Dr Paul Allen

What does God sound like? Of course, we can never know, this side of heaven, what God’s voice sounds like exactly. But Scripture tells us clearly that God does speak to us. He has spoken through the prophets and through His Word, and most perfectly through His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1–2). The question, then, is not whether God speaks but whether we hear Him when He speaks. If we ever hope to leave our cave, we must learn to recognize the voice of God when He speaks to us. We cannot hear God’s voice clearly or experience His presence personally until we step out of the insulation of our cave. The first question God asked Elijah was, “What are you doing here?” But the first action God asked Elijah to take was “Go out.” God called Elijah to step out from the depths of the cave to a place where he could experience the full impact of His presence: “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by” (1 Kings 19:11). Sometimes...

Christian worship takes place in the context of a covenant relationship between us and God. It is vital that we remember the roles we each take in that relationship: He is the Lord, and we are the servants. Therefore, worship should be an extremely humbling act, reminding us of our own creatureliness. After all, the god we are most tempted to worship besides the living and true God is the god of self. But real worship reorients us and corrects that idolatrous impulse by making it primarily about God and what He desires. Does the corporate worship we engage in on a weekly basis impress on us our status as servants of the living God? Or do we implicitly think that we are in control, that we can call the shots in this meeting with God? I think there are at least three things that we should ask to evaluate if our worship meets the biblical criteria of asserting the supremacy of our covenant King. WHO TALKS FIRST? The first question is simply this: Who talks first? Is it us or God? It ought...