Hi there, my name is Lisa Van den Berg with The Ways of Wisdom and I want to welcome you to go Today! Today we’re going to be talking about the fundamental principle, I believe in beginning to hear God and that is knowing how loved you are. If you see God as Father Christmas or Santa Claus and He’s only ever going to do something for you if you’re nice and He’s really not going to talk to you, if you’re not nice. Well, you wouldn’t expect Him to talk to you unless you behaved well. Right?
Well, perhaps you see God as this guy, like in the old Testament movies and He’s just up there and He’s waiting to get you when you’re doing something bad and He’s just waiting for the opportunities, “Ah, slipped up again. Now I get to smite them with My mighty smiter or I get to punish them for what they’re doing.” Or perhaps you see God, as well, He was really involved in the beginning when He created everything, but now He’s just off doing other stuff and the universe doesn’t really care about me or what’s happening on earth.
Each of those two ways of seeing God can really skew the truth of who He really is. This is a beautiful nugget my husband gave me. He said to me one day, “Lisa, I want you to read the Bible through the lens of love.” Wow! It changed everything for me because then I wasn’t looking at trying to find where’s the judgment, where is God waiting for me to be good or not good. Where all of these things that I have to measure up to and live up to. And when he said this, I just took a step back and began to open the Bible and everywhere I read, I was looking at it through the lens of a loving Father….how He provides for us and He looks after us all the way through the old Testament, all the way through the new Testament. Jesus said that He even came to show us what God looked like, what the Father looked like. So as you look at things through the lens of love, your heart begins to open up and go, “Oh wow. He is a good Father. He’s my Dad and he wants the best for me.”
These verses will just start to pop for you. You’ll see things at a whole new way. And when our hearts are in their place of knowing that He loves us, then we’re more able to believe that He actually wants to talk to us, that He wants to have a conversation, that He loves to hear what we’re saying and loves to talk back to us. Because when we know we’re loved and somebody is actually interested in talking to us, it makes the whole process much easier, right? There’s no tiptoeing coming and going, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m going to get into trouble for what I’m saying or should this really happen.” It just gets to be, “Wow. I get to go and have a conversation with my Dad” and that is the most beautiful place to start. So as you do that and you come from that place of knowing that God loves you and He’s your Father and wants to do this with you, that opens up your ears and your spirit and your heart to hear Him like you’ve never heard him before.
So let’s pray. Thank You so much. Lord that You are our Father. You are our Dad that wants to talk to us. This is Your greatest delight is to have a conversation with us to have a relationship with us and this is what we get to do. So I am asking today for our ears and our hearts and our spirits to open up, to be able to hear You talking to us and want to have this ongoing conversation with You at the same time. Thank You Lord, in Jesus name. Amen.