God Doesn't Whisper Part 1

Justin Peters

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God Doesn't Whisper Part 2

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I hope that you and your family are doing well today. I want to thank you very much for watching this video and the next two installments of this series.

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I have as my guest, Mr. Jim Osmond. Jim Osmond is one of my dearest friends and he is the pastor of Kootenai Community Church here in Sandpoint, Idaho.

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And we are in the sanctuary of Kootenai Community Church. Some of you may have seen some of the other videos that Jim and I did together, talking about spiritual warfare.

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Jim wrote a book entitled Truth or Territory, A Biblical Approach to Spiritual Warfare. And he has now written another book entitled

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God Doesn't Whisper. So Jim, first of all, let me shake your hand and welcome you to the -

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Thank you, I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure whenever we can do something together. It is, it really is. I'm looking forward to this.

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And I'll tell you, I am really excited about your book, God Doesn't Whisper. Jim was gracious enough to allow me to read an advance copy of it and I wrote an endorsement for it.

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And Jim, tell us about the book. Tell us, first of all, just a little bit about yourself and then go into the book.

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Yeah, for those who may not know, I pastor a small church in rural North Idaho, up just outside of Sandpoint, near the

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Canadian border. And we were privileged to have Justin and Kathy be members here and active in our church for a number of years, eight years?

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Yeah. About eight years before he moved off into the wilderness of Montana. And now he's decided to spend 40 years wandering around in the

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Montana wilderness before what, you enter into the promised land? I don't know. Yeah, it probably won't be too long for me, actually.

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So anyway, Justin and I have been friends since 2009 and we've had the privilege of working together on a number of projects and venues.

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And so it's a joy to be back with him and to work again on this project with Justin.

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Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you have, if you are anything like me, you have probably heard from the vast, vast, vast, almost unchallenged teaching, a vast majority of the evangelical world that as Christians, we are supposed to be hearing the voice of God.

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And I have said before that the bookshelves practically sag under the weight of all of the different books out there that are written to help you know how to hear and listen for and discern the voice of God.

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How do we know when God is speaking to us? Follow these techniques, follow these steps to hear the voice of God.

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And Jim, your book is very counterintuitive to that almost unchallenged notion in the evangelical world that we are supposed to be hearing

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God's voice on a regular basis. So tell us about what this book is about, generally speaking, and how did you become interested in this issue?

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Well, the title of the book is God Doesn't Whisper. And what I am challenging is the notion that's prominent within evangelicalism that we need to be listening for the still small voice of God, that we need to be paying attention to promptings and nudgings and impressions and intuitions and hunches that we might have looking for signs that God might drop along our way as if we are supposed to go through life trying to read the tea leaves, follow the breadcrumbs, discern the voice of God in our surroundings, in our circumstances, in open and closed doors, and most significantly and most dangerously inside of our own intuitions, feelings, nudgings, and promptings that we might sense inside of our brain or inside of our heart.

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So I'm challenging that notion. And basically I'm saying that God doesn't whisper. He doesn't try to be heard.

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He doesn't try to communicate. He speaks. And when he speaks in scripture, he speaks loudly, clearly, and understandably because he expects those to whom he is speaking to be obedient to what he has said.

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So I'm not suggesting that God doesn't speak to us through undiscernible whispers or even in whispers.

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I'm saying that God has spoken to us in his word and that all of these other methodologies are patently unbiblical and the assumptions behind them are patently unbiblical.

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So that's the gist of the book. And how did I get interested in it? Yeah, you...

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Yeah, the book itself is... Actually, this is the case with a lot of stuff that I end up writing.

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It ends up becoming a mea culpa for things I believed in the past. So with spiritual warfare, for instance, I critiqued a method and a view of spiritual warfare that I once held dear when

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I was in Bible college. And the same thing is true with this theology, with what I have short, I've designated

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HVG theology, hearing the voice of God theology. And I once believed because I was taught this and actually just,

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I assumed that this was true when I was in Bible college, I once believed that we needed to listen for the whispers of God.

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And this was what I had heard from the student body around me and even sometimes select teachers at the

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Bible college that I attended in Canada, that that's how we heard God was to pick up the whispers, the signs that he was dropping down.

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So it kind of came, this whole theology came to a crisis for me. At the end of my first year of Bible college,

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I faced a decision that I needed to make on whether to come back for a second year or whether I needed to leave after one year at Bible college and return back home here to Sandpoint and pursue a job in a secular career.

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And I had a strong desire to study theology. I had a strong desire to learn more about God and learn more about scripture at the end of that first year.

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I really wanted to come back. But as I would talk with other students in the student body who were also making the same decision, they would use things, they would use phrases like, the

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Lord just told me that I was supposed to come back to Bible college or the Lord laid it upon my heart or I heard the still small voice or I have a peace with returning or God has opened the door for me to come or I put out a fleece and God has revealed through the fleece that I'm supposed to come back.

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They seem to be receiving these signs and these impressions, these nudgings on a regular basis with frequency and with clarity that I didn't have.

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And so I thought maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm just not mature enough to discern the signs.

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Maybe I'm not discerning enough to see what is the hand of God. Maybe I'm not equipped enough or able to really hear his voice or figure out when he's speaking to me and when he's not.

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So I wrestled with this and I prayed for the Lord to give me some insight, some vision, some dream, some sign, something that would help me to make that decision.

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Should I stay or should I go? To quote the 80s song, should I stay or should I go? That was the decision I was trying to make.

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And I didn't get anything. I didn't get a still small voice, I didn't get any hunches, promptings, nothing that I could say, well, this was the voice of God telling me.

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So I started to ask God for signs. Like if somebody paid for my whole next year's tuition, I would take that as a sign that I should come back to Bible college.

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And nothing happened. I prayed for God to show me signs. I didn't see any signs. I didn't read any circumstances.

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Nobody said anything. There was nothing in scripture that seemed to jump off the page and reveal his will. And so I started to pray, well,

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Lord, if it's your will for me to come back to Bible college, then just have somebody step up and pay for one semester.

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And still nothing, no clear direction, no visions, no signs, nothing. And so I started to pray, Lord, if somebody just buys my books for tuition for that next year, then

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I'll take it as your will to come back for Bible college. And still nothing, no nudgings, no promptings, no clear direction at all.

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I started to feel like Abraham negotiating for a city. And I eventually got exasperated with that and started at some points to even question whether or not

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I was truly saved. I mean, that entered into my mind. How is it that all of these other people can hear these voices, these promptings?

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And I don't hear them. I don't hear that voice. And yet I would hear students quote,

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John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice. Well, if I'm not hearing a voice, maybe I'm not a sheep or maybe

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I'm just not mature enough or godly enough. Maybe I'll learn this discipline at some point. And that was the crisis that kind of caused eventually my whole commitment to the hearing the voice of God theology to come crashing down over the course of the next couple of years.

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As I came to the conclusion that God is not trying to communicate with us. He has in his word. He's not trying to whisper to us his directions through promptings and nudgings, et cetera.

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He has communicated everything in his word. It is sufficient for life and godliness. And we need nothing else other than what scripture gives us for making decisions and leading

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God, honoring God, glorifying lives. Yeah. Now, dear ones, as you're watching this, you may be right now, you're thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

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What are you talking about? This goes against everything that I've ever been told. This goes against everything

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I've ever heard from the pulpit. This goes against Charles Stanley, what I've heard him talk about. This goes against Priscilla Shire, Beth Moore.

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And this goes against, I mean, even some people that you would maybe to one degree or another hold in relatively high esteem.

