Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. I'm Evan. I'm the other senior pastor. Great to be together today. Today we're gonna be in just a moment in John chapter 10. We've been in a series now, this is our second week called Good Questions. We're not trying to give you all the answers, nor would we be able to, but instead, we're trying to ask really good questions that maybe spark some conversation and some thought around what God has for us as individuals, as.
[00:00:32] And so today, hopefully, we ask the right questions about where we're at in our lives and faith. And today's question is, how do I know if I'm hearing God? How do I know if I'm hearing God?
[00:00:46] You know, sometimes we come to follow Jesus and we come to a place of faith, and it's a really important thing to really believe that God has something to say about our lives and decisions. Every decision is important, but some really affect the trajectory of our lives, our families, where we will work or where we will move or who we will marry. All these big, huge questions. And then down to the smaller questions of what school should I send my kid to? Or, you know, what color socks should I wear? I'm wearing my yellow socks this morning. Yeah.
[00:01:23] Little pop of color. You're like, Evan, you. And pops of color do not happen. Yeah, they happen on my socks. I'll tell you what.
[00:01:31] But big decisions and little. We lean in as people of faith.
[00:01:35] We're asking the question, does God speak in a way that could actually affect my choices in my life?
[00:01:42] And today, if you're in a place you're like, I'm not sure that actually God is all that concerned about my decisions.
[00:01:48] And maybe God is out there somewhere, but I'm not convinced that he actually speaks in a way that can affect my life in a personal way. And if that's you, I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:58] And I hope today maybe you can hear this with a new understanding that maybe, just maybe, God, although he is great and powerful and majestic and seemingly far away, that somehow he speaks through the noise of the world to our hearts.
[00:02:19] And this idea that we come to prayer and we speak to God and then we wait to hear from him in a way that just resonates in our hearts, I think that's really true and accurate. Or maybe if you've been in more Pentecostal movements, you hear, you know, I need a word from God. We're seeking A word from God.
[00:02:35] And I want to say right off the bat that I believe that God speaks to our hearts. I believe that he speaks in moments of worship. I believe he speaks in moments where we are just fully focused in a place of prayer.
[00:02:48] But I also believe that when God speaks, that we have a job to do to ensure that it is tethered to God's written word.
[00:02:57] And this is really key because I have been in church world long enough to see how dangerous it can be to assign God's voice to voices that are not actually God.
[00:03:10] And I've been in plenty of conversations over the 30 years I've been in kind of this church world where people will assign God's voice to a decision that they just want to make. So, well, God told me. So, end of discussion. Right?
[00:03:25] No arguments. We're just going to shut down the conversation. And effectively, it does shut down the conversation.
[00:03:31] And this is not what we're going to talk about today. When we hear the voice of God, it is not the way that we can baptize our own selfishness with God language. You hear me?
[00:03:43] Instead, we actually turn to, yes, moments of prayer, yes, moments in this community where we come together and worship and seek God's voice.
[00:03:52] But we're always anchored to God's word. And especially as we spend time in the Gospels, looking at the heart and the character of Jesus, what happens is we begin to understand and come to a place where we can recognize the voice of Jesus because we have spent time for ourselves in Scripture.
[00:04:13] And don't take my word for it, don't take Pastor Ben's word for it, but for ourselves, we are seeking the voice of God. And we know this all the way back from Proverbs 3, 5, a very famous scripture where the writer of Proverbs says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
[00:04:34] And so we hear that, and oftentimes we interpret that as, well, I gotta go to God. And he's gotta actually, you know, give me those written instructions to know what to do next.
[00:04:44] God, I'm interested in marrying these two different people. I need to know which one. God, would you please just guide me?
[00:04:52] Fortune teller God.
[00:04:56] And I'm not sure that that's how God works.
[00:04:58] Instead, he invites us to come into relationship with him so close that our decisions and our character reflect his.
[00:05:08] And so we're going to be In John chapter 10, if we believe that we're Hearing the voice of God, we don't want to have to guess whether it's really his voice.
[00:05:18] We want to seek God, not for certainty about what's next, tomorrow or the next day, but we seek God's will so that we become formed and shaped to be more like him in our decision making. And oftentimes I think what our real question is isn't just God, what is your will for my life, but God, I want to hear you so that I can know what happens next.
