I recently made a rather bold, somewhat surprising, perhaps even controversial decision regarding my relationship with God. I decided that I will cease trying to “hear” him. I can see where such a proclamation might cause jaws to drop. It seems as though that would be counterproductive to my developing a deeper intimacy with Christ. After all, in any relationship, communication is key. It would never even occur to me that I stop trying to “hear” my husband. I understand that’s a sure recipe for marital disharmony! But my relationship with God is far different than my relationship with any human being. Because God is spirit, he has none of the limitations of frail humanity, and therefore, his communication isn’t confined to verbalization. When I focus on “hearing” God, whether I think I’m doing so or not, I limit the manner in which I relate to him. And it seems to me that relating with God is the ultimate goal. He loves me. He desires relationship with me. So of course he’s communicating with me. Yet how often have I been guilty of uttering the words, “God just isn’t talking to me lately!” I believe that as we grow and mature, it’s God’s intention to expand our horizons by allowing us to experience greater levels of his spirit communing with ours.
I believe God can and does use anything and everything to communicate his love and revelations of himself, but I think there are two very overlooked means by which he does so. One of those is through the desires and passions of our hearts. I think we’re often lulled into believing that our hearts are thoroughly wicked, and therefore any desire we have has to be crucified for the sake of being a good Christian. However, the Bible says that when we’re in Christ, we’re a new creation, and it also says that he places within our redeemed hearts desires and passions in line with who it is we’re created to be. It’s not all that difficult to distinguish between the desires of the heart and the desires of the flesh. Ironically, it’s sometimes easier to grant the desires of our flesh than it is the desires of our hearts. What if we gave ourselves permission to act upon our godly passions? Or to stop doing some things that we’re not passionate about?
Another manner by which God communicates is our imaginations. I was reluctant to accept that when I first thought about it. There is a lot of New Age teaching with regard to imagining and opening the mind and such, and I wanted no part of that. Neither do I now. However, it occurred to me that God created the imagination. He does all he does purposely. So what was the purpose of the imagination? The Greek word for “imagine” is the same word for “meditate.” When I discovered that, it suddenly made sense to me that the imagination is a faculty of the mind- that place where the enemy has no problem sowing lies and negativity.
Philippians 4:8 says, “Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.” I’ve been guilty of treating this passage of Scripture as nothing more than a good suggestion. After all, it takes effort to train my mind to travel in a different direction than it’s used to going. But what if giving my imagination over to the Holy Spirit and meditating on him would exponentially open the eyes of my heart and my understanding to those secrets he wishes to reveal to me?
Things to ponder…
