IN THE BEGINNING; THE HEARING GOD IS THE SPEAKING GOD

Let us Pray

Our Father and King, we thank You for today. 

Thank You for this 3 month journey. Thank You for all you are about to teach us. We are grateful and excited for it all. 

As we start tonight, open up our hearts to receive from You. 

Clear every doubt that has lived in our hearts. Speak to us directly. Teach us Your truth. 

In Jesus name

Amen.

I have titled our first class: “In the Beginning.”

And our sub-topic: “The Hearing God is the Speaking God.”

Today, we are beginning our journey into Divine Communication.

But before we talk about how God speaks, how to recognize His voice, how to discern what we are hearing, and all the other things we'll get into over the next few months, I want us to go all the way back:

In the Beginning.

What was God's plan from the beginning?

Because if we want to understand communication between God and man, we need to first understand what God intended from the very beginning.

I will begin by asking us a simple question:

What does communication mean to you as a believer?

Ans 1: It means an interactive channel between God and man, where you get to converse with God and listen to Him in response.

Ans 2: To me it means talking to your maker, to get directions, and every important thing needed for life.

Ans 3: Communication means having conversations.

Ans 4: A way of talking to God.

Ans 5: To my understanding, communication is speaking to God through prayers and also hearing God speak back.

Ans 6: Instruction, Reception and Action/Direction.

Ans 7: Studying the word and praying

Ans 8: To me, communication means clear conversation (speaking and responding) between me and God.

Ans 9: Communication as a believer is the process a of clear, two-way conversation between a believer and the unseen God.

Ans 10: Communication to me as a believer is like speaking and listening between two interested parties (God and myself.)

Ans 11: Communication is fellowship and staying connected to God.

Ans 12: To me, communication means one speaking and the person who is listening understands what it’s been said.

My next question will then be this:

How would you define what your communication with God has been like?

Ans 1: Monologue and Ranting 😂

Ans 2: “God is this how you will be looking at me???” 😭😭😭

Ans 3: Defensive speaker!

Ans 4: Good but sometimes I feel like I’m hearing too many responses. And ranting too😂

Ans 5: Distance and quiet.

Ans 6: Crying and ranting then switch to thanksgiving afterwards

Ans 7: Extremely distant!!! Sometimes my spirit detest God😭

Ans 8: Sometimes distance and sometimes a bit connected.

Ans 9: Pleading, crying and sometimes distance too.

Ans 10: Sometimes silent ,no response and it looks like am talking to myself

Ans 11: Talking and crying, I know you can hear me😭

Ans 12: Ranting and sometimes I ask myself if he listens to me after all the ranting 😩😩

Ans 13: Not listening to the response

Ans 14: Talking to him without getting feedback

Ans 15: It’s like I hear Him on other random things except the ones I pray about and want clarity on.

Ans 16: Communication with God for me mostly is thanksgiving for the privilege to be one of the souls saved and moving. I think I just learnt to praise more and leave everything to God.

Ans 17: I don’t even understand anymore, just in space.

Ans 18: There's the "God Abeg... "(me) and there's the rhetorical pointers(God, maybe).

Ans 19: Small God Abeg and small praise and dance.

Ans 20: Inconsistent thanksgiving and God help me na die I dey.

Wow. Thank you so much everyone for sharing. I like the vulnerability especially. 

One of the things I see believers do a lot is talk at God.

There is a Yoruba term for radio that I feel is so apt for this: “asòrò má gbésì.”

It simply means something that talks to you, but you don't get to respond.

Communication, by its very nature, is not supposed to be radio-styled or one-way.

Imagine I'm your friend, and we are to hang out together for four hours, and for those four hours, I spend all the time talking about myself, you don't get to say a word. Maybe you're even trying to speak and I keep cutting you off.

That is bad communication.

You probably won't like to hang out with me again. In fact, if you were trying to ask me out, I am obviously a red flag you should run far away from.

But this is how so many of us approach communication with God and I believe it is something we need to pay close attention to as believers.

We come to God, and we talk.

This is because we believe that God is a HEARING GOD.

We tell Him what happened at work.

We rant.

We cry.

We ask.

We pray about our relationships.

The "God abegs" and "God whens."

Sometimes, we do it not knowing if He will answer or not. But we do it still, believing that He hears.

We do it sometimes with doubts in our hearts.

"I've been here before," but we still go ahead and do it.

Ever wondered why?

The fact that we can come before an invisible God and speak so freely is itself an expression of faith.

Deep down, there is a part of you that truly believes that God hears you. It is why you keep speaking to Him.

