You remember what the disciples asked Jesus in Luke chapter 11? “Lord, teach us to pray.” The ball is sitting on the proverbial tee waiting for Jesus to knock it out of the park and affirm what Robert Morris and the vast majority of evangelicals believe today, that prayer is a two-way street.
“Lord, teach us to pray.” What did Jesus say? “Okay, here’s how you do it. You talk to God, and then you get real quiet and you listen for that still small voice.” Is that what He said? No, He didn’t say that at all. He said, “When you pray, say this: ‘Lord, hallowed by Thy name,’” nothing about listening for some still small voice, nothing about listening for God to speak back to you. So this whole notion of prayer being a two-way street, that is foreign to the Word of God. There’s nothing in the Bible about that at all.
This section comes earlier in the sermon, but the above paragraphs are so critical to be seen, I’m pushing this down to ensure the first two paragraphs get read:
How does God speak to us today? Undoubtedly, you have heard people say this: “Well, God has spoken to me and He’s told me that you are to do such and such.
And it is just ubiquitous out there in the evangelical world – whatever evangelical means nowadays – that God speaks to people in still, small voices, maybe audible voices, dreams, visions, hunches, all of these things; and you hear this so commonly.
Has it ever made you stop and wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I hear God speak to me that way? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my relationship with the Lord? Do these people have a closer walk with God than I do? What’s wrong with me?” And if you have ever had those thoughts, I hope that this session will be an encouragement to you as we look at how God does and does not speak to us today.