Which Would You Choose... A Burning Heart or Burning Bush?
Last Sunday’s sermon centred around a powerful contrast found throughout the Christian journey: the difference between a burning bush and a burning heart.
Many of us are familiar with the dramatic ways God revealed Himself throughout Scripture. Moses encountered a bush that burned without being consumed. Time and time again, God used extraordinary moments to capture our attention, redirect our lives, and reveal His purposes. Yet one of the central challenges of Sunday’s message was that while God may use burning bushes, His ultimate desire is not that we become dependent on them.
As we grow in our walk with Him, God develops within us something deeper than a reliance on dramatic encounters. He forms a heart that is sensitive to His voice, responsive to His leading, and able to recognise His activity even when there are no spectacular signs attached.
In other words, maturity is not marked by an increasing need for external confirmation, but by an increasing capacity for internal recognition.
This truth was illustrated through the contrast between a burning bush and a burning heart. One captures attention from the outside; the other testifies to God’s work on the inside. One is a sign given to us; the other is a sensitivity developed within us.
The mature believer learns not merely to look for God around them, but to discern His voice, His presence, and His leading through a heart that has been trained to recognise Him.
Of course, this raises an important question.
If part of spiritual maturity is learning to recognise God more clearly, what do we do with moments in Scripture where recognition appears to be withheld?
What do we make of passages where people fail to perceive what God is doing, even when He is right in front of them?
Perhaps no passage presents that tension more clearly than the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus…
"But God kept them from recognising him." — Luke 24:16 (NLT)
Pastor Josh helps us explore this passage and the important question it raises:
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After Sunday's sermon, a HUGEEE question many of us have asked is:
"Why would God stop them from recognising Him?”
“Doesn't that fuel the claims that I might not be hearing from God because He might be stopping me from sensing His voice?!"
I will attempt to answer that now...
Firstly, God wasn't blocking them, He was training them...
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had spent years following Jesus primarily through what they could see. Their faith was heavily anchored in the visual; His face, His presence, His physical movements.
But resurrection life operates on a different frequency.
Jesus was about to ascend. He would no longer be physically visible to them, and they needed to learn how to recognise Him without their eyes.
Secondly, before Jesus revealed Himself, He spoke to them. He walked with them. He opened the Scriptures to them. And something happened in their chests before their eyes ever caught up... "Were not our hearts burning within us?"
God restrained one receptor so He could sharpen another.
It is said of physically blind people that another sense becomes especially heightened because, the brain reallocates resources...
In people who are blind from birth or who lose sight early in life, parts of the visual cortex can actually become involved in processing touch, sound, and spatial information.
...God restrained one receptor so He could sharpen another.
Finally (for now 😅🤣),
The restraint was never permanent...
The moment the lesson was complete, their eyes were opened.
This is the pattern of a good Teacher, not a distant God.
When we feel like we're not sensing Him as clearly as we once did, the question worth sitting with is not "Has God gone silent?", but "Which receptor is He trying to develop right now?"
God is most definitely NOT hiding. He is probably stretching our range in such moments.
I hope this closes the circuit for many of us. That particular line, 'God stopped them...' can make God seem wicked. It is extremely important to understand the context, and general Character of God as presented to us from Scripture and not just one verse...
06/06/26