A WORK IN PROGRESS
Visitors to God’s Voice will notice that the titles of several pages are followed by ***. These three asterisks are used to identify pages that are “works in progress”, which means that they are incomplete and/or unpolished writing.
We alert readers to this notation so that they will not be surprised to find typos, incomplete thoughts, erroneous links, and other kinds of problems in these pages. Of course such problems may also exist in other pages as well, but these are pages for which the authors are aware of the problems and are still working to correct them.
Sometimes readers may find XXX within the body of a page. This notation is another tag used by the author to find problems that need to be fixed.
While we might like to have all pages in this website in perfect condition, we make no apologies for these incomplete and imperfect pages. As authors, we learn as we study and write. That means that writing is a very dynamic process that takes us to a wide variety of scriptures within and outside the God’s Voice website. Thus, while writing, we constantly jump from one resource to another, from one page to another, and from one set of scriptures to another because we do not want to lose any connection that explains scripture to us. It is our way of responding to God’s voice in a timely manner. And when we do jump around like this, we sometimes forget where we began and forget to go back and complete those pages or thoughts. These places are where we put the *** notation.
It is all part of the process of assembling the God puzzle. Anyone who has worked on a large puzzle knows that it is possible to get lost and even frustrated in the process of searching out related pieces of the puzzle. This happens constantly while writing this website. While searching for scriptures related to the page in which we are writing, we do not always have time to go back to other pages to re-write, correct, and polish those which are incomplete or contain typographical and grammatical errors or incomplete thoughts. And so this is why we have incomplete pages that we identify with ***. We keep working on polishing them up, of course, but it is a process that will never be finished.
The fact that this website is incomplete and unpolished only verifies what we know to be true:
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Because of these truths, we make every effort to capture and record what we hear from God as soon as we hear it so that we will not lose it. This kind of experience confirms that hearing God’s voice is an open-ended process which we never want to assume is complete. If we do assume that we know all that we need to know, we have made the mistake of thinking we are like God.
Our purpose in mentioning this jerky, non-linear process is to communicate what study will be like for New Covenant disciples. Spirit-led study will take disciples on side-trails that lead to more side-trails. This is all good and necessary — even though we may not remember where we began. It is a process of exploring with our spiritual ears.
Hearing and understanding God’s voice is like trying to capture lightning. We need to respond quickly for fear of losing what we have heard. Timely responses are all good — even though we did not always or quickly return to the starting page so we could complete it. This process is what we were trying to reflect in ***.
Another thing that must be said about incompleteness is that learning is more important to us than writing what we learn. We don’t want to lose what we heard, so we faithfully go down all of those side-trails as soon as they appear. It would be a display of pride if we ever said to God that creating this website was more important than our own learning. There is nothing more valuable than hearing his voice.
The final and main point about incompleteness, however, is that we can never know and represent everything there is to know about God. We would be foolishly naive to suggest that it is possible for us to accurately and completely represent God in this website or anywhere else. We may be proud, but we are not so proud that we believe that what we write is equal to God’s spirit speaking to the heart. That would contradict what we have written about God’s written word and spoken voice not being the same.
Nevertheless, we do the best we can to listen and report what we think we hear. But we do not, and should not, represent that anything that we write is complete and/or perfect. It is all subject to additions and corrections as we study and as God opens our spiritual eyes and ears to new understandings. This progression of understanding also applies to readers.
It must be said, therefore, that the authors make no claims that this website is accurate and complete. In fact, are very aware that it is incomplete. We also humbly allow that it may also be inaccurate in some places. Just like manufacturers of products make disclaimers about the usefulness and durability of the product if it is not maintained and used according to the manufacturers instructions, we make this disclaimer about this website: It is useful only if people who read it listen to God’s voice. At best is a tool for learning how to hear God’s voice. It is not a substitute for God’s voice and it is not equal to listening to God’s voice.
What is written here is only a report of what the authors think they have heard. Thus, what is written here should not be interpreted as God’s final or complete word on a topic. This is why we have made study a key feature of the website. Readers must listen for God’s voice as they read what is written here just as they interpret scripture according to what they think God is saying to them.
If readers do not learn to listen to God’s voice while investigating this website, the website has not achieved its purpose.
This is how it ought to be for New Covenant disciples: Never take another human’s word as the final word about God.