Responding to God

We can get in this habit of just doing what seems good to us. We need to reorient that just a little bit and make sure that we're actually responding to God. Yes, there are many good things that we could do, but there are some uniquely great things that God wants to do through us, and we need to make sure that we're responding to God in those moments.

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Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Prepped. I'm James Spencer. In today's episode, we're diving into one of the more foundational and transformative aspects of Christian living. Responding to God. So how do we go about responding to God in the various situations of life? That question, I think, lies at the heart of our Christian walk, and it's related to discernment and wisdom. But I think often our responses are influenced more by circumstances and emotions or external pressures than by God's will. I know mine often are. So what does it look like then to respond to God in a way that reflects a heart that is fully aligned with his? What does it look like for us to recognize God's presence as infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor, and to respond to him even when responding to him, obeying him, being faithful to him doesn't quite make sense. So in today's episode, we're going to cover the theological foundations for responding to God. We're going to talk about why responding to God is really vital for our spiritual formation. We're going to talk about some practical steps for learning to respond to God, and then we're going to talk about the fruit that comes from responding to God's call. So from a foundational perspective, I think the heart of Christian discipleship is really this basic idea: God is always the initiator and we are the responders. When we look at the creation of the world onward, God has been speaking, acting, and revealing himself, inviting his people to respond to him. So if we consider the opening verses of the book of Genesis 1:1-2:3, What we're seeing is God speak the world into existence. Now, God does not simply create the world in silence. He speaks and then creation responds. The various elements that he's speaking to are responding to him and doing exactly what God says. This divine pattern of God speaking and creation responding, I think, becomes sort of a foundation for our relationship with God through the scriptures. And that call to respond is just not an isolated command, but the rhythm of Christian living. And so when we think about what God is instructing us to do, when we think about, you know, God— it's often referred to as God calling us to do something, but what I mean by that is God is directing us to do certain things. We see this, for instance, in Genesis 1:26 and 27. God creates mankind in his image, male and female. He creates them, and then he gives them this sort of charge. He says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the rest of creation. And so now what the human couple is to do is to exercise that dominion under God's authority. They're to go and do that. And it's interesting within that pattern of Genesis 1:1-2:3, after the creation of man and woman, normally what we'd expect if the pattern were followed would be that, you know, and God looked at the man and woman and saw that they were good. But we don't actually see that. What we see is that the man and the woman are given this commission. And so the man and the woman are given this chance to respond to God by fulfilling this commission under the authority of God as his image. So when we think about that image of God, and you can go back and listen to some of the episodes I've done on this, some previous Prepped episodes, but when I think about the image of God, yes, it conveys dignity, but it also confers an obligation. Being made in the image of God places certain responsibilities on us. It has a claim on us. Being the image of God requires us to be a certain way. And so as God calls us, as God asks us to do things, he directs us to do things, there are aspects of this that we just have to pay attention to. So we see this, for instance, when the prophets speak, for instance. They're not just speaking from their own minds. They're not just interpreting things and going, I bet this is the way it'll turn out. They're actually given a word from the Lord that they then proclaim. We see this in the life of Moses, for instance. Moses really tries when he confronts the, you know, when he's confronted with God in the burning bush, he's standing there and he's saying, I don't know that I'm the right guy for this, Lord. I don't, I don't speak too well. You know, I'm not very articulate. Are you sure you want to send me? And God's saying, yeah, you're going, but I'll send Aaron with you so he can talk for you. You know, these are things that these are the responses. God is going to get that obedient response from us. Moses ends up responding obediently and being one of the, you know, sort of the pillars of our faith. Jesus, I think, is a great example of this, obviously. Not only does he call us to follow him, you know, we see that in verses like Matthew 4:19 where he's calling his disciples. There's a sense in which we are to follow Jesus. We're also commissioned to go and make disciples. And if we look at the structure of that that commission, what we find is that Jesus is going to state that he's been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, so because he's been given that authority, we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. Our job in making disciples is helping people live underneath the authority of Christ. Christ has this authority. When we make disciples, we are helping other people, or we are bringing other people into the understanding that Christ has this authority. They're committing to live under that authority through baptism by being baptized into the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then they're learning to live under that authority as they continually are discipled in community to follow all that Christ has commanded. So, we have these various callings through Scripture where we're asked to do something and we're asked to respond faithfully to the Lord. So, responding to God isn't a passive or mechanical act. It's an active engagement that requires attentiveness, as we talked about in the last episode, obedience, and trust. And in fact, I think our ability to respond to God is really shaped by how well we are paying attention to him, how we are oriented in relationship to him, and how deeply we have reordered our loves. Again, as we discussed