Well, I must say, yesterday’s devotional spoke to me 10 times over. I was blessed to consider promptings in my own life and also coupled that with prayerfully going through the Beatitudes. Interestingly enough, another devotional study I am involved with challenged me with the Beatitudes as well, I took that prompting as a whisper from God. In talking about the “blessedness” of the Beatitudes, author Brian McLaren in his book, We Make the Road by Walking writes this, “If we seek the kind of unconventional blessedness He proposes, we will experience the true aliveness of God’s Kingdom, the warmth of God’s comfort, the enjoyment of the gift of the earth, the satisfaction at seeing God’s restorative justice come more fully, the joy of receiving mercy, the direct experience of God’s presence, the honor and association with God and being in league with the prophets of old”. Seek blessedness, saints!
Pain – A Love Language?
Today, in Mark Batterson’s book, Whisper, we come to our discern our last love language as that of pain. C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures…but shouts in our pain”. Consider what Batterson had to say about our learning and discerning God’s voice through our pain:
“There isn’t one of us who doesn’t wrestle with shameful secrets, debilitating fears, and bitter memories. If statistics hold true, 6.7 percent of us deal with depression, 8.7 perfect of us have some sort of phobia, and 18 percent of us have an anxiety disorder. Those emotional challenges are real, but so is hope”.
“Without pain we would reinjure ourselves in the same ways. Without pain we would simply maintain the status quo. Without pain we would ignore problems that can kill us”.
“Nothing gets our full attention like pain. It breaks down false idols and purifies false motives. It reveals where we need to heal, where we need to grow. It refocuses priorities like nothing else.”
“My prayer isn’t for you that you’d be pain-free; it’s that you’d learn to discern God’s loving voice in the midst of pain.”
“No Pain, no Gain”
“Let’s be honest. Most of us prefer this philosophy: no pain, no pain. We opt for the path of least resistance, but that doesn’t get us where God wants us to go. I’m certainly not suggesting that we seek out pain. Pain will find us soon enough. But when pain comes, we shouldn’t try to go around it. Instead, we need to go through it and learn to discern what God is saying through pain, through grief, and through suffering”.
“Sometimes the circumstances we’re trying to change are the very circumstances God is using to change us. So before you take a painkiller, listen carefully to what God is saying during the tough times”.
Hearing His Voice = Know/Hear His Heart
I had a meeting last night wherein I shared a bit about these devotions I have been writing up and discerning the voice of God in my life. The brother I was meeting with added to my thoughts that rather than hearing the voice of God in His life, He feels His heart. In my estimation we were saying the same thing, but Mark Batterson challenges that the goal of the voice is to know God’s heart (talk about God’s voice coming through other people!!). Mark goes on to say, “God wants us to hear what He is saying, and we must heed His voice. But much more than that, He wants us to hear His heart. So He whispers soften and softer so that we have to get closer and closer. And when we finally get close enough, He envelops us in His arms and tells us that He loves us”.
I hope this look through Whisper challenged you to discern God’s voice. Mark ends the book with the following points:
“We’ve been deafened by the voice of conformity, the voice of criticism, and the voice of condemnation, and the side effects include loneliness, shame, and anxiety”.
“Is He the loudest voice in your life? That’s the question. The answer will determine your destiny”
God really spoke to me through the meeting I had last night. I guess it’s true if we have those attenas up. Much of the discussion I had with the brother was about the advancement of the Christian Church. In the next portion of Untamed, Alan Hirsch challenges our perspective and reality of the church. He starts out with a quote by Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The church is nothing but a section of humanity in which Christ has truly taken form”. Alan goes on to say that our major need in seeing a more missional people of God is to “Recognize the world-transforming power of the people of God” which he remarks “ is essential to becoming a mission church again in the West”.
I couldn’t agree more. Hirsch then offers up the Chinese Underground Church as an example and says, “Surely we carry the same potential in ourselves and in our communities as our Chinese counterparts. What are the obstacles that stop us from becoming a dynamic movement? What’s the difference?”
Priesthood of Believers
I truly believe than Alan Hirsch is highlighting what is necessary if we want to see Christ’s Church more authentic and effective in all that we do. Alan notes, “One of the most catastrophic- heinous is not too strong a word – barriers to being a truly untamed church full of authentic disciples lies in the suppression of one of the most potent of Christian truths about the church – the priesthood of all believers”.
If I haven’t already belabored the insights and voice of God that I discerned in my meeting last night, I have more to say. Our conversation moved into the necessity of each Believer knowing the power of God in them and acting upon it. I confessed areas this is needed in my own life and the desire to see others empowered. The brother-in-Christ that I was meeting with brought up the reality of each of us seeing ourselves as priests and discerning the work the priests would do. I have taught and wrote a bit about my “missional understanding” of the 5-fold ministries, which does indeed come from insights by Alan Hirsch (in other books like The Forgotten Ways, as well as, The Permanent Revolution). Alan writes, “One of the most revolutionary aspects of the Ephesians 4 text is that it is not a leadership text – it is a text about the ministry of the church…One of the most potent things any community can do is re-legitimize the Ephesians 4 ministries and help develop people in their various ministries, in other words, grow them from undeveloped ministers into mature, Christlike leaders”.
Prayerfully, you are already immersed in discipleship. The best way to see this happen is involvement in a local community of faith wherein you might discern and learn more about you calling in and contribution to the Kingdom of God. If you’d like to take an APEST test (and maybe after share the results your pastor or reach out to me), please consider visiting this link and messaging me, http://www.fivefoldsurvey.com/
For His Kingdom and Glory,
Pastor Michael Miano