Mount Sterling First United Methodist Church
From Darkness to Daylight

  • Hearing God: Listening in a Noisy World

    Last week I asked if you ever had a problem praying to God, knowing what to say, what to think, what or who to pray for. Prayer is our ultimate deep relationship with God, so it is the best way that we can individually and collectively mature and deepen our connection with God. This week we will discuss how to hear God in a very noisy world.
    Hearing God means we are actively listening and in-tune with God’s voice, God’s prompting, God’s encouragement, God’s motivation, and God’s Spirit. Listening is an intentional act of inviting an outside force into your mind that will offer new information, new data, that could possibly change who you are, confirm who you are, and encourage your present day walk.
    Think through your life and how so much has changed, yet one force that has change, and yet remained, is the noise of life. When you are younger, you have the noise of your ever developing body, your parents/guardians, grandparents, siblings, extended family, friends from the neighborhood, friends from school, rules of school, rules of home, rules of the community you live, and the list goes on and on.
    When you get older your noise changes into adult responsibilities. You have the noise of paying bills, the noise of fixing things that are broken, the noise of family, employment, government, neighborhood, other people’s opinions, and the list goes on and on.
    In your retirement the noise changes again but is still present. You now have noises much like when you were younger and your body is doing things that you’ve never experienced before and you may not like it. You also have the noise of hoping you will have enough money to live on, wanting to be available to have fun, desiring to be with family, more medical appointments than you desire, traveling to new places, and the noise of silence as you see more friends start to leave you one by one.

    God speaks in many ways

    In all of noise of life, in every stage of your life, God still speaks. When you’re younger God speaks in a way that is relevant to a youthful age, in your busy adult years God is speaking above, in between, and beneath the cracks of life, in your maturing years of retirement God is speaking in the silence, the mundane, the unwanted, the joy, and the freedom that this life stage provides. God is always speaking but does so in many different ways so that every age and every culture will be able to hear, and hopefully listen.
    So, in the noise of your life, in whatever stage you are in, how does God speak to you? As a United Methodist Christian how does God speak to you? Looking upon our United Methodist heritage, God is said to speak to us through Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience.
    God’s voice is heard through scripture as it is a collection of 66+ books/letters/poems/songs that were constructed to evidence God engaging in relationship with humanity throughout many millennia. Scripture is one of our ultimate guides for reflection of religious interaction with a holy God and humanity on the onward and upward holiness progression of love. Mark Twain said,
    Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand.
    Mark Twain
    For non-Christians scripture can still speak to their existence but other religious or humanistic writings may play a larger role, this is to be expected but for us United Methodist Christians, scripture is still essential in our overall understanding of how God can speak through the generations.
    Tradition is another way God can speak to us. Tradition in the USA in 2024 is going to be different than Tradition in Rome in 1200 or Babylon in 300BC. God will speak through the present day culture in a way that is significant, symbolic, while emphasizing God’s holiness and illuminating human understanding through the ever-present and moving Spirit. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said,
    We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.
    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    Traditions can come and go depending on the nature of what is needed and necessary for the people, at the time. Some Traditions can also last too long where no one understands why we do this specific act anymore. Traditions can also be good and deepen a prayerful relationship with God. God definitely speaks through the ritualistic acts that we, as a people, choose to do.
    Reason proclaims the active and ongoing knowledge that humans gain over time. You may have heard the phrase before, “we don’t check our brains at the door of the church”, this should be true of every church that you enter. If something simply does not make sense and new knowledge or data on a certain topic proves otherwise, especially if it speaks against a traditional interpretation of scripture, then reason should be highly considered as more relevant. Francis Bacon said,
    A little philosophy inclines men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion.
    —Francis Bacon
    Francis Bacon (Philosopher)
    God speaks through education as we learn more about this world, we do learn more about God and can learn to hear God’s voice in new and exciting ways. Reason is good so don’t easily cast it away when you may not fully understand something new.
    Experience is not new but was an addition from Wesley to the people called Methodists. Wesley added experience to the 3-fold Scripture, Tradition, and Reason from the Church of England. Experience is the active voice of the Holy Spirit in the daily life events, activities, and ever evolving culture of humanity. Humanity must listen to God through experiencing life for the maintenance of old relationships and the establishment of new relationships all consists of new and maturing experiences of life. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,
    We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
    Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
    God definitely speaks through experiences that are new, frightening, uncomfortable, and confirming.
    Tradition, Reason, and Experience all speak to Scripture, as Scripture also speaks to Tradition, Reason, and Experience. God throughout time has spoken when there was no Scripture, no Tradition, and very limited Reason and Experience.

