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Does God Speak Through the Bible—or Only Teach?
God has as many ways to speak as there are grains of sand on the seashore. He’s creative and does things differently every time. I was recently on a flight home from a conference that we had conducted in France. There were six of us. Have you ever tried to get six seats together on a plane? It rarely works. But as my wife requested the seats, I asked for God’s perfect will to be done—and I have come to learn that He answers such prayers.
The final seating was a long row of people and one seat on the aisle across the way. As long as I get an aisle seat, I’m usually happy;
and after all, I was seated just across the aisle from my family. Sitting in my aisle seat, there was one man seated to my right.As often is the case (but not always), I wondered if it was God’s handiwork—a di-vine appointment possibly—that this man was beside me. It was!
Don’t misunderstand me though. Most of the time, I’m content to fly in silence and read and nap.
Most of the flight I did just that: rested, read, slept, and paid no attention to anything else. But several hours prior to landing, I saw
the man take out his Bible and begin to read from the Book of Joshua. Hmm, I thought to myself, this could be one of those encouraging times when I’m supposed to give more hope and comfort to the believer sit-ting next to me. For nearly two hours I continued to glance at him and I noticed that he was still reading. Once he opened up a card, seem-ing to check that he was readseem-ing the prescribed Scripture for the day.
“This is his time,” I sensed the Lord saying. “He lives what he reads and he applies it to himself.” After over an hour of reading, he suddenly took out a pen and marked one short passage. I felt led to pray. “This is his time!” the Lord prompted me again. After a while, I got up the nerve to ask,“Are you in ministry, a pastor, or something?”
“Oh, sort of. I’m returning from a short-term missions trip to help a group in France. We go every few years.”
“The reason I ask you this,” I said,“is that the Lord was talking to me about you while you were reading your Bible.”
He was silent.
“What passage did you underline in Joshua?” My distance eye-sight is not that good, so I truly didn’t know.
“Oh, just something I wanted to remember.”
Stubbornness came over me.“Yes, but what specifically did you underline?”I insisted.“I’ve watched you for almost two hours and you underlined only one section in Joshua. I just wondered what that was.”
“Oh, well, I just noticed that Caleb went into the Promised Land when he was forty years old, but he was reflecting back on it in his eighties. I just hit forty myself so it made an impression on me.”
“That’s interesting,” I said,“because I was on a ministry trip to France, too. I teach people how to listen to God for themselves.
While you were reading, God told me it was your time. I sense He wanted you to be encouraged that this is, in fact, your time and many of His promises for you are about to come true.”
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“Well, I want to say that I strongly agree with you and I also strongly disagree with you!” he said, contradicting himself. He contin-ued, “I don’t believe a person can take the Bible and outside of its own context, apply it to himself!”
I was amazed because he had just done that very thing. He had underlined the very part that applied to himself and now he was telling me you just can’t do that—and that he disagreed with people who did such things. That’s odd, I thought to myself. He is arguing against the very thing he’s doing.
Time doesn’t allow me to describe our whole conversation, but I told him I felt it was no coincidence that we were sitting together and that it was no coincidence that he had chosen only that one pas-sage of Scripture to underline. I told him that God has chosen this time, this place, and this date for him—and for me—and God had chosen this man’s very actions to confirm to him that it was God Himself who was speaking to Him about his life.
He said,“Well, thank you.”
It was one of those,“OK, that’s all I can handle right now” kind of thank you, but it was also a true thank you, I felt. As the plane landed, his friendliness was amazing. He offered to help with my lug-gage and he offered for me not to let him leave the plane first, even though he was late for his connection.You see, something inside told him this was a divine encounter. I sensed he somehow knew, in his
“knower,” that it truly was not a coincidence, that God had spoken to him, but all his training, all his life, he’d been told it doesn’t work like this. Personally, I think his life was forever changed by that en-counter. I truly do. I don’t think he’ll ever forget it. Remember, he had already applied the Word to himself, while at the same time, denying that it was acceptable to do so.
Have you ever done that? If you have (we all have, by the way), I have a word from the Lord for you:“Stop it!” God wants to take the living Word and apply it to your personal life—in fact, He wants to apply it often, as you read the Bible. When you read the Bible, which is God’s voice to us, He often lifts a word or two or a sentence or two
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off the page and says, “This is for you…right now…today!” So, the next time this happens to you, remember what it says in the Book of Hebrews, “Today, when you hear His Voice, do not harden your heart!”
(Heb. 4:7, author’s paraphrase).
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CHAPTER 8