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 one tell the difference? And what about those Beatitudes? They sound nice and poetic, but what exactly did Jesus mean by being "poor in spirit"? Where can I find an authoritative definition of that expression? And so on.

Having been raised in a home where there was no religion, this thing called Christianity was completely new to me. So I started reading books, lots of books, seeking answers to my questions. But the more books I read, the more questions I had, and more confused I became about the place the Bible should have in my new found life.

I was sure of one thing however, that 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 material 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 often seemed like God was speaking to me. For example, as I started reading through the Bible, certain verses seemed to stand out as if they had been written specifically for me. But that's crazy, right? After all, the Bible was written more than two thousand years ago, so it's ridiculous to think that any of it was written just for me, who is just one of the billions of people who have read the Bible over the centuries. And yet those verses had almost jumped off the page in demanding my personal attention. Could this 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 an audible voice though, and sometimes I couldn't even remember the exact words I had heard. But the meaning and intent was usually clear, though not always—sometimes the words seemed more like a puzzle I had to figure out.

As I began reading through the Bible as a new Christian, I soon came across many examples of God speaking to people in various ways. But does God still speak to us like this today? The 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 miraculous. Yet I would still sometimes seem to hear a voice, or have a dream, or see a vision, or experience some other kind of revelation. How could I tell whether these experiences were real or simply figments of my imagination? And what if they originated from the Devil and not from God? Such questions worried me sometimes 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 some indigestion or watching too much Netflix.

Our approach is not going to be strictly theological, and we won't attempt a comprehensive treatment of the subject. Instead, we'll tell stories, examine Scriptures, and jump around a lot. So it's probably best if you think of our book as a practical guide to help you keep to the way and not get stuck in dead ends or waste time following fruitless byways.

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

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