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Not that we hold Beth Moore in high esteem at all, but that's for another program. But you may be wondering that, well, wait, this is not what

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I've been taught. Are you saying that God only speaks to us through the Bible? And Jim, I know

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I went through this myself. Many of you watching right now, undoubtedly you have heard all of these people say, well,

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God spoke to me. God told me to tell you such and such. God told me that we should be doing this in our church.

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We should go this direction. We should do this. And has it ever made you wonder, what's wrong with me?

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All these other people claim to hear God speak. They say that God speaks to them so clearly, so regularly, but yet I don't hear him talk to me like that.

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Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my walk with the Lord? And this is who you're really trying to reach in the book.

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It is, and some of the teachings of HVG proponents, those who teach this theology that we need to be listening for God's whispers, some of them actually, in their teachings, they won't come out and say it, they will talk in such a way or write in such a way as to really make you question your own sanctification and your own salvation if you're not hearing from God.

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So for instance, Henry Blackaby would say, if you're not regularly hearing from God outside of scripture, there's something fundamentally wrong at the heart of your

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Christian life and experience. Well, listen, if God's not speaking to you regularly, then there's nothing you can do to hear him speak to you, period.

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So if you're not hearing him speak, it's because he's not speaking to you outside of scripture. And so if it's true that God has spoken to us in his word and he has not promised to speak to us outside scripture, then if you're not hearing from him from outside scripture and yet you have a teacher like Henry Blackaby or Charles Stanley or Priscilla Schreier.

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Rick Warren. Rick Warren, yeah. Robert Morris and others like that who are telling you that you need to be hearing these things regularly, and if you're not, there's something fundamentally wrong with your relationship with the

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Lord. You have a one -way relationship with him where you do all the talking and God does all the listening and he never speaks to you.

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These teachers make you feel as if you're missing out on something if you're not regularly hearing nudgings and promptings in your head.

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They make you feel as if you are fundamentally unsanctified, immature, that your relationship with the

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Lord is broken almost to the point of being irreparable if you're not regularly receiving divine missives from heaven.

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Hi, I'm Priscilla Schreier, and I'm hoping that you'll join me for a six -week journey as we talk about how we can hear and discern the voice of God in our lives.

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Do you really expect and anticipate that the divine voice of God can be heard by you?

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Do you really think that he loved you enough to die for you but doesn't love you enough to then talk to you?

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Last week, we began a new mini -series on understanding how to hear the voice of God.

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Very few things are more important than this because you can't have a relationship to God if you can't hear

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God. If all you do is ever talk to him in prayer and you never hear

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God speak to you, that's a one -way relationship. That isn't much of a relationship.

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Right, that's the way they write. Those are the assumptions that go into their writing. And so if you're used to reading those kinds of writings and thinking in those terms, and then you start to say, well, when

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I started thinking about Chinese food during the worship service today, was that the

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Lord trying to whisper to me to go to the Chinese restaurant for lunch today? Or when I saw the picture of the shape of Africa in the clouds today as I was leaving church, is that the

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Lord trying to tell me that I need to be a missionary from Africa or give money to Africa? And if you're not regularly receiving those types of communications and picking up on them, then you would start to wonder, man, what's wrong with me?

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Maybe I'm not a sheep, maybe I'm not mature, maybe my relationship with the Lord is broken, and it could lead to exasperation, which is the opposite of what we should be experiencing as believers.

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The reason I ended up attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, not the reason I went to seminary itself, but the reason

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I chose Southwestern in particular is because I had a choice between Southwestern in Fort Worth, Texas, or New Orleans, down in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and I couldn't decide which one of those I wanted to go to. New Orleans was a bit closer, but I was driving in my van one day, and a song came on the radio, and one of the lines in the song was, "'Go

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West, Young Man.'" That Michael W. Smith? I think it was, actually, now that you mention that. Yeah, it was, actually.

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Go West, Young Man. And it was right at the time I was trying to decide, do I go to Southwestern, do I go to New Orleans? Go West, Young Man.

