WesleyGospel Ministries

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.
–Hebrews 3:15–

CHAPTERS 16-19, which are labeled under the section “Why Doesn’t God Speak to Me Like That?,” are helpful in that they might help to remove obstacles for the “open but cautious people” or the theoretical charismatics out there. I tend to think of people who are in the Christian & Missionary Alliance, the Southern Baptist Church, or the Assemblies of God. They are theoretically open to the miraculous gifts of prophecy, dreams, visions, etc–but they often don’t experience these things. They want to, but they still don’t receive it. What is wrong? Deere goes into great length why this is. Through years of experience as a pastor and charismatic conference speaker, I think he speaks with authority on the subject of why certain Christians do not hear the voice of God, or have dreams and visions.

1. Unbelief. Deere says that cessationists don’t hear the voice of God because of their unbelief. Jesus says many times in the Gospels that faith is essential to God giving His blessings. But if certain Christians have more faith in the Bible than they do in the idea that God can speak in dreams, visions, and voices…well, then God won’t speak in those ways. Why should He waste His time sending visions to people who will just find ways to explain them away? When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth? Let’s hope so. If you really want God to speak to you apart from the Bible yet not in contradiction to it, then you are going to have to pray and accept the idea that God does speak apart from the Bible. And dwell in faith and in trust that God will send you messages this way.

2. Pride. Deere maintains that it is because God opposes the proud, that God does not speak to them (1 Peter 5:5). I find that inconsistent with Job 33:14-18 mentioned above. God gives prophetic dreams to keep men from pride and Hell. However, if some men receive such warnings and still go on in their lives with a spirit of pride, without repentance, then yes, I would think the warnings would eventually cease; and the voice of God would stop speaking to that person. A person with a superior attitude is just like Satan (Isaiah 14:12-14); people who are always seeking management positions, exalting themselves over and above others, promoting themselves for vain purposes, looking down their noses at others, wanting to control others, exerting their authority and letting them “know who’s boss,” authoritarian, rivalrous, and competitive:–such people are children of the devil. God does not have a friendship with them; and God does not speak to them, no matter if they do go to church on Sunday. You may ask, “What about being a confident employee? A hard working, competitive employee?” Be careful. The trap that pride may lay for you might just be under the name of “confidence”. When you go to work, it should be about honoring God, pleasing your manager, and providing financial security for your family. It should not be about your “aggressive” work ethic that is out to prove that you are a harder worker than everyone on your team. Remember that pride goes before a fall (Prov. 16:18). Looking down on others economically, socially, morally, theologically, and religiously: is not okay (Luke 18:9-14). God has high moral standards and pride is not one of them. Proverbs 6:16-19: “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” What we call “looking down on others” is pride or “haughty eyes,” which God hates and detests. Pride of Bible knowledge is included (rationalism). Pride in the Westminster Confession tradition is included, such as its statement on Scripture in chapter 1, which speaks against continuing revelations (cessationism). Consider beggars as better than yourselves. Approach them, give to them, and pray with them, if you want to please God. Psalm 138:6: “Though the Lord is on high, He looks upon the lowly, but the proud He knows from afar.” Beware of the influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees who would cut you off from the gift of prophecy so they can control you with their Bible knowledge which they acquired at seminary (Matt. 16:5-12). Such men diligently study the Bible, but they have never heard God’s voice nor seen a vision of Him (John 5:37-40); and they will judge everyone by their lack of experience.

Deere makes an interesting point about the authority of Scripture, dreams, and visions:

Any time we say, “The Bible says…,” we run the risk of usurping God’s authority if our interpretation or application of the Bible is wrong. Instead of the authority being located in something as subjective as a dream or a vision, we have simply transferred that authority to our own interpretation, which may be every bit as subjective as anyone else’s dream or vision (pp. 267-268).

This is a valid point. Not that we should allow anything else to be considered a higher authority than the Bible. But, if we want to be more accurate in our interpretation and application of the Bible, I prefer to follow Wesley’s hermeneutical method delineated by Albert Outler, known as the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. All four sources of knowledge feed a full-orbed epistemology (or philosophy of knowledge). In the “tradition” category, the best I can say would be any books by or about John Knox, George Fox, John Wesley, Charles Finney, William Booth, William J. Seymour, Smith Wigglesworth, Donald Gee, David Wilkerson, Dennis Bennett, Kathryn Kuhlman, John Wimber, and Jack Deere. These are the best names I can list for any solid type of “evangelical charismatic” tradition: these names span from the Protestant Reformation to today. When people turn to the more “Reformed” theologians, you find that the theology becomes less spiritual, and more about the mind; theology becomes displaced by a dry Bible knowledge and everything is about the head: and such “knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor. 8:1). But if theology is done in and around “Wesleyan” theologians, it is likely the spiritual condition of the hermeneut will be more on target with the heart of God.

Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. –Jesus in Matthew 5:20 (NKJV)

I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.   –1 Corinthians 9:27 (NKJV)

Having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck.   –1 Timothy 1:19 (NKJV)

Of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts.   –2 Timothy 3:6 (NKJV)

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Dr. Thomas C. Oden, John Wesley’s Teachings, vol. 4, pp. 221-223.

Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? –1 Corinthians 9:5

So a church leader must be a man whose life is above reproach. He must be faithful to his wife. –1 Timothy 3:2 (NLT)

Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  –Jesus to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17

Originally from here.

The following letter, from J. Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission to his sister Amelia Broomhall in England, has been a blessing to many since it was first published a century or more ago.

