–These words came into my mind during the night:
“Every time you hear My voice you get a new perspective. That’s why people don’t want to listen to Me.”
–We can’t hear God’s living word ringing in our heart and remain the same. His voice changes us and transforms the way we see everyone and everything. Transformational change is tremendously uncomfortable and thoroughly troubling, so we tend to tune out the tender tone that comes directly from the living God and settle for tradition and theology instead of His “still, small voice.”
–However, we are all here to hear–living on earth to daily encounter, experience, and obey the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. Anything short of that denies our destiny as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

A gathering of Christ-followers being directly led by the voice of the Spirit instead of by a man or by human programming (ekklesia) is like the birth of Christ. It’s “incarnational.” Ekklesia releases “the word became flesh,” the power and presence of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ in and through a group of ordinary people “so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2:5)

“Christ’s voice sounds now for each of us in loving invitation; and dead in sin and hardness of heart though we be, we can listen and live. Christ Himself, my brother, sows the seed now. Do you take care that it falls not on, but in, your souls?” –Alexander Maclaren

“We must have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us. In deep inward beholding we must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.” –Alexnder Maclaren