in a previous episode, I mentioned these things are really tied together. And so I think that these are the three ways that in living what I'm calling the unbalanced life, we are to respond to God. We have to attend to his presence. We have to recognize his authority. That's the sort of loyalty part. We have to attend to his presence. Obviously, that's attention. And then we have to respond faithfully. And I think the three are absolutely— they're distinguishable, but they have to come together. So when we understand that responding to God is the natural outcome of knowing him, it does transform the way that we approach our daily lives. And instead of merely reacting to situations, we can begin to respond within them in light of God's will and for his glory. So it's not that I'm suggesting that in any given situation we just sit passively and wait for God to do something. That's not what we're called to do. I think what I'm trying to suggest is that because God is present with us in every situation, and because God is infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor we face, our response in any given situation is always to the most relevant factor. That is God. Where it's always to the most relevant actor, that is God. And so that's who we respond to. And as we respond to God from within situations, I think that God will open up ways of resolving those situations, leading us through those situations that we can't really even comprehend and we would never come up with on our own. But I think that when we respond to situations as if God is absent, We're now moving away from these sort of pillars of ordered love. We're no longer showing a total loyalty to God. We're sort of relegating him to the side. We're not saying that God is the most relevant actor or factor in any given situation. We are privileging whatever elements of the situation we tend to see over God. We're saying these are more relevant than God. Just stay to the side, God. I need to deal with this. We're brushing him aside. And so responding to God from within these situations doesn't cultivate inactivity. It isn't as if we're just going to let the world do whatever the world's going to do and, you know, just allow God to move us around as passive instruments. But what we're constantly doing is we're recognizing that obeying God, responding to God faithfully, is the best thing we can do in any given situation. So why does responding to God matter? I think in many ways the Christian life is one long response to God. And from the moment we hear the gospel and respond to it in faith to the moment that we step into eternity, our lives are meant to be a response to God who has revealed himself to us. So why is that so important? I think, number one, it demonstrates our loyalty to God. It demonstrates that God is doing things through us, that God is actually active and present in the world. So if you think about it this way, you know, I go back to something like Gideon's 300 men. God keeps whittling Gideon's army down. He's, you know, he actually— the text actually says, nope, you still have too many men. We're going to get this down further and further. Part of what God is doing there is he's giving Gideon this 300 men who by all rights shouldn't be able to win the battle they're going to win. And by whittling his army down that far, what God is showing is that he's the one who's giving Israel the victory. I think we see something very similar to Jericho. In Jericho, they're marching around the city walls 7 times, then blowing their trumpets and the walls come tumbling down. This is not a military strategy that anyone could repeat if they don't have God present with them. And honestly, they couldn't repeat it unless God tells them to do it again. It's not as if Christians could just walk around buildings and blow horns and expect them to fall down. This was a response to God, a faithful response to God's command to do what God said, even though doing what God said didn't make much sense. And so when we're responding to God, we open up opportunities to participate with God in proclaiming who he is to the world, showcasing who he is to the world. When we do something by ourselves, we really can't show that. I'll give you an example. My, my daughters and I lift weights together, and one of the things that we do, we— there's a strength challenges that we do, and you can, you can join the 600-pound club or the 1,000-pound club. The 600-pound club was designed for, uh, women primarily. The 1,000-pound club is for anybody who can do it, but it's basically 3 lifts: bench press, deadlift, and squat. And the weights on those 3 lifts have to equal 600 pounds or 1,000 pounds. So my daughters were trying to do the 600 Pound Club, and, uh, as a dutiful dad and, uh, you know, sort of understanding the dangers that come with lifting weights, especially heavier weights, uh, when my daughters do the bench press, I tend to keep my hands on the bar. And so I'll give them a little liftoff, you know, and, and they're, they're lifting the weight, but I'm keeping my hands on the bar because I don't want that bar to drop down on them at I want to make sure that if, if, if anything happens, I'm ready to respond to that. The problem is that when you watch the videos of the bench pressing, it's very difficult to tell that they're lifting the bar and that I'm not helping. I'm not helping, but you can't tell that. And so, you know, when we step in and we're using— we're not responding to God from within these situations, it can appear as though we're not— that God is not actually doing the work. There is a sense in which we can sort of steal some of God's glory by not getting out of the way enough. And so just like it's hard to tell that my daughters are actually lifting the weights because my hands are on the bar, I think when we do certain things in our— when we respond to situations in a certain way, it can seem as though we are the ones who are solving the problem, not God working through us to solve the problem. I think this actually comes out in Genesis 14 really well. And again, I did an episode on this earlier, so you could refer back to that. But basically, when Abraham comes back from defeating the kings and rescuing Lot and all the people, and he has all these possessions, he meets Melchizedek and he gives Melchizedek a tithe. Melchizedek was the priest of the Most High God. And so he is pointing to the fact that God has given Abraham the glory. And so Abram feels justified in giving Melchizedek a tenth in acknowledgment, in agreement that God did give Abram the glory. But when the king of Sodom comes and asks Abram