Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Call Waiting: How to Hear God Speak - by Robert K. Hudnut

Biblical patterns for receiving God's call



While I think this is a good book for anyone who wants to know about hearing God's call, I think it is an especially great resource book for preachers. It provides compelling character sketches on more than 30 biblical personalities, and it shows how God worked through all sorts of different situations to make his call known.

I used some material from this book when I was constructing my Listening for God's Call sermon series last December. And I received overwhelming response. I believe this is a topic that we need to understand more about. People were just hungry to know that God is working and wants to communicate with them.

So I would highly recommend this book.

That being said, I would caution that the author has a bit too much of a predestination POV for my tastes. And while he does get wishy-washy on it in chapter 29 and make it sound like he's just talking about prevenient grace, a strong theological stream of double predestination runs throughout the whole rest of the book.

And I suppose that the idea of predestination is comforting. It makes a great excuse (eventually) for never putting yourself into a position where you can hear God's call. Either you do hear it or you don't. And I suppose if you're reading the book (or this blog), then you do hear God's call. But it was not because you chose the book. No. This isn't a book you would have chosen. It has chosen you. By God's great design.

Or something.

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