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And, well, Fort Worth, Texas is west of Vicksburg, Mississippi, so that's literally why

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I ended up going to Southwestern instead of New Orleans. So, I mean, but I'm feeling much better now.

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The Lord used that decision in his providence, even though it was misguided and based upon something that he is.

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And this is the point. God has not promised to lead us in that way. There's no promise in Scripture that that is how

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God leads us, through a song on the radio, or the shape of a cloud in the sky, or a random thought, or a nudging, or impression.

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There's nothing in Scripture that promises that that's how God leads us, to make life -altering decisions like that.

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I mean, just be glad you weren't listening to Kodo's Africa. You might have gone to South African seminary or something.

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I'd be in Zimbabwe right now. Exactly. And, you know, what is the hermeneutical grid for interpreting shapes and clouds, or random song on the radio, or, as Bill Heibel said,

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Bill Heibel's former pastor of Willow Creek Church, he was out fishing on his boat one day, and a

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Bud Light beer can floated by his boat, and he thought maybe that was a message from God. Yeah. How do we interpret, you know, these?

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What's the exegetical grid? Right. See, in going into that, you have to assume that, number one, that the sign comes from God, number two, that God intends for me to exegete that sign, and try and find some meaning in it, and then, three, you have to assume that whatever meaning you're able to draw out of a floating beer can, that it is somehow divinely authoritative enough to guide you in decision -making, or to feed your heart, or sanctify you in some way.

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And those are all decisions that are without any warrant in scripture at all. So, if you're making the argument, and I know that you do, because I've read the book, but if you're making the argument, by the way,

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I wish you could have gotten somebody a little bit better to write the foreword to it. The foreword is written by John MacArthur, Dr.

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John MacArthur, so that - Well, R .C. Sproul had already died, J .I. Packer had just passed away, and I thought, who else am

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I gonna get to write? I guess I'll ask John to write. And reluctantly, he did. Yeah, reluctantly. No, I mean, in all seriousness,

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John MacArthur doesn't hand out forewords to books like Candy. If he's willing to put his name on it, that says a lot for the book.

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And, dear friends, I wanna heartily commend this book to you, it is absolutely excellent. It goes, it's diametrically opposed to the prevailing winds in the evangelical church, but I really believe that if you'll read this book, it will be a tremendous help to you, a tremendous encouragement to you, and it will allay all of those doubts and fears that you have had, well,

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I just don't hear God speak to me like he seems to be speaking to everyone else. This will be a tremendous help to you.

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Oh, thank you, that's appreciated. Yeah, and I mean it. So, but that does raise up a question.

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If God only speaks to us in his word, then how do I make decisions?

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How do I know which job to take? Because the Bible doesn't tell me if I'm supposed to be a plumber, or a dentist, or an accountant.

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The Bible doesn't tell me which house to buy, doesn't tell me who to marry, other than it tells me to marry a believer, but other than that, it doesn't tell me to marry

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Susie Q over Betty Lou, or whatever. So how do you make big, life -altering decisions if God has only spoken, and is only speaking through his word?

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Well, this is gonna sound contrary to what most evangelicals teach in most evangelical circles, and it is contrary to that.

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But it is biblical, and the gist of it is this. We make our decisions, big ones and small ones, basically the same way.

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We make the big decisions and the small decisions the same way. We use two parameters. Is one of my choices within the moral will of God, and what

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God has revealed in wisdom? And if we can eliminate any difficulties or issues with either choice within the revealed moral will of God, that is what scripture says concerning God's morally revealed will, that we be pure, that we not lie, that we not be worldly, et cetera.

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Those things, what scripture has clearly revealed, if our choice does not rest outside of that, and our choice does not contradict sound godly wisdom, also revealed in scripture.

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So I'm looking for moral issues and wisdom issues in scripture. And if either of my choices do not violate either one of those two parameters, then, this is gonna sound wacky, we are free to make either choice with God's blessing.