to take all the possessions and just leave him the people, Abram refuses. And he tells the king of Sodom that he doesn't want the king of Sodom to have any claim that he's the one who's made Abram rich. And so he's not going to take anything from the king of Sodom because he wants to make sure that only God gets the glory for prospering him. He wants to make sure that God is the one who makes Abram's name great and that the king of Sodom can't suggest that he's the one who made Abram's name great. And so as we respond to God, this is one of the things that I think we get to do. We get to demonstrate that God is really working through us. We get to learn to point to and glorify him in new and fresh ways. I think that also as we respond to God, it's going to obviously shape our spiritual formation. You know, how we respond to God determines the trajectory of our spiritual growth. And I think James tells us this in 1:22. He says, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Responding to God's word isn't optional. It's essential to growing in Christ. And so every act of obedience, every moment of surrender shapes us to become more like Jesus. In addition, I think it also demonstrates our faith. True faith isn't just about believing in God. Right? It's not about responding. It's about responding to him. It's not about just believing in the proposition that a God exists. This is about responding to the active and present God in our lives. And so in Hebrews 11, we read about the great men and women of the faith who are responding to God's call, even when they couldn't see the full picture. And so faith is not just about these intellectual assents. Yes, there are certain propositions that we believe, but it's also about this active obedience, this trusting God even when the path isn't clear. Unclear. And so, as we respond to God, we're really following something that most people can't see, but by paying attention to God, by trusting in him, putting our full loyalty in him, and then responding to him, even when that path is unclear, we're going to open up these new ways for us to demonstrate our faith and the wisdom that God has provided us through his word and through his Son. I think finally, it reflects our trust in God's sovereignty. When we respond to him, we're acknowledging his sovereignty over our lives. It's an act of surrender. And as we discussed in the episode on Reordering Our Loves, rightly ordered love means putting God in that top position, that we are ordering everything toward him, that we are being completely and totally loyal to God. And so similarly, responding to God is this act that affirms his rule over our hearts, our minds, and our actions. We're allowing God as we respond to him, we're demonstrating that he is really and truly shaping the way that we understand the world and the way that we interpret these things that are going on around us. And it allows us to posture ourselves differently in relation to some really difficult situations. So how do we learn to respond to God? What does this look like? I mean, that's, that's the real trick, right? How do we do this? I don't think it's a one-time event. I think it's really a lifelong process of learning and turning our hearts and minds to the will of God. And so I have a few practical steps, and you'll recognize these if you listen to the previous podcast, but one of them is cultivate an attentive heart. I think before we respond to God, we've got to know that he's there. We've got to understand what he's doing. We've got to be attentive to him. And if we're not attentive to him, we're never going to be able to respond to him. You know, you think of it like this. My wife and I moved into a house, our house, 4 years ago. And a couple of years back, we realized that our doorbell no longer worked. And so there could be people standing up on my door and they'd be ringing the doorbell, but because there was no sound on the inside, there was no way for us to know that they were there until they knocked. And even if they knocked while we were downstairs, we didn't often hear them. So no response from us. Because we can't attend to them, we can't respond to them. That's a problem. And so as we discussed in that earlier episode on reorienting attention, attention is a theological act. We have to pay attention to God and we have to do that through his through his word and through prayer and through the various spiritual disciplines. You know, we've got to position ourselves to hear and respond to him. And so if we're not paying attention to God, we're not going to be able to respond rightly to him. So I think from a practical perspective, we need to just set aside that intentional time to learn to pay attention to God. We've got to be constantly asking ourselves, how does God's presence in this moment change the way I'm thinking I should think about this moment? How does God's presence change the way I should react in this moment? Really crucial questions. I would also just suggest, again, build a habit of obedience. The more we obey God, the more we grow in our ability to respond to him. Obedience just isn't about perfection. It's about faithfulness. And I think every act of obedience strengthens our relationship with God and deepens our understanding of his will. So as we're responding to God's word, even by just little things. It might be forgiving someone. It might be practicing hospitality here or there. It might be choosing to rest instead of overworking. You know, I remember, um, and I lived in Chicago, downtown Chicago, for a very long time. I, I saw a lot of homeless people on the street. They were, you know, that were asking for money and different things. And occasionally I would, I would help someone out. Um, but I was driving down the road, my, my kids and I live, you know, nearer to St. Louis now. My family and I live near to St. Louis now. And, um, I was dropping my kids off at work and across the street there was a woman laying there in the park. And I just felt this prompting to go to the store, buy her some food, and take it over to her and have a small conversation with her. Would have been very easy just to ignore that prompting. Uh, nobody would have known. That I wasn't doing something that the Lord, that was really prompting me in my heart to do that, nobody would have known. And it would have been easy to ignore. I'm glad I didn't. I was able to have just a brief conversation with this woman. I took her food that day and then a couple of days later saw her again and brought her some food and had another conversation. And I just think that those are the small practical moments. They