Where There’s Blayze

A very common crisis of faith

I have been involved in the Church for around seven years now, which honestly is not that long at all, but even in that short space of time I have noticed that people seem to have the same questions and the same concerns. Questions wise it has been my experience that members of the Church are always looking for someone to help show them why their faith is not only justified, but defensible, to deal with the issues science has raised, such as the big bang in contrast to the creation story in Genesis (Gen 1-2). Always people will be contemplating the topic of suffering in the world, regardless of a belief in theism or atheism. But one of the greatest concerns I hear about is that we don’t hear from God in the way they seem to in the Bible. This can cause fear, dread and scepticism in even the most devout of Christians and it is very understandable as well. In the Bible we can see Jacob wrestled with God (Gen 32:22-32), Abraham debated with God (Gen 18:16-33), Moses spoke with God face to face (Exodus 33:11), even after the coming of Jesus Saul hears God’s voice through a blinding light (Acts 9). It’s enough to make any conscious believer have doubts. Why do I not hear from God like that? Why is God not speaking to me? Am I not good enough? Is God really even there? We follow this thought process long enough and we head into two horrible conclusions, either you are not good enough and not holy enough to hear God and their is something wrong with you, or He is simply not there. As a Church I can’t help but feel we have not been very good at aiding Christians in understanding what it means to hear from God and why the Bible is presented in such a fashion. This question can be detrimental to an individual’s faith and yet it’s one most are afraid to even ask.

Are we teaching the wrong things?

As part of my job I go into the local schools to give assemblies and assist in their lessons. It is quite common that I will have a teacher come up to me and ask me to help with their R.E. lessons. This is partly because the amount of information teachers are expected to translate to the children on Christianity in such a short space of time is laughable, but also because the questions the kids ask are very similar ones to that which the teacher is seeking answers for themselves. I recently got asked if I would help talk to a year four class on the story of the burning bush (Exodus 3). For those of you unfamiliar with this story it is about how Moses came upon a bush that was on fire, and yet did not consume the bush, and spoke with God. I had to, in essence, go through the entire story of Moses in the book of Exodus to give context to why this happened and also explain what came afterwards. This in itself is just a ridiculous task to take on with only forty five minutes to explain the intricacies of the story. Philosophers, scientists, historians and literary writers have poured over the books in the Bible to try and discern their meaning, and even with more than two thousand years of doing so, have not been able to fully appreciate all that is written. The story of Moses is rich with symbolism, cultural references and prophetic words that are barely understandable without the rest of the Bible to shed light on it. The Bible is a full story split into sixty six different books and each one offers new perspective on the rest. This is why the Bible needs to be taken in its entirety, if not then we lose its meaning among the pages and the cultural restrictions of the periods they were written in. To give an analogy (and a flawed one at that) if you watch a film that has a twist ending, then it will greatly alter your perspective of the entire film. I remember watching the Harry potter films while growing up and eagerly awaiting the next one to come out in the cinema so that I could see what happened next to our heroically relatable protagonists. After each new film I would end up going through the past films in the series to make sure I understood what this new addition meant in the grand scheme of the story. For example, for the first seven films in the series, we are led to believe that professor snape is a cruel and horrible lecturer at the school who seems to have it in for the protagonist Harry Potter, so when it is revealed in the sixth film that he is actually on the villians side, everyone kind of expected it and went along with it. It is only when you watch the last film that you find out that Professor Snape was in fact someone who was deeply in love with the protagonists deceased mother and everything he had done in regards to Harry Potter’s life was to help or save him. This one bit of information changes everything about the past seven films. Die hard fans would re-watch all the old films so that they could view this character in a completely new light and see his actions with the complete narrative in mind. If someone were to watch all the films except the last one, then their opinion of professor Snape is completely wrong and always will be until they take in the whole series as a collective. This is exactly the same for the Bible, one bit of imagery, prophecy or information may seem strange or irrelevant in one particular section, but in its entirety offers a beautifully full picture.

