Listen to the Voice of God

When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he heard the voice of God speak to him. The voice said, “You are my son, my son whom I love very much. I am delighted with you.”
The thought I have had most often as I have looked at the scene of Jesus coming up out of the water dripping wet, John standing beside him, wet from the waist down is this: I need to hear God as my Father tell me He is delighted with me, you need to hear God as your Father tell you He is delighted with you.

Jesus has introduced me to God as my heavenly Father.
Jesus has taught me to address God as “our Father” when I pray.
So I can hear the Father – need to hear the Father – say, “You, Bob, are my son. You are my son whom I love very much. I am delighted that you are my son.”

Last Tuesday at Joy Luck Restaurant, my fortune cookie message read, “Encourage me, and I will not forget you.” I liked that. Those who have encouraged me, I have not forgotten. I even remember Dr. Theron Price, who taught me at Furman University in 1964 and 65, saying to me one day, “I didn’t know that you were a ministerial student. I am delighted to know it.” I don’t remember anything he said after that, because Dr. Price – 6 feet 7 inches tall – intelligent, gentle, and an excellent teacher told me he was “delighted to know” that I was studying for the ministry. Wow! That was encouragement, and I never forgot it.

You are listening for a word of encouragement aren’t you? Listen for it diligently and let it soak in when it comes.

God’s light, encouragement, blessing flows through many human channels. I never forgot hearing Father John Powell, Jesuit priest and author of a number of books on relationship and self-image, say, “Whenever anybody gives me a compliment, I ask, ‘Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” Then he said, “I write it down, adding it to a list of encouraging things people have said to me and I keep the list in my desk drawer.”

Can you hear that encouragement from God? Can you hear the voice of God saying, “You are my child, my beloved child! I am delighted with you.”? I am asking you to make Jesus’ story your own in your prayers. Expect the fresh energy of the Spirit to flow into you. Expect to hear the quiet voice which reminds you of God’s affirming love. Expect God’s voice to tell you of the path of vocation which lies ahead for you.

Henri Nouwen believed that the words said to Jesus from heaven at his baptism are words said to all of us if we will listen and believe: “You are my beloved child. I am well pleased with you.” He wrote a book about it called The Life of the Beloved.
What we all need, what you need, Nouwen teaches, is a deep awareness that you are always God’s Beloved. How does anyone ever get the joy and peace we all want? You get it from knowing yourself as God’s Beloved.
Those who don’t know that they are Beloved run here and there looking for the imitation love of praise from others, power over others, and safety within the crowd. When you don’t know yourself as the Father’s beloved, you run after pleasure looking for something to, at least for a little while, take away the pain of not feeling loved: the worst pain in the world. This is a compulsiveness that leads to death.

The truth you need to claim for yourself is that you are “loved long before your parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved or wounded you.”

Here is what Nouwen says it means to be the beloved: It means you are Chosen, Blessed, Broken, and Given.

You are chosen, not in the sense that you deserve to be first on the team while other lesser talents are left out. The One who loves you with an everlasting love chooses you. That means you are more than a speck of humanity among millions. “Long before any human being saw you, you were seen by God’s loving eyes.”

Being chosen means, first, that you can reject the lies the world tells you that may demean you. You can know that you are the chosen child of God, even though you may not feel it right now.

Second, being chosen also means that you will seek out the people and the places that remind you of the truth of your chosenness.

Being blessed means that you are open to being encouraged and strengthened by those who will say good things to you. To give a blessing to someone is more than giving them a word of praise or pointing out their talents. It is not, “I love you because you are so beautiful or talented or successful.” It is, “I love you because God loves you.”

“To give a blessing is to affirm, to say “yes” to a person’s belovedness.” A blessing is not telling a person how much you admire them. “A blessing touches the original goodness of the other and calls forth his or her Belovedness.”

Here is an example of the kind of blessing Nouwen gave to people at L’Arche, the community of handicapped people and their caregivers. This blessing went to an assistant in the community, a 24 year old student. “John, it is so good that you are here. You are God’s Beloved Son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember hat you are loved with an everlasting love.”

