How Does God Speak to Me Today?

Is the Bible enough?  More than enough?  Does it contain all the guidance you need to do all that God wants you to do?  In this piece, written in 2011, popular blogger, author and book reviewer Tim Challies offers his view of the ways in which God speaks to us today.

Hebrews 3 vs 7-8GOD IS SPEAKING TODAY

Let me talk about the way God speaks to us through a series of 4 statements. We are taking God’s sovereignty, his secret will, as our starting point and building upon it with these statements.

The first thing we need to affirm is that God can speak to people in many different ways and guide them with their cooperation. The Bible is full of stories of God speaking to his people—God speaking to Adam and Eve in the Garden as he walked and talked with them, God speaking to Moses from the burning bush, God speaking to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream. In each case God told people his will and when God told them what he wanted of them, they were able to consciously participate in it, or they were able to reject it. Adam and Eve defied God even though they knew what he demanded of them. Jonah heard from the Lord and ran away. Abraham heard from the Lord and obeyed. All through the Bible we see God speaking and giving guidance and instruction. In all these ways and so many more, God spoke to people and guided them with their cooperation.

We need to be careful here. We are not looking to these examples and necessarily saying, “This is how God tells us he will guide us.” We are saying, “This is how God can guide people.” These are the ways in which God has proven he has the ability to guide people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can expect him to guide us or speak to us the same way. So the question we need to ask now is, How will God guide us today in such a way that we consciously participate?

The second statement is this: today God speaks to us by his Son. It is instructive here to turn to the first verses of Hebrews where we read, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.” That is what we have just said in our last statement, that long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke. But the author of Hebrews continues. “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” In these last days, today, he has spoken to us by his Son. He has spoken and is speaking through Jesus. This is not meant to be past tense but present. And how has God spoken to us through Jesus? He has revealed himself, his own character and glory, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus God has spoken to us about his plan of salvation—of the way he has chosen to redeem sinners to himself.

The man who wrote Hebrews is very careful to distinguish between these two types of revelation, between how God used to speak and how God speaks today. If you have studied the letter to the Hebrews, you know that it is a long discourse that continually shows how Jesus Christ is superior to anything in the Old Testament. That means, of course, that the revelation in Jesus Christ, is better than anything that came before. God used to speak in these ways, but today, even better, he speaks through his Son.

This raises the question of how Jesus speaks to us. I haven’t ever heard the voice of Jesus coming from the skies and I haven’t ever met him face-to-face so he could tell me what to do. How does God speak by Jesus?

That brings us to our third statement: God speaks to us by his Son, through his Spirit in the Bible. Now we are getting to the heart of it. By the time the letter to the Hebrews was written, Jesus had long since ascended to his Father. But then the author of this letter to the Hebrews writes in 3:7, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says.” “Says,” not “Said.” “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” He goes back and quotes Psalm 95 and says that through these words, the Holy Spirit is speaking. Not just that the Spirit has spoken, but that he is speaking. He continues to speak. The words that were already thousands of years old when this letter was written continue to speak.

He comes back to this a few times in the verses that follow keeps saying that the Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture today. And then he wraps up the section in chapter 4 with the conclusion that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It is alive. It is active.

The conclusion is that the Bible speaks to us today. The Holy Spirit speaks to us today in the Bible. The Son speaks to us today through the Holy Spirit in the Bible. If he doesn’t, if he doesn’t actively speak to us, the whole letter to the Hebrews is a waste of time; it’s just a history lesson. But, of course, that can’t be. The Bible is not just about what God has said, but what God is saying.

Let me make one final statement about how God guides us today. We know that God can guide us in many ways but today the Son speaks to us through his Spirit in the Bible.

The fourth and final thing is this… Continue reading

Related:

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3 Responses to How Does God Speak to Me Today?

  1. Sola Scriptura August 6, 2016 at 6:48 pm #

    Answer: Through the word, and only the word, and nothing but the word.

  2. Manny1962 August 7, 2016 at 9:41 am #

    Amen……………………The Word. All sufficient, all encompassing, all that is needed.

  3. Sharon Peterson June 19, 2017 at 2:56 pm #

    There is a small still voice that comes to me occasionally. Like an instant thought. Contemplating G-d speaking to me led me to prayerfully ask G-d how I would know if it was HIM or me or something else. The answers came in decreasing frequency over the next couple of weeks. It always started out “Do you remember…….?” and different incidents that had happened recently and incidents in the past years instantly played in vivid memory, almost like watching a video of my actions or the situation at the time. Then the incident always ended with “That was ME speaking to you.

    Proving to me this verse. Matthew 28:20 Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world. (KJV))

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