(NIV)1 John 4.7-12 7Dear Friends, Let Us Love One Another, for Love Comes from God. Everyone

(NIV)1 John 4.7-12–7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

(NIV)Nehemiah 1.3-11– 3They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

4When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.5Then I said:

“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments,6let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you.7We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

8“Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations,9but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’

10“They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.11Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.”

I was cupbearer to the king.

Hearing From God 1

Introduction:Compass Heading

1.Next Sunday, we will head out on a seven week journey together SEEKING GOD'S PATH for our church. The end we seek, really the beginning we seek, is for God to speak to us about three specific areas of ministry that will be the focus of most all we do here at First United Methodist Church of Saint Cloud for the next few years. We want to be hearing from God. Though we might even desperately desire this, there is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding even among mature believers about hearing from God. We want to communicate with God yet we are not quite sure how.

2.The compass has been used as a metaphor or a word picture for seeking a right path. For us SEEKING GOD'S PATH. What you might not know is that a compass without the right knowledge and most often a land map or nautical chart will not help you find the right direction for your path. There are other forces at play that we need to understand before a compass can be used in seeking the path. In my training to work on ships, I learned a neat mnemonics devise to help take into account these forces: Can Dead Men Vote Twice After-Easter. Let me show you how this works. Ship heading due north along the coast of Melbourne. Take a bearing of a tower off our part beam.Compass = 270°. Deviation (only on ships but keep compass away for big metal structures) = 1°W. Magnetic North = 269°. Variations = 7°W. True = 262°. Remembers to Add-East or subtract west.

3.Hearing from God, like finding our true course on the compass, in keeping with our compass metaphor, has basic guidelines that we find throughout the Bible. Unlike our mnemonic devise, we can't simply find the applicable values, apply the correct math and get to hear from God magically. These guidelines for hearing from God are found in the context of a dynamic relationship with God through Jesus. They will not bring the same identical results for each person. Like variation changes with your location on the earth and deviation is different for each ship you sail and for each heading you are going, so too are the specifics of hearing from God for each of us and for each community of faith. Yet we can be people as individuals and as a church community that can expect that we will be hearing from God.

4.If we are to SEEKING GOD'S PATH for First United Methodist Church of Saint Cloud, you and I will need to be hearing from God which means we will need to pray. More than praying alone or when you think about it, we need topray together if we expect (and we do expect) to be hearing from Godtogether. Our prayer gathers will being this coming Thursday night. Withthis in minds, I thought today would be a great time to consider some of the general guidance for hearing from God.

A.Loving Relationship

Our first general guideline for hearing from God: We must be ever maturing people living in a loving relationship with God and with others.

1.Though our NIV translations begins with "Dear friends," the better translation is "Beloved." So, even the greeting of this text reminds us that we are loved, by the writer, but first you and I are loved by God. 1 John 4.7a– 7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.... This is not to tell us that if we love one another then God will love us. Quite the opposite, God's love allows us to love others. The phrase "for love comes from God" is literally translated (ὅτι ἡ ἀγάπη ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν) "because the love from the God exists." In Greek, this verb "exists" has the sense of a ongoing activity where the subject, that is God, is doing the action. So, the ongoing action of God is love and it is this love that allows us to love. Then, we read, 1 John 4.7b–7....Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.Again, when we love others, we do not gain God's acceptance, we show that our lives have been recreated or born into a new life with God. Also, that we are (this verb, "to know," has the sense of an ongoing action, this time with you and me as the ones doing the "knowing") in a close and personal relationship with God.The writer underscores this for us in 1 John 4.8–8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. Careful here, love does not equal God but instead, God defines love.

2.So, God's self-giving, definitive (ultimate and perfect) mercy is the express source and presupposition, the foundation and the beginning, of our human love. One conclusion that we draw from this ongoing love of God is that 1 John 4.12–12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. A sure sign that God continues to dwell in our lives is our love for other believers and for people in our world. The Greek verb (τετελειωμένη) translated here as complete, means that some action has been brought to its goal or completed. God's love in us and our love for others should lead us a mature relationship with God and with each other.

3.Our first general guideline for hearing from God is that we must be ever maturing people living in a loving relationship with God and with others. This growth in trusting God and in obeying God is not simply so we avoid trouble. Far too often, we treat our relationship with God more like an arrangement with God. If we believe a set list of claims then we are saved and can go about our live pretty much as we please. Yet, there is so much more to our relationship with God. We are to enjoy our relationship with God as God enjoys a relationship with us. Part of hearing from God is growing in our love for God and for others in such a way that our character, who we are, knows what God wants us to do without God having to tell us all the time.

