God of our days and nights, we thank you for your abiding presence in our lives. You call us, and challenge us, and comfort us, and encourage us to listen for your direction. May we be open to hearing your questions of us, as you receive our questions and prayers. Keep us close to the heart of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

 

 

(The Scripture is shared in the body of the message.)

 

 

It is, indeed, a privilege and an honor to get to be with you this morning. For five years I got to hear about the Broadway Spirit. At times I felt like a fly on the wall. So, when it became time to move to Columbia, I told my family, “Have I got a church for you!” Now I get to be a part of this Broadway Spirit in some small way. I have to say that it’s usually my family that brings it home to me. 

 

I’m touched by the ministries of people like Roger Fisher, who I see sitting right here, who carries the Broadway Spirit as our treasurer for the Area and has just taken on the Director of Properties ministry. Also Martha Jolly, who many of you may know. I know Martha has been a board member. Her husband, Guy Adams, is co-chairing the Transition Team. Martha is our Minister of Outdoor and Youth Ministries. We have an incredible program with young people and lifting up youth leaders in this area. So know that the Broadway Spirit is not just here on Broadway. It goes out and about throughout the Northeast Area and beyond. 

 

That being said, I’d like to share the Word with you this morning. I’m reading from the Old Testament of the Bible. I’m reading from 1 Samuel 3:1-10. 

 

Some of you may have heard of Samuel. Samuel’s mother was a woman named Hannah. Hannah prayed and prayed for a child. Finally God blessed her with that child, but she didn’t keep him to herself. She dedicated him to God and put him under the care of a priest by the name of Eli. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few weeks ago I had occasion to start reading through 1 Samuel again. I was reminded how much I loved the stories about Samuel, particularly as a child. I love this story, because of its innocence, and, of course, because of what it says about faithfulness in our innocence, and in our not knowing, and in our uncertainties. 

 

During this time that I was reading through 1 Samuel again, this song “Awakenings” by Switchfoot came to mind. (Have any of you ever heard of the band Switchfoot? It’s a great band.) I spend a lot of time on the road, and XM Radio is my friend. On the contemporary Christian music channel, they were playing this one song over and over. This one line kept standing out to me. “Maybe it’s called ambition, but you’ve been talking in your sleep about a dream. We’re awakening.” 

 

At some point the two came crashing together - the song and the Scripture – and I knew there was a message in there somewhere. With the opportunity to come to Broadway, I knew that message in there was meant for Broadway Christian Church. Particularly, as we’re engaging in this time of dreaming, and attempting to awaken to God’s dreams and plans for us here and beyond. 

 

Shortly after that, I was talking to someone, and I had occasion to note that in times of transition, there can be a thin line between dreaming, and desire, and delusion, and denial, and how we discern all that. How we sort through what we want and what God wants for us, keeping in mind that what is most important is what God wants for us.

 

So, that’s what I’d like to spend a few minutes doing this morning here with you, talking about and thinking about dreaming, and desire, and discernment, and delusion, and denial. I promise I’ll only spend a few minutes doing that. 

 

We are here, at Broadway, engaged in 40 days of prayer. Forty days of listening, and considering what it is God may be wanting for us in the next few, maybe even 50, years. What does God have in store next for Broadway? How God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is going to manifest in the Broadway Spirit. 

 

We’ve been called (for some of us that would be a challenge) to spend 40 days praying, asking from and listening to God. It’s been said that prayer is like a telephone line that connects us to God, where we can dialogue and converse with God. The key word here is “dialogue.” It’s a move beyond merely talking and asking from God, so that we can hear from, and then respond to God. 

 

Listening is not something that comes easily for most of us. My understanding is in Stephen Ministry training, there is a lot of emphasis put, and a lot of training, on that art of listening.

 

I’m convinced that it isn’t easy. Some suggest that it’s not natural for us to be able to hear from God. I’m not convinced that it’s not natural for us to hear from God, because when you look at little children, they have this intuitive way of knowing about God. It is something, I think, we must lose as we grow up.

 

Indeed, we get to the point were we have to ask questions about how God speaks to us, and how we can know we’re hearing from God, and how we can know that what we’re hearing really is from God. We have to ask about how we can awaken to God’s call. How we can be awakened by God’s voice? At least, some of us get to the point where we ask those questions, because a lot of us are just too embarrassed to ask. We think that everyone must know how to pray, but us. 

 

But know that many, if not most, of us have to learn how to hear from God. It’s not easy to answer that question, “How we hear from God?” There are no easy answers, because all of us hear from God differently. 

 

I found that I can hear God’s voice best when I can be quiet. I’m a contemplative in prayer. I love quiet and silence. I can go days in silence. The problem is finding time. In fact, after a few days I don’t want to come out of the silence. 

 

But my husband… Some of you know Bill. He’s ADHD, and, literally, silence drives him up the wall. He hears best from God when he can get out and walk, or walk a labyrinth, or take rocks and throw them into a pond or a creek somewhere. 

