Super’s Space

As we set out to follow you, keep our eyes focused on where we are going and who we are following.  

Make us increasingly aware of those who travel with us, so that we draw on each other’s strengths and support one another in our weaknesses. 

When the going is hard encourage us to persevere.  

Help us not to be over-burdened, distracted or unduly anxious. 

May we grow in grace, in character, and in all we achieve together in your name. 

 Amen.

For the Circuit Prayer Diary, see 'Space for Prayer' (...Click)

Hearing Voices? 

A Sermon based on 1 Samuel 3:1-20 first preached on 15 January 2012

We’re not likely to hear a voice.

Indeed if we did we might be regarded as mentally unstable.

Some people will regard us as that if we make any claim that “God spoke to me”.

Within a secular view that thinks we have now out grown and moved beyond the whole concept of God, the idea of God speaking to human beings might make all the hackles rise.

For someone to say “God spoke to me”, the possibility of delusion may occur to other people much faster than the possibility that there may actually be something in what this person is saying.

Even within a faith community there may be considerable wariness towards anyone who makes such a claim.

The claim that God speaks to people can be treated with a certain level of suspicion when a person goes on to say how God had spoken in such a way as to confirm what that person had decided to do anyway. God often gets dragged in to support a notion that satisfies our wishes and boosts our ego.

So shall we dismiss this whole business of God speaking to people as just not on?

I didn’t hear a voice saying that God wanted me to become a Methodist Minister, but I did hear and read and reflect on what seemed to be a very insistent, persistent, tugging message over a period of 10 days. I think I’m a bit of a spiritual slow learner and if God does wish to communicate with me he’d need to lay it on a bit thick and make it perfectly obvious in order for me to take any notice! After 10 days of being spoken to, as it were in capital letters, even I begin to get the drift!

So I wouldn’t describe it as a voice.

I would call it a steadily growing conviction that this is the direction in which God wants your life to be developing.

In the story of Samuel he wasn’t very quick on the uptake either was he?

He made a series of mistaken assumptions.

It took a while to get hold of what was actually happening and he needed help in that.

But he was prepared to listen and to respond.

What he was told wouldn’t have filled him with much joy, and, as it concerned people close to him, he was reluctant to share it, but it marked a beginning of a relationship with God which would mark out the nature of his life and vocation.

So it’s only prophets, ministers and preachers and missionaries –people like that-that God calls then?

There are some jobs that seem to attract a sense of vocation around them-nursing, teaching-but what about traffic wardens and tax inspectors, estate agents and bankers (some of the least popular jobs in the public perception)-is there vocation there as well?

Is the call of God highly selective or can anyone hear it?
Is a sense of vocation limited to certain kinds of work or could it apply to almost any form of employment?

Perhaps there are even more basic questions to be faced.

If you believe in God at all, do you also believe that God communicates with human beings?

And what forms might such communication take?

Let’s assume that the Creator of the entire universe has numerous ways of communicating with us.

Where and how do people notice God speaking?

Taking notice, becoming conscious, becoming aware-that’s what is called for on our part.

If there have been any times in your life when you have become more aware of a deepening spiritual reality what kinds of experiences might have triggered that?

And if there was any kind of insight which might have emerged from such moments of heightened awareness, what might that have been about?

The insights we receive might not be primarily about something God wanted you to do. They might not have been about a sense of vocation at all. They might have been much more of an awareness of something of the wonder of God himself, or perhaps an affirmation of your own worth as a person who is greatly loved. Moments of awareness might be above all connected with a feeling of how profoundly worthwhile life is, of how good it is to be alive-a sense of well-being on a massive scale.

In the account of Jesus’ baptism something of that comes across. It’s described in spectacular terms-the heaven opened, the Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove, a voice from heaven-but the message of that voice is “This is my son, my beloved, in him I am well pleased”. Something of that pleasure that God takes in us, something of that embracing, affirming sense of being greatly valued, not only in the sight of another, but on a bigger dimension-as people of faith would express it-by God himself -may have come across to us at some points in our lives.

The content of the message (if there is a message) may vary.

It may or may not be connected with any sense of vocation, being called towards any form of action. It may be more about the nature of life itself in relationship with our Creator.

So maybe the area for us to concentrate on is about being open-

 to the possibility of God wanting to communicate with us in the first place.
 to moments of deepened awareness.
 to being addressed by our own name.
 to being valued and affirmed
 to being challenged and stretched and guided.

The challenge before us is to be open to the possibility of God communicating with us, and, if he should do so, being ready to respond.