B.Important

Our second general guideline for hearing from God: For us to know that we are important to God but hearing from God does not make us important.

1.God's love is not common or ethereal. God's love is specific. 1 John 4.9–9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.God makes God's love manifest (visible) to humanity in the life and death and resurrction of the Son. The Son who is Jesus who is God with us. It is by knowing God-in-Jesus that we have the life-of-God in us. One and only or begotten indicates that Jesus the Son is unique in relation to God the Father. But also,One and only also draws us back to our status where in1 John 4.7b–7....Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.In a relationship with God-in-Jesus we enter the authentic life, the life-of-God, as God's children and as ones who can now love God and others with God as our source of love.

2.God's love reveals just how import we are to God. We do not know God because we first offered God our love. Completely the opposite 1 John 4.7-12–10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Even as sin separated us from God's holiness, God-in-Jesus offered his life to overcome the consequences of our sins. Then, having experienced God's ongoing love for us in Jesus, 1 John 4.11–11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. God's love is not simply for us but for us to then offer to others. So, like God's love (though only a pale reflection of it), our love is not static or ethereal. Our love, like the love of God-in-Jesus, is specifically seen in how we treat others.

3.Our second general guideline for hearing from God is for us to know that we are important to God but hearing from God does not make us important. Hearing from God comes with greater responsibility. When God reveals God's will for our lives we are now more accountable to be and to do good in God's name. We also now have a greater responsibility to care for and to guide others.

4.Side not here: This also means we must seek not only to be hearing from God but also to receive God's grace of humility. Philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard suggests, "God will gladly give it to us if, trusting and waiting on God to act, we refrain from pretending we are what we know we are not, from presuming a favorable position for ourselves in any respect and from pushing or trying to override the will of others in our context. (This is a failsafe recipe for humility. Try it for one month. Money back guarantee if it doesn't work.)" p.38.

C.Like Those in the Bible

Our third general guideline for hearing from God: For us to pray for the faith and the experiences to believe that we will hear from God like those in the Bible.

1.Recall that we recently said that God's love is specific. 1 John 4.9– 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.This part of our text also draws us to the beginning of the Gospel of John in John 1.14– 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Here we are reminded that God-in-Jesus is fully human and fully God (divine); divine yet human. God chooses human flesh to bring about God's Kingdom. Then recall that we read in 1 John 4.7b–7....Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. So, God continues to bring about God's new creation by uniting with human beings. (Now, Jesus is a unique case. He, like us, is fully human and unlike us is fully God-Incarnation. God lives in us, we are not god.)

2.God chooses human beings to bring about God's Kingdom. Speaking of one of the great Prophets and a person in whom God worked great miracles, James writes in James 5.17– 17Elijah was a human being, even as we are....Yet,....He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.God used a human to accomplish God's work. 1 Corinthians 3.9a − 9For we are co-workers(my word-PARTICIPANTS) in God’s service....Human being like us, sinful and broken human beings, have heard from God. We should expect no less than hearing from God in our own relationship with God through Jesus. What we often lack, though,is the belief that as we enter into the Bible we are reading about people's whose experiences are basically what we might have experiences had we been there. When we fail to do this either the Bibles becomes a reference of sorts for doctrine that is disconnected from relationship or we simply stop reading the Bible all together.

3.Our third general guideline for hearing from God is for us to pray for the faith and the experiences to believe that we will hear from God like those in the Bible.Imagine what it was like for Moses to hear God from the burning bush. Observe how Ananias listened to God when he was told to go see Paul. Sit with Elijah in the cave, alone, afraid and dejected, as God's voice comes through the fire storm and howling wind and quaking earth? Prayerfully but boldly use our God given imagination to enter these stories remembering all the time that God chooses human beings to bring about God's Kingdom. Then, you and I will be able to recognize, listen and act when we are the ones hearing from God.

D.Pray with Nehemiah

1.I would humbly ask that you give this last guideline a try with me this morning. Years ago, when I first arrived, we spent some time with Nehemiah hearing from God the call to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem. (A note here: physical places - the Promise Land, the Temple, Jerusalem - play an important role for Israel in the Old Testament yet no such attachment to a place or location is found for Christians in the new Testament.) Listen to Nehemiah 1.3-11– 3They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” 4When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. In hearing about the people living back in Jerusalem and of the city in ruins, Nehemiah is hearing God voice speak to him about the great need their is for rebuilding the walls so the people can be secure.For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.Nehemiah does not need to hear words from God because Nehemiah is in such a relationship with God that he knows what breaks God's heart.

2.Then we hear Nehemiah's prayer. “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments,6let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you.7We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.