In Hebrews 3.17, the writer quotes Psalm 95, but introduces it with the phrase ‘as the Holy Spirit says.’
Jesus himself seems happy doing this himself (Matthew 19), quoting the scriptures and talking as if God said them. Jesus can talk as if Moses and God wrote the same passage from the Law (Mark 7).
This is a key plank in a theology of scripture that believes in plenary verbal inspiration, in affirming both the humanity of the authors and the divinity of the scriptures and that wants to say ‘yes’ to both human and divine authorship without landing in a halfway house between them.
I’d like to pull on one little thread of that theology, because it means we can assert with confidence that God is speaking to you as you read the Bible. Cessationists often quip, “If you want to hear God speak to you, read the Bible out loud.”
They aren’t wrong. Obviously, they are wrong when they suggest that the prophetic gift has ceased or that we cannot expect to hear from God in other ways, but they aren’t wrong that the Bible is sufficient for all that God intends it for. They aren’t wrong that the Bible is God speaking. I think we charismatics often lose or underemphasise this.
A friend talks about how he tries to get his young children to think differently about the Bible stories he reads them compared to all the other stories he reads them. He tells his kids, “this story God is reading to you.”
My concern is this: in charismatic churches where we prize intimate relations with God where he speaks with us in a variety of ways through the prophetic, do we think that the Bible is God speaking with us? I think many of us pay lip service to the idea but don’t actually believe it.
It comes clearest in the way we use the prophetic gift. While everyone would say “of course you need to check your words against the Bible” I think with most directive words “go here, do this, make that choice” it becomes difficult to check them against the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about whether you should take this job or that, or move to this place or that, or whatever it might be? Loads. But of course, not in ways that are easy for us to apply directly to the prophetic words in the way we give them.
What Might Help?
Prophetic words are given by God using the set of images, thoughts, and narratives that make up our internal world. I often receive pictures of tools. Sometimes the words come in the thought world of the person receiving them—these are typically the most powerful because the prophet doesn’t actually realise the weight or import of what they’re saying—though they still have to be explicable to the one delivering them.
If our internal thought world was drenched in the Bible and the Bible’s symbolic world, we would find, I submit, that our prophetic utterances were more and more using scripture explicitly. I wonder if these are the most helpful to people. I gave another Pastor a word recently that was situating his church and moment in a particular Bible narrative. This meant that church’s elders’ discernment had less to do if I was correct and more to do with weighing how and if that passage applied to the situation they were in.
If our symbolic world was the Bible’s symbolic world then I do wonder if we’d find it easier to ground particular images, to use them in consistent ways, and most importantly to test them against the Bible. We could consider how the Bible uses a symbol across the canon in order to appropriately weigh the prophetic word.
More Bible would help us weigh prophecy. An expectation that the prophetic would include the Bible applied would help us.
What that means is that we need to get our congregations drenched in the word and in the internal metanarrative and symbolic world of the word. There is, of course, the possibility that this is hammer syndrome (when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail), as I think that’s the solution to a whole bunch of stuff. Nevertheless, it isn’t going to hurt. It will address our deeper discipleship issues, and it will lead to more of God speaking to us.
The Bible is God Speaking
Want to hear God? Read the Bible out loud.
That statement could do with a touch of nuance because you could read a passage of someone’s false report and God is not saying that thing. God is not saying the words of Job’s friends. Nevertheless, correctly understood, the Bible is God speaking to us.
The more Bible you read the more God will speak to you. The Bible you get into your heart is usually the Bible that God will then remind you of through the day. Let’s be attentive to his voice through his words.
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
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