    The Role of Discernment

    This bring us to discernment. We all have the ability to perceive or recognize differences to judge what is right and wrong, good and evil, the voice of God and the will of humanity. Unfortunately, we’ve all come across people who who have very little discernment. There is a quote from an unknown author that says:
    ​
    Little [people] with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
    Unknown
    In other words, there are some people who simply do not have any common sense to see life with another person’s vision or walk through this world in another person’s shoes. In our 1Kings scripture reading , we have the story of Elijah running for his life after the prophets of Baal were killed. Elijah proclaimed God’s word, held to his cultural traditions, reasoned with his real life circumstances, and experienced God anew in a relational conversation. The bookend of this experience was God questioning Elijah, “Why are you here?” God spoke with Elijah to confirm who he was, confirm his prophetic action, confirm that throughout all the noise around him that God is not in the noise of the world. God is ultimately received and heard in the thin, quiet moments of reflection, discernment, and interpretation while journeying in all the noise of this crazy world. Catherine of Siena said,
    The core of pride is impatience and its offshoot is the lack of any discernment.
    Saint Catherine of Siena
    Discerning God’s voice, while in the noisy moments of life, help us to do what the Psalmist invites the readers on multiple occasions-SELAH, to pause, to sit, to reflect, and then act. When one has a prayer life whose foundation is built upon divine discernment then you will have a pray-er who intentionally seeks God’s will as God’s ambassador not the world’s warrior. When we take time to discern we then will be able to hear the voice of God. John 10.27 says
    John 10:27 CEB
    My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me.
    In the stillness of life we are able to be attentive to the voice of our Savior, to hear, to listen, and then to follow.

    God desires genuine relationships

    The busyness of life can be so noisy that we, at times, choose to deny God the relationship of his desire. That relationship is to give and receive love with you. The God/human relationship is one of intimacy in prayer, intimacy in action, intimacy in private, and intimacy in public. God never stops pursuing you for there is not an end point to a relationship. In prayer we continue to communicate with God and time with God is needed especially when the world’s noise can be too distracting. Thomas Schreiner says,
    Love for God cannot be sustained without a relationship with him, and such a relationship is nurtured by prayer.
    Thomas Schreiner
    A deeply held prayer life does not have to be one that is outlandish where you are always the person asked to pray in public settings; don’ worry that is always reserved for the pastor, even if the pastor don’t want to do it. A deeply held prayer life can also be very subtle. A deeply held prayer life can be very private. A deeply held prayer life is true prayer. R.T. France says,
    True prayer is not a technique nor a performance, but a relationship.
    R. T. France
    A true relationship with God must have true prayer from the believer or the seeker of the divine. Prayer enters one into the presence of God. Prayer strengthens the relationship with God. Prayer emboldens the faith of the believer in a noisy world. When you are soaked in prayer then you are transformed into your prayers. Warren Wiersbe says,
    Prayer is not something that I do; prayer is something that I am.
    Warren W. Wiersbe
    As we continue to develop our prayerful skills, we develop our listening skills, which develop our divine loving skills. A prayerful heart that listens to and connects with God is an act of love. Saint Augustine said,
    What you love you worship; true prayer, real prayer, is nothing but loving: what you love, that you pray to.
    Saint Augustine of Hippo
    As we pray to that which we love, our words and our actions will unite together as one. Our relationship with God will grow, the deafening noise of the world will extinguish, the words from our tongue will be praise, and people will see a prayerful life of love in action. So whether we are asleep or awake a life of prayer will guide us and help us to hear God more. John Wesley said,
    The moment I awaked, ‘Jesus, Master,’ was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon Him, and my soul waiting on Him continually.
    John Wesley (Founder of the Methodist Movement)

