Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (The IVP Signature Collection)

by Dallas Willard

Until now we have been dealing with the word of God as it comes to, on and through us. But in the progress of God’s redemptive work, communication advances into communion, and communion into union. When the progression is complete we can truly say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20) and “For to me, living is Christ” (Phil 1:21). Communication often occurs over a certain distance, even amid possible opposition. We can still communicate with those with whom we are at war. God communicates with us even while we are his enemies, dead in our sins. When communication between two people rises to the level of communion, there is a distinctness but also a profound sharing of the thoughts, feelings and objectives that make up our lives. Each recognizes the thought or feeling as his or hers, while knowing with joy that the other is feeling or thinking in the same way. When communion advances into union, however, the sense of “mine” and “thine” may often be absent. There is only “ours” and, while “mine” does mean mine, it no longer thereby also means “not thine.” This condition of union is realized in a marriage where the two partners have indeed become one. For this reason marriage can serve as a picture of the relation between Christ and his church, and between the soul and God. It is this union beyond communion that Paul speaks of when he says the redeemed have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) as well as when he exhorts us to have the mind of C...