[00:05:41] And we have to be careful that in seeking God's will and his voice in our lives, that we are not trying to opt out of the life of faith. Where we walk by faith and not by sight.
[00:05:52] There is a temptation to ask for God to help us opt out of the very thing that is at the heart of the Christian life, which is that we have to walk with trust, not knowing what's next, but believing that God will go with us into that next decision, into that next season, into that relationship.
[00:06:11] And for all those control freaks out there, and I am one of them, we desire to have everything planned out in a way that we can know and control. And God calls us to walk out onto the water of the wild frontier of following Him.
[00:06:30] And so this is not a tightrope walk. This is not something to where God asks us to follow this path so difficult and dangerous that one wrong mistake and we will fall off this tightrope of faith.
[00:06:45] Instead, like it says in Romans, chapter five, he invites us into the wide open spaces.
[00:06:51] And it's in those wide open spaces that we come to know and to love him. John, chapter 10.
[00:06:56] And just the chapter before Jesus has encountered these religious leaders who are very critical of Jesus. They're mad at him because he has had the nerve to heal a blind man in the temple on the Sabbath, which breaks the Sabbath rules that you're not supposed to work.
[00:07:12] And so here are these religious leaders, these Pharisees, and they're so intent on enforcing the rules and propping up their own importance and power that when God miraculously heals a hurting man, they can't see the miracle for what it is. Instead, they see it as a threat to their own power.
[00:07:30] And these guys, these religious leaders, who are by their very vocation, supposed to be the shepherds of the people as they come to receive forgiveness for sins and the mercy of God and experience something of the beauty of God's world.
[00:07:47] Instead, the shepherds have become the obstacle for people to experience the mercy of God. And so Jesus responds to this in John 10:11, he says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. I have two brothers.
[00:08:13] My oldest brother's five years older than me, and we grew up here in Bend. And back in the day, in the 80s and 90s, we lived way, way outside of town, like where the Central Library is now. So times change, but in our neighborhood, we would kind of hang out and walk around and ride bikes. And I remember I went on a walk with my oldest brother and.
[00:08:39] And so he's walking with me, and we get to one street over from our house, and a big German shepherd comes just bounding towards us from the yard that we're walking past. And this dog is barking and angry and mad.
[00:08:55] And I'm about, I don't know, probably six or seven years old. So my brother's what, 12, 13?
[00:09:00] And I don't know what to do because I see this dog coming at us. And my brother, God bless him, he stands up and he sees this dog coming, and so he reaches down and he grabs the stick and he puts the stick in my hand, and then he puts me in front of him.
[00:09:21] So, you know, there's different ways to exist in a relationship.
[00:09:28] Thankfully, the dog stopped. I don't know if there was an invisible fence or whatever, but I'm okay. I was okay. Our relationship has never been the same between me and my brother. But.
[00:09:37] But this is what Jesus is saying. He's saying, there are bad shepherds and there are good shepherds. There are bad voices that would exert authority in your life, and there's good voices that would exert authority in your life. And he's saying in no uncertain terms as he's standing next to these religious leaders and Pharisees, saying, these are bad shepherds, and when their best interests are threatened, they're going to abandon you.
[00:10:03] And he's drawing this contrast with him. He's saying, listen, I'm not that kind of shepherd. I am the good shepherd who lays down my life for the sheep.
[00:10:11] Verse 13. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. Verse 14. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of the sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice.
[00:10:29] And there shall be one flock and one shepherd. And then verse 27, he says, My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
[00:10:38] There is something critical about not just the voice of the shepherd speaking in a way that anyone in earshot can understand it, but there is something so critical about the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep that it's not enough just to hear the instruction or the voice of God, but it's in that relationship between the shepherd and the sheep by which the sheep can understand, recognize the voice, and obey.
[00:11:08] The most famous prayer that the Jewish people pray is out of the book of Deuteronomy.
[00:11:16] And traditionally, every day, if you grew up in a Jewish household, you would pray the Shema.
[00:11:26] And. And it's out of Deuteronomy, where it says, hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And as for you, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
[00:11:37] And the very first word of that is Shema in Hebrew. And that's where the name of the prayer comes from. And it's the word hear.
[00:11:46] But what's fascinating about that is that the connotation of hearing is not just to listen to words as they hit your ear and get translated by your brain into words, but it's to pay attention to the one who is speaking and to carry out or obey what he is saying.
