In this sermon, guest speaker Christine Westhoff teaches us to fine-tune our senses to God's frequency as we embrace the art of deep listening—a holistic practice that incorporates our emotions, imagination, and full presence. We engage in sensory exercises that enable us to experience the divine in everyday moments and discuss how artists, with their profound perception, offer a guiding light toward discerning God's will. Listen and unlock a deeper spiritual awareness of Jesus, joining hands with grace to fully immerse in the world's wonders as they unfold around us.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Christine Westhoff
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In this sermon, guest speaker Christine Westhoff teaches us to fine-tune our senses to God's frequency as we embrace the art of deep listening—a holistic practice that incorporates our emotions, imagination, and full presence. We engage in sensory exercises that enable us to experience the divine in everyday moments and discuss how artists, with their profound perception, offer a guiding light toward discerning God's will. Listen and unlock a deeper spiritual awareness of Jesus, joining hands with grace to fully immerse in the world's wonders as they unfold around us.
This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.
Speaker — Christine Westhoff
Visit Our Website — https://thelookout.church
Take Your Next Step--- https://thelookout.church/connect
Connect with Us --- https://thelookout.church/new
Give to Support the Ministry --- https://thelookout.church/give
Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram
Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at thelookoutchurch.
Speaker 2:This is one of our favorite places to come to. I have to say it feels like a family in Colorado. We often think about moving here, which isn't going to happen because now we have a grand baby and we're not going anywhere without that grand baby, unless the Lord says something. But anyway, so the Re-Framing, the Prophetic Book. I want to tell you a little bit more about it and then we'll dive into a couple of pictures I'd like to share with you. Can we click into some prophetic mode just a little bit, and then I'll click into the message? That's my plan, you guys. Good. So the book.
Speaker 2:If you've been around the prophetic world which I know this church has been around the prophetic world for a long time you've seen both the glorious and the dreadful when it comes to the prophetic. We've all charismatic. If you've been in the charismatic world, we've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. We've tasted the glory and the beauty of the prophetic. But we might have, some of you might have seen the abuse of it, the misuse of it. I was really wrestling for many years on how to address that because I, honestly, I'm like Lord, I don't want to just make a book, I'm like ticking off all that's wrong, but that doesn't seem to go well and it seems like a bad approach. There's got to be a better approach to address what it is that you wanted to say. What I felt like he said is look at the real. It made me think of counterfeit currency, those people who are experts at spotting counterfeit currency. One of the well, I think the way that they are trained in their craft is they study the real currency. They study it and study it and study it and study it. They become intimate with the real currency. They don't study the fake, they study the real. And they become such experts in what it's supposed to look like that the minute they see something that isn't the real, it sticks out like a sore thumb. That really struck me in that moment when I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said look at the real. I thought that's it.
Speaker 2:When have I studied the way that the prophetic actually functions in Scripture? Sounds like a no-brainer, but it took me a minute. That's what this book is. It's a biblical observation of this ancient gift from the Old Testament to the New, discussing what changed from the Old to the New, and the prophetic is littered throughout the New Testament and actually it's vital in the birth of the Church, it's vital in the advancement of the Gospel and the earth, and that what we want to see is the prophetic restored to actually be doing what it's supposed to be doing in the Kingdom. And we have, we have a taste of that, but it's certainly not in its fullness. I don't even know if I've really truly seen the prophetic accomplishing what it's meant to accomplish, at least not very often. And so that's what this book is. It's just a biblical observation of looking at the prophetic becoming more and more acquainted with the real so that when, hopefully the goal is, when we see something that's different than that, our discernment would trigger. All right, that's our hope. So that's that book. So definitely get it.
Speaker 2:It's not your average prophetic book. It's not filled with any wild prophetic stories on purpose. There's enough wild prophetic stories in the Bible to keep us busy all day long, so we just kept it. Bible stories, okay, huh, I mean, I feel really casual this morning. I hope you guys are okay with just being really real and laid back. Is that all right? A few things I was. I've been sensing and feeling lately that I wanted to share with you One during worship. I was really struck with the sense of the creative in this room, the sense of the artists being stirred up in this community. There is, I believe there's something that he's doing in that arena. I believe he's doing it on a mass scale around the globe, to be honest, but it it was really a sign to me of the, of the prophetic call on this house that he's now stirring up the artists.
