A voice that must be heard

"There is a voice that must be heard" according to one of the popular songs. But in our Christian life; whose voice is it that we actually listen to?!

Is it Todd Bentley or Joyce Meyer or Benny Hinn? Or- one's I've heard in the flesh:...
Rob Rufus, Ray McCauley's? Colin Urquart's? The teaching of Ellel Ministries or the Freedom in Christ (similar but more church-based) teaching?

I started thinking about this when my mother showed me an email from an old family friend who has recently discovered the teaching of someone called Andrew Wommack - and feels 'liberated' by it, after years of struggling with ill health & premature death of family & friends, including my dad.

So I was reading his site (I'd never heard of him) trying to find out what it was that set his teaching apart (it wasn't immediately obvious). His teaching is sound in itself; He is teaching people to claim the promises we have in Christ and believe that God will is health for us etc.

But his emphasis on this made me uneasy; my own experience has brought me up against people like this, whose emphasis on this means they invariably become a bit 1-sided in their teaching. I think hopelessness induced by that kind of potentially guilt-inducing teaching can actually cause one to give up; and then maybe give up on God altogether. (Must be careful here ... don't want my experience to lead me to become 1-sided in this view!!!!)

It can also cause real angst about lack of faith. Any teaching that emphasises a particular promise of God that is "ours to be received" - and then is not received - can lead to real turmoil. (And healing is the most emotive subject of all.) I know, cos I've been there. But now I see how much God has done in me & revealed to me & taught me through not providing healing when I wanted it.

God's teaching is for healing and also to persevere in faith. And In a quick-serve society we're in the habit of wanting things straight away. The bible makes it clear we are (often) to persevere and keep trusting God, against the odds.But I have more than one friend who is suffering horrible illness and (in some cases) persevering over years in bringing it go God; not to mention facing, in my job, the many thousands of people who struggle with daily pain or disability one way or the other. I don't understand it. I don't know why God doesn't just heal them.

Maybe, for some people, clinging to a certain element of the bible teaching helps them cope with what they can't understand. Instead of giving it all to God daily to bless them, they seek to mould their own answer. ("Well, it says in the bible that.... if it's not happening then it must be your lack of ..."!)

As my much used already Adrian Plass quote points out: ‘The sort of teaching that tells you B will definitely happen if only you do A is likely to produce guilt and failure if the formula doesn’t happen to work for you… God sometimes takes a route through H to get from A to B and he might even stop off at J and X on the way, hanging around long enough to find out how I & K & W & Y and the rest of the neighbours are getting along.’

And I think it's dangerously near to the dogmatic thinking (whatever the particular view) that starts to miss the point of grace. Have you ever been in a church where a certain 'wing' becomes loud-voice-ish - at the expense of love and kindness and... grace!

I still remember when God led me to the church in Heathfield, having some reservations about NFI - but being reassured on the Foundation Course by the teaching being so biblically based. My current church's Foundation Course gave me a similar confidence when the lead elder's words echoed a wonderful biblically-based/common sense sermon that I'd recently been inspired by Mark Driscoll & based on a difficult passage in Nehemiah 12.

I really believe that if you maintain an open heart that God can have something to teach you through everything you hear. He may use a ministry-speaker. He may use your elder. He may use a congregation member. He may use other ways, as you know Him more. (As you remain in His word and spend time worshipping him and serving him). If you hear a certain view point that interests you, it's probably best to research it in the bible, bible-study it, with an open heart.

The point is, to remember to listen to God's voice, first and always, no matter which other teaching 'voice' you are hearing. To match that teaching up to His word - not the other way around.