    Silent Reflection and Mindfulness

    As we enter into a new week, I encourage you to take time in silent reflection and mindfully focus upon God in prayer. Last week I invited you to pray the open-hearted disciples prayer. This week I invite you to say a prayer that has been said for many generations, The Jesus Prayer.
    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner
    Amen.
  • Awake, O Sleeper
  • Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?

      • Ephesians 5:8–14NRSVUE

  • What Darkness Does to Us
    We’ve all had the experience of being in a dark room for too long. At first, it feels manageable — even comfortable. Your eyes adjust. You convince yourself you can see well enough. You learn to navigate around the furniture by memory, avoiding the sharp corners, finding the familiar paths. After a while, you stop noticing the darkness at all. You simply start calling it normal.
    That’s what spiritual darkness does. It doesn’t announce itself with dramatic fanfare. It settles in gradually — through habits of avoidance, through patterns of shame, through the slow accumulation of lies we’ve accepted about ourselves and others. And before long, we’re navigating life by memory and muscle, calling it wisdom, never realizing how much we’re missing because we’ve simply forgotten what light looks like.
    Lent is the season when the Spirit of God begins gently, persistently pulling back the curtains — not to expose us in judgment, but to invite us into the light we were always meant to live in. This week, the story of a man born blind becomes the story of all of us. I encourage you to read the gospel of John 9.1-41.
    The Question Nobody Should Ask
    In this story, Jesus and his disciples are walking along when they encounter a man who has been blind from birth. The disciples immediately reach for the theological explanation: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It’s the kind of question that feels religious but is actually deeply unkind — the assumption that suffering is always someone’s fault, that darkness is always divine punishment for moral failure.
    Jesus refuses the framework entirely. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” This is not a man under judgment; this is a man standing at the threshold of an encounter with the light of the world. Jesus doesn’t trace the darkness back to its cause — he moves toward its transformation. The question isn’t who’s to blame for the darkness; the question is what God’s light will do when it arrives.
    This is worth sitting with, my friends. How often do we assign blame for the darkness in our own lives or the lives of others before we’ve even paused to ask what God’s luring light might be revealing? Instead of setting down the blame question, lent invites us to pick up the light question.
    Mud, Spit, and the Pool of Siloam
    What Jesus does next is wonderfully strange. He spits on the ground, makes mud, spreads it on the man’s eyes, and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. No dramatic pronouncement. No instantaneous, theatrical healing. Just mud, spit, and a simple instruction: go wash it off.
    The Pool of Siloam wasn’t just any pool; it was actually a reservoir of water. It was used as a ritual purification pool — the place devout Jews would immerse themselves before engaging in worship, before entering sacred space, before approaching God in religious practice. Jesus sends this man — this outsider, this one labeled broken from birth — to the very place where people prepare to meet God. And when the man washes, returns, and he sees.
    Think about what Jesus is doing here. He’s not just restoring physical sight. He’s restoring this man’s access to sacred space, to community, to worship, to belonging. He’s saying: You were never too broken to be purified. You were never too dark to receive light. The pool was always meant for you too. Jesus doesn’t purify spiritual blindness from a distance — he gets close, uses ordinary things like mud and water, and personally initiates the transformation. That, my friends, is the kenotic God we’ve been tracing all through Lent — not coercing healing from above but stooping down, getting muddy, and luring us toward sight through intimate, embodied encounter.
    I Was Blind But Now I See
    The man obeys. He washes. He sees. And then the real conflict begins — not within the man, but around him. His neighbors aren’t sure it’s even the same person. The Pharisees launch an investigation. His parents are called in for questioning. And in the middle of all this institutional confusion and religious anxiety, the man himself keeps giving the same simple, unshakeable testimony: “I was blind. Now I see.”
