by Larry DeBruyn
LTRP Note: On November 9th, we reported that Pastor Larry DeBruyn, while in Hungary training pastors, suffered a major heart attack, which doctors said should have taken his life. 40% of Larry’s heart was damaged. A few days later, we posted “A True Shepherd of the Church Warning About Contemplative”, explaining how Larry has been an outspoken voice warning about the dangers of contemplative spirituality. We are happy and blessed to announce that Larry has now returned home to the US and is recuperating from this near death attack. And as the saying goes, it’s hard to keep a good man down – Larry has sent us an article he just finished. In the midst of major Christian leaders not only refusing to warn against contemplative but actually promoting it, pastors like Larry DeBruyn are the true leaders of the church, and we thank God for them.
WHO GOES THERE?
Encountering voices in the silence of contemplative prayer.
by Pastor Larry DeBruyn
Through practicing the discipline of solitude and silence, contemplative spiritualists hope to hear God personally speak to them. As one nationally known personality stated on the Be Still DVD, “intimacy automatically breeds revelation.” But if a voice speaks, there is some question regarding its identitity. Therefore in the video’s same segment, “Fear of Silence,” Richard Foster offers advice about how to discern who might be speaking. He said, “Learning to distinguish the voice of God . . . from just human voices within us . . . comes in much the same way that we learn any other voice. Satan pushes and condemns. God draws and encourages. And we can know the difference.”
Though there could be others, Richard Foster admits to cacophony of possible voices that might speak in the silence: first, human voices (a source that could involve hearing oneself speak, in which case, contemplators would be listening to themselves); second, Satan’s voice; and third, God’s voice.
In order to determine whose voice might be speaking, Foster provides criteria. If the voice is positive and reaffirming, then the voice is God’s. If however, the voice is that of a bully who “pushes and condemns,” then the voice must be that of Satan. To discern whether or not the voice is human, Foster offers no advice.
If the voice is human, one is left wondering, why go into a meditative trance to hear yourself or another human speak? After all, in the normal concourse of life people talk to themselves and listen to others all the time, unless contemplators feel so isolated and alone, or unless in accord with the eastern monistic worldview, meditators believe they are gods so that when they listen to their voice, they are listening to god!
