“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." John 14:15-17 ESV
"Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." John 14:23 ESV
God wants to have a relationship with us, and as you can see from these verses, He wants to commune with us. But there is a problem.
Sin comes between us and God. But 2,000 years ago, God remedied that problem when He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth. He lived a perfect life, without doing wrong, yet, He was punished as if He were a criminal. He was given the death penalty and paid a high price for something He was not guilty of. But He did this so that we could live. He did this in our place, because of our sin. When we turn to Him in repentance and faith, we are completely forgiven of all our sins, and, we are reconciled back to God the Father.
The reason why I am writing this is because there are many today who put too much stock into their understanding of theology. Many are theologically astute, which, in itself, is great. But, there is a tendency to replace our knowledge of the Scriptures for our relationship with God. We downplay many things that God wants to do in our lives, because we are trusting that our relationship with God comes through the Scriptures. Simply speaking, we are replacing the Scriptures for the Holy Spirit.
First of all, please do not misunderstand what I am saying. The Scriptures are so valuable to us and help us to understand who God is. The Scriptures tell us what God is like and why we have this problem of sin and being separated from God. The Scriptures are also a spiritual weapon against the Enemy of our souls. We need to feed on God's word each day to nourish our souls. We can't live without the Scriptures.
But our knowledge of the Scriptures, which should be helpful to us, sometimes gets in the way of our relationship with God. For example, God wants to commune with us. He wants to individually work in our hearts. He wants us to know Him and learn how to hear His voice. But if we don't believe that God can speak to our hearts today, because He only speaks through Scriptures, we are missing something important.
For example, God used a man who was an evangelist, to share the Gospel with someone named Orlando. (This is a true story). God revealed to this man that he would meet a man that night named 'Orlando' and he was to give a message to Orlando. Orlando was to get ready to meet God. I can't remember the words that were used, but the evangelist went out that night and met Orlando. He gave him the words God showed him in his heart. The evangelist also shared the Gospel message with Orlando, and Orlando came to Christ. The evangelist went to pick up Orlando to bring him to church on Sunday morning. When he arrived at the place where Orlando lived, there were sirens and emergency vehicles and he couldn't find Orlando (Orlando lived in an area where homeless people lived). Someone told him that Orlando went on his bike to get something for breakfast, and someone hit him with the car. Orlando was killed. But Orlando was alright, because he knew the Lord Jesus Christ and met Him a couple of days before that.
Many times, God helps us to connect the Scriptures so we understand the bigger picture of who He is and who we are in His plan. God's word has wonderful principles He wants us to learn. But, unless His word is activated in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, they will not have meaning.
The devil knows God's word inside and out, backward and forward. It is important to know the word to do battle against his plans against us. But we must listen to what God says to us. We cannot replace our knowledge of the Scriptures for hearing God's voice. The Holy Spirit makes the word of God come alive to us.
Everything God says will be based out of His word. Nothing He tells us in our hearts will ever go against Scriptures. They will work with Scriptures.
Another example would be similar to the situation in the book of Acts where an angel of the Lord tells Philip to go on a road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza. He met the Ethiopian Eunuch there. The Ethiopian Eunuch was probably seeking after God, (God had prepared his heart), and was reading the book of Isaiah, which today would be chapter 53 (this was before the Bible was divided into chapters.) Notice in chapter 8 verse 39 where it says that the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." Philip didn't argue and say to himself, 'That isn't in the Scriptures and God only speaks through the Scriptures, so I guess it really wasn't God speaking because I can't find this direction to join this chariot in His word.'. Some might argue today that since the command to preach the Gospel to every creature is in Scriptures, that means that there isn't a need for a voice to tell us to go to specific people. But here it is in Scriptures, and we see what happened when the evangelist (described in a paragraph above) heard God's voice and obeyed.
The point is, God wants to have a growing relationship with us. He wants to commune with us, and I wonder if we stop short because that violates our thinking of God only being able to speak to us through Scripture. God can't give individual instruction through Scripture. We must never neglect the Scriptures or go against them. But we need to wait upon God and listen to what He tells us, which will always be in accordance with His word.
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27 ESV
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." John 10:27 ESV
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