4. Listening to God

Communicating with God

Part 2

Opening prayer: “Father, we understand that the world and Satan want to keep us so busy and so confused, with our mind so full of things that we do not stop to listen to You.  But Father, we have time to do what we want to do, so I pray, Father, that as we talk about listening to You that we will, in our hearts through the power of Your Spirit, commit ourselves to doing precisely that.  May we listen to You.  In Jesus’ name, amen.”

I. Listening to God

When you and I became a Christian, we entered into a new relationship.  And one of the crucial elements of any relationship is communication, both speaking and listening.  And since we “always” listen before we talk, I want to talk today about listening to God.

A. Revelation

There are three terms I want to make sure we understand as we talk about what it is to listen to God.  The first is revelation

.  Revelation is simply God making Himself known to us.  Revelation is God speaking so that we can listen to Him.  And God speaks to us and we hear Him in two basic ways. 

1. General Revelation

One way we call general revelation, which is information about God that is available to all people of all time.  This is God speaking to all people and all people being able to hear what He has to say.  In Romans chapter 1, Paul has been talking about the fact of people’s sin and their responsibility for their sin and it’s within this context beginning in verse 19 that Paul says this: “For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.  For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.”  Paul is saying that in creation, God is clearly, plainly speaking. And everyone who has ever lived, regardless of time and place, is able to hear this particular voice of God. 

There are three things that God has been saying.  The first is implicitly that “I exist.”  Secondly, He has been telling everyone about His power.  And thirdly, He’s been telling everyone about His divinity.  Divinity simply means that He is separate from creation, that creation does not hold the key to its own existence, but that the Creator of creation lies outside of creation.  And Paul is saying that in creation, God has been speaking this, proclaiming this to all people and all people should have been able to hear that. 

This is the same theme that the psalmist picks up in Psalm 19.  This psalm is really a celebration of God’s revelation.  Starting at verse 1, the psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky proclaims His handiwork.  Day after day pours out speech and night after night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.” 

In creation itself, God is speaking and He is proclaiming His existence and His power and His divinity – those invisible attributes of God.  And certainly as we think about listening to God, we have to learn to listen, to pay attention to His voice in creation, don’t we?  It’s one thing to go out and stand on the Oregon coast and say, “That’s beautiful.”  But what we have to do is to say, “It is beautiful because a beautiful God created this.”  And as we see the sunset over those large beaches, we think of God.  And that is what those beaches are doing.  The beaches are declaring the glory of God.  We look at pictures of galaxies – one of my favorite things to look at – and we see the distance and the brightness and the power but what we need to see more than anything else is the awesome power of the Creator God who made millions of galaxies.  As we look close-up at pictures of flowers, and we see the intricacies and the delicacies and the beauty of a flower, we think of the God who is separate from the flower and yet proclaims Himself to us through the flower. 

This is us learning to respond and learning to hear what God is saying generally through His creation and it is clear, isn’t it?  It is clear and it is profound.  And yet you could stand as long as you wanted on the Oregon coast and you’re never going to hear God saying, “My Son died on the cross for your sins.”  General revelation doesn’t have the capability of teaching us that salvation is by grace through faith, for example.  For that, we need the other kind of revelation.  And we call that specific revelation.

2. Specific Revelation

Specific revelation is information about God that is available only to some people, some of the time.  Specific revelation is when God is speaking to only certain people who are capable of hearing what He says.  Specific or “special” revelation is the technical name for what we also call The Bible.  The Bible goes by many names – Scripture, the Word, the Word of God – but it is this that contains special, specific revelation and this is how we hear God speak to us, even if other people in other places of other times were not able to hear the same thing. 

If you continue in Psalm 19, he goes through a few more verses and he talks more about creation declaring things about God, and then in verse 7, he switches to the specific revelation and he says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” – the “law of the Lord” is just another name for the Bible.  “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.  The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”  Down to verse 10: “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings from the honey comb.  Moreover, by them is your servant warned.  In keeping them there is great reward.”  Psalm 19 is the celebration of the fact that God has chosen to speak to us so that we can actually hear Him.  We can hear of His existence and His power and His divinity as He speaks through creation but we can learn so much more as He speaks to us through His special revelation, the Bible. 

