Get a Revelation // When God Speaks, Pt 3

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Sometimes, let’s be honest about it, we can be incredibly spiritually thick. God puts something right under our noses and we miss it completely. Come on, it’s true isn’t it? So perhaps it’s time to get a revelation of the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to ignore the things that we’re taught. I remember during my tertiary studies plenty of times sitting in class, hearing the lecturer speaking and yet allowing my mind to wander. I still have notes from lectures where my handwriting falls off the page, where I fell asleep during the lecture. A good friend of mine tells of a teacher who said to him once, "Son, you sit and think, but mostly you just sit."

Often our undoing isn’t as a result of a lack of knowledge, but our failure to learn and apply what we’re being taught. I’ve watched people at church as the preacher preaches a really good sermon. Their minds have kind of wandered off somewhere else, or they’re more interested in that woman over there who just walked in late or whatever’s going on. Now imagine that morning, when you were sitting in that church, hearing the preacher but not really listening, imagine that God was wanting to speak to you, through His Word. God had a special message, something powerful to say to you that would change your life, but you weren’t paying attention. Sad to say, that happens a lot more often than we’d like to think.

So let’s take a look at the complete opposite of that: A heart that’s open; that’s ready; that’s listening and hanging on God’s every word. Psalm 119:12-16:

Blessed are You, o LORD; teach me Your statutes! With my lips, I declare all the ordinances of Your mouth. I delight in the way of Your decrees as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your Word.

That right there is a man speaking to God about his heart to learn from what God has to say. There is a man with a teachable heart: Not only ready to listen to what God has to say, but to live by what God has to say.

So I’m thinking, what if everyone who believes in Jesus, what if everyone who calls themselves a Christian, had a heart like that? What would the church look like then? What would this world look like then? How much more love, more peace, more sacrifice, more service, more healing, more reconciliation would be happening in this world if we all, you and I, lived with that sort of a heart towards God?

Teach me Your statutes, o God. I will declare Your Word with my lips. I will delight in Your ways as much as in all riches! I will meditate on Your Word and fix my eyes on Your ways. I’ll delight in Your Word, and I won’t forget it. Wow!

But there’s something else that we need to get that sort of insight, that sort of impact in our lives from God’s Word. The essential ingredient of having a teachable heart, the essential prerequisite if you will, is having a humble heart: A heart that is aware of the deep spiritual poverty that lies within. Often the reason we don’t take God’s instruction (God’s wisdom) to heart is because there’s this translucent veil of self, as A. W. Tozer calls it, draped over our hearts. ‘I know everything! If only my wife or my husband or that person over there would listen to what the preacher’s preaching today! Well, this world would be a better place! If only they would get it!’ That’s often how we think. Right? It never crosses our minds that what God is saying today through His Word is meant for us; that He’s trying to deal with that poverty within us, that’s robbing us of the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

Come on, we all have blind spots. We all have things about ourselves that we can’t see. Well, that’s the whole point of it being a blind spot, right? We just can’t see it. Jesus said (Matthew 5:3):

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, those who recognise their deep poverty, those who admit it, they’re the ones who’ll be blessed because the kingdom of heaven is for them. What blind spots do you have? The answer is, you don’t know because they’re blind spots. The same’s true of me. I have my blind spots too. The question is, what do you do about them? So try this on for size. Psalm 119:17-19:

Deal bountifully with Your servant, so that I may live and observe Your Word. Open my eyes, so that I may behold the wondrous things of Your Law. I live as an alien in the land; do not hide Your commandments from me.

What do we do about our blind spots? We ask God to open our eyes, so that we can see the point of what He’s trying to say to us; so that when we open the Bible and read His Word, the Holy Spirit will lift that one particular verse or that one particular story that He has for us today right off the page and plonk it into our hearts; so that in an instant, we’ll get what He’s trying to say to us, in a way that completely and utterly and radically changes us; in a way that deals with some of the deep spiritual poverty in our hearts.

When was the last time that you went to God and asked Him to deal bountifully with you, to open your eyes so that you could behold the wonders of His Word? When was the last time you said to God, "LORD, I’m an alien in this world. This life down here is tough today. I need Your Word, so don’t hide Your commandments from me?" In James 1:5, God says that:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you.

Sometimes we wrestle with problems and we just can’t find the solution. The solution, though, is in asking God to help; asking God to open our eyes; asking God to give us the wisdom that we don’t have.

Why is it that we imagine that, in living our lives for God, we have to go it alone? So often it never crosses our mind to ask for help from the God who created the whole universe.

Listen how God describes Himself to His people, when they are labouring as slaves in captivity. Just listen to the picture that God paints of Himself:

To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created all these stars? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:25-31)

That’s the God who we serve. This God whose understanding is unsearchable. Who created the heavens and the earth, the trillions of stars. Why do we imagine that our way is hidden from Him, when all along this mighty God would give power and strength to the weak.?

God is ready, willing and able to help. And He is still speaking today, through His Word. So what are you waiting for?