“Broken” is Nouwen’s word about our sinfulness and our suffering. His example of his brokenness is his addiction to one person’s attentions and support. While he doesn’t go into any detail, he makes it clear that this one person was too important to him. He seems to have been trying to get all of his feelings of being beloved from one human being. The insight is this: God’s love flows through many human channels, and we make a huge mistake when we rely on one person for all of our security and feeling of being loved.

Nouwen’s guidance: “put your brokenness under the blessing,” has helped me to hear the Father speaking to me about how delighted He is that I am alive.

There is a brokenness in you. How do I know that? Are you a human being? Here is what the Bible says in Romans 3:23&24, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
What you tend to say to yourself is this: “The suffering I am going through is proof that the deep feeling I have of being no good is accurate. My brokenness proves it that I am no account.”

But when you put your brokenness under the light of blessing you move toward full acceptance of yourself as the Beloved. You begin to, as the First Letter of John says, “to walk in the light as God is in the light.” I take that to mean, you begin to tell the truth about yourself, about your sinfulness and your brokenness. You don’t try to hide and run and lie.
Putting your brokenness under the blessing means you recognize that God will use what has happened to you because of your own or other people’s sinfulness. God will use your brokenness to enable you to serve others.

Jesus gave his life to allow you to put your brokenness under God’s blessing.
This story gets at the meaning of putting your brokenness under the blessing. Tony Campolo said he was in seminary studying to become a minister when one day a professor called on him to lead the class in an opening prayer. He was praying along and said, “God be merciful to us worthless sinners.”

The professor, he said, “Stopped me right in the middle of my prayer, and I’ve never forgotten what he said to me. “Mr. Campolo, we are not worthless.
We are unworthy sinners. Unworthy, but not worthless.”

Everyday I receive a brief meditation written by Henri Nouwen as an email. This is what appeared in my email when I opened it this morning at 6:15 .

Growing Beyond Self-Rejection One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.
You are chosen, blessed, and broken not for your own sake, but in order that we can be given. In the end, what brings you the greatest joy in life is to being able to do something for another person. God’s blessing flows into you in order to flow on to others. All that you receive from being the beloved is to be passed on.

In his book Craddock Stories, celebrated preacher Fred Craddock tells of an evening when he and his wife were on vacation in Tennessee. They were eating dinner in a restaurant called The Black Bear Inn in the Smokey Mountains. A white haired, elderly man who was the owner came over to their table.

“Where are you from?”

“Oklahoma.”

“What do you do there?”

Fred said, “I thought now that’s none of his business, but he told him: ‘I teach preaching.’”

“Oh, you teach preachers! I’ve got a story about a preacher,” and he pulled out a chair.

Fred Craddock is one of the best preachers in the country and, at the same time, is a shy introvert if there ever was one. I heard him speak at a Stetson Pastor’s School one February several years ago. I went up and introduced myself to him. I could tell that meeting new people is not an easy thing for him.

So Fred thought sarcastically, “Sure, sit at our table while you tell it! I’ve heard all the preacher stories. Most of them came off of Noah’s Ark on crutches.”
"I am from around these parts," the old man said. "My mother was not married, and the shame the community directed toward her also fell on me. Whenever I went to town with my mother, I could see people staring at us, making guesses about who my daddy was. At school, I ate lunch alone. In my early teens, I began attending a little church but always left before church was over, because I was afraid somebody would ask me what a boy like me was doing in church. One day, before I could escape, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the minister. He looked closely at my face. I knew that he too was trying to guess who my father was. 'Well, boy, you are a child of. . .' and then he paused. When he spoke again he said, 'Boy, you are a child of God. I see a striking resemblance.' Then he swatted me on the bottom and said, 'Now, you go on and claim your heritage, boy.'

“I left church that day a different person," the now elderly man said. "In fact, that was the beginning of my life."

"What did you say your name is?" Dr. Craddock asked.

He answered, "Ben Hooper. My name is Ben Hooper." Fred Craddock thought, “Ben Hooper, Ben Hooper? I remember when I was a kid hearing my father talk about how the people of Tennessee twice electing as governor of their state a fellow who was the illegitimate son of a mountain woman. His name was Ben Hooper.”

When you know that you are God’s beloved child and you help someone else to see themselves as the Father’s beloved child, too, you never know what may come of it.

You never know what may happen in the life of one person who claims his or her heritage as a child of God!