B. The Bible

In a half hour, I have to pick and choose what I want to share with you about the Bible, and there’s a lot more that could be said.  But the one thing I have been wanting to say, which has been a little frustrating up to this point, is basically how we reference the Bible, how we get around in it and refer to pieces of it.  The Bible is basically divided into two parts and we call them the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Each of those testaments is broken into books.  There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament.  I want to encourage you sometime to open your Bible and, if you’re not familiar with it, to thumb through the Table of Contents to get used to the names of the books so if I say “2 Timothy” you’ll think, “Oh, that’s a book in the Bible.”  So, the Testaments are broken into books and the books, then, are broken into chapters and chapters are broken into verses. 

The way we reference a place in Scripture is to say, for example, “In John 3:16…” and what that means is that John is the name of the book, which happens to be in the New Testament, 3 is the chapter, and 16 is the verse.  So, I haven’t been able to reference Bible verses to you earlier, but now I can.  John 3:16 – book, chapter, and verse.  There’s also a handout that you have and I would encourage you to go through it and spend some time with it.  It’s the names of all the books in the Bible broken into general categories and it will kind of give you a feel for what’s in the Bible and where, so you just need to spend some time going through that.

C. Four important topics

There are four topics that I can’t really talk about the Bible without mentioning and, again, I’m not going to have the time to go into them in detail but I do want to mention conclusions about these four different topics/terms.  And if these are concepts that are important to you, I’d encourage you to go to Biblicaltraining.org and go to the section on Biblical Literacy and the first three lectures there are going to be my discussion of these four words that I just want to share with you very briefly in talking about the Bible.

1. Inspiration

We believe in the inspiration of the Bible.  We believe that the Bible is inspired.  What that basically means is that we believe the Bible comes from the very mouth of God.  Inspiration is a doctrine that is primarily concerned with source and so if you go to the book of 2 Timothy 3:16, you can see Paul write, “For all of Scripture is inspired,” some of the older translations say.  Some of the newer translations say, “All of Scripture is breathed out by God.”  Actually, Paul makes up a word, which is why it’s hard to translate it.  He takes the word for “God” and he takes the word for “breathed” and – you can do this in Greek – he just sticks them together and he says, “You figure out what it means.”  But all of Scripture is God-breathed.  All of Scripture, we believe, comes from the very mouth of God. 

In another book called 2 Peter, in chapter 1 starting in verse 20, Peter says this about Scripture: “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man but men spoke from God” – there’s the origin – “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”  When we talk about the inspiration of the Bible, what we believe is that different men sat down and wrote these words, but they were carried by the Holy Spirit.  In other words, the Holy Spirit controlled what they were writing such that what they wrote were the very words of God.  That’s the doctrine of inspiration.

2. Authority

The second thing I wanted to mention in passing is the whole issue of authority.  We believe in the authority of Scripture.  If you continue to read in 2 Timothy 3:16, it says, “For all Scripture is breathed out by God and is [therefore] profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”  And what Paul is telling Timothy is that if you understand the source of Scripture, that it comes from the very mouth of God, it therefore comes with His authority.  So when you go to teach or correct or reprove or train someone, you don’t use human words and human wisdom.  You use God’s Word.  So the doctrine of inspiration is that Scripture comes from God and because it comes from God, it bears God’s authority. 

I don’t preach out of this book because it’s magical.  It’s not something inherent in the book itself.  I preach out of this book and we believe the book because we believe the words come from God and, therefore, His words come with His authority.  So, my job is to proclaim what God has said and not what I think.  So the doctrines of inspiration and authority are tied together very, very closely.

Please understand that the Bible does not share its authority with anything or anyone because God does not share His authority with anything or anyone.  This book is not in competition with the Koran.  This book is not in competition with the writings of Joseph Smith.  This book is not in competition with human philosophy.  This book is not in competition with church tradition and the edicts of popes and the statements of priests.  This book does not compete with anyone for authority because God does not compete with anyone for authority.  Scripture and Scripture alone is our source of authority and our source of truth and our source of guidance and it is to this that we go, not because it’s magical or you can buy it in any color and put funny colors on the edge.  We go to it because we believe it comes from the very mouth of God.