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And we should. We should choose to do what we want to do in that situation and do it with God's blessing.

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So if we're talking about being, making a choice with a job career, I had a choice that I could go back to Bible college or not go to Bible college.

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If I didn't go back to Bible college after one year, then I was gonna come back here. I was gonna pursue a course to become a certified public accountant.

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I was gonna go to a secular university, get a secular job and go on with my life. That was my other option.

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The other option was, my first option was to stay at Bible college and continue out my course of studies there. I didn't know

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I was gonna become a pastor. I never expected to ever become a pastor or to ever preach or teach scripture or to ever write books or anything.

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That's not why I wanted to go. I wanted to go because I love scripture and I wanted to learn more. So I had a desire to learn and to know

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God and to know God's word. So those were my two options. Now, neither one of those is outside of the moral will of God.

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There's nothing in scripture that says you shouldn't be a certified public accountant. There's nothing in scripture that says you shouldn't go to university to gain a skill like that, that you can leverage into a vocation to earn money, provide for your family, have retirement, live a life in the secular job field.

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There's nothing in scripture that prohibits that. There's nothing unwise about either one of those choices. So at the end of the day, those are my two choices.

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At the end of that first year of Bible college, I did what I most wanted to do. And I didn't make that decision of doing what

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I most wanted to do because I had clearly in my mind this method for decision -making and hearing from God.

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I didn't. I just did what I most wanted to do because at that point, going to a secular university and becoming a certified public accountant was less and less appealing to me.

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And continuing to study scripture, even though I didn't know what the end result of that was gonna be, was very appealing to me. So without any signs or voices from God, without any vision, heavenly visions, dreams, nudgings, promptings, anything,

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I went and did what my heart most wanted to do. And it was within the moral will of God and it was within the wisdom model of pursuing

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God's will. So that applies to choosing a job. It also applies to choosing a spouse.

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If choosing woman A over woman B is not an issue that violates

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God's moral will or violates God's wisdom, then I'm free to choose to marry whichever woman within the will of God and expect

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God's blessing. And in those situations, the Lord is not concerned. The Lord has not promised to reveal to us specifically which one of those decisions he is to make.

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Now, the Lord may through his providence close off certain doors, break off certain relationships. The Lord may through his providence, even extraordinary providences, close off certain avenues and clearly push us into a certain path of directing our steps as it were.

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But those acts of providence are not the voice of God. We don't say the Lord spoke to me and told me this because that's not the language that scripture uses.

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Rather, we would see it as the hand of God guiding our steps and we can look back in hindsight and see that the

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Lord has guided our steps in this way. And we can give him credit and glory for doing that, but we can't call that the voice of God because scripture does not call that the voice of God.

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Yeah, right. And you deal with in your book, and I think it's an excellent point. I think a lot of us have this idea, especially dealing in the

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New Testament days with the apostles. The apostles were these super spiritual men and they had this direct pipeline to God and God did give them direct divine revelation.

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But as far as decision -making, even in the apostolic age, we don't see the apostles seeking out

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God's specific divine will for their lives in every single decision.

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Do we? The apostles, they just did stuff, right? They did stuff and they did stuff with God's blessing, trusting that God was going to work out the details and guide their steps in the process.

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Sometimes they even did stuff expressing their own desire or what seemed right to them. For instance, they made the decision, the theological issue concerning meat offered to idols and circumcision in Acts 15.

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And at the end of that entire episode, Peter and the apostles stood up and said, it seems right or it seems appropriate to us.

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That was not given granted to them by special revelation from scripture. This was, they discussed this theology, what the teaching of Jesus was, the obvious testimony of people being included into God's salvation program, like in Acts 10 with Peter and Cornelius and then with Paul and Barnabas after, because that happened after their first missionary journey in Acts 13 and 14.

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So they looked at the evidence, they saw what the hand of God was doing, they looked at the doctrines of scripture, saw the

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Old Testament promises regarding Gentiles and they said that it seems appropriate to us that we lay no other burden except for these things.

