This fifth sermon concludes the 2024 edition of my “PRAY Like Jesus” series by focusing on how we listen and discern God’s voice. Prayer is meant to be talking with God, not just talking to God. So how do we get over the sound of our own voice to hear God’s response to our prayers?
Today’s Scripture readings are Proverbs 2:1-8, Psalm 119:97-106, and John 10:1-10, 27-30. This sermon is adapted from my sermon at St. Peter in Greene on March 17, 2019. Other than the sermon, some music, and communion, the bulk of this service was interactive prayer stations, as you’ll see in the livestream below from Living Hope. Sermon podcast audio is below as well.
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Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
We have spent four weeks looking at prayer through the lens of PRAY – Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield. If you’ve missed some of those, you can go to the church website to watch the livestreams or listen to just the messages as a podcast.
Every time I define praying, I try to be careful to say prayer is talking with God, rather than talking to God. It’s a two-way conversation. So today’s question is, “How do we listen to God?” How do we hear God’s response?
As we’ve talked about different aspects of prayer each week, I’ve brought up Martin Luther and his understanding of the Lord’s Prayer.
Today, we’re turning to the founder of another denomination, John Wesley, the key figure in the Methodist tradition.
Wesley agreed with the Lutheran doctrine that we’re saved by grace alone through Jesus Christ, but he felt Luther focused a little too much on salvation and going to heaven and didn’t put enough emphasis on how God’s grace works in this life to make us more holy.
He thought a lot about how we follow God’s will here and now, in this world, how we make ethical decisions.
So today as we explore how we listen to God in prayer in this life, I’m going to share something called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.”
This is a great example of theologians liking complicated-sounding names for simple concepts. Wesleyan quadrilateral just means Wesley’s idea of four points.
Again, the question is, “How do we hear from God to know God’s will?”
The first corner, the foundation, of Wesley’s quadrilateral is scripture, the Bible, God’s written word.
Obviously we read the Bible in worship here at church, but I hope this isn’t the only time you ever open a Bible. And by the way, if you don’t have a Bible, or you want an easier translation to read, talk to me sometime and I will gladly help get you a new Bible.
If you regularly spend time reading the Bible, the Holy Spirit might sometimes bring specific verses to mind at the right time to be helpful. For me, sometimes it’s through a song popping into my head to remind me of a Bible story or verse.
Of course, the challenge with listening to God through the Bible is that the Bible often does not answer our specific questions.
In my senior year of college, I prayed about whether I should be a pastor, and I never found a Bible verse saying to stop applying for computer programming jobs and start sending in seminary applications. But the Bible does give us a good framework for knowing God’s general will.
One example I’ve heard (from Nicky Gumbel in the Alpha Course) is if you’re wondering if you’re hearing God tell you to leave your wife for someone you met at work, the answer is no. If you’re wondering whether God is telling you to cheat on your taxes, the answer is no. God tells us in the Bible to not commit adultery and to not steal. Sometimes the commands are pretty clear.
I learned from the Bible that God wanted me to proclaim the good news and serve my neighbors, and this career is the best way for me to obey.
Most importantly, the Bible tells you God loves you. It tells you Jesus died for you to set you free from sin and to give you eternal life.
Proverbs 2 is talking about Scripture when it says, the Lord gives wisdom. If you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you…you will find the knowledge of God.
Today’s Gospel reading tells us Jesus is our good shepherd who comes to give us abundant life. Those are good places to start when you’re looking for an answer to prayer.
Did you hear in our Psalm how much value is put on God’s word? God’s words are sweeter than honey. They’re a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. God’s word guides us in life.
So our primary source for hearing God is through Scripture.
The second point of Wesley’s quadrilateral is tradition. We listen to God through our worship traditions, through spiritual practices like confession, and through the historical experiences of Christians through the last 2,000 years.
Learning about church history and the lives of the saints help show us how God works. Tradition doesn’t mean keeping everything the same; it means learning from those who’ve walked the road of faith before us. People have wrestled with most of the questions we could come up with, and we can learn from their experiences and wisdom.
Point three is reason. God gave us brains to be used. We need reason to understand the Bible, to take those general points and apply them to our lives today.
Lutherans understand “scripture interprets scripture.” We don’t take every word in the Bible literally. There are all kinds of laws we don’t follow, because we read everything in the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ.
When we read tough passages about God saying to kill all the people in the promised land, we interpret those through the lens of Jesus saying God loves the world.
We interpret parts in the Bible about people of different sexualities not being allowed in the temple through the lens of stories like Peter baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch.
Even though the Bible has examples of killing people of other religions, we oppose religious warfare because the Bible also praises people of other faiths and tells us to not commit murder.
The Holy Spirit works through our reason so we can apply the general principles of Scripture to our particular situations.
The Wesleyan quadrilateral’s final corner is experience. Our relationship with God is personal. God is speaking to you, in lots of different ways: through other people, through events in your life, through your conscience, at the communion table through ordinary means of bread and wine.
Sometimes God speaks through visions or audible voices. People in the Bible sometimes hear God’s voice, like Samuel hearing God calling him in the night. For Moses, it was a burning bush. There’s one story of someone hearing God’s voice through a talking donkey!
Other times, God speaks through dreams, telling Joseph to take Mary and the baby Jesus and flee to Egypt. Historical figures like St. Patrick, who heard God’s call to go to Ireland as a missionary through a dream.
I’ve never personally had a supernatural voice or vision as an answer to prayer, but maybe you have.
The challenge is figuring out whether your dream is from God, or from what you ate for supper, which is where tradition, reason, and especially Scripture come in. Experiences can be untrustworthy.
Most of the time, I suspect we have trouble hearing God’s response to our prayers because we don’t take time to listen to God.
The Bible is full of examples of God speaking when people are silent, when people stop to listen. Jesus goes to a quiet place by himself to pray. David goes in to sit before the Lord. Peter goes onto a roof to pray.
Of course, God can speak anywhere, but coming to church definitely helps in hearing God. Worship invites us to turn our focus outward, and reminds us to listen for God.
One of the most common ways God talks to us is through other people, so if you think you’re hearing God’s voice, run it by someone else at church. Having a community helps us test what we think God is saying against scripture and other people’s reason and experience.
This week, I encourage you to take the time to pray, and as part of your prayer, practice listening for God’s voice. Jesus says the good shepherd knows his sheep and the sheep know his voice.
Read God’s word. Gather for worship. Pay attention to your experiences. Pray and listen to God.
Right after the next song, we’re going to take some time to pray. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about prayer; let’s put some of it into practice.
There are a variety of prayer stations set up for you to try. We probably don’t have enough time for all of them, but try to experiment with at least a few.
These are different creative ways of praying for you to take advantage of and incorporate into your own prayer life. If some of them don’t work well for you, that’s ok; try a different way of praying.
As you pray, as you spend time with God and pay attention to your relationship with your heavenly Father, may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen