Denver Seminary

I FIRST ATTENDED DENVER SEMINARY BECAUSE I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING FROM GOD. I was transitioning from work in cardiovascular research to collegiate ministry. Three years later, I realized my need for deeper theological foundations and began researching seminaries. I narrowed my choices to Denver Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School—both great schools, and what I felt was a coin-flip decision. For weeks I'd asked God to lead me to one seminary or the other. I sought friends and family to pray and discern God's lead with me. Facing an enrollment deadline, I decided to seek God's voice on this critical decision by fasting. Three days later, I had heard nothing and was terribly hungry—not the discernment process I'd hoped for. Having no sense of God's specific leading, I decided on Denver Seminary for two reasons: my best friend lived here, and I wanted to snowboard. Those were the tiebreakers, and neither seemed very spiritual to me. Most of us have asked similar life questions, wanting God to speak into relationship, occupation, economic, or ministry decisions. But for some, the earnest desire to know God's pleasure is met with confusion. Are they just not listening, or is God speaking at all? Dallas Willard suggests that there are three common, though mistaken, interpretations of how God speaks to us. The message-a-minute view assumes that God will always tell you what to do if you are listening or willing to ask. The it's-all-in-the-Bible view is well intended but ignores "the need for personal divine instruction within the principles of the Bible yet beyond the details of what it explicitly says." 1 The whatever- comes view assumes a determinism of God that eliminates relational discernment with Him because everything that happens is believed to be the guidance of God. Assuming the Living God does speak to His people today, then how does He do so? And how should His people posture themselves as listeners? LISTENING THROUGH THE SCRIPTURES Scripture is revelation from God about Himself, how He relates to creation, and how we respond to Him as called persons. Scripture is authoritative because of the sovereign authority of God who reveals it. And Scripture is inspired (God breathed). It is not meant primarily to inform us but to form us (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Taking these together, we should remember that the reading of Scripture personally, communally, or liturgically ought to always be deeply relational. The Word of God is alive and active, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Heb. 4:12) because God's animating Spirit speaks to us today through the Bible. Certainly, most issues on which we seek God's lead are not addressed scripturally, per se. But we become God- listening people as we maintain an interpersonal posture toward His Word. Early in my marriage, I was embarrassed to need my wife's coaching on how to listen to her. Ten years later, we've companioned through more trials in work, life, and family; I know her more intimately and can better intuit her desires. If she needed to coach me today as she did when we were first married, that would indicate my regression out of one-flesh companionship. God has spoken, is speaking, and will speak to His children as they listen to Him through the Scriptures. As we listen to the Scriptures, we come to know God as we learn about Him. We learn His ways and wishes, developing our theological imaginations so we might better (though not perfectly) intuit His pleasures in our life decisions. In 1 Samuel 3, Eli served as a spiritual director as Samuel learned to hear God's voice. Eli commended a simple response to God: "Speak, for your servant is listening." What an open-handed, earnest, and dependent prayer. As we open the Scriptures, we might adopt that simple breath prayer to reorient us interpersonally to God. Or we can join Christians across time and traditions who have found lectio divina to be a rich and intimate way to commune with God through His Word. God has spoken, is speaking, and will speak to His children as they listen to Him through the Scriptures. For anyone seeking God's direction, this is a foundational conviction for all other ways that we discern His voice. LISTENING COMMUNALLY We uphold a staunch spirit of individualism in the West, maintaining our rights to an almost unlimited freedom to think, speak, and act. But if this ethos creeps into our Christian lives, it can create relativistic belief and practice. 8 SPRING 2015 MAKES YOU THINK 1 Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 57–62.

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