[00:12:03] There's no separate word for obeying that is different from the word to listen. And so for those who have prayed this prayer every morning for generation after generation, the very first word of the prayer is hearing and obey. When you understand it. And can I tell you that hearing the voice of God is not just to hear instruction or hear God throw out things that are true about what you should do or what you should think or how you should live, but it's to hear with the intention of understanding because you trust the one who is speaking.
[00:12:36] And this relationship of trust is at the heart of hearing the voice of God. That God is not some vending machine of good outcomes where if we punch in the right code, if we get the right formula, then God is gonna lay out for us the best path forward. Instead, we are invited into a relationship of one, the sheep, with the shepherd.
[00:13:00] And God calls us into this relationship, not so that he can, you know, spell out every single move of our day, but to create in us a kind of character so that as we exist in this world and make the next best move that we do so with the heart and the mind of God. And I love this quote from E. Stanley Jones. He says, God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us, the development of character, rather than in the direction in this and that. And the other thing must be the primary purpose of the father. He will guide us, but he won't override us.
[00:13:31] As the parent of a brand new high schooler, the last thing I want is constantly her texting. Okay, I just arrived at school. Which door should I go in? Dad.
[00:13:42] Okay, I'm through the door. Which class should I go? No. I am most proud of my kids as they show their independence, not in rejection of what they've been trained and taught and brought up in, in our home, but as a reflection of their developing character. They can make decisions and choices that I say, that's the same choice I would make.
[00:14:00] Why? Because there's character being developed. And so it is with God. If we are looking for a pen on paper kind of instruction list for today, we might miss the point that God is trying to shape us into the kind of people that will make the decisions that in line with his heart and his character, less of an audible voice and more of a shaping of who we are. So that as we move and exist in this world, we do so as reflections of the God who made us in his very own image.
[00:14:28] And, you know, after 20 years of marriage, Alyssa and I celebrated 20 years this last summer. And if someone were to tell me something about Alyssa, and you know, she's not there, and they come and say, Alyssa told me this, Alyssa said that she doesn't like Trader Joe's. I would say, liar.
[00:14:47] I know her too well. And she's probably at Trader Joe's right now, in fact.
[00:14:53] Because why? Because we've spent too much time together. I know her too well. We've had too many years together and conversations and I've paid too much attention for someone to come and claim to represent what my wife does or doesn't like or have preferences for. I will know better because I know her so deeply and I know even the cereal at Trader Joe's she will buy. And that's garbage cereal.
[00:15:21] It's terrible. Some of you don't know. Some of you have just had, like, their delicious frozen treats. Those are very good. But you've never gotten the cereal. And you're like, ah, this is probably pretty good too. It is not. It is the worst.
[00:15:34] It's like little bits of cardboard is terrible.
[00:15:39] That's the depth of her love for Trader Joe's.
[00:15:43] Sorry, I will keep going. But when we come to a place where we know the heart of Jesus so closely that when competing voices that would claim to speak for God come in and say, well, I think this is what actually God has for you or your family or your relationships or your church.
[00:16:05] We spent so much time in the Gospels and reading for ourselves and not just taking, you know, our word for it up here on the platform, but really for ourselves, spending time with Jesus in the story of Jesus, spending time in prayer, not only in these corporate settings, but also personally, that we spend time in worship, whether you can sing or not, but we spend time in focused attention with Jesus. We begin to understand what he sounds like.
[00:16:33] And I think one of the greatest dangers is not nefarious forces out there trying to come for your values. It's actually mistaking other lesser voices and lesser shepherds for the voice of our true shepherd, our good shepherd, Jesus.
[00:16:51] And there are so many voices and so much noise today, it can be incredibly challenging to hone in on and hear with clarity the voice of Jesus in our lives. And so we have to do the work to discern what is the voice of Jesus and what is lesser voices in our lives. And I doom scroll with the best of them. Okay?
[00:17:16] I am as susceptible as any of us are to the algorithms that entertain the ways that media is presented in such a way that is addictive and compelling and interesting. And before we know it, we are immersing ourselves in information and entertainment and news and all the sources of information out there, not realizing how deeply that is forming us.
[00:17:44] Evan, are you anti news? No, I'm not.
[00:17:47] Are you anti technology? No, I'm not. But we can never assign greater authority to those sources of news and information and entertainment than we do to the voice of Jesus.
[00:17:58] And if our entire diet of information looks a lot like scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, maybe we need to balance out our diet. You hear what I'm saying today? Because that forms us.
[00:18:12] And then I've noticed this about myself, I'll come into places where, you know, maybe it's here at church. Pastor Ben's up here preaching.
[00:18:21] And if I've spent all week scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and letting that form me, I come in here, and when there are things that are said from Scripture that align with what I've found on my feed or my algorithm that I agree with, I'm like, that's a good point.
[00:18:37] But then if something is said that doesn't really align with where I've been on my phone all week. I'll say ah, less so. I don't know about that, but I liked that one point that aligns with, you know, what I'm doing. I'm letting somebody else, somebody else's voice be my shepherd. And then when I come, and I'm not saying Ben is the voice of Jesus or I'm the voice of Jesus, but when scripture is. Is teaching me something and trying to challenge me, I'll recoil a bit because I'm actually allowing something else to be my shepherd.
[00:19:04] And so we have this invitation to maybe de emphasize and deauthorize those lesser voices in our lives and coming through our screens so that we can put back the voice of Jesus as the highest authority in our lives.
[00:19:22] And so we do this anchored in scripture. And there's really three great questions I think that we should ask as we are setting out to make a decision or forming a worldview or coming to a point of where we have an opinion on something.
[00:19:37] These are some great questions to ask. Number one, does this resonate with the character of Jesus as told in Scripture?
[00:19:45] Can I see Jesus? Not the Jesus that I've invented, not the Jesus that a podcaster told me about, but the Jesus I read in Scripture. Can I see Jesus sitting with me across from a table? Would he support where I'm coming to? As far as this point of decision or opinion based on his character as revealed in the Gospels, does it resonate with the character of Jesus, or is it just a projection and a reflection of my own anger, fear, insecurity, anxiety?
[00:20:16] Does it resonate with the character of Jesus as told in Scripture? Number two, and am I willing to let others in our community question my decision or interpretation?
[00:20:26] There is no shortage of good and bad information out there that we can ingest. And it is critical to be in a healthy community where I open myself up in a vulnerable way for people to challenge the opinions that I have come to.
[00:20:41] And so this is maybe one of the gifts that the church has to offer in communities is a place where maybe people don't agree with everything I think and I have to sit across from you and we can talk about that. And the wisdom of God comes through in the counsel of many that there is something of discernment that cannot happen in a vacuum all by ourselves. We need one another.
[00:21:05] And then number three, does following this decision or opinion lead towards the fruit of the Spirit in my life? This is maybe one of the best ways to tell if we are hearing the voice of God? The voice of Jesus in our lives are our decisions that we are walking in, creating the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, self control, long suffering.
[00:21:30] When we are walking through our lives, the fruit of our decisions, does it look like anxiety, fear, insecurity, anger, resentment?
[00:21:40] We should go back to Jesus and say, lord, lead me in your way. Not because every decision is going to be the path of least resistance. Not every decision is going to be easy or pleasant. But what it produces in us is always going to be the fruit of the Spirit.
[00:21:54] Those things that Paul says in Galatians 5, there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit is what we desire as a result of us following the voice of the Good Shepherd.
[00:22:06] And so what are the competing voices that will lead us astray if we give them ultimate authority in our lives? Here's a few of them. Number one is our own goals and desires.
[00:22:17] Of course, this is not bad to have goals and desires. I hope you have goals and desires in your life.
[00:22:22] But when every decision is only led by our own desire or goal to be more successful or better or more affluent, we oftentimes can look back and say, lord, lead me in ways that sometimes cost for the sake of following your heart and will for my life.
[00:22:44] And there's this great tradition in the early Church, in the church fathers with St Ignatius, where instead of trying to shove down desire in our lives, instead of trying to separate ourselves from desires which we all have, St. Ignatius and those who have followed his teachings are encouraged not to shove down or try to repress or ignore desire in this life, but actually to lean into that desire, but direct it towards Jesus.
[00:23:20] So all that desire for success or power or pleasure that we look and we turn towards Christ and we follow, focus that desire towards Him. We've become people not with no desires, but actually we have turned up the dials of desire and focused it fully on the person of Jesus and what he's doing in this world.
