God Still Speaks

There’s been this tension in the faith I’ve grown up with and I’m not sure how to resolve it, or even if it needs to be resolved. Sometimes I think we expect cut-and-dried answers from God only to find him responding like he did to Job asking, “Where were you…?” or to Paul saying, “My grace is sufficient.”

The tension is between what we call the “closed canon of the Scriptures,” and God’s guidance in the everyday activities of life.

This weekend I was flipping through the channels on TV and I stopped for a minute on a Perry Stone program that was on local cable. It appeared that he was at the old temple wall in Jerusalem being a tour guide and he made a statement, calling it a “prophetic word.” He was teaching from Jesus’ parable in Matthew 20 about the laborers in the vineyard. He went on to proof text some other passages from the New Testament giving what he believed was some sort of “deep” or “hidden” meaning of what the “third hour,” the “sixth hour,” the “ninth hour” and the “eleventh hour” meant. His conclusion is that the various “hours” mentioned represent various epochs or ages in history and that the eleventh hour is the hour we now live in. It is an hour in which all of the blessings of every other age will be brought together and poured out in the world. Strange view for a Dispensationalist who takes the Bible “literally.”

Certainly such an allegorical interpretation is not unique to Perry Stone or to 21st Century Christianity. St. Augustine was doing it long before there was a Perry Stone, though I’m not certain Augustine was calling it a “prophetic word.”

These sort of wildly speculative interpretations create a lot of trepidation among my brand of Christians who are quick to say that God has said all he needs to say in the Scriptures.

But are those the only two options available to us?

Let me give the obligatory affirmation to the “closed canon of Scripture.” And let me also give an affirmation to the reality that God still speaks to his people.

Everyone I know (everyone) affirms the latter, at least in practice. I know of no evangelical Christian who believes that God only speaks to us through Scripture. I’ve known a few who come terribly close to saying that, but none who believed it in the practical outworking of their lives, least of all the many preachers who have at least come close to sounding as if God has already said all that God has to say.

I know of no evangelical preacher who says that he is serving in his current church position simply because he thought it was a good idea, or because it seemed like a good fit, or because it just seemed to make sense. They will tell you, one and all, that they are where they are because God led them there. Of course there is no chapter and verse to cite which says that preacher so-and-so shall pastor for x years at such-and-such church and then shall move on to this other church. No. We all depend upon some sort of guidance from God that is outside of the written Scriptures. Then, of course, there are the cases where things don’t work out so well where everyone apparently misunderstood exactly what it was that God was saying - or where he was leading.

We seem to be pretty ok with God guiding us in that sort of way, especially when our sense is confirmed by others (namely the church extending the official call). But outside of that we become very skeptical of other’s ability to “hear God” in that same way. We continue to practice this sort of guidance in our churches. Whenever we want to start a new program or build a new building or go in a particular direction we are sure to give God all the credit. We don’t want people thinking that it was the burrito we had for lunch that was actually talking to us.

And I believe that God, in fact, does give us this sort of direction - or at least he makes it available to us. We don’t always hear so well. Sometimes we are not all that familiar with his voice. Sometimes we are not as familiar with the sort of things he says when he does speak to us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In John 10 Jesus said that his sheep hear his voice and follow him. He says that they will not follow a stranger because they do not recognize the stranger’s voice. They do, however, recognize his.

Divine guidance is not only possible, it is necessary. It is necessary to the sort of relationship that God has called us into. We cannot comprehend a relationship with a human being that is maintained strictly through written correspondence or through correspondence that does not specifically address the particular needs of the recipient in a specific way. I’m not suggesting that there are those arguing that the Scriptures are static nor that they do not speak with specificity to us. The Word of God is living and active and profitable. But when it comes to the person I should marry, the job I should accept, the plan of medical treatment I should take, where I should live, and a host of other specific questions that come up in our lives, God has not left us alone to try to figure it all out for ourselves. He is not disinterested. He still speaks.