How God Talks When He Isn't Talking

By Rev. Alvin Cordes

Reading the content pages of this book will show you that this book is very
practical and may change you forever. However, there are some who should not read
this book. I dare you to overcome the should nots.
Those who should NOT read this book:
Anyone who does not want to have a loving relationship with God.
Anyone who thinks psychiatrists and psychologists are smarter than the Bible
when it comes to human nature.
Any one who believes that God is not interested in his or her problems.
Any one who thinks some things happen by chance, without Gods consent
or control.
Any one who thinks that there is no way to ask God for an immediate decision
to do or not to do, to go or not to go a certain direction.
Any one who thinks the 66 Book Canon has no better information than any
other book.
On the other hand:
If you to want to learn what TICKS GOD OFF;
If you fi nally see that drugs, getting drunk, sex orgies, homolesbianism,
riches can never satisfy your longing for something real;
If you want to try God out, to see if He is really loving; this book will probably
help you. Especially if you have been water baptized, you will fi nally realize that
many times God had his fi nger on your life.
I want to see you in heaven with me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479768288

Rev. Alvin Cordes

Rev. Al is the oldest of four siblings born to one of the last circuit riders of western Montana, where he was born, whose dad became, a missionary to the deaf for 39 years, and fi nally, to his death, a chaplain to nursing homes. Alvin was born May 1, 1930.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Why am I here?

Nothing is more basic to life itself. Every honest person, at a very early age, wants to know the answer to the question, Why am I here?

That natural need drives many to ask the question until they find the answer in God. God will always give anyone the answer, especially when God is not talking.⁴

Let’s let Jesus show us. It is the same reason for which Jesus came.

There are 51 times glorify is used in the New Testament in its past or present tense. All are a translation from the word doksa’zoo.⁵

But when I ask the concordance on my computer to give me those verses with glorif- & my in them, we see why Jesus came.

"And whatever you will ask in My name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.⁶

"In this, My Father was glorified, that you choose to bear much fruit. So will you become My disciples.⁷

If we study only some of those 51 verses using glor-, we will begin to see that Jesus is possessed with one goal: To cause God the Father to be praised forever.

How only can this happen?

The only ones who praise God are those who know they are going to heaven. How else and for what else could any one praise God?

So, the Spirit moved me to ask some of my nursing home friends, What is your last address?

My nursing home friends know. If they don’t, I have failed as their pastor. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is often concerned about failing to save Judas.

If you are a father, and you don’t know what your last address is, you and those who follow your ignorance are facing eternal life without God.

And there is only one place like that. It is very hot. There is not one drop of water there. No fresh air. No music. No dancing. No laughing. No flowers. Most people will be there. Everyone of them will have brought all their guilt and sins with them to hell. Moaning and groaning will be the eternal sound of hell. I don’t want to you to be there.

I have a tract written Who is the head of your family. In it, God’s Word shows how men are called differently than women. In fact, there is much more in my foot notes on those passages found in the New Testament.

Now, dear mothers and wives! Where your man has not carried out his duty for your soul, you will have to be more concerned, especially if you have children. God will give you other Godly men to take the place of a Godly husband and father. Watch and see. Even then, you will have to be the tester of the spirits.⁸

The same is true of you teenagers, young adults, and children.

Keep reading! If you are a little confused, you will find the way in this book. But if you are in a real hurry to know the certain way into heaven, call me now. I’ll show you how to be certain, that if you died right now, you will be in heaven with me.

February 16, 2002, Jesus used me to bring Charlie, a total stranger, into His kingdom within about two minutes after he asked if there was a heaven. As a life long Catholic, he asked about purgatory. Jesus’ one word while on the cross, TETEL’ESTAI clinches it for me and everyone I meet. Call me. You never know which is your last breath.

In the summer of 2005, a young Asian woman had large tears in her eyes as she learned how certainly Jesus saved her. The Spirit called her into the peace of Jesus. I have not seen her since. She left with the black man who was anxiously waiting for her.

How thankful will you be when you know the way? Will you keep it to yourself? I don’t think so. Oh yes! You won’t be able to be silent about it.

As soon as you are really and truly born from above, you will become Jesus’ ambassador. That is what a disciple is.

Neither Jesus nor the Bible know much about Christians who are silent about heaven. There were a number of silent Christians in the Temple Council of Jesus’ day.

Generally speaking, silent Christians eventually fall away, or, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, they finally stand up for Jesus, even if they don’t believe in His resurrection.⁹

When you know Jesus’ only way into His eternal presence, you will keep praying for the right time to share your last address with everyone you meet. You will be with me and every other Christian in the eternal purpose for which Jesus came.

