Equipping Eve Episode 2: How to hear from God

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Need for Biblical Equipping for Women

Well, hello and welcome, ladies, to Equipping Eve. My name is Erin Benzinger, and this is the show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth, if you will, from God's Word. And we take this truth from that firm foundation of the Word of God, and then we know that we are prepared and equipped to stand strong against the onslaught of lies and deception that is just so prevalent today in the world and in the visible church.

And it all goes back to that very first distortion of God's Word in the garden that was presented to the first Eve, did God really say? We here at Equipping Eve believe that God did say, and that He wrote it down for us in what we call the Bible, and this is a word that we love and treasure, and we know it to be true.

And so here we seek to dig into that word and learn as much as we can about it so that we are equipped with the truth, and then we will so much more easily distinguish error and the false when we see it and know what we believe to be true is true and can be trusted.

So today, I would like to equip Eve to hear from God. Yes, you heard me. Today we're going to talk about hearing from God. And some of you might be in a panic right now, and if you're familiar with my blog at all over at DoNotBeSurprised .com, you know this tends to be a pet peeve of mine when people claim to have heard directly from God.

Speaking of blogs, by the way, and websites, we do not currently have, as I record this anyway, we don't have a website for Equipping Eve, but it is in the works. So the address will be equippingeve .org, but there's a very good chance if you go there now that there won't be anything there.

It's not live yet, but it is being worked on, and I think it's going to be really great, and I can say that because I'm not actually designing it. So I have a lot of confidence in the gentleman who is working on it.

So I think it's going to be great once it's going, and we'll let you know once it's up and running, but it's not there yet, but keep that in the back of your mind, equippingeve .org. For now, you can contact me at DoNotBeSurprised .com.

And as I said, if you go there, you might see that there have been quite a few articles in the past about prominent Bible teachers who claim to hear from God. We know that women like Beth Moore claim these things, Sarah Young, the author of Jesus Calling, has claimed these things.

In fact, I ran across a devotional from Joyce Meyer just this week, and it was entitled Hearing from God, and she takes this verse from 1 Kings 19 where it talks about the still small voice, and she says, If you want to hear from God, you need to create a quiet, peaceful, strife-free atmosphere and set apart regular time to fellowship with God there.

He may not always speak what you want to hear or in the way you might think he would, but don't get discouraged. God will lead you. She doesn't say anything in the short little devotional about opening your Bible to hear from God.

Instead, you obey what you sense in your heart that you are to do, and when he is ready, he will show you the next thing. As you are thankful, you will find your sensitivity to God's voice increasing, says Joyce Meyer.

Just get quiet and listen and expect him to lead you in all that you do, and the power thought for this devotional is, I can hear the still small voice of God. So Joyce Meyer wants us to hear from God, and she never mentions the Word of God, the revealed Word of God written down in the 66 books of the Bible, Old and New Testament, the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

She never mentions it. That's not how Joyce Meyer would seek to hear from God. But is that right? I mean, why did God give us the Bible if we're not going to use it to hear from him? Why did he bother?

You know, but so many people today are seeking experiences outside of the Bible, and you'll often hear these people say, well, you know, we tested against scripture, and of course I believe in the sufficiency of scripture, but what they are doing by claiming personal outside revelation from God is functionally denying the sufficiency of scripture and saying one thing out of one side of their mouth, and yet doing another thing.

Because when you seek that extra biblical revelation, you are saying that the Bible is not enough. Hey God, thanks for this Bible. I want more. Seems like something you wouldn't want to say to your creator, but essentially that's what's going on.

John 10:27 in Context

And one verse that is often used in defense of this audible hearing from God is John 10 27. And I'm sure many of you are familiar with this argument. People say, well, John 10 27 says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

And that's Jesus speaking. So, I mean, case closed, right? Jesus says that his sheep will hear his voice. So obviously we're supposed to listen for that voice. I mean, why would we argue with Jesus? It's right there.

It seems simple, doesn't it? Well, at the risk of offering too simple of a refutation here, I have to ask, when did you become a sheep? I mean, a literal sheep. When did you first notice that you were growing wool and a tail and were craving grass instead of chocolate?

Has that happened? Because if you want to take part of this verse, literally, you have to take the whole thing, literally. And it just does not work. But this doesn't stop people from claiming to hear from God.

