Chapel: Moore has a lot to talk about -- so does God

By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau

Sean Moore’s energetic Chapel talk Monday morning at Grand Canyon University Arena made it clear that he’s a lively conversationalist – just like God.

The pastor of Faith Christian Center in Phoenix had a lot to say about what a dialogue with God looks like and sounds like and how it affects our relationships with other people.

He drew laughs from the audience on several occasions, especially when he said, “Hearing from God should not make you spooky. If you’re spooky, stop telling people that you’re hearing from God. And listen to me, Spooky, you know who you are. Turn to the person next to you and say, ‘Spooky, is that you?’”

So what does God sound like? Moore mused about whether His voice is deep, like Barry White, or powerful, like Thor, and whether the words He uses are in the King James vernacular.

It’s none of that, of course.

Instead, Moore listed seven ways that God speaks to us, accompanied by the Bible verses that illuminate them:

The first one is the most important, Moore said. Those verses from Timothy explain it:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

“The same way that God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam came alive on the inside, the Scriptures have also been God-breathed,” Moore said. “So when you take God’s Word, you get it on the inside of you, you’re going to come alive on the inside like you’ve never been before.”

But just reading the Bible isn’t enough.

“The purpose for the Bible is not just to read it, it’s to experience it,” Moore said. “You can read the Bible and never know the author. The Pharisees were masters of the law. But yet when the word became flesh and dwelt among them, they didn’t even recognize the very word that they’d been studying.”

Moore’s second way God speaks to us, through the Holy Spirit, picks up the conversation where God left off. Moore noted that we’re not going to understand everything God tells us, a concept that Jesus explained in John 16:12-13:

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

Moore addressed the students directly when he said, “Holy Spirit wants to have some conversations with you about your future, about what life looks like after school, about who you’re going to marry, about some of the major decisions that you’re going to make in your life going forward. And, listen to me, being able to properly discern the voice of God can make you or break you in the calling and the purpose and the plan of God for your life.”

That discernment comes by being in fellowship with God. It’s not enough, Moore said, to just pray for God to protect you and open doors for you: “If you’re going to have relationship, then there’s got to be reciprocation. There can’t just be monologue, there’s got to be dialogue.”

Just like the conversation you would have with a close friend – a friend like no other.

“There are things you can say to God that you can’t say to anybody else,” Moore said.

But it’s a conversation like no other, too: “God does not speak in shouts. He speaks in whispers.”

Moore likened not being at peace to “being in the shower with your socks on. You just know something is not right.”

Peace is like an umpire, Moore said, in helping us discern right from wrong. That fits with the importance of relationships and accountability in discerning God’s will – when you’re in a relationship, you can’t just do whatever you want.

But it all starts with the most important relationship of all.

“I found that once I got my relationship with God right, my relationship with God gave me wisdom on what I was supposed to do in my other relationships with other people,” Moore said. “So, if anything, my relationship with God gave me better people skills instead of isolating me, keeping me off to myself and people no longer being able to relate to or connect with me.”

● For a replay of Chapel, including the music by the Worship team, click here.

● Next week’s Chapel speaker will be Robert Watson of Sun Valley Community Church.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or [email protected].