Pastor Mike Holtzinger

The Morning I Heard The Voice of God
By: John Piper March 21, 2007

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples’ retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, “Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?”

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: “I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever.” Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by “come and see.” He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the “awesome deeds” he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear his very voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, he spoke again. “I keep watch over the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. At least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said, with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, “Never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me.”

I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. “I keep watch over the nations.” He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God.

Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites—this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind—and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

This is why I found the article in this month’s Christianity Today, “My Conversation with God,” so sad. Written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian University,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

I am sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, “For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear” (emphasis added). Surely he does not mean what he seems to imply—that only when one hears an extra-biblical voice like, “The money is not yours,” can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness ten thousand times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible.

I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, “Incline my heart to your word” (Psalm 119:36). “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Grant that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and our inheritance and the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:18; 3:19). O God, don’t let us be so deaf to your word and so unaffected with its ineffable, evidential excellency that we celebrate lesser things as more thrilling, and even consider this misplacement of amazement worthy of printing in a national magazine.
Still hearing his voice in the Bible,

Pastor John

Isaiah 6:1-8  In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  (2)  Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  (3)  And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”  (4)  And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.  (5)  And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”  (6)  Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.  (7)  And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”  (8)  And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

In the year that King Uzziah died, his reign as king came to an end.  I am mindful that the following Presidential reigns of Harry S. Truman 1945-1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953-1961, John F. Kennedy 1961-1963, Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-1969, Richard M. Nixon 1969-1974, Gerald R. Ford 1974-1977, Jimmy Carter 1977-1981, Ronald Reagan 1981-1989, George Bush 1989-1993, Bill Clinton 1993-2001, and George W. Bush 2001-2008 came to an end during my lifetime.  Now we have Barack Obama 2009- starting his.

With the change of leadership, come changes in the land.  There are changes from the past president’s (king, if you will) character, philosophies, and agendas to the new president’s (king’s) character, philosophies, and agendas.  This brings about changes in the people.  Where there was once agreement, there is now disagreement or visa versa.  Where there was once joy, now anger or frustration or visa versa. Where there was once something about your life (you fill in the blank), it has changed with the change of the king.

During Isaiah’s life, there were changes brought about with the death of King Uzziah.  However, Isaiah had his focus on the one and only true Ruler, the King of Kings, the Almighty One, the Creator, the All Knowing God, the All Powerful God, the God who exists in all of eternity, the LORD (Jehovah – the self Existent One), the God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, the God who never changes, and the Holy God.  Isaiah saw the same God we, as believers, see today – the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we, Christians, have our eyes are focused on the Lord Jesus Christ as the King, then several things will happen: 1. We will trust in Jesus as our King, not the king of the land, 2. We will recognize who we are in the presence of the LORD and say, as Isaiah said, : “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” and we will seek God for forgiveness, and 3. We will answer the call of God to go into the land and declare to the people that the Lord Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and declare to them that Jesus is the one and only Saviour.

]]> http://vvbcs.org/blog/2009/02/what-is-your-response-to-the-king/feed/ 0 http://vvbcs.org/blog/2009/02/quote-of-the-day-3/ http://vvbcs.org/blog/2009/02/quote-of-the-day-3/#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:34:23 +0000 mikeholtzinger http://vvbca.org/blog/?p=132 Rarely is a leadership disaster rooted in a person’s incapacity to lead.  It is most often an issue of failed followship.  In fact, all of our failures can ultimately be traced to ceasing to follow Christ.    Yet our twisted sense of values, exalting leading over following, independence over dependence, is evident in our whole attitude toward those whom we regard as qualified to lead and the qualifications we consider essential for the task.  We are too easily seduced by the external qualities of charisma, competence, and credentials.  This is not to say that these elements arn’t important.  It is to underscore that these are not primary qualifiers.  But American society refuses to accept the idea that character and submission to  oral authority are important, particularly in the selection of leaders. – Joseph M Stowell “Following Christ”, Harper Collins Publishing, pg.37