Ways that God speaks

How does God speak?  God speaks externally and internally.  Externally, He speaks through creation (a sunset, flowers, the ocean), signs, and symbols, sacraments, nature, science, people, events, circumstances, books, The Church, the Bible, the Pope, bishops, priests, the lives o the saints, through husbands, wives, children and even through our failures.

Internally, God speaks primarily through our own thoughts, but also through our deepest desires, our intentions and insights, our dreams, and our visions.

“If you really want to know what God wants you to do, simply ask Him.  Make sure you really expect a solid answer for a double minded person will be unsettled as a wave at sea.”  (James 1:5-6)

“Now we believe, because we heard for ourselves” (Jn 4:42).  God speaks “in many and diverse ways.”  Let me list some of the most usual ones by first discussing some of the internal ways.

INTERNAL WAYS:

THROUGH OUR THOUGHTS

God’s normal interior way of speaking to His children is through their own thoughts, which His Spirit from within puts into their minds.  This happens so “naturally” that most of the time, His children miss the realization that the “insights” or thoughts that come to them come from Him.  In fact, he first wave of the gifts of the Spirit are “thought” gifts, I.e. wisdom, understanding, knowledge, prophecy, “conscience” and discernment.  Wisdom is an overall understanding of God’s character and plan.  Christian wisdom would mean understanding the basic ‘kerygma’ or the “essential truths” of the gospels.

1.  That God as Father has revealed Himself and His Will in many ways to His children.

2.  That Jesus as the full revelation of the Father has come into our world to help us think, love and act like Him.

3.  That the Spirit of the Father and the Son has been poured forth      bringing both gifts and fruits.

4.  That together with one another, we form God’s covenanted family on earth.

5.  That each of us is called to this shared life with Him and one another.

Christian understanding means that we perceive the inter-connection of these truths with life.  Christian knowledge, (in Hebrew “to be intimate with”) means we have made this our own.  Christian prophecy means that we are open to the ongoing “voice” of the Lord.  Christian conscience “is discernment.”  Paul prays, “May the eyes of your understanding be enlightened, and may you have a renewal of your minds so that you may know God’s will, what is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect.”  (Eph 1:17 & Tom 12:1-2)

THROUGH OUR HEARTS

God’s next most popular interior way of “speaking” is through the “Impressions” He make upon our hearts.  When we realize that God has placed His Spirit “within” us to enlighten our minds and inflame our hearts to do His will, we begin to trust the “impulses of His Spirit” within.  So we can say that the second wave of the gifts of the Spirit are “heart” gifts such as love, compassion, sensitivity, caring, longing, awaiting, mercy zeal, and purity.  He sensitizes us and He expands our ability to face the whole spectrum of human emotions from ecstasy to deep empathy, and from exquisite joy to profound sorrow.

THROUGH DREAMS

A third interior way of God speaking is through dreams.  God spoke through dreams frequently in both the Old and the New Testaments.  Thanks to men like Morten Kelsey and Louis Savage, more and more christians are open to the power of dreams.  Since about one-third of our lives are spent sleeping, let us claim the promise of the Lord, “The Lord gives to His beloved while they sleep.” (Ps 137).

THROUGH VISIONS

The fourth internal way of Good speaking is through visions.  Some people “see” images of God, Jesus and Mary, a loved one or an event.  The difference between a vision and an apparition is seen through our natural eyes.  The difference between a dream and a vision is that a vision is perceived while awake.

THROUGH WEAKNESS AND SIN

Finally, God can speak to us through weaknesses and sins.  I used to think that my strengths were my virtues and my weaknesses were my liabilities.  I have since changed my mind.  My weaknesses have been the source of great graces.  They force me to my knees.  They humble me and make me compassionate.  They help me understand both the awesome love and mercy of God.  My “virtues” to the contrary, still are the places where I control, where I do not “sense” my need or vulnerability.  With St. Paul, I now pray, “Gladly will I glory in my weaknesses, for in them I am made strong.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

EXTERNAL WAYS:

THROUGH THE CHURCH

God speaks powerfully and clearly through the Church, which He has left behind as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12), “The pillar and standard of truth” (1 Tim 3:15).  Jesus gave to Peter (Mt 16:18) the keys of binding and loosing and to the apostles the authority to speak in His name.  “He who hears you hears Me.”  Pope John Paul II, His vicar on earth, is speaking so clearly and precisely about God’s direction for our lives.  His eleven encyclicals, his present catechesis on the Church (his Wednesday audiences), his almost daily allocutions are hard-hitting, gentle and precise.  He is the voice “extraordinaire” of Christ on earth.

THROUGH THE NEW CATECHISM

Christ speaks clearly and precisely through the New Catechism of the Church (CCC), which is a “sure and authentic norm” of  1.)  truth  2.) liturgy  3.) holiness and 4.) prayer.  I have written a summary of this (124 pages) entitled “A Walk Through the New Catechism.”

Obviously, God always speaks primarily through Jesus and Spirit.  All of the above are remote causes, that is secondary instruments.  In all revelation, Jesus and the Spirit are at work.     

