Sunday, June 1, 2008

God Wants You to Hear His Voice.

1:57 PM by Christi Bowman

Matthew 23-8-10 (msg) You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do.

Kevin and I were talking about 3 types of grace last night...beckoning grace, saving grace, and sanctifying grace. Did you know that we don't even posses the ability to come to God on our own? If we see Christ for who He is, it is because God allows us to (John 6:43-46 msg).

Jesus said,..."You're not in charge here. The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me, that's the only way you'll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, setting them on their feet, ready for the End. This is what the prophets meant when they wrote, 'And then they will all be personally taught by God.' Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to the Father, really listening and therefore learning, comes to me to be taught personally, to see it with his own eyes, hear it with his own ears, from me, since I have it firsthand from the Father. No one has seen the Father except the One who has his Being alongside the Father—and you can see me.

If you receive beckoning grace, you move to saving grace. Saving grace is accepting Christ as your personal savior. I think this is the only grace we teach, we begin at saving grace, and we end there. God has SO much more for us. Sanctifying grace is receiving God's teaching, and allowing it to change your life. We have free will. At any point in this process we can choose to turn a blind eye, pursue earthly things (satan's kingdom), and halt the process. If we halt it in the beginning we die an eternal death. If we halt it at a later point we miss out on an abundant life with our Father.

God speaks to us in many ways. A few are people, the Bible, and Himself personally. God came to me back in October and said in a very audible voice from within..."I can't use you like this". When Almighty God spoke to me, I was already at a place where I recognized that NOTHING I pursued was bringing me REAL happiness. He had let me pursue it ALL. It was almost as if He knew I had to prove that to myself. I was pursuing satan's kingdom, and I couldn't even see it for what it was. Don't waste the time I did trying to make yourself happy. YOU CAN'T DO IT. THINGS, no matter what they are...possessions...addictions...sports...jobs...success...they CAN'T make you happy. They are LIES!

AIM, the mission organization we are getting involved with, believes heavily in discipling. Discipling is when someone takes you under their wing, and challenges you to come up higher as you study God's word. God will put the right discipler on your path when you are ready. He did this for me. I have started participating in the discipling process. I read a book "Save me from myself" by Brian "Head" Welch. In that book, the writer brought up some spiritual issues that I wanted to know more about. God wanted me to want to know more about them too. He wouldn't let the ideas leave my head, I didn't understand them myself, so I prayed that God would help me come to a better understanding of these spiritual things. A few days later I received an email about the same spiritual material I came across in the book...from my discipler (Lakeland stuff). After my discipler's email, Seth blogged about the SAME spiritual material (Lakeland). I emailed my discipler about these things. She said to call her. That phone call was amazing...and has opened MANY spiritual doors. This is what discipling is all about. God uses people to help you grow.

Don't discount the voice of God Himself. I don't think you can hear Him, as your teacher, when you first begin to take your relationship with Him seriously. We have A LOT of walls and roadblocks to hearing the voice of God, and receiving what He has to say. These walls and roadblocks MUST be torn down. Once you come to the place where you realize your life is meaningless without Him...REALLY meaningless...He will begin, slowly, bringing things into your life to bring you to where He needs you to be. God wants to talk to you. God wants you to hear his voice. God has some AMAZING revelations about this life, your body, and where you actually are once you are in Christ. These revelations will free you from the pain of this earth in a mind boggling way.

We have allowed satan to take this type of relationship with God away from us. Lets get it back. God wants to be our teacher. What He knows and wants to reveal to us is far greater than anything man can say. Give your life away. Give the pursuit of yourself, while you are here on this earth, away. Realize the truth of Psalm 90...our lives here on this earth are like blades of grass. From an eternal perspective, our time here is NOT long. Lets STOP making decisions like this is our forever place...its just not.

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