Now, if we've established that God is a hearing God, what kind of God is He on the other side of the conversation?

If I believe God hears me when I speak, do I believe God speaks when we meet?

Do I even believe God should speak to me every time we meet?

Again, I need us to use our human relationships as examples.

Remember, we are made in the image of God and in His likeness.

Would you not find it absurd, if every time you came to my house or we hung out, I did not say a word to you or communicate in any form? Every time!

So why are we not alarmed enough as believers, by this way of life where God is just a Hearing God and not a Speaking God?

When we come to God and rant for 30 minutes, do we expect that He has something to say too?

What is your prayer life like? Is it a one-sided communication?

Many of us have assumed that prayer is us talking to God and then going back home to wait for an answer.

No!

Prayer is communication with God.

It is fellowship.

It is us cultivating a relationship with the One our soul longs for.

This is exactly where I want us to start from.

Not the "How to Hear God."

We will get there, but not yet.

We need to establish something more fundamental first:

The Hearing God is the Speaking God.

In fact, the order should be that He is the Speaking God before He is the Hearing God.

Oh yes! There is proof of this in Scripture.

Let's go to the beginning.

"Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." [Genesis 1:3]

And God said.

This was the very beginning.

The first picture of God given to us in Scripture is that of a Speaking God.

We see this interaction all through Genesis 1:

God speaking.

In fact, there is no part in Genesis 1 where God was a Hearing God.

The foundation presents God first as a Speaking God.

He would hear and listen to the first man later.

But this is the layout we see in the beginning.

It starts with God.

And the first thing Scripture wants us to know about Him in the creation account is that He speaks.

The first picture is not that God heard; it is that God spoke.

"And the LORD God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.'" [Genesis 2:18 NKJV]

Again, God is a Speaking God.

This was not Adam He was talking to.

Even within the Trinity, God speaks!

I need you to understand this clearly.

The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God:

"For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." [1 Corinthians 2:11 NKJV]

If the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, why is He still speaking?

If He speaks to members of the Trinity who already know, how much more to you and me?

How much more?

You see, in this first class, I need you to leave with one truth:

God likes to talk to me.

God wants to talk to me.

God wants to show me.

It is not a burden to Him.

He absolutely wants to.

He enjoys it.

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ” [Genesis 1:26 NKJV]

Look...

"Let us make man in Our own image."

I need you to ask yourself a question:

If I am created in His image, why would communication with the divine be foreign to my design?

Sit with that.

Sit with it until something rises in your spirit.

Because, see, in the beginning it wasn't so.

"The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both." [Proverbs 20:12]

The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord made them both.

In the beginning, God created man with eyes and ears.

Adam's ears weren't just to hear Eve.

They were designed to hear God too.

"And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden." [Genesis 3:8 NKJV]

And they heard the Lord God! How? Because they have ears.

Do you have ears? If yes, did God make your ears? Then you can hear God!

One of our assignments for today is that everyone makes a mini-confession from this teaching to say to yourself every day.  

Keep saying it to yourself until everything inside of you believes it and hears it.

I am saying this to clear any form of doubt in you: the only reason you cannot hear God is if God did not create you.

That verse in Proverbs says He made ears that hear and eyes that see. Except your ears came from China, if it is God that made them, you can hear! You can hear Him loudly and clearly; not faintly, o! Audibly!

I will get ahead of myself for this class... 

In Genesis 3:8, even after man had fallen, man could still hear God. Even inside of sin, he could still hear God. 

Even though his relationship with God had changed, there was now sin, fear, hiding, and shame, the part of him made in the image of God could still hear the One in whose image he was made. 

We will get to what affected our hearing and communication as we move on with this class.

So tonight, I don’t want you to leave thinking, “I need to learn how to hear God.” I want you to leave instead with something deeper:

“I, [your name], am a person created by the speaking God, and He created me with the capacity to hear Him.”

ASSIGNMENT

Personalized Confession: Make a personalized mini-confession that you say to yourself every day. Share it in your individual group by 4:00 PM tomorrow at the latest.

Scripture Meditation: Meditate on the following scriptures between now and Saturday:

Genesis 1

Genesis 2:15–17

Genesis 3:1–10

Proverbs 20:12

Hebrews 1:1–2

John 10:1–5, 27

Let us Pray:

Our dear Father,

Thank You because you've made us with eyes that see and ears that hear. Thank You because our hearts believe this truth. We are not in doubt of it. As we leave here tonight, let this word dwell in us richly

 until it produces fruit, until it erases every doubt inside of us. 

Between now and the next class, speak to us in ways that we know it is You. 

In Jesus name.

Amen.