John H Armstrong

Listening to God's Word with the Heart

Yesterday I made a point about the Hebrew word (dabhar) that is used for God's Word. This word means much more than the sound of words in our ear or the registry of a meaning upon our mind. The same Hebrew word is used for God's creating the world by his word. And this is the same word that expresses God's revelation in Jesus Christ. When the word became incarnate it was this creative, powerful, faith producing word, which became the Logos of God (cf. John 1:1).

We listen to words at many different levels and in many different contexts. Words come at us in many forms and at many levels. Some words go no further than our ears. We hear sounds and that is it. Others enter our minds and make us think. (I am convinced that this is how most people read the Bible!) Some words touch us on the surface of our emotions and bring shallow feelings of joy or sadness.

The deepest form of listening, that which the biblical writers speak about regularly, is to listen with the ears of your heart. Such words will impact us powerfully. They can and do change us. This is real listening. We usually listen to dear friends in this way, a way that is rooted in the love of a relationship. The words of such friends might hurt us but they ultimately enhance our sense of self-worth and change how we see ourselves and the world around us. More times than not they encourage us to keep moving in faith and love. 

This is how God wants us to hear his words in Holy Scripture, with holy listening that touches our deepest inner being, the heart. Jesus told Mary and Martha that Mary had chosen the better way because, rather than serving his meal and speaking to him, Mary sat with him and listened with her whole being. We also recall that on the Road to Emmaus the two disciples hearts burned within them while they were listening to Jesus open up the Scripture and reveal himself to them. This is what needs to happen to you and me? We need to experience the Spirit opening our hearts to the Scriptures so that we might see and hear Jesus speaking to our hearts. 

When we listen to the word in this way we experience deep feelings of love, joy, freedom and need. We experience hope and confidence, awe and wonder. We may even experience regret about sin or shame. But even this regret, or sorrow, is godly and is clearly meant to lead us into the love of Jesus. Whatever you feel when you properly read/hear the Word of God you know that you are rightly listening to the Word of the Lord. Do not settle for less. Refuse to study the Bible as an academic text or a devotional manual. Open your heart and your soul to God and ask him to speak to you.

Caution: If you read God's word and you have continual feelings of guilt, fear and loathing, or excessive anxiety, then you need some help. Find a spiritual adviser or solid Christian counselor. Speak to a trusted friend. But do not accept constant anxiety as the norm for what happens when you listen to God's Word from the heart!

God's Word

The Hebrew word dahbar is used to describe God's word in the Old Testament. Dahbar means much more than a sound in our ear or a thought in our head. It is used to describe the power of Yahweh in creating the world. Dahbar is a creative word. It is, in other words, "word-event." God's word never leaves the listener to same. When a word from God is received with an open mind and teachable spirit the person who hears is gently, and powerfully, changed. Most of us hear the Bible read in church, or read it quietly each day, but few of us actually encounter the dahbar on a regular basis.

In Jesus Christ God spoke this deepest Word to Jesus. Jesus became dahbar incarnate. The humanity of Jesus was the full manifestation of all that God is. And every word Jesus spoke was God's word. This is why we need to read the four Gospels with a different attentiveness to "hearing his voice." (I am not suggesting the rest of Scripture is not the Word of God!)

Because Jesus speaks the Word of God to us, because he is the living Word among us, the New Testament still speaks God's word to us. This is why Paul told Timothy that every word of Scripture can instruct us, correct us, teach us and equip us. And every word of Scripture is saying, very powerfully, "I love you!" It says this in many different ways, sometimes warning us and urging us to repent. But this is what it says because God cannot speak any other word since God is love. 

God's word is like seed. It drops into our lives and germinates within us initiating life and faith within us. Peter says that we are "born anew . . . through the living and enduring word of God." And Paul said to the Colossians, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." These statements clearly mean that Holy Scripture can transform us because we are hearing God's Word from God himself. 

When we read the Bible like a text, or like a magic verse box, we actually miss hearing God. We must come with hunger and thirst, seeking to hear the Lord speak to us. We pray and seek the Lord. We ask to hear him. Each time we hear the Word, in a prayer and meditative manner, we can hear God speak to us. His ways are higher and deeper than our own so never expect that you will hear something tame or easy. Expect to encounter flame and energy. Expect to hear a person who speaks with love and tenderness but who may well show you again what must be changed and how. God cleanses us, prunes us, by this process. Are you meditating in the Scripture or just reading it like a "holy book" each day?

God's Word is powerful but we have to understand the central message -- God's love -- and then come longing to meet the One who loves us and speaks to us. 

God Is Looking for Man

I have always thought one of the more impressive and important things our Lord ever uttered is recorded in Luke 17:10. Here he says:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

It is the last sentence in what is attributed by Luke to our Lord that I find the verse that has sustained my thinking for many years now. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Jesus is the seeker. We hear a lot about seekers, and so we should. But we must not forget who the real seeker is—Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord. He seeks for the lost!

St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan (339-397) writes: “As in Paradise, God walks in the Scripture, seeking man.”

And Peter Taylor Forsyth (1848-1921), an all too little-known Protestant theologian of immense importance, adds, “The Word of God is in the Bible like the soul is in the body.”

