Reading Scripture: The Work of the Spirit

Marc Chagall: "The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)

God speaks to us through his word when we read it, hear it, remember it, and even when we simply ponder its meaning. God awakens our hearts to understand his word, and he then transforms our minds by aligning our understanding with his revealed truth. The implications of his revealed truth (scripture) are the guidelines by which we then walk by faith.

Here's how that works out in terms of experiencing the presence of God. He says that he is with us. We can choose to believe him or disbelieve him based on his word alone or we can attempt to induce in ourselves whatever feeling or experience we suppose best corresponds to experiencing the presence of God. The former isn't easy, even with the aid of community and experience, but the latter is ill-advised under any circumstances. Isaiah 50:10-11 (NIV) puts the matter this way:

Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on his God.

But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.

We cannot hear God apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and we don't call on him unless the Holy Spirit moves us. However, knowing him is not a matter of heeding a quiet voice or somehow sensing his presence. Knowing God requires seeking him where he may reliably be found—in scripture—and believing that he is who and how he has revealed himself to be in scripture. Experiencing his presence is the act of believing that he is with us—whether we sense it or not—simply because scripture says that he is with us.

God may indeed sometimes use a premonition or voice to speak to us, but we should not rely on such promptings because they aren’t reliable and they don’t build up a solid understanding of scripture that over time gives us a clear idea of who God is and what his kingdom entails. It isn’t enough that a voice doesn’t contradict scripture; merely missing the main point of passage after passage (in favor of a message for the day) will have a negative cumulative effect. Moreover, no voice that interprets scripture will seem to contradict scripture. Therein lies the problem.

This is not to say that a voice not from God is therefore from the Devil. Even more or less random acts pursued in complete reliance on God will often bear good fruit for no other reason than that God is sometimes pleased with the naive audacity of our faith. Think of Peter stepping out of the boat in the middle of a storm. Jesus chided Peter for faltering in his faith—not for making a frivolous request.

This brings us to the question: what guarantees authenticity? Something isn’t necessarily right just because it feels right, especially since things tend to feel right when they conform to expected patterns. Feelings sometimes do reflect a genuine “ah-ha!” moment when the Holy Spirit’s work in a person’s heart opens that person’s mind to suddenly grasp the implications of a passage in scripture, but this usually involves either understanding how a passage relates to personal circumstances and/or how one or more passages relate to one another.

Scripture itself ultimately guarantees the authenticity of our understanding because its sprawling complexity (taken as a whole) resists complete resolution unless every piece is in its proper place. As we grow in our understanding of scripture, many truly odd passages in scripture start to make perfect sense as the ramifications of basic truths are more richly understood. Such understanding takes decades of faithful study and consideration of scripture, so we are heavily dependent on others to help us along for much of our Christian walk. This is one reason, though hardly the only one, why faith apart from fellowship is problematic.

The purpose of scripture is not to fill our heads with doctrines, but to reveal God so that we can live in him. Neither is serving God merely a matter of following dictates. We take our guidance from his word, and we trust him to help us make good decisions among better or worse options, but he largely delegates choices to us. He tells us what kind of person to marry but not which particular person to marry or even whether to marry at all. He doesn’t tell us what profession to pursue or which job offer to accept, but he does tell us what he expects his kingdom to look like. We should thus avoid thinking that an open door or a closed door represents a sign. The apparent chance of a lifetime may entail trade-offs that simply aren’t worth it.

Read scripture for what it can provide you over time, and make decisions with a view to long-term goals. Surrender every loyalty to God and call on him to help you obey him. How could he refuse such a request? Surrender every hope and he will bless you beyond what you know how to ask. Seek the fellowship of believers whose lives have stood the test of time and whose credentials are a faith grounded in scripture, a hope grounded in faith, and a love grounded in hope. A person could make far worse choices than that.