    The story is clear that this man doesn’t have a complete theological system. He doesn’t know exactly who Jesus is at first. He can’t explain the full mechanism of his healing. But he knows what he knows — the before and after of his own experience. And that testimony, simple as it is, becomes the most powerful thing in the room.
    His parents, by contrast, know the truth but won’t speak it. Oh, they confirm their son was born blind, but when pressed about how he now sees, they deflect: “He is of age; ask him.” They choose institutional safety over honest witness. They prefer to avoid the social and religious consequences of claiming what they know to be true. In protecting themselves from the darkness of exclusion, they remain in a different kind of darkness — the darkness of silence and self-protection.
    This is the Lenten tension we all face. The light of Christ reveals things about our lives — our healing, our transformation, even our belovedness — that can feel risky to claim out loud. It’s easier sometimes to stay quiet, to stay safe, to stay invisible. But the man born blind can’t unknow what he now knows. And once the light of Christ has touched your life, siblings of Jesus, you can’t unknow it either.
    Children of Light
    Paul can’t move on either as he writes to the Ephesians with stunning directness: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.” Not in darkness. Not surrounded by darkness. You were darkness. This is not a comfortable image but it’s an honest one. Before Christ, we didn’t just live in the dark — we participated in it, generated it, carried it into every room we entered.
    But now, if you have faith in Jesus, you are light. Not a person who carries a little light. Not someone who occasionally reflects light. In the Lord, you are light. That’s an identity, not just a behavior. And Paul’s implication is clear: you cannot simultaneously be light and keep covering your eyes. You cannot claim to be a bearer of Christ’s light while continuously retreating into the familiar darkness. The life of a child of light requires stepping into the open, letting what is hidden be exposed, letting what is sleeping be awakened.
    “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” This is Paul’s early Christian hymn fragment embedded in the text — a baptismal call to wake up, to rise, to receive the dawn. In Lent, that call echoes again across the weeks. Wake up to what the Spirit is illuminating in your life. Rise from the comfortable numbness of spiritual sleep. Let Christ’s light shine on the places you’ve kept carefully shaded. This is not shame. This is invitation.
    The Ones Who Prefer the Dark
    The most sobering moment in John 9 comes at the very end. After the healed man has been thrown out of the synagogue, Jesus finds him, reveals himself as the Son of Man, and the man believes and worships. Then Jesus turns to the Pharisees who have been watching and says: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
    The Pharisees, who have perfect physical sight and comprehensive religious knowledge, choose spiritual blindness. They reject the light of Christ Jesus not because they can’t see it, but because seeing it clearly would require them to change — to relinquish control, to admit limitation, to welcome the one they’d rather exclude. Their blindness isn’t incapacity; it’s preference.
    God never forces sight. The light of Christ illuminates, lures, and invites — but it does not coerce. The Pharisees are not condemned for their inability; they are accountable for their refusal. That’s an important pastoral distinction. We are not responsible for the darkness we were born into. We are invited to respond to the light that has come. And that invitation, extended again and again with patient, persistent grace, is always available to us — even now, even here, even in these forty days.
    Walking into the Light Together
    So here is the Lenten invitation for this week: identify the room you’ve been navigating in the dark for too long. The familiar corner where you’ve stopped expecting light. The pattern you’ve started calling normal because you’ve forgotten there’s another way to live.
    The light of Christ doesn’t come to humiliate you for how long you’ve been in the dark. It comes the same way it came to the man born blind — through ordinary means, through an unexpected encounter, through the simple instruction to go and wash. And when you do — when you respond to the luring light with even the smallest step of obedience and trust — something shifts. The void that darkness created begins to fill with something that doesn’t evaporate. A spring that doesn’t run dry. A light that doesn’t flicker out. You were once darkness. In Christ, you are light. Live like it. Walk in it and let it shine. Amen.
Mount Sterling First United Methodist Church
sterlingfirstumc@yahoo.com
(740) 869-3577
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