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And they wrote that letter to the Gentile churches and that was not granted by divine supernatural revelation. There's no indication in scripture that the apostles selected the deacons in the early church based upon the

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Lord singling out which deacon to choose. The way the apostles made decisions is they looked within the moral will of God.

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For instance, Paul would say, God had called him to be an apostle, God had called him to evangelize, he had the opportunity to do that.

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So he would go out and do that. But divine intervention in scripture was always unexpected, it was never anticipated and it was always out of the ordinary.

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It wasn't the ordinary event when the Lord would appear in a vision and say, go to Macedonia, that was extraordinary.

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Not every step that the apostle Paul took was a Macedonian style vision. But there were extraordinary acts of supernatural revelation to those men.

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We would expect that because they were apostles, but we're not promised that. And they weren't promised that. No, they weren't promised that, but the

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Lord intervened at certain times in the record of acts. And all of those instances are related to apostolic ministry and the worldwide expanse of the gospel.

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You never get anything in scripture that indicates that Paul waited upon a sign from the

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Lord to determine whether he was gonna go have Chinese food for lunch or a ham sandwich for lunch.

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You never, for choosing which direction to go for missionary activity or which traveling companion to choose or with whom to send the letter to Corinth.

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Was it gonna be through Trophimus or Timothy or Titus? Which one of those guys? There was never an indication in scripture that the apostles waited on the

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Lord to reveal those things through any kind of supernatural means or any whispers by which they would get divine revelation.

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Yeah, Paul said that they spent the winter at Nicopolis because he thought it was best.

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Thought it was best, yeah. Thought it was the best thing to do and so they did. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the model that you see in the

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New Testament, but that is so contrary to what most evangelicals think today. We think we're supposed to, we've been preconditioned to believe that we're supposed to get whispers or hunches or still small voices to tell us where to go to have lunch.

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I've even literally, I've heard people, I had one guy, this was a long time ago, told me that God revealed to him what kind of toothpaste to use.

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I mean, it's just, but it's, you see, that is not what we see in scripture, not even in the apostolic age.

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No, in fact, to add to that, the apostle Paul talked about his desire to go to visit Rome and he wrote to the

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Romans. That's right. And he said, I have a desire to come and visit you, but the Lord has prohibited me to this time. He had no opportunity. He was hoping for an opportunity later on and he had a desire to go visit them, but at no point did

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Paul say, the Lord has revealed to me that I should go to Rome or that the Lord has revealed to me that I'm coming to Rome. He just said to the

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Romans, I have a desire to come and visit you so I can impart to you a spiritual gift and perhaps the Lord may grant me opportunity to do that.

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Here are my plans for staying there. You know, I'll go on to Spain and winter with you, but in the meantime,

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I'm waiting for the Lord to open up these opportunities. Paul did not wait upon divine revelation. He had a desire to do something and he would go and do it and if the

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Lord kept him from doing it, he would try something else. They just, to say what you said, they just did stuff.

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Yeah, they just did stuff. And you know, friends, you don't have to worry about, you know, if I choose this when

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I really should have chosen this and everything's just going to fall apart. The Bible says that God upholds all things by the word of his power, right?

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I mean, every atom in the entire universe is being held in its place by the active exertion of God's power and so he is in control of everything.

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He's sovereign over our decision making and so we rest in the sovereignty of God and we know his revealed will in the scriptures and we just obey it and we do stuff and trust in his providence and sovereignty.

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You're not going to thwart God's sovereign purposes or his accomplishment of his objectives by making a wrong decision so long as it is within the moral will of God and his wisdom.

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We seek to not be disobedient to what is clearly revealed in scripture and when we are making decisions within those parameters, we can trust the outcome, trust that God will bless it and that God will use it and that what we're doing, he will use to accomplish his purposes for us.