The fundamentalist pays too little attention to the historical formation and literary forms of the Bible by defending it in an unnecessary and fruitless way. When this is done the Bible becomes the center of a debate. Ambrose and Forsyth, Catholic and Protestant, both agree—the Bible is powerful precisely because it fulfills its purpose, namely to reveal Christ to us through divine revelation. The human form of words, and the interpretation of those words in a literalistic manner, is not the primary issue. The primary issue is the purpose of Scripture. This is true with everything under heaven. We ask, “What is the purpose of this or that?”

The purpose of Scripture is to reveal the seeking Christ to lost mankind. Pick the book up and read it, not for debate and polemics but rather to see Christ. It will transform you if you read it the right way. As Ambrose said God is walking in these pages “seeking man.”

The Power of the Word

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog about the authority of Scripture and how the church has disagreed about the role that tradition and the Catholic Magisterium have in forming the doctrine of the church. I made particular reference to the teaching of the Catholic Magisterium and they differed with the magisterial Protestant Reformers. The main reason I wrote that particular piece was to show one of the reasons why I was not a Catholic. Another reason I wrote was to show that one could hold to the final authority of Scripture without holding to  the typically fundamentalist views of the Bible many conservative Catholic apologists accuse Protestants of holding to even when they clearly deny these views. My blog was not meant to be a polemic against Catholics, or even Catholicism, even though I am not persuaded by the Catholic argument at all. It was meant to be more of a confession about my own journey and understanding than anything else. It was a type of statement that very simply stated why I remain where I am in terms of the church. Most readers understood that point and responded accordingly. But some wanted to show me why I was wrong and convince me that only the Catholic Church understood this  matter of authority correctly. (I am fully aware of the logic involved—two contradictory views cannot both be right. One is wrong or both are wrong but both cannot be right at the same time! It could be, however, that neither has the whole truth thus neither is quite right, at least not yet. This should lead toward a different way of doing doctrinal disagreements, one that I do intend to foster by my writing.)

Today, I want to comment on the Scripture again. This time, however, I want to show how much we have in common as Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians when it comes to actually using the Scriptures in our lives. I have in mind today the power of the Word. All Christians, from antiquity to the present, have agreed (or should agree) that the Scripture has an inherent Spirit-given power that can be acknowledged and celebrated by everyone who loves the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is a way of seeing this simple point from a Catholic perspective, that of the famous Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was a French monk and the founder of the Cistercians. He wrote:

When you see a soul which, having left all, cleaves unto the Word with every thought and desire; lives only for the Word, rules itself according to the Word and becomes fruitful by the Word—which is able to say with St. Paul, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”—then you may have assurance that this soul is a bride wedded to the Word.

St. Bernard wrote this in a sermon he preached on The Song of Songs. 

Think about this quote for a moment. This respected Catholic monk is urging every believer to conform every thought and desire to Scripture. He adds that real assurance comes from being wedded to the Word of God as a bride to her husband. In case you protest, he is using Word here not as simply a synonym for Jesus, the true  and eternal Word, but for the Word revealed in the written apostolic Scripture.

The most famous of all Catholic theologians, and perhaps the most brilliant theologian in the history of the Christian Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, said: “I am a man of one book!”

And one of my favorite modern Catholic writers, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), wrote about Scripture:

Anyone entering the sphere of radiance of the divine word is held fast by it; he knows from experience that this word not only communicates knowledge about God, but—hidden within the God of the letter—actually has divine qualities; in itself it is an overpowering manifestation of God’s infinity and truth, his majesty and love.

French Cistercian abbott Andre Louf, a Catholic writer on prayer that I value very highly, wrote in Teach Us to Pray (1992): “The heart of man was made to receive the Word, and the Word adapts itself to the dimensions of the human heart.”

And St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), a holy teacher of the Catholic faith, wrote: “But it is especially the Gospels which sustain me during my hours of prayer, for in them I find what is necessary for my poor little soul. I am constantly discovering in them new lights, hidden and mysterious meanings.”

This has been my experience as well, especially in the last two decades of my life.

A recently discovered Catholic teacher who has helped me a great deal is David Steindl-Rast. Steindl-Rast, an Austrian Benedictine monk and profound spiritual writer, says, “Responsive reading is the form the Bible gives to our basic religious quest as human beings.”

Let me ask you, Protestant or Catholic reader both: Do you value the Scripture in this way? Have you tasted of the power of Holy Scripture and do you meditate upon these writings day-by-day and read them to gain the knowledge of the true love of Jesus? While you debate and read apologetics about Scripture and Magisterium do you treasure the writings? Do they take you to Jesus?

You know what—we may disagree (and we will likely continue to disagree) about the exact way we understand the role Scripture plays in defining the authority of the church on earth but we plainly can and do agree that the role Scripture should have in changing our lives is direct and powerful. This is why a real ecumenist says, “We can do these two things together: pray and read the Scripture and we must do them both more and more.”

This is why missional-ecumenism can celebrate this reality—when we read and study Scripture privately, but especially together, we open a door to amazing insights and truths that can transform us—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox—without leading any of us to compromise our basic convictions about the church.

William Johnston, the author of one of my favorite books on mysticism rightly concludes:

For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power of the word of God is so great that it remains the support and energy of the Church, the strength and faith of her children, the food of the soul, the pure and perennial source of spiritual life.