Despite all this, I do my best to explain this book as best I can and answer as many questions as I can in regards to what this means for us today. One question that was raised by a small girl was one that I had heard only the previous week at one of my Bible studies, “Do Christians believe you can still hear from God the way Moses did?” This is an extremely difficult question and one I am sure a much more intelligent mind than mine could write a whole book on. I was quite knocked back and did not quite know how to answer. The answer I gave was that Christians believe that God can interact with us in a great number of ways, but He will often do so in the way that we need. This may mean we see a talking burning bush, but more likely it will be something far more subtle. I was pressed to give an answer for a question I was not prepared to be asked and subsequently I did not really like my response. It is simple to suggest that God speaks to us in a way we need Him to, but what then about the people of the world that never seem to hear Him? Would they not have benefited greatly from seeing a bush in the middle of the field on fire talking to them and engaging with their questions? How amazing would it be if Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins were to announce to the world tomorrow that they had encountered God as a burning bush in the middle of a field and were now dedicating their lives to following Him. What a sign that would be! People around the world would be hard pressed not to hear that and have serious questions about their personal beliefs in God. Something like that could bring thousands to Church, a lot more than a new hymn or a preacher using a powerpoint would. The truth of the matter is that even in the Bible God speaking directly to an individual in such an outright action is still very rare. So is it really appropriate for us to teach children these stories in Sunday school instead of the other books where God is more subtle in His interactions.

What the Bible shows about hearing God

Have you ever sat down and tried to see how many people actually hear from God in one typical Bible story? In reality it’s not that many, it’s not even that often. Not at least in the way that Moses did. Let’s take the Exodus story as an example, at the start of the book of Exodus we can see that the Pharaoh decides to enslave, kill and torture the Israelites (Exodus 1:8-22) and yet between this time of Pharaoh making this decision and Moses being born and growing up God seems to speak to no one. Not in a way that he does to Moses later on. These people were followers of God and we know their would have been a great number of them because the Pharaoh initially fears their great number (Exodus 1:9). Despite this, we see no recorded evidence of God appearing to the Israelites in the form of a burning bush, we don’t see any recorded evidence of God speaking audibly to His people. Instead we wait many years for Moses to grow up before God speaks in a powerfully dramatic fashion. Look at the story of Esther, nowhere in the book of Esther is God named. Nowhere in the book of Esther is God even referenced. This is the only book in the Bible that seems to not mention God. Despite this, we still read that story and see God at work and even leading His people. In Esther 3:5-6 we see Haman plot to kill all of the Jewish people because Mordecai, a Jew, would not bow down to him. From our basic reading and interpretation of the story of the burning bush, we could sit here and think, well why does God not appear again? Surely such desperate times call for God to appear in dramatic fashion again? Instead, we do not see dramatic intervention, or audible speaking from God, but in fact we see devout following of God’s word by Jewish people. Upon hearing about the plot Esther tells her uncle Mordecai to tell the Jewish people to fast for three days and to wait upon God (Esther 4:16). After all this, it transpires that in incredible fashion, Haman is put to death on the very gallows he had built for the Jews (Esther 7:9-10), and then Mordecai was promoted to second in rank to king Xerxes (Esther 10). This is all incredible stuff, and let’s face it something that does not necessarily break the laws of science, like the burning bush does in the book of Exodus. Instead it shows God working through his people, silently answering prayers and working miracles. You can find examples of this kind of interaction by God throughout the Bible and indeed in the world today. It tends to only be with the gift of hindsight that we can truly see God is at work.

Why the more silent approach?

