Hearing God First on Every Issue

There is an old story about a poor family who saved for years to buy passage on a great ship across the ocean. They scraped together just enough for the fare and packed a suitcase of cheese and crackers to eat for the whole voyage. Day after day they stayed below, nibbling cheese and crackers, while the smell of feasts drifted down from the dining hall. Near the end, one of them finally asked a steward how much a meal cost. The meals, he was told, were included in the ticket the entire time.

Many of us are eating cheese and crackers when the full bounty of heaven has already been included. One of the great tragedies in the church is how easily we swap the gospel of the kingdom for a thin gospel of just barely making it. We picture a heavenly person as someone who will one day squeeze through the gate. And so we settle for cheese and crackers here, as long as we make heaven someday.

What a heavenly person actually is

But a heavenly person is not merely someone destined for heaven. A heavenly person is someone who lives on earth the way they would live if they were already in heaven. You are not heavenly because you met the minimum requirement to get in when you die. You are heavenly because, right now, in Christ, you carry heaven inside you.

Say it and mean it: heaven is not only my home, it is my lifestyle. It is not only my destination, it is my present reality. If it is happening in heaven, it can happen in my life now. And the more you press through the resistance of your own flesh, the more the glory of that kingdom shows up on this earth.

Here is the truth that reorders everything. Unless you become a certain kind of person, no external condition will ever create a heaven for you. That is why Jesus never said, go show people how to get to heaven. He said, make disciples. A disciple is someone who lives a certain way because they have become a certain kind of person, and they became that kind of person by being with a certain kind of Master.

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You!

Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)

Why does fixing your thoughts on the Lord produce perfect peace? Because the thoughts of the Lord are heavenly thoughts. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His thoughts above ours. And one simple, sturdy way to keep your thoughts on Him is to learn to hear God first, in prayer, on every issue.

Start with how you see yourself

Hearing God first begins with you. It means the way you see yourself is based on what God has told you about yourself, not on what people said, not on what your spouse or your friends decided about you. Who told you that you were naked? In Eden, that verdict did not come from God. It came from somewhere else.

Years ago I decided to locate myself in the Scriptures the way John the Baptist did when he called himself a voice crying in the wilderness. One day I came upon a word — the Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary; He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to hear — and I sensed the Holy Spirit say, this is you; pray it into your life. Later, God gave me another word through Jerry Bridges in his book The Discipline of Grace: there is no day so bad that I am beyond the grace of God, and no day so good that I do not need the grace of God. That changed how I thought about myself.

So let me ask you plainly. How do you think about yourself, and where did you get it? Once someone is settled about what God has said about them, they stop being ruled by what everyone else says. You spend so much energy chasing the scoop on what people think of you. When was the last time you inquired what God thinks of you?

And how you see everyone else

Now turn it outward. How do you think about other people? Do you sort them into good person, bad person? Do you judge and condemn, or do you bless? When you look at that young man, that young woman, and a thought forms, where does that thought come from — your common sense, your mood, what simply makes sense to you? Or from God?

Imagine pausing before every verdict and asking Him first. Lord, what is Your view of this person? The driver cutting across three lanes in front of you — before you mutter, crazy idiot, what if you asked, Father, what is going on with this person, and how can I bless them? I did that recently for a woman I passed, and the word I heard back was simply, treasure. Imagine meeting an adult who lies to your face, or a child acting out, and instead of firing back, you asked, Father, what should I say now? What would You do if You were me? Imagine, in the middle of a quarrel with your spouse or your child or your boss, stopping to ask, Lord Jesus, if You were me, what would You do?

That is a heavenly person. It is not only about going to heaven. It is about going after the heart of God, and living on earth now the way you would live there. Because in heaven, this is exactly how life works. There is no sun there — God is your light. No sea — He is your water. In Him you move and live and have your being. If you never learn to live from Him here, even heaven would feel like a prison, a place where you can no longer run on your own thoughts but must live entirely from Another. For a heart bent on having its own way, that would not be heaven at all.

How David heard God first

We can learn the practice from David. In one chapter, twice, before he lifted a finger, he inquired of the Lord — should I go and attack these Philistines? And he waited for the answer. Three things stand out.

• First, David had already made up his mind to obey God, even when it made no sense. Only a person settled on obedience will ever bother to hear God first. If, deep down, you insist on understanding a thing before you will obey it, that itself is a quiet form of idolatry — an unrenewed mind competing with the counsel of God.
• Second, having decided to obey, David opened his mouth to inquire. The decision to obey is what creates the desire to hear. You make no time to listen to someone you have no intention of obeying.
• Third, having asked, David expected an answer and paused for it. As you wait, His thoughts begin to stream through your mind — a picture, a verse, a single word.

Notice too that an accurate understanding of God leads to accurate reception of His thoughts. Who God is to you is who He will be through you. If you perceive Him as a killer, you will hear threatening thoughts. If you know Him as a healer, the same situation will produce a very different word. And prophecy, at its simplest, is just speaking out in faith what you believe you have heard from Him.

Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.

Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)

What this opens up

Imagine your thoughts toward yourself becoming His thoughts about you. Imagine living with your spouse and children and getting a fresh download from heaven each day — what to say, how to act, how to love this particular person right now. It is as if God hands you the manual for each relationship, moment by moment, because each moment you pause and ask, Father, what are Your thoughts toward this person now?

As this becomes your habit, heaven begins to download more than manners. It gives strategies, inventions, creative ideas, songs, solutions to problems that governments cannot crack. It is not so strange. Many of history's discoveries came to people in dreams — the structure of the benzene ring came to Kekulé as a snake seizing its own tail; others found insulin, the sewing machine's lock-stitch, the periodic table in the same way. If God can whisper to a searching mind in sleep, how much more to a child who has learned to ask Him first while awake. It is how Jesus knew the woman at the well, how He saw Nathanael before they met.

God is restoring this message of the kingdom to His church, because the gospel of the kingdom must be preached to the ends of the earth before the end comes. The generation that ushers in that harvest will not be Christians straining to escape the earth. They will be heavenly persons, princes of His kingdom, walking here as sons of God — healing the sick, blessing the difficult, turning this upside-down world right side up, because heaven is already in them.

And it starts with one very simple decision, small enough to begin today. Before you speak, before you judge, before you react, pause and ask Him first. Lord, what do You think about this? Let whatever you then say be only the echo of what He has already told you. Stop eating cheese and crackers on the way to a feast that was included all along.