3. Canonicity

The third thing I wanted to mention is the whole issue of canonicity.  It’s a fabulous topic and there are many books and different lectures you can listen to if you want to learn more about it.  Canonicity is simply the process by which the Holy Spirit worked through the Church as a whole in helping the Church understand which books are truly inspired.  There were a lot more books than 66 written and, through the power of the Spirit, we believe that He guided the early Church as a whole in identifying these 66 as truly being from God and all the other ones that people nowadays keep holding up and saying, “You really should be reading the Gospel of Thomas” – we believe that they’re wrong because God controlled the Church in the process of canonicity. 

By the way, if anybody says to you that the Gospel of Thomas should be in the Bible, ask them if they’ve read it because all you have to do is read the Gospel of Thomas and you can understand that it can’t possibly be Scripture.  It’s nothing like the Bible and it was written in 180 AD so Thomas didn’t write it unless he was really old, and he wasn’t.

4. Trustworthy Message

The fourth thing I wanted to mention as well is that we believe the Bible is trustworthy.  Because it comes from God, it not only has our allegiance, but we believe that the writers got it right.  And when they say that “Jesus did this” or “Jesus said this,” we believe that, guided again by the Holy Spirit – which is one of Jesus’ promises to them that “the Holy Spirit will come and cause you to remember everything I have taught you” – we believe that’s exactly what happened.  Therefore, this is a faithful witness to what Jesus taught in the Gospels and this is a faithful witness to the growth of the early Church and what the apostles taught. 

Again, I know it’s very popular in some circles to say, “Oh, I can’t believe the Bible.  It’s not trustworthy.  It’s so full of contradictions.”  And one of the things I enjoy doing – I don’t know if I should, but it’s a good thing we’re all sinners saved by grace! – I get this horrible look on my face and say, “Oh no!  Really?  It’s full of errors?  Show me one.”  “Well, it’s just so full of errors, I mean, they’re all over the place.”  “Well, if it’s so full of errors, then you should be able to point one out to me really easily.”  They don’t know where the problems are.  They just don’t want to trust it.  We believe the Bible is trustworthy, that it doesn’t contradict itself.

So, I just can’t talk about the Bible without mentioning those four things: inspiration of Scripture; the authority that comes from God’s Word; the fact that the early Church, by the power of God’s Spirit, got the right 66 books; and that it’s absolutely trustworthy that when the Old Testament prophets say, “Thus saith the Lord,” that the words that came out and the words that are written down truly came from the mouth of God.

D. What do you do with the Bible?

What I wanted to emphasize this morning is the whole question of what do you do with this?  What do you do with this book?  It’s all fine and good to argue about inspiration and authority and canonicity and trustworthiness – some of us love to argue about these things.  But the question is, is that what this is here for?  The answer is obviously no.  So, the question is, what do we do with this book?  Let me encourage you to do four different things with it:

1. Read it!

Some of us love to read, don’t we?  And we love to read all kinds of things.  We love to read about the Bible.  We love to read people’s understanding of the Bible.  We love to read biographies about how the Bible has impacted people’s lives.  But, do we love to read the very words of God?  It’s so easy to be caught up in reading things about it, but do we read the words of God?  Let me encourage you to read it for at least three different reasons.

First, Healthy relationships require healthy communication.  It’s kind of one of those “no, duh” kind of statements but it really, really is true.  Healthy relationships require healthy communication and if we are going to have a healthy relationship with our Redeemer, then we have to communicate, and we communicate partially by listening to Him and we listen to Him by reading what He has said.  This is a common sense thing about healthy relationships and, like any relationship, I would encourage you to listen to your Redeemer regularly and listen to your Redeemer often. 

The favorite time of day for me is the first hour of every morning.  My wife, Robin, and I, after a few years of trying different things, developed a ritual where we get up early and the kids aren’t up yet and there’s no noise.  Nothing major has gone wrong…yet.  It’s still quiet, reasonably peaceful, and after four cups of coffee we’re ready to talk.  And we have about an hour together and it’s a wonderful quiet time.  And we say, “How’d you sleep?  How do you feel?  What are you doing today?”  Healthy communication.  “What’s God teaching you?  What did you read last night that really made a difference in your life that perhaps you’ve been mulling over this morning?”  See, that’s healthy communication, isn’t it?  It’s regular, it’s every morning, it’s frequent.  The same thing that is true in our marriage is true in our marriage with our God, because we are the Bride, right?  Men and women alike, we are the Bride of Christ.  And we must communicate with Him if we are to have a healthy relationship with Him.  You may have heard the phrase “quiet time.”  This is what quiet times are all about, that you and I need to fine someplace to get away on a regular basis and do it often, where it’s quiet, it’s peaceful, and we can listen to God and then we can speak with God.  Healthy relationships need healthy communication.  That means we have to set times aside to listen to Him.

Secondly, I really want to point out that if we don’t read it, how will we know what God is saying to us?  If we don’t read it, how will we know what is truly best?  If we don’t read it, how will we really know what is true?  If you’re not “in the Word,” as the expression goes, if you’re not reading this thing, how will you know what the very, very, very, very, very most important thing to do every day is?  Terrible grammar, but you get the idea.  What is the most important thing?  What is the greatest commandment that God has for us?  To go to church?  No?  That’s not what it says?  “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength.”  If you do nothing else but you do that, then you’ve done the most important thing.  But you’re not going to know that if you haven’t been reading.  You’re not going to know that we’re into cloning, you know that?  Christians are the primary cloners of the universe, because disciples are to replicate themselves.  But you’re not going to know that if you haven’t read the Great Commission.  Jesus says, “Go make disciples.”  That’s what we’re here for, to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Every one of us is to be involved in evangelism one way or another and then all of us are to be involved in making fully-devoted disciples, “teaching them to obey absolutely everything that I’ve taught you,” Jesus said.  These are things that you don’t know if you don’t spend time reading.  So, I encourage you that if you want to know what our all-wise, all-good God is holding out to you and saying, “this is the best, this is the truth” – you won’t know it unless you listen to Him and you can’t hear Him unless you read Him, right?

I also want to mention that you really need to ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand, that as you read it, He is your best Teacher.  He’s better than your preacher.  He’s better than your Sunday school teacher.  And He’s better than all those books that you might want to read about the Bible.  But the Holy Spirit is your best Teacher. 

Paul tells the Corinthian church that the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.  Before you became a Christian, Satan blinded your eyes and those blinders have now been taken off.  But you have a ways to go – I have a ways to go – and we go that way by asking the Spirit to help us understand what God our Father is saying to us.  In the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul says this starting at verse 12: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.  And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” 

Let’s covenant to be a people of the Book.  It’s not a hoop to jump through.  It’s not a ritual to earn favor with God.  It’s none of those things.  It’s just common sense.  We’ve entered a new relationship.  If we want a healthy relationship, we need to communicate.  Part of communication is listening and so we listen by reading.

2. Meditate on it!

Secondly, let me encourage you to meditate on the Bible.  There are many mornings in which I’m talking with Robin where she’ll say things to me, and they just won’t click.  They don’t make sense to me or something.  But she’s usually right and I’m usually wrong so when things don’t click, it’s usually my fault.  What I need sometimes is time to mull over stuff. 

Robin loves to read dead people.  If you want to know where my illustrations come from, if the person is over 100 years old, it’s Robin giving me those illustrations.  She loves to read people who are dead.  It’s a good way to read good stuff.  She’ll give me these illustrations.  She’ll talk about things that the Church was talking about in 1850.  It takes me a while to mull over some of this stuff and think through it.  But I’m so committed to our relationship and I trust her so much that I’m committed to meditating on her words.  I’m committed to mulling it over and thinking and, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first, I’m committed to giving her the benefit of the doubt.  That’s what meditation is. 