Many might argue that to not seek supernatural interventions by God is to restrict our image of Him and His power. I would argue, however, that to limit God’s interactions with his people to only those things that we cannot explain as being greatly naive and restrictive of God’s presence in the world. If God is all powerful and can work all things then why would He have to break the laws of science to answer our prayers, what would be the point? Is it any less incredible that Alexander Fleming accidentally stumbled across penicillin which has helped save millions of lives? Is that not a miracle and answer to prayer? Is it not an answer to prayer that we have had great advancements in the use of anaesthesia so that operations and childbirth can be far less painful and result in much fewer deaths? Surely people have been praying that God would help stop these meaningless deaths for thousands of years, why then must we restrict our praise to God just because these advancements are explainable using science? If we follow the train of thought that if it is explainable, then it can’t have been God, then we are just kidding ourselves. I remember being in an Old Testament lecture while at theological college, Cliff College, and we were discussing the likelyhood of the parting of the red sea. Was this something that genuinely happened or is it mythical superstition wrongly passed down through the generations. It was in this lecture that I found out that some had tried to argue that there was a natural explanation for the parting of the red sea. They had posited that there was records of an earthquake at the time that the parting of the sea was supposed to have taken place, therefore, if this had happened in such a way then it was possible that the sea did part. I don’t pretend to be an expert on understanding what happens during an Earthquake and what the potential aftermaths could be, but even if we can explain the parting of the red sea from a purely scientific standpoint, I don’t see how it makes it any less of a miracle? The Jewish people were still saved from slavery and the Egyptians were still defeated, who cares if we can explain those occurrences as natural phenomenons. Who cares if we can explain how we found penicillin, or how we have advanced so greatly in the area of medicine. There are churches all around the world praying that we will find a cure to cancer and that God will, not send a bolt of lightening to make it all better, but to guide the minds of those working on a cure to find a cure. If we were to find a cure for cancer tomorrow, then that is a miracle! I don’t care what anyone says to me, no matter what scientific explanation they can offer for the discovery of this cure, its almost irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that we have cured cancer and will now save countless lives due to this discovery. Why does God need to intervene in a way we don’t understand? When we teach children to help themselves and be productive members of society, we don’t do it for them with no explanation so that they will stand in awe of our actions, we teach them how to do things themselves so that they may repeat the process in future. Following this logically surely it is better for God to reveal things to us in a purely natural form as then we can seek to repeat that miracle for others. Moses was never going to be able to repeat the actions of the burning bush, but we can repeat the benefits of the discovery of penicillin. This is not to suggest that one form of intervention from God is greater than another, it is simply to say that each has its merits and we should not limit God to just the supernatural and the unexplainable.

So how do we hear God?

Although as I sit writing this blog I would love nothing more than to experience what some of our favourite characters in the Bible experienced, such as talking burning bushes, great lights, face to face discussions with God, it is certainly not how I have heard God. I can say with utter certainty that I have never heard an audible voice that I can attribute to being God. I have never had the luxury of visually seeing God in front of me challenging me to a wrestling match, although I think that experience would raise more questions for me than answers. Instead I have felt the presence of His Holy Spirit, I have felt his thoughts occupy my mind and I have received images that I know with utter certainty were not of my own imagination. For no other reason then they were just mad, or things I did not know about or understand. Surely this is the most biblical way to hear from God. When Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, the disciples expected that Jesus would remain with them in human form and go out to the people to prove his authority. Instead of this Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to leave them. This was no doubt the last thing they expected hear, but it does make sense. When Jesus was on the Earth he was restricted by the human form. The only way to be with Jesus and know His mind was to travel to see Him and question Him. This meant that only a very small population of the world would ever actually get to experience Him. This is why He leaves His disciples and tells them of the coming of His Holy Spirit that will reside in each of them and indeed all who seek Him (Matt 28:16-20). This meant that now location had no part to play in whether you would get to know the will/power of Jesus and indeed God, because His Spirit was something we could all access. When the Spirit is described in the Bible, it is never described as speaking audibly but rather guiding us. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). I could go on and name many more examples of the Spirit being an entity that guides us rather than speaking audibly to us. There is always the potential for God to speak to us in some grand fashion, but we should never beat ourselves up for not having an experience of that.

