What has God said?

"In every sermon you hear, the speaker is handing you a brick. It's your responsibility to take the brick and build something with it. It might not be covered in gold, but if you can build with it then it is fulfilling its purpose as a brick!" So said the guest preacher in chapel down at school.

And, a wise sister in care group has been faithfully proclaiming and pointing to this verse: "The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down." (Prov. 14:1)

For the building up of my house, here are some "bricks" that I received from my pastor's hand yesterday.

What has God said? I could spend all day answering this question. In a vague sense, there could be hundreds of different answers, all of them true. But I don't think that it was asked vaguely, seeking a meandering answer. The following questions give the emphasis: based on what God has said, what must I believe and how must I live? There's an urgency brewing behind those questions. How much of the shallowness of our lives is the result of a refusal to take God seriously when He speaks?

I'm looking at the notes I scribbled yesterday, and it says, "God removes the capacity to hear rightly if you refuse to hear rightly." God said, "Be holy, for I am holy." So what's being said is that if I refuse to properly hear God, if I know the words but they have no meaning in my life, if I continue to fill my mind and heart with junk, then I had better not be expecting to be filled with the Spirit on Sunday morning, overflowing in joy and grace.

If God has said it, then the "what I must believe" is always that it is true. He cannot lie, nor is He misleading, nor is He just joking. Consequently, the "how I must live" will either be obedience or disobedience. I am either going to obey Him, or disobey Him. There is no other way out of it.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:6-10

I haven't heard until I do. Do I have a category for obedience in my mind? Am I doing everything that I've been told in the right way, right away, and all the way? What am I going specifically to change this week as a result of what I have heard? Am I consciously and intentionally conforming to the word of God, being aware of the authority of God behind the word?

Lord, help me to hear as never sure to hear again, as a dying woman listening to dying men!