Now, some of you may have red flags that go up when I say “meditation” and you may be thinking of Eastern religious meditation.  That is not what I’m talking about.  The kind of meditation that we see coming out of the Far East is really, really, really wrong because they teach that you open your mind.  That’s their meditation.  All you have to do is talk to someone who’s been a Satanist and he will tell you that there’s nothing that Satan loves more than Christian kids meditating and “opening their minds” because Satan will head straight for that empty vacuum.  Christian meditation is the exact opposite.  It is filling your mind with the things of God.  It’s filling your mind with the things of Scripture, mulling over, thinking, giving it the benefit of the doubt because you know that ultimately, it’s right.  So you work on it, and you listen to it, and you mull, and you meditate.  It takes work but it’s worth the effort, isn’t it?  A relationship with God is worth the effort to mull over and to think.  So whether you’re driving to work or you’re on a coffee break or it’s lunch or the computer’s blurring before your eyes and you need a ten-minute break – stop and meditate.  Stop and fill your mind with what you’ve been reading in Scripture.  Repeat the verse that you’ve been memorizing and ask God to make sure you understand it and can apply it in your life.  If you do that, do you know what Scripture promises?  It promises that you’ll be blessed.  I don’t know about you, but I like being blessed by God.  Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.”  Blessed is the person who stays away from sinners.  “But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law he meditates” – on Scripture, he meditates – “day and night.”  And here’s what a blessed man looks like: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruits in its season and its leaf does not whither.”  That’s God’s blessing, that you and I are this tree planted by the streams of life that flow from Him and flow through His holy Word.  As we draw nourishment from that stream, we grow and we become oaks of righteousness.  But you can’t get there just by reading.  It requires this meditation, this mulling, this reflecting.

3. Memorize it!

Thirdly, let me encourage you to memorize it.  “Oh no, I can’t memorize anything since poetry in fifth grade!”  Let me encourage you as I’ve been encouraging myself to memorize Scripture.  It’s worth the effort.  It’s worth it to have God’s truth on the tip of your tongue.  It’s worth it when your mind is so saturated with the words of God that no matter what happens, we know what is true and we have a very good idea how to respond to this situation. 

The psalmist says, “I have stored up Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”  How will we know what sin is unless we have stored up Scripture in our minds and memorized it?  And so we memorize Scripture, we memorize verses, perhaps paragraphs, perhaps chapters so that when we face temptation, yes we know the story of Jesus that when He faced temptation, He responded the same way all three times, didn’t He?  He quoted Scripture.  But even more, when we face temptation and temptation is saying, “Oh, go ahead and do that.  It’s kind of dangerous but you can test God and He’s promised to take care of you,” the verse goes through our head, “You shall not test the Lord your God,” because we’ve memorized Jesus’ response to Satan. 

Or perhaps life is difficult and the pressures are weighing on us, and the thought goes through our head, “Hey, if this is what Christianity is about, I don’t want anything to do with this.  It isn’t any fun and it’s too difficult,” and the verse is floating through your head where Jesus says, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.  I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”  And that verse floats through our head and we say, “If Jesus promised that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, then why am I under such oppression?”  And the verse helps it. 

Loneliness is at an epic and all-time high in Western culture.  We are so connected but most of it is false connection and there’s not the deep intimacy that we crave.  Americans, especially, are phenomenally lonely.  So you’re in life and you’re in a situation and the loneliness is intense, and the last words of Jesus to His disciples in the Gospel of Matthew float through your head: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  This is the beauty of memorization where these verses are on the tip of our tongue and our minds are saturated with the very words of God, that when we get in a situation, there’s the answer, there’s the truth, there’s the stuff to help. 