THROUGH OTHERS 

God’s primary way of “speaking” to those inexperienced to listening to Him for themselves is through others, usually those placed “over” them such as parents, pastors, teachers, guardians, and so forth.  As a person develops, however, internal evidence becomes more important that external.  In fact, since Vatican II, millions of people have shifted their antennae from exterior to primarily interior “voices” or thoughts and impressions received in prayer.  This was brought about primarily through the renewal moments such as the Charismatic, Cursillo, House of Prayer, Catechetical, Foculare, Directed Retreat and Renew movements.  God’s spokespersons can be anyone, even a child or a very simple person.

THROUGH THE WORD

The Bible is the “inspired” external word of God for all men and women.  In His Word is wisdom for the ages.  The scriptures are thus normative for Christian living.  Christ’s mind, heart, principles, character and plan are essentially therein revealed.  It is, however, not so much a prescription like an “owners manual” as it a “description” of the type of relationship men and women today are having with the living God.  Sometimes God will lead us over and again to the same passage, often with deeper and different insights.  Through His Word, God inspires us, enlightens us, comforts us, challenges us, fills us, heals us, earns us, assures us, expands us, and sends us.

THROUGH SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

A fifth way that God speaks exteriorly is through symbols such as a burning bush, a hug, a kiss, a bent knee, a bowed neck.  In her marvelous book, “Every Bush Is Burning,” Sister Joan Puls, O.S.F., says that “more and more people need to see the connection between ordinary reality and divine faith.”  For in the words of Gerald Mauley Hopkins, “The world. Charged with the grandeur of God.”  Everything can point beyond itself and thus become a sign of sacrament of not only water and oil and raised hands, but also trees, sun, sky, and sea.  In our Western world of abstraction, we need the artists and poets to assume their prophetic role.  They keep our “spirituality” incarnation and “enfleshed,” therefore truly Christian.

Although every Christian can be given the gift of prophecy (1 For 14), and although Moses prayed, “Would that everyone were a prophet,” true prophets are rare.  Still, the Church, at any time, is built upon them as foundations (Eph 2:20).  Our age needs them desperately.  So God gives them in many like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in a priest like Rick Thomas, in popes like John XXIII, in a bishop like Robert Moreau, in lay women like Dorothy Day, in laymen like Charles Colson, and in ministers like Bill Gorhard and Dave Wilkerson.

They always take us to the cutting edge of life where the Gospel, in its simplicity and power, meet the world in its complexity and weakness.  They take us beyond where we wish to go.  So often, we persecute them rather than listen to them.  They are men and women who preach by the way they live more than by the words they say.

THROUGH CIRCUMSTANCES

Another way pf the Lord speaking through circumstances.  God being God controls everything.  There are no co-incidences; there are only “God-incidence.”  Everything is working out for the good, for those who love God – everything )Rom 8:28.). Once God open a door, no man can close it.  Once He closes a door, no man can open it.  (Rev 3:8; Is 22:22).

THROUGH PARABLE AND PARADOX

Another way that God speaks a disarming word to us is through parable and paradox.  We, in our unconscious desire to stay in control, want nicely wrapped religious concepts.  But God’s ways are not our ways.  Most times, they are just the opposite.  The first will be last, the rich will be poor, the slave will be master, the old shall be young, the lion shall be gentle, the flowers will bloom in the steep, the rivers shall flow in the desert, the rough ways made plain.

The impossible with God and the Kingdom of God shall reign on earth.  The basic problem with so much fundamentalism is that it misses the obvious – God is bigger than our boxes and brighter than our mysteries.  Sufferings turn into joy and light shines in darkness.  If you think you understand, you probably don’t; and if you are searching, you most likely will find.  Only those who ‘stand under’ Jesus, understand the parabolic and paradoxical nature of His character and message.  The wise person is able to rest with mystery and paradox.  The Catholic answers most are ‘both/and” rather than “either/or”.

THROUGH WISE COUNSEL

God speaks always through wise counsel, be it in the form of a wise spiritual director or a friend in the Lord.  He wants us to see and listen to the “Spirit” in one another.  No man is an island.  There are no “Lone Rangers” in His Kingdom.  People need the Lord and they need one another.  He wants to give us anointed leadership.

THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING

A deep and profound way that God speaks is through our “crosses,” that is through the pain we all experience be it physical, emotional or spiritual.  Nothing so “breaks” us as sadness, loneliness, despair, sickness, alienation and separateness.  Broken hearts are the vehicle of grace.  No one is spared.  We hold the treasure of grace in clay pots, as Paul says; or as others say, in “cracked pots.”  We are all “psycho-ceramics”; yet it is precisely through the “cracks” that God’s love shines and the oil of the Spirit leaks out.  Our wounds are our glory.  They remind us of our desperate need.  They humble us and we learn more in the valleys than on the mountain tops.  More through suffering and defeat than through victory and success.  God calls us to faithfulness more than success. 

To be Continued…