 

You know, this listening stuff is complicated by the fact that few of us, literally, hear disembodied voices, let alone a voice that we could define as God. I’ve only known two healthy people who, literally, could say they could hear God’s voice speaking to them in a way like we would speak to one another, in a way that God would speak out loud to them, as God spoke to Samuel.

 

Now there’s a challenge for us. How can we know that the voice we're really hearing is God’s voice? Even Samuel, who was still young and surrounded day in and day out by the realities of God, who slept in the sanctuary, even Samuel didn’t recognize God’s voice. You may recall, in the Scripture, it said, “He did not yet know the Lord, because he had never had a message from God before.” Indeed, Samuel mistook God’s voice for the priest Eli’s voice, and the priest Eli didn’t even hear God speaking. 

 

I don’t want you to raise your hand, but I know that we’re not alone by any stretch of the imagination, if we’re not sure when or even if we’re hearing from God. You’re not alone if you wrestle with what you hear, however you hear that, with whether or not that’s God’s voice or your own voice. Many of us struggle, and I think there is some integrity involved here, when we do wrestle with whether what we hear is our own voice or a voice within us that is somehow beyond us.

 

There were reminders this week in our prayer guidebook. I hope you all are using this. This is fabulous. If you didn’t get one yet, out there at the Welcome Center, you can get one. This week in our guidebook, they had suggestions for making a little one-on-one time with God. 

 

I like the tips about how we can put ourselves in places to hear God’s voice: walking for 20 minutes; doing things each day that give glory to God; prioritizing our daily agendas around God’s agenda; consulting God in every decision we have to make, even what to eat for breakfast; opening ourselves up to what God wants to do, by knowing that nothing is too small or trivial to ask from God; and allowing God to free us from whatever holds us back, whether that be in our prayer or in our lives.

 

Now with all of this comes, of course, the promise, some might see it as a risk, that God might actually talk to us. God might actually give us what we want, or, God forbid, more than what we want or ask for. 

 

The United Church of Christ recently had a campaign. Actually, I think it’s still going. It is called “God is Still Speaking.” 

 

You know a lot of people think that God stopped speaking 2,000 or so years ago. God is still speaking, and not merely through a preacher here or there. God speaks to us, each one of us, and God speaks in a variety of ways. Yes, in the voices of preachers, and friends, and family, in the words of the Bible, and biographies, and letters, through the still small voice in our head that we are not always sure is God’s voice and not our voice. 

 

The prophet Joel, who also wrote a book in the Old Testament of the Bible, says, “Old men will dream dreams, and young men will have visions.” 

 

I once heard Dick Ham, our former general minister and president of the Christian Church – Disciples of Christ, ponder why it is that young men get to have visions and old men get to dream dreams. He concluded that as we age, we tend to rely so much more on ourselves than on God, that we forget how to rely on God. As a result, we don’t tend to hear God as we might have in our younger days. So, Dick says, “God has to come to us while we’re asleep and our defenses are down.” 

 

God continues to call out and speak to us, but here’s the caveat. Often what we think is God’s voice… What we think is God’s dream for us looks a lot, or sounds a lot, like what we want. Again, there’s a thin line between dreaming, and desire, and delusion; between what we want and what God wants, and how we sort through all of that.

 

So, how can we know what we hear or think we hear is from God? First, let me say that God is wise. I believe it was a suggestion in the book, you may have an idea that comes to you, and you think, “Where on earth did that come from?” You might be tempted to toss it out? That is a good question. “Where on earth did that come from, or did it come from beyond?”

 

Nothing is too big or too great for God. Another way to check if what we’re hearing is from God is to reflect on the content of what we’re hearing. I need to say this. If what you think you’re hearing from God causes harm to you, or someone else, it is not from God. God is not a God of harm, so anything you might hear that would cause harm physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, that is not from God. 

 

That doesn’t mean that when God is working on things, some of us aren’t going to feel a little pain along the way, but do no harm. 

 

I also want to say that it’s important not to get attached to what we hear, think, believe, or want. Discernment and differentiating between what we want and what God wants calls for detachment. Discernment will break down if we get attached to the possibilities and the probabilities that we dream and desire. It’s not about me, or you, or even us. It’s about God and God’s dreams, and desires, and wants. 

 

I’ve said this is not necessarily easy work. So, what I’d like to do is leave you with a few Ds. D as in “dog.” So, here they are. Here are eight Ds to think about.   

 

 

So, there we are: Eight Ds. Dream. Don’t get diluted into thinking you’ve got the market on God. Stay detached and open. Move past doubt and denial. Discern what is your stuff, and what is God’s. Keep in dialogue with God, but don’t forget to dialogue consistently with others. And depend on God to be God in your life, and the life of Broadway, and beyond. May you find God’s will and ways awakening in, and among, and through you, and us. 

 

Amen.