Speaker 2:And here is why, for the last four years, since the pandemic kicked off and all of our lives were turned upside down and inside out on many levels, not just here but around the world we all had a shared moment of trauma. We all had a shared couple of years of trauma. The psychologists around the world are now trying to address the reality, that of collective trauma on many levels, in many nations and in our country. It was more than just a pandemic. It was the politics, it was the division, the division, the division, the division. It was traumatizing on so many levels. We are completely different people. You are a different person than you were four years ago, completely different. This church is a completely different church than it was four years ago. This city is a completely different city than it was four years ago. This state, this nation, this, everything about us. The church in America is a completely different church than it was four years ago.
Speaker 2:And I'm not saying that God caused the pandemic, please hear me. This is not a theological debate on suffering, but this is the reality that his hand has been in the mix and we are going through what I would call a global reformation. And I don't even think I'm being dramatic when I say that, which I do have a tendency to be a bit dramatic, so you can disagree with me if you like. I've actually been wrestling over words. I'm like Lord in this moment, when it feels like the whole world, like we're in a dispensational shift. That might have been a bit dramatic, but that's what it feels like right. It feels like this massive shift of culture, this massive shift of spirituality, a massive shift of church, a massive shift of relationships and everything, everything, everything. Everything is different.
Speaker 2:And in this moment we are in a moment of history. I keep feeling like we are in another 99 thesis moment. There's people pinning 99 thesis on many doors. Some of them are from the Lord and some of them are not. We need discernment more than ever. But the reality is is this moment of reformation is on our doorstep. We have been undone and now he's about to do some recreating, some co-creating with us again in this space, in this liminal in-between space in history.
Speaker 2:And in the middle of that, I have asked the Lord over and over again what are you saying? What do we do? Where are you taking us? I'm so aware of this historical space that we find ourselves in and I'm just one tiny little voice on a global stage, but what I keep hearing him say over and over and over again is follow the artist, follow the way of the artist, disciple in the way of the artist. Read the scriptures. The way that the artists read the scriptures relate to the world around you, as if you're walking through an art gallery. Follow the way of the artist, and this is what I think he means by that. First of all, I think the artists are going to prophesy in this next wave more than any other people. We have to grow eyes to see how artists prophesy that the prophetic in the arts is well, there's no prophetic and the arts. The prophetic is the arts, it's a part of the arts, it is an art form. All the prophets in the scripture were poets. Most theologians will say so. There is something he's doing in awakening the artists and, make no mistake, it is a prophetic thing he's doing in this church through the arts.
Speaker 2:The other picture that I have been seeing over and over again and again this morning, as I see first, it's just one man and he's walking out of a cave. The light is so bright he is wintzing and closing his eyes, but he's got a smile on his face because he hasn't felt the sun on his face in a long time. I have a sense that the cave was a holy cave. It wasn't. It was dark but it was holy. It was hard but it was God ordained. It was isolating but it was challenging. And yet in that cave there was a holiness that came forth. There was new territory inside of him that was forged between he and God. And as he gets up and walks out of this cave, he has a bag of gold in his hands and this gold in his hands is everything that he gleaned while in the cave. He's not sad to be out of the cave, he's quite relieved, but he's got a bag of gold and as he looks at the gold that he was a bit surprised that was there.
Speaker 2:I hear the Lord say remember, remember what you gleaned from the cave. Remember what you learned in the cave. That is the wisdom that will carry you forth. Don't try to pick up where you left off. Remember the wisdom that you learned in the cave. And I, I feel like that could be a word for the church at large, to be honest. But I also feel very literally that there are many of you, not just one man, because as the lens zooms out, I think I see many, many people in this moment where they're walking out of a cave, and it really is this Awakening. It feels like, oh, thank God, that's over, like this awakening into clarity and awakening into Just light, and it's a beautiful moment. I don't know who this is resonating. I hope it's resonating with somebody, but it is a beautiful moment of awakening. But in there, please don't try to carry on like you did before the cave, because everything is now different.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing that I saw, and I don't really know how to interpret this, so I'm gonna leave it with you, but I saw people several people in this room running Towards an open door and then, right as they got there, the door shut and it was this like they didn't smack into the door, but it was a like oh, I wasn't expecting that. That door just slammed in my face and then they began to question everything, like why was I running, why was that door open, why did it just shut? But really it's just a pause and it felt like the holy pause because it felt like the Lord's pacing, because the eagerness of running is Something that's fun. But when we see an open door and we know it's our open door to go through the, our instinct is to go for it and that's not wrong. But he is going to pace you. I, honestly, as I'm saying this, I'm like this is the church, this is for the lookout church is that he is going to pace you. You'll see the open doors on your run form, but when a door shuts, just wait, know that the pacing of the Lord is on your doorstep and he will Open the door. Don't worry about the timing, he's got it. Amen. I'm gonna need a Kleenex. Is there something handy? So I don't keep sniffling? Thank you, can I take the box? Okay, thanks, slightly, greedy. I hope you didn't need that. Okay, um, all right.
