By Ben Davenport

I was thinking about nothing the other day. About how in the beginning there was nothing. And about how the problem with having nothing is that nothing isn’t there. When you have nothing you have nothing to work with, nothing to mold, nothing to bless or damn or love.  This is how everything began.  In the beginning . . .God . . .and nothing.  Unfortunately, when it comes to the human soul and the human race, this is still how everything begins. God  . . .and nothing . . .and then He speaks . . . and His words are Life!

The problems start when we face the fact that, unlike the rest of creation, men and women are not simply autonomous pieces of matter and antimatter to be whipped around like mindless, soulless ingredients in some cosmic stew.  No, when God made man, he made him free.  Free to love or hate, create or destroy, yield or rebel.  So God speaks. He speaks to man. And the question is: will anyone listen? 

The Bible says that Jesus stands at the door; he stands at the door that bars the entrance to the souls of men and He knocks. Then it says a most curious thing. It says, “If any man will hear His voice,” and will respond and open the door, He will come in. I don’t know about you but my mind staggers at this. “If?” “If any man will hear His voice?”  He is the King of all kings and the Lord of every lord, the master and commander of all that is. His voice spoke and galaxies sprung into being and stars stood at attention. How could any man not “hear His voice” when He speaks?

The Bible is filled with other oddities that bear on this question.  It speaks of men and women who have ears but cannot hear and who have eyes but cannot see. This would certainly be a sad state of existence for anyone to live in. When we meet someone, a child perhaps, who is blind or deaf, we tend to feel pity for their unfortunate circumstance.  Why?  We have no pity on flowers that cannot hear or for trees that live out the whole of their existence without sight.  So why do we pity this child?  The answer is quite simple. Flowers have no ears that were meant to hear and the trees have no eyes with which to see and therefore their inability to hear or see is of no consequence. They were never intended to see or hear. But the child, ah, the child has both eyes and ears and that very fact alone testifies that in her deafness and in her blindness, she is being deprived of that which her very constitution proclaims should be hers! 

It is one of the gravest travesties that today God speaks with the same voice that once spoke worlds into existence, and yet men who have the faculties to hear continue to wither away, perishing in the silence of their own souls as if He had never spoken at all.

It is a thing to be lamented and mourned that God, the Light of all worlds, appears in radiant sin-shrinking glory at the doors to the souls of sin benighted men who have the faculties to see and who yet continue to stumble and grope in the blinding noonday sun as if surrounded only by darkness. 

This describes the damnable condition of the greater portion of mankind.  It is called sin.  It is our inability to hit the mark that our very constitution proclaims to be our design and destiny.  This is our doom.  Created to bear the image of God and to have fallen so low in our refusal to serve our Maker that we have become servants and slaves to our flesh to the point that we often bear more the image of beasts than of men, much less God!

This is the universal malady of our kind.  It is not that God has not spoken or that His life giving voice is not speaking.  He is speaking!  The scripture says that the eyes of the Lord search to and fro throughout all the earth.  He is seeking after those who have an ear that can hear what the Spirit is saying to the church and to fallen humanity.  He seeks for worshippers who will worship Him not out of duty or pretence or ritual, or even for their own eternal gain, but for those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth.  He is looking for men, but listen . . .He is looking one man at a time.  He is looking for women, but He stands at the door of each individual heart and knocks. 

Oh yes, God is still speaking.  He is still wrestling with the abyss of nothingness that is the empty wilderness of the human soul.  Our trouble is not that God does not speak but that we do not hear.  Or is it that we choose not to hear?  The scripture says, “If any man will hear His voice.”  Here is the key.  The word, “will” implies exactly that.  Will we hear Him or will we turn a deaf ear to His commands? God told Ezekiel in the third chapter of the book that bears his name, “Israel will not hear you for Israel will not hear me.”  The word “will” implies choice. Will we “will” to hear the voice of God? Adam and Eve answered that question with a resounding no.  They chose instead to listen to the voice of a talking snake (go figure).  God spoke and they willed not to listen, they chose to believe neither Him nor His word.  They chose as individuals but they lost corporately.  When God confronted them, each tried to blame their sin on the community.  Adam pointed to his wife, Eve pointed to the serpent, but God held them each individually responsible even though their individual actions would affect the human community for millennia to come.

We can try and blame whatever we want on our community, the culture, the sinful age in which we live, or on the sorry state of the church in general; but ultimately God is going to hold us each individually responsible for the state of our own souls and for what we did with our life.

There is nothing that we see around us today, whether good or evil, whether revival or revolution, that cannot be traced back ultimately to the choices and actions individuals. 

In the beginning there was God…an individual.  And in the beginning of our race there was Adam and there was Eve… two individuals. God spoke to these two and He did not stutter. But with the voice of God resounding in their ears they each chose not hear, and the whole of the human community was plunged into darkness.  The world was lost one person at a time. Think about it. The world was lost one person and one choice at a time. The world will be saved the same way . . . person by person, choice by choice. And it is no different when it comes to the church.

What do you do when God speaks?

God is speaking.  God is calling, but He is not calling to races, or nations, or cities, or denominations, or churches.  He is not calling groups or communities or committees to be saved. He does not fill institutions with His Spirit, nor does He call non-profit organizations to be His ambassadors. He is calling to people, to men and to women.  He is calling to them.  He is calling to us.  He is calling to you.  He is asking us if we are willing to reverse what Eve began.  He is asking us to hear Him and His Word instead of shutting Him out while the deafening roar of our lusts drown out our senses. He is asking us to believe Him instead of the lies that bombard us from every corridor. He is asking us to have faith in Him amidst a faithless generation; to open the door, to shut out the poisonous doubt of the serpent, and to make the exact opposite decision of our mother, Eve.  Here we rise or fall.  The human community was damned by individuals who lost their faith in God and respect for His Word.  The community will be redeemed by individuals who look to Christ and to Christ alone for a life that truly works.

The church of today has followed the well-worn path of our ancestors and has arrived at its low present state not corporately but individually. The church has lost its faith in God and respect for His Word because it is filled with people who have lost their faith in God and respect for His Word. The church as a whole is nothing more than a sum of it’s parts and it will only be redeemed corporately when the people who comprise it return to their first love, or truly find that love for the first time, as they look to Christ and to Christ alone for life and life more abundantly.

For years I have listened as people have prayed for their city or church or family to be brought to spiritual life. But hear me, there is no such thing as corporate salvation, and there is no bulk discount on revival.  The cost of the resurrection of one single human soul is the yielding of that soul to its Savior, and none can yield that soul but its possessor.  No one can yield my soul but me.  You cannot do it for me, nor can I yield yours for you, and God will not make us do it. 

A marriage forced and carried out at gunpoint is one that is ultimately devoid of love. We all know that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, but so often we do not remember that He is looking for genuine, freely given, love in return. God will not force us into a heartless relationship with Him and He is even less interested in detached, passionless, ritualistic, dead, cold, dry-as-dust religion, no matter how conservative and orthodox it may be.

So, the ball appears to be in our court. And I do mean our court as individuals. Quit waiting for a revival to come to your city. Quit waiting for a restoration of your culture. Quit waiting for an awakening in the church. God is speaking now! He is speaking to us . . .and His words are life. What will we choose? Who will we “will” to hear? The tree is still in the garden. He has set before us the narrow and living path, but just to the right of that path is still the glittering and enticingly broad road to destruction. Hear His words, “Choose life that you and your children may live.”

Editor’s Note:

Ben Davenport is the pastor of Stone Mountain Church in Fort Collins, Colorado.  If you would like more information about Mr. Davenport, please pester him in the comments section below.  Ask him why he doesn’t yet have a blog site?  Why his church doesn’t yet have a website?  You know, irritate him until he yields and cries out, “okay, already, I’ll do it!”   In the meantime, Stone Mountain Church’s main worship service is held at 5pm, Sunday nights, in Old Town Fort Collins at 328 Remington St, on the corner of Magnolia and Remington.  But, please be aware, this guy preaches even more forcefully than he writes.