The Need To Hear What We Don’t Want To Hear

In a telephone conversation with a Christian man recently, he asked me to pray for a man in his church who is thinking of marrying an eastern European single mother in her mid-30’s. The man, in his mid-50’s, hasn’t met this woman face to face but from what he knows about her he apparently thinks the marriage would work out and so he’s doing all he can to get her here. I know nothing about the success rate of such marriages, but I asked my caller if the man had permitted his church to bring him wisdom, counsel and caution on such a serious matter. Some have, but he doesn’t want to hear because it clashes with what he does want to hear!

Such clashes are not uncommon in Christendom. Years ago I cautioned a brother in Christ about hasty marriage. He’d been leading a secret life which caught up with him, his marriage failed and he found himself renting a property owned by a woman of similar age to him. He told her all about Jesus and the gospel, she “made a decision” for Jesus, they got married and within 18 months or so it all fell over. It is amazing how spiritual some people can appear to become when not wanting to hear what they need to hear. Ask what it is that the Lord is saying to them and quickly they’ll come back with, “I feel the Lord is leading me…..” or “I think I’m being led to….” or “It feels as though the Spirit is saying/doing….”

In response, if one should say, “Lay your feelings aside and find out for sure what God is saying through the Scriptures, then ask Him to confirm it for you, more than once if you have to” … that’s not the language they want to hear. A divorced woman in her late 40’s walked into a church, she quickly charmed and impressed the fellowship with her spirituality and it was not long before she became an active, vocal member thought and spoken of as, “such a beautiful Christian” and “she’s so spiritual; what a beautiful Christian.” She married a bachelor of similar age, she later developed breast cancer, her “spirituality” dried up, her “beautiful Christian” image faded and within a few short years that marriage fell over too.

This post is not about marriage failure. It is about the need to hear what we don’t want to hear. How is this possible? It is possible only through developing and maintaining a sound relationship with God the Holy Spirit and His revealed word, the Bible. As Christians, much of what we hear, dwell on or contemplate, much that’s seemingly favorable, advantageous or desirable coming our way needs to be held up and measured not only according to the Scriptures, but according to the Holy Spirit of the Scriptures. In other words, simply saying, “The Bible says….”, is not enough, we must also ask, “But what does the Spirit say?” And what the Spirit says to one, He may not say to another.

On the other hand, the Holy Spirit may not say; in which case we should wait or perhaps at the very least move ahead with caution being prepared to lay it down if He reveals that at a later time. But to rely on feelings and opinions alone saying, “I feel the Lord is giving/saying/doing ” or “I think I’m being led, I’ve got such a warm feeling about it all”, that’s closer to Mormonism, not Christianity. It is not faith in the Living Lord Jesus Christ that leads us astray, so often it is faith in our faith, or faith in our feelings, opinions, wishes and desires – all of which can be so easily spiritualized by grabbing a Scripture or two and forcing them to fit those things. Then all we need to do is look the part, speak the part and most others will believe we are the part.

A pastor once asked us to pray for him because, “I’m getting this feeling that God wants us to move from here.” Some of us prayed, God answered from the Scriptures that we were to stay. It was not what he wanted to hear. So, speaking softly with a smile, he quoted his Scriptures. We moved, but God didn’t come with us, so the church fell over! The pastor was partially correct, the Bible did say what he said but the Holy Spirit didn’t say it to him. A Christian man, new in the Lord said he “felt” God was leading him to start a retail business. The product he intended to sell, whilst it was lawful for a Christian to sell, could not be said that it was helpful (expedient) or edifying 1 Corinthians 10:23. He didn’t want to hear that. Later his business fell over.

Bible commentator Matthew Henry said: Often have we set up idols in our hearts, cleaved to some forbidden object; so that if a greater than Moses had not stood to turn away the anger of the Lord, we should have been destroyed. I thank God for the mercy He grants in the Lord Jesus, our greater than Moses. Before I met the Lord, music was one of my idols. See post: But they still have a god. Years ago when we needed money desperately, a friend offered me a job selling recorded music. I was grateful for the offer and said yes. In the shower I was praising and thanking God for solving our financial problem. Then I got to thinking about the music catalog … and shock! horror! I knew finances would still be our problem!