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And just as you're saying that, I would throw in real quickly, I've heard people say, well, as long as what you think you're hearing from God, as long as it's biblical, as long as it's in agreement with the word of God, then you know it is from God and I would say that's not necessarily true because if I were to go up to a young man and say,

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God has spoken to me and he's told me to tell you, young man, who is just out of high school or whatever, about to go into college or something like that,

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God revealed to me that you're supposed to be a missionary in Mozambique. Is that unbiblical?

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No, it's not unbiblical. It's certainly not unbiblical to go and preach the gospel to foreign lands.

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That's perfectly biblical, but maybe that's not what he's supposed to be doing and I could ruin his whole life because he thinks

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I'm hearing from God and maybe God doesn't want him to go to Mozambique.

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Maybe he's just supposed to be a construction worker in Walla Walla, Washington or something and raise a family and be a member of a church so you can really mess people up significantly.

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The bottom line is we are not promised in scripture that God will give us that information before making decisions. There's no promise in scripture that that is how

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God leads us or that we should expect that. Now, some of you watching this, you may be thinking, oh, this is

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Justin Peters and so he's really hammering the charismatic, the continuous issue and in case you're not familiar with those terms, let me just briefly define.

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There is a position known as cessationism and if you're a cessationist, of which you and I are, we're both card -carrying members.

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Card -carrying, I got my card right here. You got your card, cool. So as a cessationist, you and I believe that not that all of the spiritual gifts have ceased, but only the apostolic gifts have ceased.

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The sign gifts, which would include tongues, interpretation of tongues, miracles, physical healing, those gifts have ceased.

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Not that God doesn't still heal people, he does, but the gift of healing has ceased. But as cessationists, we would still affirm the gift of teaching, mercy, administration, exhortation, giving, hospitality, all of those gifts.

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So that's the cessationist position. If you are a continuous, some would say a restorationist, that you believe that those apostolic gifts continue to be in operation or they've been restored to the church, then that is by definition the charismatic position.

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So is that what you're dealing with in this book? And is that who you're, are we talking about word of faith, charismatics here?

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Yeah, when I wrote the book, I could have taken it in any one of those directions and I could have sort of shot a broad shot against all of it, because you have within that continuationist movement, you've got

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New Apostolic Reformation, Pentecostal, charismatic, and you've got even Calvinist continuationists now that are cropping up.

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I wanted to be more targeted and I'm not dealing with the cessationist versus continuationist issue itself per se.

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So I'm not offering a case for cessationism. What I am offering is a rebuke of a certain element of continuationist practice.

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Even though somebody might not be continuationist in theology, they might be continuationist in practice, in what they practice concerning hearing from God and getting revelation and revelation knowledge, et cetera.

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So that's kind of what I'm dealing with is more, it's not, I'm not arguing for cessationism, even though I am a cessationist, because I would suggest that there are people who are continuationists who would also could, or sorry, yeah, people who are continuationists who could also agree with this.

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You don't have to be a card -carrying cessationist to recognize that scripture does not promise you revelation for decision -making and God does not promise you, scripture does not promise you that every one of God's people is gonna be a prophet.

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So I'm really going after the, in this book, I'm dealing with a certain type of practice, hearing from God, and we're gonna get into those in the next episode, specifically what some of those practices are.

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But I'm dealing with a certain kind of practice and I'm really targeting it at the people who would call themselves cessationists.

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They would say, I don't believe in any of that charismatic nonsense, but it's the little old lady sitting in the back pew of the

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Southern Baptist Church who thinks that God is revealing to her right then which missionary she should support or which elder she should vote for or which restaurant to go to for lunch.

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She's waiting on these revelations of God whispering in her ear. She would consider that the work of God in her life.

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She would be listening for those things even though she would reject all the charismatic craziness that you and I might object to.

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So that's really what I'm going after. You don't have to be a card -carrying cessationist to recognize the scripture does not promise that all

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God's people are prophets. Yeah, and it's not just the charismatics that believe that God is still speaking outside of scripture.

