Category: Uncategorized

Here is the basic outline for my sermon last Sunday

Why Do we listen for God?
-comfort
-direction
-to know God (Psalm 46:10)
-to develop our relationship

How do we hear/How does God speak?
-to us directly
-Scripture
-music
-books
-other people

How do we/should we respond to God’s voice
-with a hard heart/doing things our own way
-with obedience
-active waiting/active listening (see my post a couple of weeks ago)
-with action

This is the outline. I was able to fill in my own story to highlight parts. I also look at the prophet Elijah and his story from 1 Kings 19.

The key points of the sermon are that God does speak to us in a variety of ways, we need to be listening, and that we must respond with obedience to what we hear.

I am preaching this weekend in Wisconsin, and the title of my sermon is “Listening for God.” As I reflect back over the last 6-8 months this is spiritual discipline that has been drawing me closer into an intimate relationship with the creator God of the universe. What an wonderful thing.

As I began to think about this topic I was drawn to the story of Elijah as Jezebel was moving to have him killed (the story can be found in 1 Kings 18,19). As I read and pondered I came up with three questions: Why should listen to God?, How do we hear God’s voice?, and How should we respond to what we hear? As I began “preaching” the sermon in my head, a lot of the thoughts that were forming sounded familiar. I then looked back through my blog and found that I have been reflection on answers to these questions in a number of my postings. I hope to record the message and get it posted so if you are interested you can listen to the sermon. I would post my sermon notes, but they wouldn’t do you much good, I don’t preach with more than a outline on paper and my Bible. I then just share what God has placed on my heart. How do I know what that is? As I prepare I am “Listening for God.”

As this year draws to a close I see that I have not spent a lot of time on this blog. This is not to say that I have not had thoughts on the subject, but I have a couple of different blogs to keep track of. No longer. I have decided that this blog will be my blog of choice. So keep checking back in 2008 and see where my journey leads.