It doesn't stop them from claims to personal revelation, dreams, visions, prophecies. And the whole idea that God is speaking audibly or in nudges or whispers, it is perpetuated by men and women alike.

In the Visible Church, I mean, Bill Hybels has a book, The Power of a Whisper. So this is not something that women have a corner on. But let's face it, ladies, we are more emotionally driven. We seek experiences, perhaps a little more than men do.

And I think we're more susceptible to this deception than men may be. So what we are going to do today is go back to the Bible and see what God's word has to say about hearing from God. We're not going to do like Joyce Meyer and just throw something out that sounds good and just completely ignore the fact that God has given us his revealed word in this amazing collection of books.

We're going to go back to that word, what we know to be true, the firm foundation of scripture. We're going to dive in and see what God has to say about hearing from him. So first, I want to look at the broader context of this verse in John 10.

If you start at verse 22, it says that it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem. It was winter and Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon and the Jews gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Have you been paying attention is almost what you want to say to these people. Jesus has made it very plain to them who he is. And so he answers them. I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name.

These testify of me, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

So what is Jesus saying here? If you go back a couple chapters to chapter 8, verse 43, he says, why do you not understand what I am saying? It's because you cannot hear my word. Why not? Why can these people not hear his voice?

Because they are of their father, the devil. But Jesus is speaking the truth and they could not hear him in such a way that they could understand them. John 8, 47, Jesus says he who is of God hears the words of God.

For this reason, you do not hear them because you are not of God. So this all goes back to God's sovereign purposes and salvation. And ultimately, the Lord knows whom he has chosen and he calls them and they hear him and they come because they know his voice.

So we cannot rip John 10, 27 out of its broader context, because if we do, we're missing the great truth of God's sovereignty and salvation. In fact, actually, I stopped at verse 28, but verse 29 and 30 says, my father who has given them, Christ's sheep has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

I and the father are one. So this is what we see in the context, in the broader context of this passage. And by just ripping this out because, oh, my sheep hear my voice, that works. That'll prove that I should be listening for the voice of God.

You're missing this awesome truth. Of God's sovereign hand and choice and purposes in salvation and his promise to keep his own. So when we look at this misused and abused verse, we need to keep that broader context in mind.

But yet so many misguided Christians want to use it. They want to twist it. They want to distort it to apply this idea of personal revelation to the Christian from God Almighty. So what does scripture say about ongoing revelation?

Is the canon closed? If God is still personally speaking, you can sit there and say the canon is closed. But if you claim in the next breath that God talked to you while you were on your elliptical machine in the morning, or God gave you a dream and gave you a word that you have to go tell to a bunch of people, guess what?

You're saying the canon isn't closed because God himself has spoken to you and you should then start writing in the back of your Bible. Maybe I should start writing the book of Aaron for all those times that I claim God has talked to me, which I haven't actually done, by the way.

God's never audibly spoken to me, but he has spoken to me in his word. You know, if Joyce Meyer is hearing from God, should I add the book of Joyce to the back of my Bible? You see, we can't say one thing if we're functionally denying that truth by what we're doing in our lives and what we're saying out of the other side of our mouth.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Hebrews 1, 1, and 2 that says, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.

So again, we have in these verses an affirmation that in days past, God did speak to the prophets in many portions and in many ways. This is true, isn't it? We can read the Old Testament. God spoke to Moses.

God spoke to Elijah, to the prophets, to others. So again, do we have the same problem? Case closed. It's biblical that God would still speak to people in dreams and visions and voices, right? Well, all in all, if you examine the Old Testament, you'll see that the number of people who were addressed by God directly is actually very few, and they were called very specifically to a God-ordained role.

And what about the New Testament? How many times does Paul discuss with his churches in his letters or in his letters to Timothy and Titus, how many times does he talk about the phenomenon of Christ making personal guest appearances in someone's dream or doorway?

How many times? Because I don't see any instances of that in the text, and that's because there aren't any there. Paul doesn't say anything like that, and that is because the canon is closed. We aren't getting personal visits from Jesus.

What does the Bible say? We go back to Hebrews 1 -2. In these last days, he has spoken to us in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Kevin DeYoung says something helpful about that in his new book, Taking God at His Word.

He really, you know, he says that the Bible is not Jesus, the scripture is not the Son, but he says the words of the Bible and the word made flesh are distinct, but they are also inseparable. And he goes on to say that every act of redemption that we see in the scriptures is also a revelation.

