Introduction

I had lots of questions as a new Christian. Many of my questions were about the Bible. Are the Ten Commandments still important for us to follow? Or is it enough if we love God with all our heart and our neighbors as ourselves? Do we still need the Old Testament since we now have the New Testament? Or should we read and become familiar with everything in the Bible? And are all the books of the Bible equally important, or do some of them have more value to us as Christians than others? And what about all that stuff in the first few chapters of Genesis. Is it all literally true? Or is some of it only figurative? How can you tell the difference? And what about all those Beatitudes? They sound nice and poetic, but what did Jesus mean by being "poor in spirit"? Where can I find an authoritative definition of that expression? And so on, and so on.

Having been raised in a home where there was no religion, all this Christianity stuff was totally new to me. So I began reading books, lots of books, seeking answers to my questions. But the more books I read, the more questions I had, and the less certain I began to feel about the place the Bible should have in my new found life.

I was certain however of one thing: I had personally encountered the living God. My conversion experience had been powerful and very dramatic. I had seen Jesus hanging on the cross, and I knew from my vision that he had died for my sins, and that I now had eternal life. Yet here I was, still living in a world where science says there is no God, in a universe that doesn't care, made of atoms. A universe where I often still felt alone.

Yet I wasn't alone, for it seemed like God was speaking to me. For example, as I began reading through the Bible, certain verses seemed to stand out, as if they had been written just for me. But that's crazy, right? After all, the Bible was written more than two thousand years ago, so it's kind of far out to imagine that any of it was written specifically for me, who is just one of the billions and billions of people who have read it. And yet those verses had almost jumped off the page in demanding my personal attention. Could that really be God speaking to me? How can I know for sure?

I also sometimes seemed to be hearing God telling me to do certain things, like talk to a particular person, take a certain bus, or (yikes!) move out of my parents' home. It wasn't really an audible voice, and sometimes I couldn't even remember the exact words that I had heard. But the meaning or intent was usually clear, though not always—sometimes it seemed more like a puzzle I had to figure out.

As I started reading through the Bible I came across many examples of God speaking to people in various ways. But does God still speak to us like this today? The Evangelical church I had started attending had a cessationist position on this issue, saying that while God can still speak this way today, he usually doesn't. Why not? The answer, I was told, is that now that we have the Bible, we no longer need the kind of direct revelation God's people had during Biblical times. Intellectually this made sense to me, and for a time I became a cessationist and discounted anything Charismatic or Pentecostal. Yet I would still sometimes seem to hear God's voice, or have a dream, or see a vision, or experience some kind of revelation. How could I tell whether these are real or just figments of my imagination? And worse, what if they're demonically inspired? These kinds of questions worried me as a new Christian.

This short book is intended to try and provide you with answers to such questions. About the Bible and its trustworthiness, and its place in our lives as Christians. About how God speaks to us in and through the Bible as we read it. And about other ways God speaks to us, and how we can discern whether it's God we're hearing or just the result of indigestion. Our approach is not going to be theological, and we won't attempt an organized treatment of the subject. Instead, we'll tell stories, look at Scriptures, jump around a lot. It's probably best if you think of our book as a practical guide to help you stay on the main road and not get stuck in dead ends or waste time on fruitless byways.

Having said this then, let's step forward. And the first step is, as always, simply this: Jesus.

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