How does God speak to us

I adapted this from some correspondence and discussion I recently had on the subject of 'bible dipping', when sometimes you just turn to the Bible, let it fall open and are really helped and spoken to by God.

I guess 'how God can speak to us' is a pretty significant part of our Christian lives, maybe it should be 'how God DOES speak to us..' (..and much of the time we are either not listening or we ignore it) It's a bit like when we are warned not to grieve the Spirit, a very important subject for our lives to be successful. The Bible is our food and the context of what you are reading is very important so we can understand how the words were intended by the author or Author. The authors had their own context of course, like many of the 'letters' in the New Testament, but it is GOD who is the Author, it is through Him and His Spirit that all these authors are brought together in one Book (we won't mention some of the books that many scholars think may have been omitted from our 'version'..).

Interpretation of Scripture is a subjective matter of course, which is why there is disagreement amongst Christians or a difference in emphasis placed on certain things, that will always exist. I happen to think that the Holy Spirit is very powerful and can and does open up the word to individuals and ministers to them in a personal way that is just right for them, sometimes without the input from any hints, help or Minister. The Gideons example, where they decided to put "hints" in the front on the Bible definitely does have it's place but I suppose some might say is this not then in some way encouraging the reader to only read certain chapters and nothing else. It is possible to be led by commentators and 'scholars' and have lots of head knowledge but without any Spirit led heart felt knowledge. Understanding the context is certainly very important, it is not always easy to do, maybe it is something we need to study and consider in more depth. It is also very convenient in churches to place emphasis on the context surrounding verses but then on other occasions to place less importance on the context, either way to support or disprove an argument.

I also believe that it is possible for God to take some words out of the context of the 'story' they are in, in a situation where an individual is seeking God in a very real way or when God needs to speak to them in a more direct way. So if that individual opens up a Bible and a verse or verses give him/her the answer they were seeking or God speaks to them there and then - then that is a real intervention by a powerful and awesome God. I don't think that God then expects them to read beyond and before, to study the context, the historical perspective and analyse it it studios detail. He might, but then he might not.

He speaks to us in many different ways, and sometimes the purist ways when he speaks to us through our own spirit without any intervention or input from others, are the most important ways. Sometimes. I have never read the Bible from cover to cover, it is something that I have often thought I should do - I wonder if we are truthful how many actually have. I know some do daily readings or have a 1 year bible that helps them. I wonder how easy it would be to really be able to understand all the context to every chapter, especially some of the Chapters in the book of Numbers, but then perhaps do we always need to. Maybe in just reading the words, even if we don't understand them at the time, maybe at the end they come together as a whole or one day they will make sense to us.

It's rather like life in general, sometimes we don't understand why things happen, it's only after many years or through experience that we can make sense of them or the reasons are revealed to us.



Follows, by J.I.Packer which seems very relevant to this:

The Bible is the rope God throws us in order to ensure that we stay connected while the rescue is in progress (by J. I. Packer Christianity Today, October, 1996)

A lifeline is a rope to which a drowning person clings while being pulled ashore. Drowning is a condition of being invaded and overwhelmed by water, which gets into your lungs so that you cannot breathe. Metaphorically, you can be said to drown in sorrow, or grief, or any other invasive mood that disrupts normal personal life.Today we are surrounded by people drowning in the raging waters of hopelessness. The proverb rightly says that while there's life there's hope, but the deeper truth is that only while there's hope is there life: When the light of hope goes out, and there really seems nothing to live for anymore, life itself becomes a killing burden. We are so made that we live very much in our future, and the desolation of feeling that there is nothing worthwhile to come, nothing good ever to be expected again, eats the soul away like a corrosive acid.To moderns drowning in hopelessness, disappointed, disillusioned, despairing, emotionally isolated, bitter and aching inside, Bible truth comes as a lifeline, for it is future-oriented and hope-centred throughout. The God of the Bible, whom Christians know as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit united in a shared divine life, is both a very present help in trouble and a very potent hope in times of despair. The triune God, we might say, is the lifeguard, who, in true Baywatch fashion, comes in person to the place where we are drowning in order to rescue us; the Holy Scriptures are the lifeline God throws us in order to ensure that he and we stay connected while the rescue is in progress; and the hope that the Scriptures bring us arrests and reverses the drowning experience here and now, generating inward vitality and renewed joy and banishing forever the sense of having the life choked out of us as the waves break over us.That the Bible throughout is a book of hope is not always appreciated, but it is so. From the giving of the promise that the woman's seed will crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15), the Old Testament constantly looks forward to great restorative things that God will do for his people and his world. The New Testament nails down this hope by its repeated assurances that the Lord Jesus Christ, our divine Sin-bearer and present heavenly Friend, is with us by his Spirit to keep us sane and safe till he returns to re-create the cosmos and lead us all into unimaginable endless glory with himself. Meantime, he gives our lives permanent and satisfying meaning by making us his servants, with jobs to do, and that is a relationship that will continue forever. In a world in which the individual's natural sense of significance is so largely snuffed out, such a hope is a lifeline indeed.