Chinkiang
17 October 1869

My own dear Sister,

So many thanks for your long, dear letter… I do not think you have written me such a letter since we have been in China. I know it is with you as with me—you cannot, not you will not. Mind and body will not bear more than a certain amount of strain, or do more than a certain amount of work. As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month or more has been perhaps, the happiest of my life; and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul. I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful—and yet, all is new! In a word, “Whereas once I was blind, now I see.”

Perhaps I shall make myself more clear if I go back a little. Well, dearie, my mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight months past, feeling the need personally, and for our Mission, of more holiness, life, power in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God. I prayed, agonised, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, sought more time for retirement and meditation—but all was without effect. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me. I knew that if I could only abide in Christ all would be well, but I could not. I began the day with prayer, determined not to take my eye from Him for a moment; but pressure of duties, sometimes very trying, constant interruptions apt to be so wearing, often caused me to forget Him. Then one’s nerves get so fretted in this climate that temptations to irritability, hard thoughts, and sometimes unkind words are all the more difficult to control. Each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power. To will was indeed present with me, but how to perform I found not.

Then came the question, “Is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end—constant conflict and, instead of victory, too often defeat?” How, too, could I preach with sincerity that to those who receive Jesus, “to them gave He power to become the sons of God” (i.e. God-like) when it was not so in my own experience? Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting very low. I hated myself; I hated my sin; and yet I gained no strength against it. I felt I was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, “Abba, Father”: but to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless. I thought that holiness, practical holiness, was to be gradually attained by a diligent use of the means of grace. I felt that there was nothing I so much desired in this world, nothing I so much needed. But so far from in any measure attaining it, the more I pursued and strove after it, the more it eluded my grasp; till hope itself almost died out, and I began to think that, perhaps to make heaven the sweeter, God would not give it down here. I do not think I was striving to attain it in my own strength. I knew I was powerless. I told the Lord so, and asked Him to give me help and strength; and sometimes I almost believed He would keep and uphold me. But on looking back in the evening, alas there was but sin and failure to confess and mourn before God.

I would not give you the impression that this was the daily experience of all those long, weary months. It was a too frequent state of soul; that toward which I was tending, and which almost ended in despair. And yet never did Christ seem more precious—a Saviour who could and would save such a sinner! … And sometimes there were seasons not only of peace but of joy in the Lord. But they were transitory, and at best there was a sad lack of power. Oh, how good the Lord was in bringing this conflict to an end!

All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out. He was rich, truly, but I was poor; He strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually the light was dawning on me, I saw that faith was the only prerequisite, was the hand to lay hold on His fulness and make it my own. But I had not this faith. I strove for it, but it would not come; tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fulness of our precious Saviour—my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar! Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world—yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy [John McCarthy, in Hangchow] was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote (I quote from memory):

“But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”

As I read I saw it all! “If we believe not, He abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave you.” “Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For, has He not promised to abide with me—never to leave me, never to fail me?” And, dearie, He never will!

But this was not all He showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fulness out of Him. I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all—root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.

Oh, my dear sister, it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour; to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and the left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves? Again, think of its bearing on prayer. Could a bank clerk say to a customer, “It was only your hand wrote that cheque, not you,” or, “I cannot pay this sum to your hand, but only to yourself”? No more can your prayers, or mine, be discredited if offered in the Name of Jesus (i.e. not in our own name, or for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His, His members) so long as we keep within the extent of Christ’s credit—a tolerably wide limit! If we ask anything unscriptural or not in accordance with the will of God, Christ Himself could not do that; but, “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us, and…we know that we have the petitions that we desire of Him.”

The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realise this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money, and brings me his purchases. So, if God place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that His resources will be unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me. All this springs from the believer’s oneness with Christ. And since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith, how happy I have been! I wish I could tell you, instead of writing about it.

I am no better than before (may I not say, in a sense, I do not wish to be, nor am I striving to be); but I am dead and buried with Christ—aye, and risen too and ascended; and now Christ lives in me, and “the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” I now believe I am dead to sin. God reckons me so, and tells me to reckon myself so. He knows best. All my past experience may have shown that it was not so; but I dare not say it is not now, when He says it is. I feel and know that old things have passed away. I am as capable of sinning as ever, but Christ is realised as present as never before. He cannot sin; and He can keep me from sinning. I cannot say (I am sorry to have to confess it) that since I have seen this light I have not sinned; but I do feel there was no need to have done so. And further—walking more in the light, my conscience has been more tender; sin has been instantly seen, confessed, pardoned; and peace and joy (with humility) instantly restored: with one exception, when for several hours peace and joy did not return—from want, as I had to learn, of full confession, and from some attempt to justify self.

Faith, I now see, is “the substance of things hoped for,” and not mere shadow. It is not less than sight, but more. Sight only shows the outward forms of things; faith gives the substance. You can rest on substance, feed on substance. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith (i.e. His Word of Promise credited) is power indeed, is life indeed. And Christ and sin will not dwell together; nor can we have His presence with love of the world, or carefulness about many things.”

And now I must close. I have not said half I would, nor as I would had I more time. May God give you to lay hold on these blessed truths. Do not let us continue to say, in effect, “Who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above.” In other words, do not let us consider Him as afar off, when God has made us one with Him, members of His very body. Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths, as for the few. They are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonour to our Lord. The only power for deliverance from sin or for true service is Christ.

Your own affectionate brother,
J. Hudson Taylor

If you’re charismatic, and look at this and say a loud angry Bible rebuke should always be taken to mean a demon spirit of jealousy, bitterness, and offense–okay, well. I’d like to see you say that at the judgment! And when Jesus says to you, “But did you guys ever preach repentance and the blood?” And when your answer comes back as a No, it’s at that point that I’d like to see what happens. –J.B.

God that is sickening.
I will never listen to that guy again.
Maybe I’ll get to see him at the judgment.
–J.B.–

The Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. –Acts 17:11