Audio Transcript
Bible memorization — we’ve talked a lot about it. We need to get Scripture in us deep, and for a lot of good reasons. A big one is that the vast majority of life is lived spontaneously. We must make hundreds of quick decisions every single day (like what episode to click play on!). And all those actions reflect whatever fills our hearts. If goodness fills us, it overflows; if not, harmful patterns emerge. So, without regularly meditating on God’s word, we are unequipped to make holy decisions when we must. If you’ve heard that before, it’s because we have covered that before, as you’ll see in the Ask Pastor John book on pages 24–25 and 41–43.
Similarly, we have this question from a listener named Andrew: “Dear Pastor John, I’m curious about the balance between fate, hearing the voice of God, and our own power in decision-making. In Acts, the apostles drew lots to replace Judas (Acts 1:20–26), and we see God speaking to individuals in various ways (Acts 9:3–20). While God clearly speaks to people in different ways, there are also decisions he seems to leave to us, like whether to have turkey or chicken on a sandwich. Where do you see the balance between these elements, and how can a believer know which to follow when making decisions?”
The Balance
Okay, here’s my answer to the balance question — the balance between situations in which you draw lots, maybe, or receive a special revelation from God, on the one hand, and then actions that you take without any special divine interventions. That balance between those two (special intervention and no intervention) is like 1:99 or maybe 1:999. That’s the balance. Let me explain.
Let’s just leave aside for now the debate between cessationists and continuationists (that is, the debate between those who think there are no special supernatural revelations from God today and those who think there are). Because even those who think there are (and I’m happy to be among that number) know that in the living of our daily lives from six in the morning until ten at night, we make a thousand choices — from the socks we put on to the breakfast food we eat and whether to smile at the Uber driver.
A thousand choices, all day long, not dictated by the intervention of God through special revelation in the moment. We make those. That’s why I say 1:999 is the balance: 999 choices that we make without special revelation in the moment versus perhaps one unusual intervention from God. In my judgment, that’s just the way it is. That’s not a matter for dispute because the most vibrant charismatic, walking in the Spirit, knows this is true.
For all Christians, the way God has ordained for us to live our lives and make our thousands of choices is not by God’s whispering in our ear every five or six seconds what gesture to make next. We know that’s not the way it is. That’s not the way he leads. So, the really interesting and important question is this: Why? Why does God do it this way?
Following Without Hearing
Suppose this question with me. Since Christ aims to be the Lord of every Christian — and Lord, among other things, means we do what he says. He’s in charge; we’re not. He gives commands; we obey. That’s what lordship means. So, if that’s God’s design for our lives, then why didn’t God set it up so that the Lord Jesus is miraculously giving new revelation every few seconds in our brains so that we receive a divine direction that we can choose to obey or not as to what we’re supposed to do in the next five seconds?
Turn left; turn right. Smile; don’t smile. Speak; don’t speak. Take a second helping, or don’t. Thousands of these situations all day long. Now, that is a really serious question. The implications of how you answer that are huge. God intends for Jesus to be the Lord of every Christian, and 999 times out of 1,000 every day, he does not give special revelation for how to do his will. Why not?
“The glory of Christ will shine more brightly if it is imprinted upon the minds and hearts of his people.”
So, the question is, why did God set things up so that we are supposed to make God-pleasing decisions without a thousand special messages from God every day about what those decisions should be? And I think the biblical answer is this: He didn’t do it that way because the glory of Christ will shine more brightly if it is imprinted upon the minds and hearts of his people in such a way that we make God-pleasing choices because we think and we feel and we act in accord with the peculiar nature and worth of Christ’s glory imprinted on us.
That’s a long sentence. Let me see if I can say it more simply.
Transforming, Not Directing
God intends for us to discern — sometimes by reflection, sometimes by intuition, sometimes spontaneously — what is God-honoring and Christ-exalting and people-loving because, through his revealed word in Scripture, we have become like Christ in the way we feel, the way we act, the way we think.
And when that happens, when we are acting out of a transformed nature in the image of Christ, Christ gets more glory than if we were simply hearing a voice a thousand times a day and complying. So, the reason I believe this (I didn’t just make this up) is because of Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may [approve] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
This is obedience stemming directly from divine transformation, not directly from special information. And this is the way God intends to shape us and guide us. The New Testament describes the human mind apart from Christ as depraved, blind, hard, fleshly, hostile, sensuous, corrupt, double. And it describes our desires in similar ways: deceived and fleshly.
In other words, without transformation, we are in no condition to see what we need to see and think the way we need to think and feel what we need to feel in order to make the choices that glorify Christ. We’re just corrupt. We’re not fit to do it, which means we are in desperate need of more than new information given by God a thousand times a day. And the way God wants to shape those thousand choices is by transforming us by the word through the Spirit into the image of Christ.
Behold and Become
How many times do we circle back, Tony, to this precious text from 2 Corinthians 3:18? Oh my goodness! “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” In other words, the glory of Christ will shine more brightly in his people when our behavior and our thinking and our feeling are shaped by the glory of Christ, by beholding the glory of Christ and being transformed by the glory of Christ.
So, the way Paul teaches us to make choices is this. How does this work in your life? “Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” That’s his answer in Ephesians 4:24. Same thing in Colossians 3:9–10: “You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge” — renewed, transformed in knowledge — “after the image of its creator.”
Christ is glorified by the countless decisions we make from this new nature because this new nature is the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ. That’s why Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 2:16, and why he exhorts, “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ” (Philippians 2:5 ASV). So, the great calling of the Christian is to be transformed by the word of God and the Spirit of God. And then, as we grow in this sanctification, more and more of those thousand choices each day will conform to Christ for his glory.
