“I faced a mountain
That I never faced before
That’s why I’m calling on You Lord
I know it’s been a while
But Lord please hear my prayer
I need You like I never have before
Sometimes it takes a mountain
Sometimes a troubled sea
Sometimes it takes a desert
To get a hold of me
Your love is so much stronger
Than whatever troubles me
Sometimes it takes a mountain
To trust You and believe …”
Sometimes it Takes a Mountain by Gaither Vocal Band (2014)
God desires to speak directly to you. God desires to speak directly to me also. As a good Father, he deeply longs to engage with every single one of His Children in continual conversation. God desires to hold our attention to hear only Him.
So great is his longing for communication that he’s given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. We now have access to the heart of God through the Spirit. We can know his will, hear his voice, and live with the knowledge of his wisdom and his love.
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, [a] is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John 10:27-29 ESV)
Let the truth that God desires to have real, life-transforming conversations with you sink into your heart for a minute. Think about what it means for your own life to have communication with God.
Your Creator longs to help you with your decisions, our relationships, work, finances, and identity. God himself wants to talk with you about your life—to fully know you and be known by you. God really wants to hear and to be heard.
Just as any good parent loves talking with their children, your heavenly Father loves talking to you, his child. You see, God speaking to you is so little about our ability to hear his voice and so much more about his desire for you to know him.
His voice in your life is just another product of grace, God’s unmerited favor for those who believe. Like any conversation, you will only hear him when you are listening. Just like any good conversation, God longs to hear from you as well.
As much as we each mutually want and mutually share the desire to hear and be heard, the truth is there are times and seasons of great silence from God’s side.
There are also times and seasons of great silence but also times and seasons of great stubbornness on our side. We speak to God as He asks us to do – but we only receive great silence.
We do not necessarily mind episodic periods of brief silence – we expect them.
We do not like silence, however, when it is all, we get in response to efforts to our alleged “best and most energetic and fervent” efforts communicate.
I get really put off when I seem to be the only one who is making the sincere and considered effort to communicate.
I get really perturbed, then I will go silent too.
In my response, in my angst, I will allow my own heart to go silent with God.
My heart hardens against my God.
My soul will sit with my great angst and feast on my growing stubbornness.
I will not sit at His table nor feast at His table of abundant life. (Ps. 23:5)
I will, instead, sit at my own table and repeatedly stab my fork into my silence and I will, instead, raise my fork unto my mouth and feast upon its abundance.
Who shares my table with their “great cloud” of witness statements on this?
And then the Holy Spirit rushes into my silence, interrupts me, reminds me God’s Word speaks of caution, admonish and sternly warn against that too.
Hebrews 3:7-10 Disciples’ Literal New Testament
Therefore Do Not Harden Your Hearts As Israel Once Did
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says[a] [in Psalm 95:7-11]: “Today, if you hear His voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion during the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers tested Me with a trial and saw My works 10 for forty years. Therefore, I was-angry with this generation and said, ‘They are always going-astray in the heart, and they did not know My ways’.
The Word of God for the Children of God. Gloria! In Excelsis Deo! Alleluia! Amen.
How clearly the anonymous writer to the Hebrews reminds us to consistently and continuously keep our focus on Jesus, Who is both the Apostle and the High Priest and the Author of our Christian faith and our heavenly calling.
Savior Christ’s faithfulness in carrying out His Heavenly Father’s business is unsurpassed by great prophets like Moses, unmatched by distinguished high priests like Aaron, and unrivalled by celebrated kings like David or Solomon.
Savior Christ’s glory and splendour, might, majesty, dominion and power, far surpasses such great men. He is the master-builder of the universe and while these others illustrious men were God’s faithful servants, Christ Jesus is the Son of the most High God, and we are safe and secure in His care.
He alone is entrusted to take charge over God’s entire house, and Church-age believers are members of that household. Together, we are being built up into a spiritual temple, in Whom the Holy Spirit of God resides.
The insufficiently preached and taught astonishing and wonderful truth is that WE who have trusted in His sacrificial death and glorious Resurrection, are His spiritual household, missioners and ministers of His New and better Covenant.
We have God’s assurance our eternal salvation is secured forever in the nail-pierced hands of Christ, Who died to pay the price of our silence and our sin.
Nothing can snatch us out of His hands and nothing will pluck us from the hand of our Father in heaven, for we are saved by grace through faith.
We are neither saved by our silence nor kept by works, for He who started a good work in us has also faithfully promised to complete that good work.
He has promised to hold us fast to the end and sanctify up completely, spirit, soul, and body, lest anyone should boast.
Savior Christ has taken the responsibility of both our initial justification and progressive sanctification upon Himself. He that keeps Israel, has promised to guard us, keep us and protect us by His sufficient grace and almighty power.
We in turn, in humble gratitude give an outward profession of our faith and are called upon in this passage to ‘prove all things’ by walking in spirit and truth.
We are to eschew evil, abide in Christ, obey His commands, and trust in His Word throughout our earthly sojourn.
We are to remember the thrice-proclaimed warning that is in these verses, that today – Today – “TODAY is the day of salvation.”
Today is the day we are to live our life as unto the Lord, to produce spiritual fruit which will verify that we are truly members of His holy household, and citizens of heaven.
We are to grow in grace, mature in the faith, never to give up on His living Hope and live a life that readily and assuredly and easily identifies us as His hallowed household. We are to do it today, and not postpone it for some future occasion.
We are to take to heart the self-same warning that went unheeded by the Israelites: “Today is the day of salvation.”
Today is the day we need to live as unto the Lord.
Today is the day we should give up on our angst and silence to grow in grace.
Having been justified by His blood, we are reminded that today is the day that we should continue to be maturing in the faith and be progressively sanctified.
Today is the day we should become more and more like Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed.
We are blessed to have the indwelling Holy Spirit Who has promised to guide us into all truth, through His gentle inner promptings and by means of the holy Scriptures –
for His Word is: Hebrews 4:12
“Living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword and is able to discern every inner thoughts of the heart and every secret motives of the mind.”
We must never forget that we are to listen to His voice, heed His instructions, and live by faith ‘today’. We are to encourage one another day after day, for as long as we live and keep growing in grace as long as it is called ‘today’.
Let us forget our silence. Let us never forget that “today is the acceptable day of the Lord,” not only for ourselves but for sinners and saints alike, and may we use our voices today in a way that glorifies God and points others to Christ.
God has spoken to the hearts of his children over the centuries inviting them back into relationship with him. These Spirit-inspired messages came in many and various forms, but the clearest came through Jesus (Hebrews 1:1-3).
Through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, God speaks to us and to those around us, inviting us to come home to him. We must respond, or our hearts harden, and we lose any possible sensitivity to the message of grace.
The message from the Holy Spirit, uttered over and over through the centuries, now comes to you and me in today’s verses:
“Hear God’s voice! Do not harden your hearts!”
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Heavenly Father, thank You for this warning in Hebrews that today is the day to hear Your voice and respond to Your warning, in thought, word, and deed. Keep me from going astray or developing a complacent attitude, a murmuring spirit, or a hardening of my heart. Help me to be a become a godly testimony of Your Holy Spirit’s work in me so that others may see Jesus in me and glorify Your holy name. This I ask in Jesus’ name, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! AMEN.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 