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This is, as we said, this is almost the unchallenged belief in non -charismatic churches.

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And so it's really those people that you're trying to reach. Yeah, there are people that I critique and quote in the book who would call themselves cessationists.

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I think Bill Hybels would probably comfortably call himself a cessationist or at least a non -charismatic. So would

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Henry Blackaby and so would Charles Stanley. Of course, I do deal with some charismatics, a couple of Word of Faith people, a couple of New Apostolic Reformation people.

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But for the most part, I'm trying to show the overlap that you can have somebody like Charles Stanley who would think that God is speaking to him and giving him revelation, how much he agrees with Jack Deere and how much he agrees with Mark Batterson and Robert Morris and Joyce Meyer.

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And so there's a lot of overlap there. And it's because they may be cessationists in theology or at least a profession of theology, but then they're continuationists in their view of how

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God gives them guidance each and every day through whispers, nudgings, and promptings. And I think the overall argument that we're making and the thing that we want to champion and the thing that we want to really restore into the forefront of people's minds and their confidence is the sufficiency of Scripture, isn't it?

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There've been battles fought over inerrancy, whether or not God's Word is inerrant. Those battles were fought in the late 70s, early mid 80s.

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And theoretically, those battles were won, theoretically, over inerrancy. But the real battle today is over sufficiency.

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Is God's Word sufficient? And we are losing that battle. We're losing it because of some of the things taught by Henry Blackbee and Experiencing God and Bill Hybels.

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So if God is speaking in a direct, quotable sense outside of Scripture, then that by definition means that the

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Bible is not enough. Because if it was enough, God would not have a need to speak outside of it in addition to it.

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And that's the argument of hearing the voice of God, HBG theologians. They would say that we need to hear from God just as much as the

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Old Testament prophets did, or the New Testament believers did. We need to hear from God, and God needs to speak to us.

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How else is he going to give us the instructions that we need? Robert Morris says he wouldn't even know how to pastor a church if he wasn't regularly hearing from God.

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He needs God to speak to him and all these decisions to make in pastoring a church. Well, listen to what that communicates. Listen to what that's saying.

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He's saying that in Scripture, he has not been given enough information on how to pastor a church in Scripture. So instead, he has to hear

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God speak to him to give him directions about which ministry to support, which youth pastor to hire, what type of services to have, what to preach on a

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Sunday morning, what songs to choose, et cetera. He needs all of this extra information in order to successfully pastor a church.

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Well, I happen to believe that God has given to us everything that's necessary for life and godliness and ministry, and that the

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Word of God is sufficient to equip us for every good work, including pastoring a church. Well, dear ones,

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I hope that this has been helpful for you and hopefully whet your appetite for our next two installments.

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Our next program, we're gonna be talking about some of the specifics of these issues. What about John 10, 27, my sheep hear my voice?

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What about the still small voice? Doesn't God speak to us in still small voices? What about putting out fleeces?

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We're gonna drill down into some of those specifics. And then our final episode, we're going to answer some of the objections that people will raise.

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And as this book has only been out as of this recording a few weeks, but we've already received some pushback, some objections, and we're gonna talk about some of those common objections and we will answer them.

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Yep. Okay? All right, dear ones, Jim, before we sign off, where can people find your book?

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Oh, amazon .com. You can get it in Kindle or in print, amazon .com. And you have a website.

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I do have a website, yeah, jimosman .com. Last name is O -S -M -A -N, jimosman .com.

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And you can find all my books there, actually. Yeah, he's written four, three of it.

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This is your fourth? Yes, fourth. Fourth book. So he's written three other books. So jimosman .com, I was really glad to see you get a website with your name on it because that makes me feel better about my own website.

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I've always been a little sensitive to justinpeters .org. So thank you, I feel better about it now. So all right, dear ones, until our next time together, may the grace of our