Of the many hundreds of music titles, there were 4 or 5 that I knew to be of a bawdy or lewd nature. I tried to think of ways to get around this, from justifying sales of them to ignoring or hiding them from being sold, but whichever way I squirmed I knew that I would be compromising myself and my stand for God. After my initial dramatic encounter with the Lord Jesus a few years earlier, I was not going down that path ever again, regardless of cost.  And it did cost, big time! But there’s no bigger cost for a Christian than to ignore hearing what we need to hear. Playing sneaky, silly little religious games and lifting Scriptures from the Bible to support them is not only foolish, it shows need for deliverance from wickedness Jeremiah 17:9.

A fellow blogger sent me this message the other day: If only we Christians could get the revelation that we (each of us) are the royal priesthood, then we could minister to our great King without worry or shame. In 27 years, I wouldn’t need the five fingers on one hand to count how many times I’ve heard a message on our royal priesthood status 1 Peter 2:9. I’ve been asking myself why and I believe one answer can be found in 1 Peter 2:1 … a reluctance for the church to lay aside one of the meanings of hypocrisy, that of ‘dissimulation’ which means: ‘disguising or concealing under false appearances.’ It’s a bit like the Christians-are-not-perfect-just-forgiven mentality, which for many has become little more than a licence to sin.

Such Christians are not really walking in obedience before God nor truly persevering in faith, yet they’ll hold on to that saying as they pull other Scriptures from the Bible to support whatever it is they “feel” they’re being led to engage in. Are they not being presumptuous in thinking themselves as being part of a chosen generation……a holy nation, His own special people ? They don’t proclaim (publish, celebrate, show forth) the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. How can they when all the evidence points to them being still in the darkness? How many pastors and elders are standing in pulpits today disguising or concealing themselves under false appearances?

I am suggesting there are thousands and thousands of them. That’s why they can only make mention in passing of our royal priesthood status, they cannot bring any expositional teaching on that verse. The devil has them trapped back in verse 1, they won’t go to God to get released so the Holy Spirit has nothing to say to or through them in relation to verse 9! And when we take this to the sick and pathetic spiritual state of today’s world-wide institutional church we get one explanation for the compromise and caving in to same-sex marriage legislation, abortion and euthanasia etc. No wonder they’re ashamed and embarrassed to associate themselves with truths about biblical royalty.

Any church is as good or as bad as its leadership … hypocrites and dissimulators, disguisers and concealers, liars and deceivers, spiritual compromisers and cowards, sex perverts and pornographers, adulterers and fornicators, the headstrong and haughty – if they’re in the  pulpits, they’ll be in the pews! No wonder the world laughs at the church. Instead of being sojourners and pilgrims empowered by the Holy Spirit to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, and displaying conduct honorable among the Gentiles 2 Peter 2:11-12, they see us as no better than them! No church is capable of going beyond their leader/s unless all repent of their darkness and wickedness and/or get rid of those who don’t want to hear what they need to hear.

It is a rare church today that will take that stand. This is the age of the loveless church – they love themselves more than they love Jesus; it’s the age of the compromising church – false doctrine, sexual immorality and idolatry is more important to them than true, pure doctrine; it is the age of the corrupt church – with preference for occultic, sexually immoral and idolatrous worship; it is the age of the dead church – spiritually dead and caught up in dead religious activity; it is the age of the lukewarm church – neither hot for the Lord Jesus nor cold, ho-hum, spiritually proud and arrogant Revelation 2:1-3:22.

So what is the solution? Not what, but Who? The Lord Jesus Christ is the Solution. And whilst there is a measure of the Holy Spirit in all those churches today, that’s all it is and it can never be anything else. Historically, those Revelation churches fell over. The holy ones (the overcomers, the obedient, the separated), came out from among them and the rest came under the Lord’s promised judgment. There was no other alternative then and there is no other alternative today. When a Christian man or woman insists and persists in rejecting what they need to hear because it clashes with what they want to hear we must cut them loose from us or, cut ourselves loose from them. “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear” Mark 4:23. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” Romans 8:14.