You know, John Piper has come on my radar on women’s ministry issues, and some of my comments have been pretty negative. But this article on his DesiringGod.org web site is something that resonates completely with me. For my skeptical friends, no, this is not the evidence you keep hoping I’ll provide. It’s simply an example of where someone else’s experience of God parallels mine so completely that I have to simply say “Wow!”
Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six oclock. 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.
. . . continue reading from DesiringGod.org.
Hat tip: Adrian Warnock’s Blog.
Henry, on that site, the pastor wrote: “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.”
I think that we need to be aware of both auto-suggestion and doctrinal bias. If the gentiles have the law written in their hearts (Romans) then though a person’s joy may be great as God shows that person wonderful things out of the Law, that same person’s bias towards only hearing Biblical words has to be humbled. The last time my God spoke to me in a form of direct words, he said “We don’t do things that way”. I loved the communication because although I could have made it up I probably wouldn’t have. I was miserable, and the reproof strengthened me – it was chesed, loving kindness, in the shape of a reproof (BDB allows this as a rare translation and later it informed my translation of Psalm 23). I agree that the presence of the Lord in his word is wonderful, but he is also present in additional surprising ways in word and deed – known and unknown, perceived and not perceived. We do not have to think like a pastor or a scholar or know the authority structure of a religion to hear and know God. I learned what I have learned about presence through the death of Jesus for me and in me by faith – so I am a Christian, but such experience is not confined to that tradition.
Bob, I agree substantially with what you are saying here. I resonate with the experience of hearing God’s voice in and through scripture. The problem that I see is that quite frequently people who have no knowledge of or patience with the Bible itself claim to learn all kinds of new things through direct revelation.
My own experience in hearing the voice of God through scripture resonates fully with the words that Piper wrote. I do not, however, intend to deny that God can and will speak in other venues and of other topics.
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