[00:23:42] And so if we don't have shaped and formed goals and desires and we give first billing and the highest authority to those goals and desires, oftentimes we become selfish people that walk far from the will of God in our lives. And number two is the preferences of other people or what those around me want.
[00:24:01] Maybe you're a people pleaser. How many people pleasers do we have? Raise your hand. It would make me really happy if you'd raise your hand. Okay. Yeah, I know we all probably at some level want to keep people around us happy. And there's obviously a Virtue in being the kind of person that selflessly wants to see that other people are happy and content and not angry at us.
[00:24:22] But we know this. We can't keep everybody happy. And if the goal of our lives is just to make everyone happy and everyone happy at us, we will find ourselves deeply frustrated because you can't do it.
[00:24:32] And so we have to lay down not only our own goals and desires and give them second billing beneath the voice of Jesus, but we also have to set down the preferences of other people and what those around me want me to do for my life.
[00:24:45] And then finally, the systems that steal attention to what the world wants.
[00:24:51] These are all lesser voices, voices that come not necessarily with nefarious purposes, but oftentimes the noise that clouds out our ability to hear clearly the voice of our shepherd.
[00:25:03] And in the ancient world, in the near east, even today, oftentimes around watering places, multiple flocks would gather all to drink at the same time from a watering hole.
[00:25:17] And the only way that they could tell the sheep apart without going sheep by sheep, if they were branded or whatever, is that the shepherd would stand at a distance and with his voice, he would call out to the sheep. And those that recognize the voice of their shepherd will come out from the group.
[00:25:32] And I want to tell you this is a picture, I think, of what the church is, that we are not so separate, that we never interact with people on the outside. And you know this. If you've been here at Westside for a long time, you know that we are a church for the city. We are a church aimed outward at the city and those on the outside. We believe that God has not gathered us here for our own sake, but it's for those who are not yet know Him.
[00:25:56] And so we are hopefully very embedded and ingrained in the world around us. But we never lose the ability to hear the voice of Jesus amongst the noise.
[00:26:06] I think this is the heart of Jesus for us as a community.
[00:26:13] So if we are discipled, informed, by a thousand lesser voices because they agree with us or entertain us or align with our own desires, we will often find ourselves down a road where we walk far from the voice of our shepherd.
[00:26:30] And the invitation of Jesus is to come back, to come back to hear his voice, not to get today's fortune told, but instead to have such a relationship with him, to where we hear his voice. And I would say this, you know, the world oftentimes can feel out of control.
[00:26:49] And so anger and fear and distraction become the drug of choice for us in our day. To day lives.
[00:26:57] And to that I think we have a picture of what our good shepherd offers in Psalm 23. And so I want to close in just a moment. I want to read this very familiar passage to us today as a picture of what we can expect when we follow after our shepherd and listen for his voice.
[00:27:17] Psalm 23. It says, the Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need.
[00:27:21] He lets me rest in green meadows. He leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength.
[00:27:26] He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.
[00:27:30] And even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid. For you are close beside me.
[00:27:35] Your rod and your staff, they protect and they comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.
[00:27:47] And surely goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life.
[00:27:52] And I will live in the house of the Lord forever.
[00:27:56] If the voices in our ear and speaking to our souls are creating that anxiety and that fear, making us angry, they're making us doubt the goodness of God in our world, I would turn us again to Psalm 23 and say, if we're listening to the voice of our shepherd, even in the darkest valley, we're not going to be afraid.
[00:28:20] Even when we're surrounded by enemies on all sides. He prepares a table and a feast for us right in the middle. There is peace in the storms if we're staying close to Jesus.
[00:28:32] And this week, I know, and I think I said this last week as well.
[00:28:36] It's true again this week. We have a lot of people hurting, a lot of people hospitalized right now, a lot of people facing diagnosis and sickness and.
[00:28:44] And all these things. And so my heart is heavy today for so many that are looking to God and saying, God, I need to hear your voice because I'm hurting.
[00:28:53] I don't know what this outcome is.
[00:28:57] And for all those who are experiencing that pain or that uncertainty, that fear, man, I just pray this over us today. Psalm 23. That in the darkest valley we are facing a decision we don't know the answer to, that we would experience God's goodness and his mercy and his lovingkindness, that all our days we would know that he is with us even in the darkest valley. Amen. Amen.