They tell us something about the nature of sin, the way of salvation, the character of God. Likewise, the point of revelation is always to redeem. Redemption reveals, revelation redeems, and Christ is both.

He is God's full and final act of redemption and God's full and final revelation of himself. I think that's a really great way of helping to explain these verses in Hebrews, because the bottom line is, Jesus isn't here at our dinner table to talk to us, right?

So sometimes people read these verses and say, well, yeah, but it says he's talking, he's spoken in these last days through his Son, but Jesus isn't here. How does that work? Do I get a text message, an email?

Do I set up a lunch date, coffee date with Jesus? Well, some people would say that those things happen. I actually once heard a man claim that he opened the front door one day and there stood Jesus. And he really didn't have much explanation beyond that.

And this actually happened in a class I was taking. And if I remember correctly, the professor kind of stood there for a moment, silent, and then just ignored it and moved on, because it wasn't really a story he wanted to lend credibility to.

So it was just ridiculous what this man was claiming. I also once knew of a woman who started a church, a woman who started a church, because Jesus supposedly visited her in her kitchen one day and told her to do this.

Friends, let me just say this. I can say without reservation, without fear of error, that this woman did not talk to Jesus Christ. She may have been talking to someone, but it was not the Jesus of the Bible.

And how can I say this? Because Jesus does not contradict his word. In the word of God, places like 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, we see that the role of elders restricted to men. We know from 1 Corinthians 14 that women are not permitted to teach or hold authority over men in the church.

So to claim that Jesus Christ showed up in someone's kitchen and told this woman to start a church and to preach and to serve as pastor at this church is directly opposed to his own word. Christ would not oppose his own word.

He certainly would not call a woman to such a position of authority when he so clearly commands women not to hold such positions in the Bible. And I could easily go off on a tangent here. We will be speaking about women and roles of authority within the church in a future episode.

Lord willing, that day is not today. So God speaks to us through Jesus. Jesus isn't here in person. He is revealed to us in his word, in the Bible. Jesus Christ is the word incarnate. In the beginning was the word.

The word was with God. The word was God. We have been given such a gift in the scriptures. I venture to say there's a pretty good chance that most of you listening, as you sit in your living room or wherever you're listening, you probably have multiple copies of the Bible available to you.

Whether it's on your bookshelf, on your table, on your phone, on your iPad. The word of God is so accessible to us. It is literally at our fingertips. What a gift. So not only have we been given this gift of the word of God, but the way that God has ordained that technology would progress through the ages, we have it so readily available.

And that is such a treasure. And yet, when we think of these people who still seek to hear more, and they want more, and they want dreams and visions and prophecies and personal conversations, they're just basically spitting on this word and saying, thanks, God.

That's great. I want more. It's not good enough. But this mindset is so prevalent. There are so many claims to extra biblical revelation today. And people who maybe haven't experienced this or thought they experienced it are seeking it because they think it is normal.

Last fall, actually, about a year ago, YouGov .com released some statistics that claim that of the 76 of Americans who said they believe in some sort of God, half of the 76 claimed that they had done something because God told them to.

The study says, quote, the group most likely to have acted on God's command are born-again or evangelical Christians who make up about a third of Americans. Almost two-thirds of these born-again Christians say God has told them to do something at least once before, while only a quarter of the remaining population has had the same experience.

I'm not quite sure how they're defining born-again Christian. I venture to say it's not a biblical definition. But nevertheless, this phenomenon, these claims are most popular among professing Christians.

And as we all know, and as we've already mentioned, women especially love to have emotional experiences. Whether we like it or not, we have to admit it. It is our desire to tend to want more than the objective truth of Scripture.

We feel like we need something more. Women like to feel loved. We want to feel that everything's personal to us. And this can extend beyond our relationships with other people to our relationship with God.

And so for many women, objectively knowing that God loves his own might be difficult to accept as sufficient. And they begin to feel that they need to feel something emotional and experience something to bring validity to what they objectively know to be true.

But can we, should we, judge objective truth by our subjective experiences? Should we allow our manipulated and manipulative emotions to determine our course of truth? As I said, what are we saying to God, the author of this word, when we determine that this word is not good enough for us?

He's told us, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

Now, Paul's writing to Timothy here in man of God, you know, he's talking, it's a pastoral epistle, but ladies, this doesn't get you off the hook. The Bible is adequate to equip you, to teach you for reproof, for correction, for rebuke, for training and righteousness.

