Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (21 page)

I meet with a professional Christian counselor about once a month—and if you’ve made it this far in the book, I’m sure you don’t need any more examples of why I need his services. In all seriousness, I meet with Lance because I need someone to help me process my own chatter. There is something about verbally expressing your internal struggles that objectifies them. And it’s good to know that the person I’m expressing my struggles to is obligated not to express them to anyone else.

Lance has walked with me through a lot of battles and dilemmas, and I greatly value his insights. But one day as I was going on and on about something I was working through, I had an insight of my own.

“Lance, I just figured out something,” I said, smiling.

He just looked at me the way counselors do, with the classic tell-me-more look, which kind of proved the point I was about to make.

I continued. “I mean, I like you. I love you. But you don’t ever really tell me anything I don’t already know.”

He leaned forward and said, “Tell me more about that.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about! All you do is keep me talking until I remember what I already know and say what I need to hear. You should be writing me a check after every session for all this incredible advice you get to hear me give to myself.”

We were both laughing, and I was thinking about something Jesus said about the Holy Spirit. In John 14:26, Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Counselor.” Now most translations render the word “Advocate” or “Helper.” But in
the translation I memorized, the word is “Counselor,” and that’s what came to my mind while I was talking to Lance.

Here’s the full verse in the very words of Jesus:

The Scriptures mention more than seventy different functions of the Holy Spirit. In the last couple of chapters, we’ve discussed one of those functions in depth: how Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin. He explained to His disciples:

We’ve talked at length about the difference between conviction and condemnation. But so far we’ve approached it mostly from the standpoint of how to recognize the voice of condemnation. In other words, our focus has been on training our ears to hear what the negative chatter sounds like.

However, I’ve heard that the best way to learn to spot a counterfeit is to become intimately familiar with the real thing.

So what does the real thing—the voice of the Holy Spirit—sound like? We’ve seen how condemnation works, but how exactly does conviction operate in the life of a believer? In this chapter I want to talk about one of the seventy functions of the Holy Spirit that is, to me, one of the most overlooked yet all-important functions of the Spirit in the life of every believer. Without it, we’ll never access the fullness of the Spirit’s power.

I want us to consider how the Holy Spirit—the Counselor—is our
Divine Reminder
.

Because the fact is, most of us are already educated far beyond the level of our obedience. We need God’s help to remember—and obey—the revelation we already have.

The Life You Forget

I love this opening section of Donald Miller’s book
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:

If you think about it, not only is it remarkable how much of life we
don’t
remember; it’s bizarre what we
do
remember—and what we forget. For example, most people would have a hard time telling me the passage the pastor preached on last time they were in church.

But if I say the words “In West Philadelphia born and raised,” every single American reader born between 1975 and 1983 will automatically respond, with a catechized precision, “On the playground was where I spent most of my days.” And without assistance they could continue reciting—word for word—the entire theme song from
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
.

I don’t mean this as a rebuke, although a Jesus Juke would be most fitting right about now: “Y’all have more passion for Carlton than you do for Christ … oh, smack.”

I’m just saying, it’s crazy what we tend to remember and what we tend to forget. Our human memories, even as believers, are incredibly
selective
. And it’s not even like we’re the ones making the selections much of the time.

The Counselor and the chatterbox both have the same goal—to remind us. It’s what they’re reminding us
of
that sets them apart.

This has much deeper implications than the theme song of an early nineties sitcom. The chatterbox wants us to forget what God wants us to remember, while it reminds us of what God wants us to forget.

That’s where the Counselor comes in. While the chatterbox reminds us of our wrongs by showing us our shame over and over again, the Spirit convicts us of our sin by reminding us of our righteousness.

In the last chapter we talked about how Peter’s failure was not final because of the better word Jesus spoke over his future. We looked at what Jesus said to Peter before the failure and how God’s grace restored Peter following the failure.

But, personally, I think one of the most poignant parts of Peter’s story happened in the exact
moment
when he came face to face with his failure. It comes just after the third time Peter had denied Jesus—the very thing he had insisted he would never do.

I sense a haunting quality in the phrase “Then Peter remembered …” Do you?

Not only does Peter remember Jesus’s prediction about the failure of his faith. You have to assume that he also remembers the bravado and boldness with which he had denied the possibility that this could
ever
happen to someone as committed as he.
²

“Never, Lord! I’ll
never
deny you! They might … but I
never
will!”