To give an example of a time when I felt God speak to me through the Holy Spirit, I was driving to Church one Sunday morning and I saw a car crash. I began praying out loud for the safety and health of all those involved when suddenly I had a thought in my head that there was someone at Church who needed prayer but was too afraid to ask for it. This took me somewhat by surprise as I started to wonder why I had thought of such a strange scenario in the midst of a prayer about something completely different. I started telling myself I was just being silly and was thinking too much into it. Once I got to the Church I decided I would let the minister know of this thought that had occupied my mind on the way hoping that she would then announce it and save me the embarrassment if I was wrong. Despite my hopes, she told me that I had to announce this during the service. From that point to when I announced it I kept telling myself I was being silly and that this was just a random thought I had in my mind, that it was not God at all. I eventually stood up to confess this experience and began by explaining how I was probably wrong. I told everyone I was probably just being silly, or it might not be a word for anyone here today. Once I had laid myself a bit of a safety net I told the Church of what I suspected God had said to me. I announced that if anyone did want prayer then they should find me at the end of the service and that I did not care what their reason was for feeling that they could not ask for prayer, I would still do it and with no judgement. I sat down and consistently looked around the Church to see if anyone seemed moved by my announcement. We got to the end of the service and people began to leave. Well there we are, proof that I was clearly going mad. Just before I was about to lock up an individual from the Church came to me asking if anyone had come to me to tell me that they felt I was talking about them. I told this individual that no one had and that I was probably making it all up. It was at that moment that this individual confessed that they felt I was speaking directly to them and their current situation. This individual began to tell me through their tears how they were going through a very tough time and were worried at how the Church would react if they knew. I am keeping what this individual said purposely vague as they have not granted me permission to talk about this particular experience, but what this proved was that there was an individual at Church who was desperately seeking prayer and yet did not feel like they could ask for it. I prayed for that particular person there and then as they wept and we spoke for a short time about their particular situation. As I was doing so I felt an immense surge of the Spirit within me, some may tell me it was a feeling of relief or pride in my actions, but I can assure you I have felt both those things and this was not that. This was that indescribable feeling that every Christian can attest to. It is a feeling that dominates the entirety of your body and soul, a feeling that our language could not describe with any great accuracy, it is the guiding power of the Holy Spirit. This experience could be explained away very naturally as one person who just got lucky, but that to me is no excuse to deny God the praise for that action. I have also experienced healings, people breaking out in tongues, people interpreting them, individuals collapsing under the power of the Spirit and prophecies so accurate that its scary. I have had preachers receive a word from God, stand up and begin to describe an image that is in my mind with intense accuracy. Our God is a powerful God that does act in dramatic fashion, but we should not restrict him to the realms of the unexplainable. We should not tell ourselves that the only way to hear God is to hear and audible voice or see something outside of the laws of science.

What should I do now?

This is indeed one of my longer blog posts and for all I know has raised more questions than it answers, but that’s ok, that is the nature of our faith. What I hope you will do upon reading this blog is to cut yourself some slack if you have never heard the audible voice of God. It does not mean you are any less of a Christian. The Bible shows us that these are rare occurrences and that instead we should seek for the Spirit of God to GUIDE us in our everyday lives. Go away and try and do what Esther and her uncle Mordecai did when they did not hear an audible voice, do what God calls us to do. Ground yourself in prayer, humble yourself and train yourself to identify those images, words and message that the Spirit of God wants to reveal to you. Chances are you have already experienced them, you may have just written them off as your own silliness or wild imagination. But to not act on those things is to deny God the opportunity to move, to deny God the opportunity to move in dramatic fashion. If you speak what you feel is from the Spirit and it transpires that you are wrong, then don’t worry about it, that is another experience that will aid you in your recognising what is of your own mind and what is of God’s mind. If we write off the possibility that God can talk to us through various means, then we shut the door to God completely. Earlier i mentioned Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, both of them have spoken about how nothing they could experience would make them believe in God. Dawkins goes as far as to say that if God were to appear as a giant in front of him and talk audibly to him that he still would not believe. He has written off the possibility of God being able to speak to him, and in my mind that is why they don’t hear from God. They refuse to. Don’t become one of these people. Open yourself up to God speaking to you through the everyday and you will begin to see God speaking to you through the unexplainable.