt the divine gravity pull me back toward God, even while I am dumbstruck by his hiddenness. My conception of faith has become Abrahamic—which is to say, I must trust God even though I do not understand him.

Many Christians read the Nicene Creed with its marvelous stanza, "On the third day he rose again." They know the story of Christ's dead body being placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on Friday and pulsing with new life on Sunday. In violation of natural laws, Jesus was again breathing and walking among his astonished disciples. One doubtful disciple even felt compelled to put his finger into Jesus' wound to convince himself that the crucified Jesus was indeed alive. It was hard to believe, but there before them all stood Jesus.

What does the empty tomb of Jesus have to do with the snowy tomb of Kelly James? Everything. Kelly confessed, as I do and as Christians have for nearly 1,700 years, that "we look for the resurrection of the dead." Nicene Christians were not immune to the despondency of despair and grief. Over the centuries, and amid enough tears to fill an ocean, many of us have had to bury our loved ones. But we bury them with a promise: "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. … For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:20, 22).

This magnificent promise does not indemnify us against the grief of losing a beloved brother or even against disappointment with God. It does, however, take my faith to depths I never fathomed, where hope begins to poke through the heartache. Like a sunbeam piercing through a cloudy sky, faith portends that better weather is on the way.

Frank A. James III is provost of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.

The Story Behind the Story

In December 2006, Kelly James and his climbing partners, Brian Hall and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke, died on Mount Hood in northern Oregon. Their expedition was intended to prepare them for their lifelong dream of climbing Mount Everest. The climb began on December 8, but they encountered a rogue blizzard of enormous intensity and duration. They burrowed into a snow cave to wait out the storm. But the storm was unrelenting. Apparently Kelly had been injured, so the hard decision was made that Brian and Nikko should go for help. Sensing the gravity of their situation, Kelly must have released Brian from their long-standing pact never to leave one another. Alone in the snow cave, Kelly made desperate calls on his cell phone. On Sunday, December 10, against all odds, one call mysteriously connected, and he was able to speak to his wife and two of his sons for six minutes. It was the last time they would hear Kelly's voice.

From the outset, the story captivated the national news media, and the three families asked if I would serve as the public spokesperson. A massive search was launched, and finally, on December 17, we were notified that a body had been discovered. The fateful call came that evening, informing us that the recovered body had a signet ring with the initials JKJ—Jeffrey Kelly James. The search for Brian and Nikko continued, but their bodies were never found. I preached at my brother's funeral on December 27, 2006.
—Frank James

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today.

Difficult Questions for Christians

Being a Christian does not mean you never have doubts and you ignore difficult questions.  There are many big questions raised but God has also given us a sure foundation from which to answer life's questions, even the most difficult.

Recently Ligonier Ministries held a conference to answer some of these questions.  Check out their website where you can watch some leading Christian thinkers share answers to some of these questions.

Here are some of the topics covered.  I hope you find them helpful!

What is Evil and Where Did it Come From?

Is the Bible Just Another Book?

Why Do Christians Still Sin?

Can We Enjoy Heaven Knowing of Loved Ones in Hell?

Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Is the Doctrine of Inerrancy Defensible?  

Does the Gospel make a difference in your life right now?

Does the Gospel only make a difference in the future, or do you see the effects of the gospel in your life each moment of the day? I can relate to this article, not just because it uses my name, but in many ways, I fail to live the reality of the gospel in the present.... check it out. Let me know your thoughts!

CAN I EVER CHANGE?

Recently I picked up a book in our church library/bookstore called "How People Change" by Paul Tripp and Timothy Lane.

Like I often do, the book sat on my desk for weeks, while I read a few chapters of a stack of other books all the while hoping to dig into this book and this topic.  The question is a pretty big one, "How do people change?"  

I don't know anyone who doesn't want to change in some aspect of their life but so often is seems like change is almost impossible and we keeping screwing up in the same areas.  We look in many different directions for help, sometimes give up, and sometimes we just escape by trying to satisfy ourselves with pleasure in food, tv, recreation, reading, etc.

I finally picked up "How People Change" this evening since the book is about 3 weeks overdue to the church library and thought I'd skim through it to find out the key principles the authors were sharing about "how people change."  The central thrust of the book focuses on change happening through the work of Christ and our relationship to Christ.  But that is not what I want to blog about in this post.

One thing stuck out to me as I landed on page 82-83 in chapter 5 "Change Is a Community Project."  I thought this would be a good point to share, especially as I find myself in the descriptions that Tripp and Lane give below.