It is for every child of God who has been redeemed and saved. So as we consider this trend to rely on our experiences to determine what we believe to be true, and as we acknowledge the growing desire among Christians to literally hear from God outside of the Bible, I want to bring some interesting observations to your mind that have been made by anthropologist Tanya Lerman.

Lerman is the author of the book, When God Talks Back, Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Now, it's important to note that she does not consider herself to be a Christian. She says in her book, I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality, but it is also true that through the process of this journey in my own way, I have come to know God.

I do not know what to make of this knowing. I would not call myself a Christian, says Tanya Lerman, but I find myself defending Christianity. I don't think of myself as believing in a God who sits out there as real as a doorpost, but I have experienced what I believe the Gospels mean by joy.

Of course, if she has not been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that she has not experienced true joy and true peace through forgiveness of her sins through Christ, but that's another episode. And so I am not advocating Lerman's work per se, but I think some of her observations are important to the conversation here.

I think we should probably, probably presume that much of her exposure to so-called Christianity, I'm using air quotes, but it's radio, so you can't see that. I'm using air quotes around Christianity.

Her exposure to what she calls Christianity, I think has been deceiving, and that's just kind of based on the observations she has made, but it just speaks to the prevalence of this deception that we should seek personal experiences and personal words from the Lord.

In an article published in Christianity Today, Lerman proposes that through her observation of various evangelical streams that she discovered that women are more likely than men to hear from God because they are more sensitive to the use of their imaginations.

Did you catch that? Women are more likely to hear from God because they're more sensitive to the use of their imaginations. She says, quote, women pray more because women are more comfortable with their imaginations.

And in order to pray, you need to use your imagination. Let me be clear, she says, I'm not suggesting God is a product of the imagination. I'm instead noting that to know God intimately, you need to use your imagination because the imagination is the means humans must use to know the immaterial.

Now, first of all, I know plenty of men who are avid prayers, legitimate prayers. So I think there's a little bit of an insult there to men to say that women pray more. But she's talking about a different type of prayer here.

Women may be more inclined to pray with the hope that it will elicit an experience or an encounter. I don't have any data to prove that, but I think there's some legitimacy to that. But what is most telling here with what Lerman is saying is the focus on the imagination.

On one hand, she says God's not a product of the imagination. But on the other hand, according to her, it's those who are most comfortable with their imaginations who pray more and who think they are literally hearing from God, think they are experiencing God.

She also says, in general, people experience God in this vivid way if they are comfortable with their own imaginations. The amount of time they spend praying also makes a difference to the vividness of their experience.

And that last quote there makes me think of contemplative prayer, that people who use their imaginations are able to create these experiences. And when you participate in contemplative prayer, or it's also called soaking prayer, breath prayer, meditation, drifting into the silence, basically entering an altered state of consciousness to have a supernatural experience, you may encounter something, you may have a very vivid experience, but it will not be with the God of the Bible.

But again, that's a whole other show. The fact that Lerman, though, as an outside observer, she has no apparent bias for or against Christianity here. And the fact that she notes that it's those who are hearing audible voices from God are those who are open to the vividness of their imaginations.

I think this is extremely telling. She seems to see this as a positive thing, probably because it feels good. It gives you the warm, fuzzy feeling. But again, we here at Equipping Eve need to be concerned with one thing.

Is it biblical? And so at that point, we go back to what we know to be true. Hebrews 1 tells us God has spoken in these last days through his son. Paul tells us that the word of God is sufficient. Nowhere in the record of the Old or New Testament do we see the Lord speaking to individual Christians as a matter of common and expected practice.

Further, if you find that you have to engage in unbiblical meditative practices and start using your imagination to experience God, you've got some concerning deficits in your understanding of the truth.

And you may hear from something, but it will not be the God of the Bible. So ladies, do you desire to hear from God? I do. I do. And when I desire to hear from God, I open the Bible. Pray for wisdom and understanding from above.

Ladies, let's not seek for more outside of the word. How good is God to have given us his word? What else could we possibly ask for? You've been listening to Equipping Eve. Thanks for tuning in. And until we meet again, ladies, get in your Bible, get on your knees, and get equipped.

Thanks for listening.

You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a No Compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of our two websites, do notbesurprised .com or equippingeve .org.

Thanks for listening.