Speaker 2:So when we Deeply listen to someone, and I'm not talking about our average everyday kind of listening, but when we are in a space where we are deeply Listening. Most of us have had that experience, whether we've experienced being deeply listened to by somebody else that was in a way that caught our attention, that you had that Sense and that feeling like whoa I don't know what just happened, but I was, I was really heard. Some of us know what it's like to make the effort to deeply Listen to somebody else and in those moments, those holy moments, I'd like to just sit in that experience for a minute, because there's many things happening at once. When we deeply listen in a way that creates a holy, the sacred space. We, we listen by, like we're not just giving eye contact. It's so much more than that. We are studying their face, we are studying their body language, we are taking note of every twitch of their lip. If they have a slight quiver when they say something, we notice that we're, we've thrown ourselves into the experience of everything that they're saying.
Speaker 2:To deeply listen to another is a fully embodied experience. We listen with our Imaginations, we engage our minds where, if they're telling a story, we're imagining the story. We're engaging our emotions because, as they're telling a story and we're imagining it, we're allowing ourselves to fully experience their Story, to try to experience somehow, maybe a little bit of what they experienced, to truly and deeply listen to another. It is a wholehearted Experience. It's a wholehearted engagement when we're not just listening with our ears, we're listening with our eyes, we're listening with our hearts, we're listening with our bodies. Our bodies are in this To be it, to be a good listener. Our bodies are open and what I mean by that is we have. Our hearts are open. We're not sitting there listening, categorizing things that they're saying. Well, when they say this, that's in this box and we're putting this in that box and oh, I know what they mean by this and this is what they. That's not a good listener.
Speaker 2:A good listener, a good listener, listens with an openness, with an open-heartedness that doesn't draw conclusions, at least not in that moment. They're listening with them with a non-judgmental ear. They're listening with a Curiosity and a wonderment and a full involvement. But they're not listening in a judgmental stance and I don't mean judgmentalism in the sinful way that we talk about it, but even in the slight ways that when we we just draw quick conclusions that someone's talking, that would. That's what it's. That's still a judgmental mindset. That's not good listening.
Speaker 2:To truly listen, we're open and we're captivated and we're willing to experience what they're experiencing. So it's, it's deep, and that's when you can ask good questions, because you're right there with them, you're not separate from them, you're, you're fully engaged. Does that make sense? It's, it's such a profound thing to truly learn how to listen. That's why I really think listening is another art form. We pay attention to their hand motions. We pay attention to whether Even their slight I got that. Do they seem nervous? We were sensing.
Speaker 2:How many of you have had the experience? When Someone walks in the room, you know that they're angry. I Mean all of us. We're, we're, we're sensory beings. It's, it's not even a spiritual experience. Our oh babe, help me with this, I mess it up. Every time our hearts emit an Electromagnetic frequency. Did I get it that it makes out away from us, from anywhere from six to ten to twelve Inches in there, somewhere like it's. It's what? Feet, feet, oh, wow, that's. That's far so. That's just scientific. That's not weird, it's not new agey, it's like that's just a scientific thing. They did a whole article, I think in Time magazine on it.
Speaker 2:So we feel, all of us feel other people's emotions. Now in the West we don't often, we just don't value our senses very much. We don't value that. In fact we kind of learn to shut that off because it's uncomfortable. Some of us in this room it's kind of a personality thing, our high-feelers, so you can feel what everybody in the room is feeling and for you I am sorry. I've had that experience Myself and I am one of those and I have nothing but compassion. Being high-feelers is is exhausting and it does take training. But that's not what I'm talking about this morning. But all of us to some degree feel what other people are feeling.
