We are reviewing a few examples of
people “hearing” from God through the Bible.
The first example happened in the late 30s AD and the second onehappened in the late 300s AD. Both of
those experiences resulted in the conversion to Christianity of the person
involved. Now we are going to jump to
1978 and describe an experience that happened to me. In this case, the words I “heard” didn’t
result in conversion, but it did set the path of my life from a career
perspective. Again, the point here is
not that the experiences themselves are necessarily compelling, but they serve
as examples of the way in which God can speak to human beings using the Bible. If you’re totally skeptical of such things,
then you will remain skeptical even after reading these examples. I can’t blame you for that. But my goal is to encourage those of you who
are skeptical to put yourself in a position of possibly experiencing these kinds
of things yourself. If you’ve already decided that God doesn’t interact with
human beings, and no amount of evidence of any sort will change your mind, then
you’re really wasting your time reading this blog.
Example #3 – My Path to Biomedical Engineering
As
I was growing up I always wanted to be…well - two things. When I was younger, like grade school (third
grade especially), I really wanted to be a doctor. I was fascinated by anatomy and physiology. I thought the way the human body worked was
incredibly fascinating. So I wanted to
be a doctor. But over time I also got
interested in machines and electricity.
I was especially interested in Thomas Edison. I read books about Thomas Edison and about
how he had this big laboratory where he just sat around and invented
things. I thought that was the greatest
thing ever. I loved inventing
things. So I began to think to myself: I’ll become an inventor instead of a
doctor. Besides, it seemed like you had
to go to school a long time to become a doctor, so maybe being an inventor was
better. It never entered my mind that
you don’t just go to school and major in “inventing”. So when it came time to look into going to
college, I was very disappointed to find that there was no major in
inventing. I began to try to figure out
what inventors major in. It seemed like
mechanical engineering was close to what I was imagining when I thought of
being an inventor. I was also
interested in electronics, but it seemed like mechanical engineering was the
area I would want to go into. So that
was my plan. I was going to go to
college and major in mechanical engineering, graduate, and be an inventor.
During the summer between my junior
and senior years in high school, for some reason, I picked up the “Science Year
Book” to read. The Science Year Book was
a yearly supplement to the “World Book Encyclopedia” series. There was one Science Year Book put out each
year. I started reading the articles in
it. I don’t know why, but I did. There was an article in this particular one
on prosthetic arms. In particular, it
was about myoelectrically-controlled prosthetic arms. It totally fascinated me. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. The article talked about how these prosthetic
arms were being developed in a new field of study called “biomedical engineering”. I thought it sounded like a fascinating area,
but I didn’t think of it as applying directly to me.
Early
in my senior year of school, we had to do a report on different careers. I felt like I already knew about mechanical
engineering, so I decided to do the report on something I didn’t know anything
about. I picked the field of biomedical
engineering since it seemed kind of interesting. I got a book from the library about
biomedical engineering. It turned out to
be almost a propaganda book about biomedical engineering, with the primary
purpose of trying to encourage people to go into that field. I read through it and it was really
interesting. Biomedical engineering
combined medicine and engineering and was very interesting to me. But still at that point, I wasn’t going to
change my own plans. It seemed like too
big of a step. To me it was like
changing my major – a huge decision - even though I hadn’t even started
applying to colleges yet! I didn’t know
that most people change their majors at least once after they get to
college. I don’t know why I felt like it
was wrong to change my plans, but I did.
Looking back now, it just seems odd.
As the fall went on, however, the
thought began to creep in that maybe I should seriously think about majoring in
biomedical engineering. I began to pray
for some kind of guidance. I guess I was
afraid that I would make a wrong decision.
Also, I think I knew even at that time that it wasn’t easy to find
schools with biomedical engineering degrees.
Oregon State University, which was where I was planning to go for
mechanical engineering (I lived in Oregon), didn’t necessary have a program in
that area. I wanted to stay near home –
at least stay in the state of Oregon - I had no interest in going off into the
wide world. All of these things were
weighing on my mind at that time.
In the midst of my praying and
thinking and stewing about this issue, I was sitting in Sunday school sometime
in the fall of my senior year. I was
daydreaming and I wasn’t listening to the Sunday school teacher at all. I was thinking about the field of biomedical
engineering and what I should do and whether I should make what seemed like a
huge change in the direction of my life.
I thought about how it combined all of the interests that I had had –
medicine, engineering, inventing – how it kind of combined all the things I
thought I was good at – all my talents…and just as I was thinking this, the
Sunday School teacher was reading a verse somewhere in I Corinthians and he
said that the verse showed how we should use all of our talents for God. So just as I was saying to myself “…all my
talents”, I was suddenly conscious of the fact that the Sunday school teacher
was also saying those exact same words, reading from the Bible. The coincidence of my own thoughts and the
Sunday school teacher’s words made it seem to me exactly as if God were
speaking directly to me. Suddenly it was obvious – I should go into
biomedical engineering – I felt that was exactly what God wanted me to do. To me, there was no doubt about it. From that moment on, I started looking for
schools with biomedical engineering programs and I was set on that path to this
day. I am still in that field almost 40years later!
So, that’s an example from my own
personal life. As with the other
examples, it could simply have been coincidence. All I can say is: “you had to be there”. For me, having someone else speak out loud my
own private thoughts word-for-word for a sentence or so was hard to
ignore. I can’t expect any of you to
understand how mind-boggling that was without experiencing it yourself. There was no question about it for me – it
might as well have been a lightning bolt from sky.
Could this happen to you? I can appreciate significant skepticism,
especially if you’re pretty convinced that there is no supernatural element to
the universe. Even I, when I think back
on some of my experiences (including the one I’ve just related), I think they
are somewhat corny and even childish.
Isn’t a scientist above attributing simple coincidences to a
supernatural being? It seems so silly.
I’m just looking for a moment of
complete honesty here…we just think we have it all pretty well figured out and
we don’t need to fit God into the mix.
But as we discussed before <*here*>, if we prevent God from speaking
to us using any natural means, and we reject all supernatural means, then what
is left?
I have come to believe the
following: God really does want to
communicate with us – but it’s really hard to get our attention without being
rude. And God is not going to be
rude. I made a personal rule in my own
life never to interrupt someone when they are talking – I just don’t do
it. But I can tell you that sometimes
that is a really difficult rule to keep because people go on and on in their
ignorance and never stop to take a breath!
I feel that we are like that with God.
We go on and on and we never stop to listen. All I can ask is that you take a breath and
listen – really listen. I know that’s hard to do. But you might hear something surprising!
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