God Speaks!

WEEK ONE: Who is Holy Spirit?

“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.” John 14: 25-27 MSG

Jesus says this after the crucifixion, when he tells his disciples he is leaving them to go back to heaven. He tells them this to explain the presence of Holy Spirit to them, explaining they are not abandoned, and that Holy Spirit will bring them peace. Holy Spirit is a person of the Godhead, or Trinity. He lives in the heart/soul of anyone who follows Jesus.

What does Holy Spirit do?

Holy Spirit is our guide, comforter and encourager. He explains the ways of God to us, and reminds us of God’s ways. He is a friend to us, and he brings us peace. You could say that Holy Spirit is kind of like a telephone between us and Father God – Jesus’s relationship with Father God, and now our relationships with Father God, happen through Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is what connects us.

How do we know when he’s near or at work?

We can always ask him to be near us, and we can welcome him. God always ‘shows up’. Even if we don’t feel the warm & fuzzies, or if we can’t hear his voice, he is always there.

Sometimes when Holy Spirit is at work, we might feel physical manifestations of that. Often people will feel tingles, dizziness, heat or extreme emotion (e.g. tearfulness or laughter). But if we don’t feel those things, or anything at all, that’s okay and very normal as well. The ways we FEEL aren’t important – the important thing is that we are connected to God.

When Holy Spirit is at work in us or around us, we see the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

How do we develop a friendship with Holy Spirit?

Ask him to be your friend! If there’s a person of the Godhead you feel more comfortable with, e.g. Father God or Jesus, ask them to help you.
Talk to Holy Spirit – deliberately address him in your prayers.
Think of Holy Spirit as a person, as he is, rather than a wishy washy cloudy presence.

WEEK TWO: How do we know God speaks to us?

First things first – how do we know he speaks?

The idea that God speaks to us is incredibly Biblical. We see it with Adam and Eve, then Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Noah, Joshua, David, Solomon… through the prophets, who predicted the coming of Jesus down to the date and town he’d be born in, to Jesus himself, then his disciples, and now us (we are also his disciples).

The Day of the Lord (Joel 228-32 MSG)

I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters. Your old men will dream, your young men will see visions.I’ll even pour out my Spirit on the servants, men and women both. I’ll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below: Blood and fire and billowing smoke, the sun turning black and the moon blood-red, Before the Judgment Day of God, the Day tremendous and awesome. Whoever calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help. On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be a great rescue—just as God said. Included in the survivors are those that God calls.”

So what does this mean?

1) God will speak to ANY of us who ask him 2) God loves to bring us messages and communicate and be clear with us.

Testimony time!

Think about the different ways God speaks to people in the Bible.

– He walks with Adam and Eve in the garden

– He sent Joseph dreams

– He spoke to Moses through the burning bush

– He made Abraham promises

– He sent an angel to Mary

Think about the ways people YOU know have experienced God! God speaks in a variety of ways, e.g. dreams & visions, inner ‘sense’, physical things, circumstantial ways, words of knowledge from others, etc. It’s okay to not know how God speaks to you, or to find these things unfamiliar, but don’t dismiss them BECAUSE they’re unfamiliar. Listen and share stories with the people around you!

So… why DOES he speak?

To guide us
To encourage us
To show his love for us

The standard by which Jesus lived his life was this:

John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” NIV

So Jesus allows God to guide him by communicating with him, telling and showing him things, to the point where Jesus does NOTHING unless it’s approved by the Father! Jesus’s life was 100% led by the Spirit, in line with the ways of Father God. (We are not perfect and it’s okay for us to not reach this standard, but we can go for it anyway…)

All this amounts to relationship. There are 1000 religions based on a distant God who doesn’t want relationship, but we know the true God, who loves us so much, he sent his son to die for us, paying the price of our sins, so we would never ever have to be separated from him. God wants to be friends with us – best friends. He wants us to turn to him first when we have troubles (and he actually has the power to rescue us from suffering too). He wants us to tell him we love him, and hear how much he loves us. He wants us to live in fullness of the person he has created us to be. He wants to be at the centre of our lives.

WEEK THREE: If God speaks, what is the Bible for?

This week, Tash came to speak to us about the Bible.

Variety in the Bible: the Bible books vary enormously, from Old Testament literature, to the everyday advice of Proverbs, to the historical accounts of Jesus’s life in the Gospels, the instructive letters of Paul, and the prophecies of the Old Testament, and of Revelation.

Power in the Bible: Tash told us the story of Esther Gulshan (you can read more about her testimony here). She explained that Christians read the Bible because we want to, not because we feel like we have to! The Bible is a wonderful gift from God that helps us to know him better, to be encouraged and guided by testimonies of other Christians through the ages. God won’t love you less if you don’t read your Bible – his love for us is unconditional. But if you do read the Bible, you get to find out more about who he is, and how to pursue life to the full, which is amazing.

Tash encouraged us to get to know the structure of the Bible – to learn how to find books, chapters and verses (always start with the contents page!), and to learn more of what the books are about. You can find a breakdown of what the books in the Bible are for here. She also recommended some different ways to read your Bible. Word 4 U 2day is a website that puts up a different verse from the Bible everyday and explains it. You can download the Bible on your phone, or find loads of different reading plans online. If you don’t know where to start, try reading the gospel of Mark – it’s the shortest gospel, and it’s just incredible. You could read a section every day, or set aside specific times in the week to read the Bible. Bible Gateway is a great resource for reading the Bible in different translations – I’d recommend NIV (essentially plain English) or the Message (a bit more readable). You could also try reading the Psalms – they are all about what life with God is like.