Speaker 2:But once again, in our culture we don't value that, we don't talk about it much, we don't actually. We like we are a concrete Western thinking society and we want facts. So when somebody talks about like I'm sensing, I'm sensing you're angry, that's like I'm not angry, you know. And we, we, we don't value that to the same degree. But we are sensory beings Like I described, as we deeply listen to another word, listening through all of our senses.
Speaker 2:All of our senses are awake and alive. That's what we're created to do. We're created to sense. The world around us was created like our hearts electromagnetic frequency. I don't know why that's so hard for me to say, but it we're created like that.
Speaker 2:He created us to sense and to feel that our communication, we know, we talk about it's only 12% verbal. When then we like, often, go on to you, know our hand motions or our facial expressions which all of that's true, but it's just minimal. Think about how much we're actually sensing in every conversation. If we're open, if we are Awakened to the fact that we are sensory beings, we will sense more and more, and it's valuable. Actually, it works to emotionally healthy Relationships because we want to be both self-aware and aware of what others are feeling. It's incredibly valuable. In fact, I would say it's. It's equal to love. Alice Freiling says Go for it. Yes, there you go. That's my husband. Everybody intentional who does not need a microphone.
Speaker 2:Intentional listening is Indistinguishable from love. Everything I just described to you as a deep listening human is how we love. It's how we express love, it's how we become the presence of love to another human we do. We are in an epidemic of poor listening skills. Maybe the pandemic, but it's not.
Speaker 2:I'd like to just blame social media because that makes for a good sermon, but it's been around since the time of the Bible days, because we have scriptures like in Matthew 13, verses 14 and 15, in their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says you will keep on hearing but will not understand. You will keep on seeing but will not perceive. For the heart of this people has become dull. So hearing and understanding are two different things. Seeing and perceiving are two different things, and I know that. We know this, all of us know this. So my call to you today is to awaken our senses, to become good listeners for one another, good listeners to ourselves, good listeners to our own body, our own emotions, our own thought life, because it is love.
Speaker 2:True listening does not presume to know. What about listening to someone's actions? It shouldn't be a foreign idea. Do we listen to each other's actions? Of course we do. If my husband runs through the house and listening to his actions, I'm aware that either something is wrong or something is very right. I'm paying attention to the look on his face, to the energy that is emitting from him. That's not New Age. New Age has no power. They just steal from what we already know that God created us. We pick up on the energy of others. It's not this weird New Age thing. I am an energetic human being. You are perceiving my energy right now. If you were standing up here and acting completely different, you would perceive that energy. It's a part of how we understand each other. This is instinctual for all of us. It's not New Age, it's not weird, it's instinctual. I think it's actually an area that we need growth in. It is an area that we can intentionally mature in, and this is why Because all of what we just talked about is also how we listen to God.
Speaker 2:It's the same. We listen to God with our whole being. We don't listen to God with our ears. Honestly, we talk about hearing God's voice, but let's be real. We're not really hearing a voice for the most part. Every now and then he's like you know. Somebody has an audible voice of God moment and those are like clunking somebody over the head because we can't hear any other way.
Speaker 2:We are perceivers. We perceive God. We don't listen to a voice. We learn to be receivers of God as the same way that listening, deep listening we learn how to receive another human and make space for them. This is what we learn how to do as we learn how to discern God, as we learn how to be perceivers of God, as we want to learn how he is moving, how he's feeling, what he's doing, what he's intending, where he's looking, what he's directing us to be perceiving, along with him.
Speaker 2:So, to have a conversation on hearing God's voice, I wanted to be able to start with expressing and demonstrating to all of you guys that this is instinctual for us. This is the most natural thing in the world for us to be able to perceive God, to discern God. It's what we long for. But we have become dull in the West, especially because we have dulled our senses, often intentionally, or it's just generationally. We didn't know there was an option. Some of us are high sensory people and you're listening to me going. If only I could dull my senses. I won't ask you to raise your hands, like I hinted at earlier.