I’ve noticed that approximations really don’t help.  Have you noticed that?  You’re in a difficult situation, you’re anxious about something.  I heard of an incident last night – it wasn’t my daughter – where someone’s daughter was stuck in Albany and the airlines seemed to have no concern whatsoever that she couldn’t get on the airplane.  There was the tendency to be anxious and the verse floats through our head, “Be anxious about nothing, but by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God.”  And the verse that Paul gives the Philippians also goes through our mind: “And the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  See, it’s one thing to have your daughter stuck in Albany and say, “OK, God, I’m getting anxious here.  Um, OK, what’s that verse?  Uh, God promised me peace, um, but what about peace?”  It just doesn’t work, does it?  But we’re to “be anxious about nothing, but by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God.  And the peace that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”  See, that’s the power of memory.  And I would encourage you as I’m beginning more and more to encourage myself to commit Scripture to memory so it’s there on the tip of my tongue, saturated in my mind.

4. Obey it!

Fourthly, let me encourage you to obey it.  Sometimes we get this feeling that all I have to do is know it, but I don’t have to really do it.  I can quote verses about not being anxious but what happens when the temptation comes to be anxious?  Let me encourage you not just to read it or meditate on it or memorize it but we must obey it, mustn’t we? 

When you know Scripture but you don’t obey it, there’s a word for that.  It’s called “being a fool.”  The end of the most famous sermon in the world, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “The person who hears My words and does them is like a man who built his house on a rock and the storms of life come and the house stands firm.  But whoever hears My words and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the storms come and the wind comes and the rain comes and great is the destruction of that house.”  It doesn’t do any good to know it if we don’t obey it and put it into practice. 

You know what’s going to happen as you and I read it and learn it and obey it?  We start to trust it.  The world has a lot of truth claims out there, doesn’t it?  There are a lot of things the world is saying are true and it’s over there and Scripture is over here and we have to choose.  Are we going to believe the world or are we going to believe God?  This is just a process we all go through, isn’t it? 

I was watching “60 Minutes” a while back and I was told that it is unreasonable to think that any human being could control his or her sexual urges.  And the person described us as dogs.  You can’t expect a dog to control its sexual behavior; well you certainly can’t expect our teenagers to.  That’s what the world says.  And over here, Scripture makes another truth claim and it says, “But among you, there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed because these are improper for God’s holy people.”  And you look at that and think, “Who do I believe?  I know I’m supposed to believe this, but everything in me is telling me to believe that over there.”  And we have to make this choice.  Sometimes we choose the world and we tell God He doesn’t know what He’s talking about.  And other times, even when it doesn’t make any sense to us, we choose to believe God. 

Has God ever been wrong?  The answer is no, never.  Even in those situations – I’ve noticed this in my life – even when I’ve read some things in Scripture and I think, “You know, if that wasn’t God saying that, there’s no way I’d ever believe it because that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”  “Don’t let any foolish laughter come out of your mouth?”  That’s stupid.  But as we make this faith choice and as we choose to obey, we find out that He’s always true.  He’s always right.  And that builds trust.  And as we obey and as we grow in our trust, then we start to be transformed and that’s the ultimate goal of all this.  Paul tells the Corinthian church that “we, by beholding the glory of God, are being transformed into the same image, the image of His Son, from one degree of glory to the next.”  As we obey it, and as we grow in our trust of it, we start to be transformed because we start to look more and more like Jesus.  May that be true of all of us in this church.  May we become people of the Book. 

Let’s pray: “Father, there is much in this book that is strange and that we don’t understand and we admit that freely.  There are things that are confusing and things that go against my instincts.  But Father, we believe that they are Your words.  They bear Your authority, an authority You share with no one and nothing else.  And Father, this is not a hoop to jump through.  We desperately want to know You and the power of Your Son’s resurrection.  We want a healthy relationship, Father.  May You teach us to listen.  May we be really, really good listeners.  May we listen by reading.  May we mull over and think of what You have told us.  May we memorize those things that are especially important.  And Father, may we throw ourselves into it and obey it even when it seems to be a silly thing to do because, Father, You are always true and Satan is always a liar.  May we grow in our trust and may we be changed from one degree of glory into the next and may we look like Your Son, Jesus Christ.  Father, we look forward to that day when we will be face to face with You and we will be able to talk to You, watch Your facial expressions as You listen and as You talk back with us.  Until then, may we cherish Your Word.  In Jesus’ name, amen.