Example questions you could ask when you’re reading the Bible, to help you think about what you’re reading:

1) What is the main thing about God that struck you from a passage

2) How can you apply this passage to your life? Is it instructing you to treat people a certain way? Is it showing you a side of God you haven’t experienced?

Tell someone about what you’ve read! Explain to them what you think it means – that’s a great way of figuring out what a passage is all about.

WEEK FOUR: “How to communicate with God”

This week, Mark spoke to us about how and why we speak to God through worship. Here are his notes on the session:

Discuss as a large group what are some things that people get really passionate about and ‘follow religiously’ today. (1-Direction, Science, Football, ourselves?)

Do you think these things provide people with ‘fulfilment’. Do they make them feel whole? The vast majority don’t and those that do, don’t consistently.
Why do you think people follow these things?
1. Because they think they’re great! Find them really interesting. Care about them a lot.

Essentially the reasons we want to worship God are because we think he’s great. Why do we think he’s great? How do we know he’s great? There are so many things that are great about him and reasons that he’s great and the book of Psalms is a great place to look at these! Go into small groups and give a choice of which to look at:

Psalm 97 – God of Glory
Psalm 65 – God in Creation
Psalm 23 – God of Hope

Break down into small groups. Ask the group ‘who is the God in this psalm, and what do you learn about him here?’ Read through the psalm and reflect individually on it. Discuss your answers. Then think about ‘is that a God who we want to know better?’ and ‘is that a God who is worthy of worship?’

Back to the large group: is the God you’re learning about someone you want to know more? We’re not going to feed back what we learnt about him today, but if you want to know more I’d definitely say you should get stuck into the Psalms! The Psalms were written mostly by a man called David and are a mixture of prayers to God and songs for him.

So, like we said earlier, people worship things because of how ‘great’ they think they are and essentially we worship God for the same reason and the amazing thing is that the more you worship him and delve deeper into his mysteries, the more you fall in love with him and want to worship him (which is like so many other things!). So how do we actually worship him, how do we do that?

The first one that you’ll have all seen when we’re in church is ‘sung’ worship, in a group setting like at church. I can never quite explain why, but there’s something about singing and music that draws people to God. I think it’s because our relationship with God isn’t just in our heads, but it’s also in our hearts! And music helps to unlock our hearts and allow that relationship to grow, where normally we might try and be ‘logical’ and overthink things, music just helps step through that barrier! Me, Tati and Anna all love sung worship! But it’s not for everyone, and I know you guys probably find it boring at times, though I’d really encourage you to have a think about the words we’re singing in church sometime!

If you don’t like singing there are loads of other ways we can worship God! In fact, when God made the world he made us just so he could love us and we could have relationship with him and actually everything he’s made is for that! Not just music! So what things do you love to do and how do you think you can do them with God? For example, I play lots of Frisbee, which you all know and I try to do that with God (though I mean obviously I can’t just throw him the frisbee…). I do it by thinking about how the world he has made allows me to do that and I am in awe of that. How he’s given me legs so I can run around. How he’s made the beautiful weather, that I can feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair! How he’s made such amazing people for me to be friends with and play with. And it also comes in other activities, even in my sleep I can be thinking about how he allows me to rest and I don’t have to work like a robot! How he gives me dreams!

We don’t have to change what we do in our lives to worship God, because actually God is already in everything that we do!

So what we’re going to do now is take a moment and quietly think about what think we do we do in our lives. Everyone does school obviously! What else do you do? Sport? What do you enjoy doing at school? What can you be thankful to God for in that? How can you see God at work in that?

So we’re getting excited about who God is! We think he’s great! We want to know him more! How do we do that? As we talked about earlier the Bible is a great place to start. What else can we do? What do you do when you want to know someone better? TALK TO THEM! The amazing thing is that God is a person. He’s not just an idea or a powerful spirit-like being. He’s an exciting, complex, funny, interesting person that we can get to know and the most amazing thing is that because of what Jesus has done for us, we can know him fully through the Holy Spirit.

We’ve spoken about prayer before and I think we’ve all prayed, but if you haven’t it’s really easy! You simply talk. You can do it in your head or out loud or write it down, different people pray in different ways and they’re all great. I guess the thing is that prayer can be so much more than what we make it to be. So often we confine it to be something that we do ‘just before we go to bed’ or only when we’re struggling with something or only when we’re at church or Pathfinders, but actually prayer is something that can be in anything! Last time Anna was here she said ‘Our mountains are his molehills and our molehills are his mountains’ and that really stuck with me. God really wants to know all the details of your life, not just the big stuff! And he wants to talk to you all the time, not just occasionally! I find it so great that we can pray whenever we want to or need to. Personally I love to pray when I’m walking places. I love having that time set aside to be ‘free time’ that I can spend with God and it isn’t going to be interrupted with other things. I love that I can pray over the smallest things like ‘I need a parking space please!’ or ‘Help my friend with his presentations that he’s struggling with right now’. Above all I love that he listens!

Here are some cards that have some tips on how we can communicate with God throughout the day: