Before the session

Read this through at least once. Bring honest answers to the three questions at the end.

The question we are asking

There is one question this whole course is built around, and it is worth saying it plainly before we start.

Does God still speak today?

Not did He speak. On that, every Christian agrees. Does He speak now. Through Scripture, through other believers, through prayer, through the inner witness of His Spirit, in ways a 21st-century person could call hearing Him. That is the question.

Different parts of the church have answered that question differently. Honest, faithful Christians who love Jesus and the Bible have lived their entire lives on opposite sides of it. We are not pretending the disagreement is not there. We are also not pretending we can settle it in six weeks. We are simply going to sit with it, with our Bibles open, in the company of people we trust.

If you have been told for years that the question itself is dangerous, you are welcome here. If you have always assumed the answer is yes and have never been pressed on it, you are welcome here. If you do not know what you think, you are most welcome of all.

What we mean, and what we do not mean

Before we go further, we need to be careful with our words.

When this course says God speaks today, it does not mean any of the following:

That new Scripture is being given. The canon is closed. The 66 books we have are sufficient and final, and nothing said by anyone in any room anywhere has the same authority as those 66 books. This is not in question.
That every impression a believer has should be trusted. Many should not be. Some are us. Some are our tiredness. Some are the enemy. The New Testament itself instructs us to test what we hear.
That God speaks more clearly to spiritual elites. He does not. The whole counsel of the New Testament is the opposite. "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Joel 2:28, quoted by Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2:17).
That we are required to label every thought "the Lord said to me." Most of the time, that language is unhelpful and presumptuous, even when something real is going on.

What we do mean is something quieter. We mean the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit applying the truth of God to specific lives in specific moments. We mean the low whisper that came to Elijah in the cave (1 Kings 19:12). We mean the verse that suddenly seems to be addressed to you in your Bible reading. We mean the conviction in prayer. We mean the inner witness Paul writes about in Romans 8:16. We mean the Shepherd's voice that John 10:27 says His sheep know.

The historic Reformed tradition has a useful word for this. They call it illumination. It is not new revelation. It is the Spirit applying the already-revealed Word to a particular heart. It is, on every side of this debate, biblical. It is just that some traditions are more comfortable than others naming it as God speaking.

So when we ask "does God still speak?" we are not asking "has the canon reopened?" The canon is closed. We are asking whether the Shepherd whose voice the apostles knew is still speaking, in some way, to those who follow Him.

Why this question matters

It would be easy to treat this as an academic question, the kind that belongs in a seminary classroom and not in a small group on a Tuesday night. But the question shapes more than our doctrine.

It shapes how we pray. If we believe God hears but does not respond, prayer becomes monologue. If we believe He responds, but only ever through Scripture read silently, prayer becomes a Bible study with a closed door at the end. If we believe He responds in the inner witness of His Spirit, prayer becomes conversation, however quiet.

It shapes how we suffer. The believer who is sure God still speaks has a different posture in the dark than the believer who is sure He has gone quiet. Neither posture is unfaithful. But they are different.

It shapes how we read our own lives. If God has not spoken since the apostles, our lives are interpreted entirely from the outside, through the Scripture and the church. If He still speaks, even in the small ways named above, our lives are interpreted partly from the inside, by His Spirit's witness in us.

It shapes how we read each other. If God still speaks, when a believer says "I think the Lord put this on my heart for you," we have to take it seriously and test it. If He does not, we can dismiss it without engagement. Both responses cost something.

This is not just a doctrine. It is a way of seeing the world.

The course's anchor

The verse this whole course rests on is Hebrews 3:7-8.

"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'"

Notice what is happening here. The writer to the Hebrews is quoting Psalm 95, written hundreds of years earlier. He attributes that quotation to the Holy Spirit, in the present tense, says. Not said. The Spirit is still speaking the words of the psalmist, addressed to the readers of Hebrews, addressed by the same Spirit to us.

And what does He say? Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

Today.

It is not a stretch to notice that this verse, on its own, asks something of every reader. It assumes the Spirit has a voice. It assumes that voice can be heard. It assumes hearing it is a present possibility, not just a memory of an apostolic past. It assumes the appropriate response to hearing it is a soft heart, not a hardened one.

This is the verse we will return to at the end of every week. Not as a proof-text. As a posture.

Who this course is for

If you are reading this and you love Jesus, honour the Bible, and have been formed by a tradition that taught you the gifts of the Spirit ceased, or that hearing-from-God language is suspect, this course was written for you. Not to dismantle what you have been given. To sit with you while you ask.

If you are reading this and you have always believed God still speaks but have never had to defend that belief, this course will sharpen you. Some of the cessationist concerns you will encounter in week four are wiser than you may have realised.

If you are a pastor reading this with your congregation in mind, this course was written with you in mind. It is built to be safe for the cautious, generous to the curious, and rigorous about Scripture. It is a course you can hand to your most Reformed elder and your most charismatic deacon and trust that both will be honoured.

Permission to leave

One last thing before we begin.

You are not committing to anything by reading week two. You are not signing up to change your mind. If at any point this course is asking too much of you, or feels like it is leading somewhere you do not want to go, you have full permission to step out. We mean it. The point of this course is honest attention, not a doctrinal scalp.

If you stay, we are glad. Bring your questions. Bring your conviction. Bring your suspicion if you have any. Scripture can hold all of it.

Before you come to the session

Bring honest answers to these three questions:

What were you taught about whether God still speaks today? Who taught you, and how confident were they?
When you read passages like John 10:27 ("my sheep hear my voice"), what have you understood that to mean for you personally?
What is it you are quietly hoping for, or quietly suspicious of, that brought you to this course?

You do not have to share all your answers. Bring at least one to the group.

The Honest Question