Suddenly a single sound—
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
—jars Peter from a state of disillusionment and denial, pulling him to the depths of remorse, contrition, and humiliation. It’s deep enough to bring him to his breaking point: “And he went outside and wept bitterly.”

How many memories Peter must have had in that moment and in the days that would follow. I’ll bet he remembered much more than the warning of Jesus in the upper room.

In a flood of flashbacks, maybe he remembers how the voice of Jesus had called him to
come
on the storm-tossed Sea of Galilee late one night. And how,
moments after he’d placed the ball of his foot onto the uncertainty of water and had begun to sink, Jesus had reached out and saved him. Perhaps he remembered the walk he took with Jesus back to the boat. Maybe he and Jesus shared a private conversation in that moment that wasn’t meant to be recorded. I’m sure they had many of these kinds of moments. I suspect some of them came back to Peter, and he saw them in his mind’s eye … with the soundtrack of the rooster’s crow.

Whatever he does or doesn’t remember, certainly he remembers the confident endorsement of Jesus: “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
³

But now it appears the gates of hell have prevailed—against Peter at least. The rooster has crowed, the test is over, and Peter has disappointed the One he had pledged his life to serve.

And it was the crow of the rooster that reminded Peter and brought him to a point of repentance.

Or was it?

Let’s look at the verse again, more carefully this time:

It may seem like a small detail, but it contains a meaningful revelation: Peter wasn’t reminded of the word Jesus had spoken by the crow of the rooster. He was reminded by the
look
of the Lord.

How do you think Jesus looked at Peter in that moment?

Do you think He revealed an expression of disappointment? That’s impossible. How could the One who foretold this very incident be disappointed by its occurrence?

Or do you think Jesus put on His angry eyes before He fixed his gaze on Peter? I doubt it, considering Jesus had plans to invite this guy to be the guest speaker on the day of Pentecost.

I’m sure there was a measure of hurt and sadness in the Savior’s eyes. But mostly I think that when the Lord looked at Peter, Peter saw the same thing he’d always seen in the countenance of the man who had inspired his total allegiance for the last three years.

I believe Jesus looked at Peter with a look of love. And it was not the crow of condemnation but the look of the Lord’s love that brought Peter to a place of repentance.

You may think I’m making too much of a small biblical detail. I get it—I’m inferring a lot. But isn’t this consistent with the truth we’ve been studying so far in the Scriptures? Isn’t it the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance?

Haven’t we seen that the Spirit convicts believers of sin, not by rubbing our noses in our mistakes (we already know these too well), but by reminding us of our righteousness in Christ? He brings to our attention the incredible realities of salvation that our defective memories seem to frequently forget. But when we look into the face of Christ, we
remember
.

It hit me recently that many believers suffer the effects of spiritual face blindness. You’ve heard of face blindness, haven’t you? I saw a fascinating news report about it recently. People who have this disorder can see ordinary objects all around them, so there’s nothing wrong with their actual eyesight. They simply can’t
recognize
faces—even those of people they’ve known their whole lives, like their moms, their dads, their sons, their daughters, or their spouses. How difficult to go through life seeing the form of the faces of those you love but not being able to correctly perceive their identities.

The crow of condemnation wants to divert your attention and erase your spiritual memory so that you aren’t able to behold the face of Christ.
Cock-a-doodle-doo! You’re a loser. You’re worthless. You’re inconsistent
.

But remember, if the rooster is crowing, that means it’s morning. And that means the sun is coming up again.

In the Spirit of God, we have a light that reveals to us who God is, what He is like, and what He desires to do in our lives. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:6:

Jesus puts the same light that was active in creation in our hearts by giving us His Spirit to gently remind us of what we already know. The Counselor reaffirms the Father’s love for us in our moments of failure by showing us the face of Christ.

But the Spirit’s conviction sounds nothing like condemnation’s
cock-a-doodle-doo
. It looks like the face of Jesus. And this face is radiant with love and compassion.

I’m sure Peter heard many more roosters crowing throughout the duration of his life. I have visited the Galilean countryside, and even today it is nearly impossible to avoid—or ignore—the sound.

Yet when Peter wrote his letter to the Jerusalem church, over thirty years after his epic failure in the courtyard, here’s what he had to say about the value of spiritual memory:

Look at that first paragraph again. Make your calling
sure
?
Never
fall? How could the man who failed so miserably—and publicly—make such a promise? How is the disciple whose uncertainty made him sink to the bottom like a rock now giving instructions on how to be
sure
?