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What is going on? II ...

Tuesday, Dez 10, 2019. How do you come to conclusions with respect to God? How do you decide what to think about this basic question? We need to talk a little bit about our communication with God. How can you communicate with him?

The question of how to hear from God is linked to the overall situation of humans in general. If God is there, how does he interact with us humans? This is one of the basic questions people have been asking for a long time. Is God a hidden God? Can you live with him on a daily basis? How does it work? What does the Bible say about this?

Let them hear …

The question how God is talking to humans is taken up in the bible in many places. The basic answer it gives is that God wants to live with us humans, and he wants to talk to us. He wants to be there, day by day. He wants to be the determining person in our life!

Jesus talks about a story, where people realize that God lives indeed, and that faith has severe consequences. And their conclusion is that they want to talk to their family and friends to tell them that it is really important. They want to send a dead person, to convince them that all the biblical statements of faith are true. But this is rejected by God. Jesus tells us the following words instead:

But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ (Luke 16, 29)

The first thing we need to do is to listen to Moses and the Prophets. The communication with God starts with the biblical scriptures. It does not end there, but the bible is the reference point of our communication with God. Here, Jesus refers to the Old Testament scriptures, the Jewish books. The “let them hear” is an important statement about how God wants our communication with him start and where he sees the centre of this communication.

The Spirit …

Both the Old and the New Testament also talk about the spirit of God, who comes to believers. The spirit talks through the prophets. The spirit is the main driver of the communication between God and us. Jesus says himself that he will send the spirit after his death and resurrection, to be with us.

Thus, the biblical testimony is complemented by the spirit. It is not different from the presence of the spirit, since all the biblical books have been written “in the spirit”. It is the same spirit, who talks through the bible and who comes to believers.

But it is an important part of Christian faith and experience that when you trust your life into God's hands through Christ Jesus, you receive the spirit of God. With this spirit, your life changes, since he is God's power to experience his presence.

You can communicate with God through prayer, meaning that you talk and you listen as well. Prayer is a two-way communication. Through the spirit God talks to you, by pointing you towards biblical insight, by giving you thoughts, wisdom, images and visions. The spirit clarifies things by widening our mind. Very simple facts can talk to you, when the spirit of Jesus is there. Communication with God through the spirit works in a fantastic and very satisfying way. (Roland Potthast)

This is part of the trilogy project “Faith of a Scientist”.