Speaker 2:If you are a high perceiver, a high-feeler, and you're discerning God and everything else, there is a training of the senses to lean in past all the other noise in the room to perceive God. That is the point of discernment. That is why Hebrews 5.14 says they have their, the mature, have their senses trained to discern between good and evil and basically what that is saying to be able to discern between light and dark, god and the enemy, between the world and the voice of the Lord, the direction of the Lord, the movement of God. We want to be able to perceive and sense and receive the presence of God around us more than we do all the other things that we perceive. So, whether you need your senses awakened or whether you need your senses trained, we're having the same conversation. It is working with our senses to have them trained to perceive and discern God. That is our mission. Have I freaked you out yet, or no?
Speaker 2:Okay, good, I honestly think this is why, in the charismatic world specifically, there's a lot of talk around silence. Silence is not new, of course. In most of the other traditions in the Christian world, silence has been a normal part of their spiritual practices. Us charismatic are just really loud people. We do all things very loud, and so it's really. I think it's the hand of God where he's now working on the charismatic church to cultivate spaces of silence so that we can awaken our other senses. You know how we, you guys know.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that we've heard in the deaf community that when one of our senses is shut down, all of the other senses become more heightened. Right, we've heard that. In fact, I was watching this TED Talk from Evelyn. She's on my notes. Her name's Evelyn. She is a deaf percussionist Fascinating. I've totally lost track of my notes. Anyway, she's a deaf percussionist, a deaf musician, and she, her mission in life is to train the hearing world how to hear. Isn't that awesome? I love that so much, like it's just brilliant, because she's convinced that the deaf world actually listens better than the hearing world. And I can totally understand that, because in the deaf world they've had to focus on it, they've had to work on it. They could not depend on their ears, which are often deceiving. They had to focus on all the other senses. And Evelyn I will get her name before I'm done.
Speaker 2:Evelyn talks about how, as a, she wanted to be a musician and she remembered when she was 12 years old she went into a music class and the teacher was like, looked at her like she was crazy. She's like no, I want to. I want to play drums, I'm a percussionist, I know this is what I want to do. And he's like how? Like I don't get it? How can you possibly be a musician? And she was totally, completely deaf. And she said I hear more than you do. I hear through my fingers, I hear through my skin, I, my heart hears. My whole body has become an echo chamber for the sound of the drums. I hear in my my scalp. I can feel the noise in my scalp, every ounce of my being can hear, and I want to play the drums. And so she's now one of the most world famous percussionists and she uses that to teach the hearing world how to hear.
Speaker 2:And now take that and apply it with me really quick, not just quick. Sit with it for weeks, if you can, if you remember. How does that apply to how we hear God? We don't see him in front of us. He's not standing there. We can't look at his facial expressions. Let's be real. We can imagine, but we can't look at his facial expressions, so we don't have our eyes. Most often we're not hearing anything with our ears, so we don't have eyes, we don't have ears. How the heck, like no wonder people get stressed out when we talk about hearing God's voice. We use terrible language. We talk about seeing Him and hearing Him. It's like when I'm not hearing anything, because we as hearing people, we think hearing, we think ears, but ears actually get in the way.
Speaker 2:Close your eyes right now. Pretty, please. Pay attention to all the noise in this room. Of course, now everyone went quiet, but I can hear the furnace. Is that the heater? There is air in this room that you're breathing, but it's not blowing. Can you feel it on your skin? It's there. Can you feel the air as it goes in your lungs? Now, if you are able to shut off your ears and close your eyes, what would be left? You can open your eyes.
Speaker 2:The ability to sense and perceive and discern God is within every human being. It is our birthright. It is what he created us to do as co-creators with him. It is how he formed you, why he gave you the senses that you have to perceive him. And now I'm asking that he would use our senses to train our senses, to draw us more deeply into an intimate awareness of his presence, of himself.
Speaker 2:Whether we're having a wild worship moment in our goosebumps or everywhere, or not, it's more important that we can perceive him at all times, in all places, because we know he's always there. This grace abides in the core of your soul, and it is a grace. It's not a skill you can acquire. It is something we can co-labor with the Lord to actually invite him to help us to nurture our senses to be able to perceive him. And this is what artists do better than most of the rest of us. It's how they create their art, from the depths of their being. True artists create from a place that is outside of the realm of our common seeing or hearing. I think this is one of the reasons why we are to follow the way of the artists. To discern the will of God, we must awaken our senses. We must train our senses to be more attuned to him than anything else in the world, and this is what I pray, lord.