See if you can relate to or identify with any of these descriptions:

"Change...happens best - and primarily - within community..(pg. 73)."  "What are some common obstacles that hinder redemptive relationships from developing in our lives?  Consider the following list and ask yourself if any of them apply to you:

1. The busyness of life, keeping relationships distant and casual.
2. A total immersion in friendships that are activity- and happiness-based.
3. A conscious avoidance of close relationships as too scary or messy.
4. A formal commitment to church activities, with no real connection to people.
5. One-way, ministry-driven friendships in which you always minister to others, but never allow others to minister to you.
6. Self-centered, "meet my felt needs" relationships that keep you always receiving, but seldom giving.
7. A private, independent, "just me and God" approach to the Christian life.
8. Theology as a replacement for relationship.  Knowing God as a life of study, rather than the pursuit of God and his people.

Do any of these apply?  Think about your closest relationships: your spouse, parents, children, or small group.  What needs to change so that you can form more meaningful relationships with the people who are already in your life?"

So, what do you think?  Is there a relationship or several you need to change or pursue?  We don't change by ourselves.  I am looking forward to breakfast with a close friend Thursday morning so I can share my struggles, my victories, his counsel, rebuke, encouragement, and focus on Christ!  I couldn't do it with out him and the rest of the body of Christ!  

If you are reading this post, I hope you can keep a look out on me as well and help me to take the right steps toward loving God and walking in a way that pleases Him!

God is Enough

This is one of my favorite videos!  It is a great reminder to me that God is enough no matter what is going on in life.

In the deepest possible pain we can say "God is Enough", "God is good", and not just say those words, but feel those words and know that He is enough.  We can trust God in all things!

As Paul said, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."  Christ is all we need!  If Christ is our life then not even death can take away our greatest pleasure, God Himself.  Instead death brings us face to face with the center of our hope, joy, and satisfaction as we will have God in full and be like Him as we see Him.

Homosexuality.... where do you stand?

Where do you stand on homosexuality?  

Is there something seriously wrong with those who reject homosexuality?

Does the Bible reject or accept homosexuality?

Is it a choice?

I would encourage you to check out this talk by Matt Chandler and see if you agree or disagree with what he is saying.  I came across this talk on another blog from Justin Taylor.  

Here is a brief summary from Justin Taylor of Matt's talk:

"Chandler begins by tracing the biblical storyline. In the second video, he gives some basic responses to several street-level objections, like:

1. If you’re not hurting anyone else, what’s wrong with it?

2. Since you’re a sinner, too, who are you to call out others?

3. Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality.

4. Some animals have same-sex relations, so if it’s in nature it must natural.

5. The homosexuality condemned by Paul is a different type of homosexuality than we see today.

6. Revisionist arguments from modern scholarship.

In the third video he fields questions via text message—like how parents should handle their adult kids who are gay with partners coming to visit." 

You can watch these talks or download them here.

If you have any thoughts I'd be glad to hear them.

Do we really believe the wrath of God is coming?

As you think about what we are actually saved from and why we share the gospel with others John Piper has some interesting thoughts on the coming wrath of God:

"Do We Really Believe the Wrath of God Is Coming? 

A question that presses itself on me here is this: is one of the reasons that we make as little effort as we do in winning others the fact that we don't believe the wrath of God is coming? For many today the good news of Jesus Christ is conceived almost entirely as another strategy to handle psychological needs—depression, grief, abandonment, loneliness, anger, low self-esteem, fear, etc. And the gospel does have an impact on all those things. But that is not what makes it the gospel. If the gospel did not touch any of those things in this life (which is conceivable), it would still be unspeakably good news. Do you believe that?

What makes the gospel good news is that I am already acquitted in the courtroom of heaven. There is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. The sentence of infinite, holy wrath has been revoked in my case. Jesus absorbed it for me. Therefore, as 1 Thessalonians 5:9 says, "God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ."

But O what a difference there is for those who do not embrace the gospel! Romans 2:5 says, "Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." I wonder if we believe this. Very little in our culture helps us believe this. It is a massive worldview change from what most people think. There is coming a day of wrath and righteous judgment of God. Everyone, Paul says, will give an account of himself to God (Romans 14:12). And there are only two verdicts and two sentences: guilty or not guilty; and eternal life or eternal wrath and punishment (Matthew 25:46).

If this is a minor part of your thought world, if you don't think about this very much, then it will be hard for you to feel the sense of sorrow and urgency that Paul felt for the lost people around him. What we need to do is ponder the wrath of God that is coming—to meditate, think about, reflect on, mull over, turn over in our minds, and dwell on—the reality of the wrath of God. Until this figures as largely in our worldview as it did for Paul, we will not have the passion for evangelism that he had.

To help us do this I have written the STAR article this week about the wrath of God and included numerous texts about it. We need to memorize some of these and expose our minds to them as often as we are exposed to the messages of the media that the big things in life are money and position and coolness. One of the biggest realities in the universe is the wrath of God, and it is coming on all those who do not trust in Jesus, "who delivers us from the wrath to come.""

Graduation Day

Trying to figure out this whole blogging thing... graduation day with Adam Page... 6 years... 1 MDiv