were easy for me to do. It wasn't some big, you know, gesture. I didn't, you know, go out and take her to take her out for steak, right? It was, it was just, I bought her some small things at the store that I knew would keep. I could take them to her. Hopefully that helped her out. And then I had a short conversation with her and, you know, it took maybe 20 minutes out of my day. It wasn't a huge obligation, but because I, at that moment, I just felt this conviction that I needed to do this. I, I followed that conviction. I don't feel that all the time, but when I do, I want to honor that conviction. And so I think over time, small acts of obedience can cultivate a heart that's really ready to respond to God in bigger ways. And I think this is how we develop a sensitivity to what God is calling us to do. I think the third thing we need to do is just question our motivations. You know, before responding to God, I think we need to ask ourselves why we're responding. Maybe, maybe a better way to say this is before responding to a situation, we need to ask ourselves why we're responding. What I find a lot of times is that I'm doing things that I think are just generally good. I'm not really responding to God. I'm just sort of on autopilot. I'm deciding that, yeah, that's a good thing for me to do. So let me do that. Yeah, this person needs that. Oh, okay. I'll go do that. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's also not particularly intentional. And so we can get in this habit of just doing what seems good to us. And, you know, we need to reorient that just a little bit and make sure that we're actually responding to God, that there is a sense in which, yes, there are many good things that we could do, but there are some uniquely great things that God wants to do through us. And we need to make sure that we're leaving room, that we're responding to God in those moments. And so I've really taken some time and tried to decide, you know, what is it that I'm really responding to? What's my motivation here? Why would I engage in this, that, or the other activity if I'm not really responding to God in this moment? And does participating in this activity reflect my response to God in this moment? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But I think we have to be that intentional about asking these questions and considering, you you know, what is it that I'm really responding to? Am I responding to some sort of cultural pressure? Am I responding to some sort of, you know, must, as I talked to previously, you know, a must-do that my society is telling me, yeah, you have to do this. If that's what we're doing, we really need to wrestle with that and try to understand and reflect on our motivations. And we need to ask God to give us a heart that really desires to serve him, not out of some obligation, not out of some cultural sense of the good, but really out of a deep loyalty and desire to respond to what God is asking us to do. Then finally, I would say, you know, we need to listen to the Holy Spirit. You know, the Holy Spirit is the one who's empowering us to respond to God. Jesus promises in John 14:26 that the Holy Spirit is going to teach us and remind us of everything that he said as we live in relationship with the Holy Spirit, he's going to guide our responses to God's call. He's going to produce fruit in our lives. And so we need to tune into the Holy Spirit's promptings throughout our day and listen to his voice in times of prayer and moments of decision and in interactions with others. And I think what will happen when we begin to respond to God in every situation is that the fruit of that sort of life is going to be both internal and external. We're going to have peace when we respond to God. We experience that peace even in the midst of a challenge that we know we're moving in the right direction because God is with us. He will give us that peace that transcends our understanding. I think we're going to experience transformation so that every time we respond to God, it's going to transform us. It's going to change the way we see the world and change our understanding of our role in it. Romans 12:2 says we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And as we respond to God's call, I think we are shaped more into the image of Christ. We are— we are— our behaviors are modified so that we understand that we are participating with God We're not participating in this life on our own. God is with us. He's active. He's present. I think it's going to give us some sense of purpose and fulfillment. You know, responding to God in our lives really does align us with eternal purposes. We experience fulfillment as we participate in his work in the world. And so Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. And our response to God leads us into those good works. And then I think finally, we're going to give a compelling witness to the world because responding to God becomes a testimony to the world around us. When we live in response to God, we reflect his character, his love, his truth to others, and our lives become a living witness to his goodness. So to close this up, I would say responding to God is at the heart of what it means to follow him. It requires our attentiveness. It requires our obedience. It requires our trust. It requires our loyalty. But when we respond to God, we find peace and purpose and transformation. And we align ourselves with his will so that we can point to and glorify him. So take time this week to reflect on your responses to God. Are you really hearing his call? Are you really recognizing his presence in your life and allowing that to shape your understanding of the situations that you're in so that you can respond differently in those moments than you would if he were absent? Are you really responding with obedience and trust and loyalty and attentiveness? To who God is. Hey, thanks for joining me here on Prepped. If this episode encouraged you, please share it with someone else. Leave a review, hopefully a positive one. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, subscribe to our— the podcast on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. And in the next episodes, we're going to be coming back and circling around. We're probably going to talk a little bit about false teaching. We're going to talk about the dynamics of open and closed-mindedness. I've written a couple articles on those lately. And so I want to address those topics. But until then, may we all learn to respond to God faithfully in every moment. Take care, everybody.

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