"If we give primacy to forms of communication that God does not on the whole prefer in relation to his children, that will hinder our understanding of and cooperation with his voice" (HG, 27).
Something I did not consider in my initial response to Ch. 1 was the fact that I was probably allowing my own biases to completely shape my approach to the idea of Hearing God. As I have continued to read, I have been confronted with the fact that God is always speaking - but I am not always listening. I am noticing that the problem is me, not God. That often my motives for wanting to hear God are selfish and impure. And often I approach God with a spirit that has it all figured out. I assume too much - God is "supposed" to act in this way. I almost tend to go to Him with the idea that He is only there to confirm what I have already figured out for myself. How arrogant of me to assume that I know the mind of God! Or perhaps it's not that I KNOW what I want Him to say, it's that I WANT to hear a specific something so much, that I tune out His true word. Ever the skeptic, I am the child that comes to ask my father for bread, all the while expecting to receive a stone.
Willard does confront the issue later in the book that the fundamental issue at the heart of hearing God is a matter of what we believe about God. If our view of God is skewed, we will never hear Him. This makes me think of Jesus' time, when everyone was looking for the Messiah to be a valiant warrior and someone who would overthrow the government. They totally missed the One that God sent. Now I am having to confront the erroneous ways in which I view God. And trust me, there are a lot of mixed messages swimming around my head...
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