Scripture describes one other god besides the heavenly Father, and that is the god of this age, the devil. According to 2 Corinthians 4:4, his work is to blind the minds of people so that they cannot see the truth. That blindness reaches the ears as well, leaving people unwilling to listen.
Those who know Jesus Christ as personal Saviour worship a very different God. He is compassionate, loving and personal, and he takes a genuine interest in everything that interests his people. He listens. His omnipotence goes beyond what any person can describe or understand.
Christians serve a living God.
For they themselves report about us as to the kind of reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God,
Some believers wonder why God would want to speak to them at all. The first reason is love. God desires an intimate relationship with each person, and that kind of closeness requires conversation that travels in both directions.
Believers must be willing to talk with God, and they must be equally willing to listen to him. God listens readily to his people, and he also wants to be heard.
A relationship with him cannot be right unless listening accompanies speaking. One of the chief reasons God speaks is to build that relationship, because no bond with anyone can grow where only one side ever talks.
Speaking and listening belong together.
My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
God listens to his people, and he wants to be heard. A right relationship with him depends on listening as well as speaking, since no relationship can thrive when the conversation flows only one way.
Believers today need guidance just as much as the saints of the Old and New Testaments did. Throughout both testaments, God’s sons and daughters, his leaders and his people looked for direction, and they found it in a variety of ways.
People of faith still seek guidance now, whether the question concerns finances, the home, the church or any other part of life. In every case, they need the wisdom of God.
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
When a jailer asked Paul and Silas what he needed to do to be saved, their answer was short. They said believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Some have pointed to this exchange as proof that the gospel message requires no doctrine, no mention of repentance, and no explanation of who Jesus is or what he has done. But that reading pulls the answer completely out of its context and ignores what must have already taken place before those words were spoken.
Before a person can believe in someone, do they not first need to know who that person is? Before they can grasp what they are being saved from, doesn’t that condition has to be explained?
Paul’s short answer to the jailer assumes that all of this groundwork had already been laid. Romans 10 makes the same point. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing requires a messenger who explains the details. The command to believe was the call to act on what had already been shared, not a standalone formula that replaces the full gospel message.
How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? But how are they to preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
In Matthew chapter 19, the apostle Peter asks Jesus a question that some readers find a little embarrassing on Peter’s behalf. After Jesus had spoken of the difficulty of the rich entering the kingdom, Peter turned to him and said, in effect: “We have left everything and followed you. What is in it for us?” No, not those words, that’s my summation. It sounds, at first hearing, like the kind of frank self-interest that we might quietly hope the disciples had moved past by this point in their discipleship. Yet Jesus does not rebuke him. And that absence of rebuke is worth pausing over.
We ought to be honest enough to admit that there was something genuinely human, and perhaps genuinely limited, in the disciples’ understanding of what they were following Jesus toward. James and John had their mother approach Jesus to lobby for the best seats in his coming earthly kingdom. The disciples were, on more than one occasion, debating who among them would be the greatest. They were not simply interested in spiritual blessings; they wanted to know about tangible, earthly, visible reward.
Jesus, rather than correcting the expectation entirely, seems to validate its essential core. There is an earthly kingdom coming. He calls it a “palingenesia” a word meaning the regeneration. I see this as a remarkable word pointing to the restoration of all things, a period described in Revelation chapter 20 where believers will reign with Christ on this earth and the apostles themselves will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The expectation was not entirely wrong; it was simply premature and somewhat self-serving in its orientation.
What does this say to us? I believe it says that God’s people are not wrong to long for the day when Christ rules visibly and righteously over a renewed creation. The new heavens and the new earth, the reign of Christ, the restoration of all things, these are genuine promises, and we are permitted, even encouraged, to desire them.
The correction Jesus offers is not to extinguish that hope, but to set it within the larger framework of faithful following, sacrifice, and trust that the one who promised is able to deliver.
If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He will also deny us;