Our purpose here, is the same as Jesus’: To give God the most glory forever and ever.

So, join the crowd of happy saints.

Chapter 2

How do You go about Serving God?

Why do I ask this question? What has this got to do with talking with God? Every thing. Serving God has everything to do with talking to Him when He isn’t talking. If you do not see the connection just yet, don’t be alarmed.

The fact that you picked up this book in the first place shows you something about your relationship to God you never really were aware of. Do you forget God? I do too. Do you worry? I do too. Do you want a closer walk with God? I always do too.

Okay! Let’s get practical. While you are going to the meetings which you must direct or attend, what do you say to yourself?

You know, that if you get there in the wrong attitude, you will be in a self-destruct, negative mode. You know, from experience, what the president of my seminary, Dr. Barth, told us back in the ’50’s in the first period of Orientation, Everything depends on your attitude. Attitude! That’s it, attitude! as he sat on his desk with a grin on his kindly mustached face, Attitude! Attitude!

In going to my God concerts at my nursing homes, I never know what will happen.

One Easter Sunday, the dinning hall, usually available for services, was unavailable. Cooks had not made breakfast at the usual early time. They and other workers didn’t show up. The residents were just beginning their breakfast, when I arrived at 9:30 for the 10 o’clock service. It takes me about 30 minutes to set up.

Another time, this dinning hall was filled with beds. Air conditioners had broken down in one ward. Dangerously hot, bed-ridden residents had to be put in my dinning room, where the air conditioner was still working. So a number of Sundays in a row, I was told, You will not be able to use your room today. I tried ministering to my gathering flock in the hall way. I could do nothing but lay my blessing hands on a few of them to at least give them God’s Aaronic blessing.¹⁰

Or, in another home I might be told, just when I arrive, that I would have to have my services in the dinning hall where, at times, nurses and orderlies thoughtlessly and loudly carry on.

We have to use your room today, is upsetting to all of us. But we have suffered under these rude intrusions better than any one could expect. When a birthday party takes precedence over 20 to 30 residents worshipping and praising God, we naturally wonder where is the true sense of values? And, who really has the residents’ wishes at heart?

If I would allow myself to begin to review these past unhappy events, trying to rehearse what I might say or do in reaction to what they might say and do the next time this happens, before long I would be ticked off. And a bad spirit would take over by the time I get there. That could only make matters worse.

Besides, Jesus made it quite clear that we are not to prepare what we will say in a confrontation because that is one of the times when God wants to talk to those people without using His own voice.¹¹

Dear friend! There are times when Jesus’ Spirit wants to choose the words which God wants them to hear. At that time, He does not want your own volition and determination to get in the way of His own words. Jesus says,

"And when they bring you before the synagogues and rulers and authorities, do not be anxious how or what you choose to declare or choose to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you in the same hour what you ought to say.¹²

So, to get into and keep myself in the right attitude, as I’m driving down the busy streets to the care center, I’m saying, Praise the Lord! Thank You, Jesus! Thank You, Jesus! You are so wonderful. You have everything under control.

I’m not just repeating idle words. I want the Lord Jesus to prepare me for anything He has in store. There might have been a death to one of my regular worshippers. The place of worship might be in a mess. One of my regular worshippers might be angry with me. That happened once and the person didn’t come back to services for five or six months.

Another time in 2000, the activity director told me, You can’t have services in the dinning room any more. (Over twenty were coming. Three or four new residents just came for the first time. A husband went back to his room to get his wife.) . . . But you can meet with the two of your ladies you first came for. Others who want to, may come in their room, if they wish. From the beginning, she said she would not announce my meetings on the calendar nor would she let me use her vacant activities room for the services. The devil finally got me out that home completely.

When I am praising the Lord it doesn’t matter what might happen when I arrive. I just keep Prais(ing) the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

I am praying in faith, expecting God’s gracious presence before I get there. Why He eventually stopped the services at that nursing home, to which I drove 40 miles round trip for only two women, I will never know.

But we must pray in faith with only one condition. That is, as Jesus did in the Garden: If God has a better way, for whatever reason, God’s choice is always better than my faith-motivated expectations.

I never did this praising exercise while I was in the parish ministry back in the ’60’s and ’70’s. I never knew any one that did this. My missionary-to-the-deaf dad didn’t do it, that I know of. None of the professors suggested this preparation for services and church meetings. No one throughout my five years at seminary really taught us how to get a proper attitude in advance of our arrival to the place where we would have services.

And, especially in my graduate year, I pastored a complete Sunday School in an old abandoned one room school house in the country. It eventually became part of the Lutheran church near by. A grandmother and granddaughter became active members in that church.

There is a good section on prayer in our Catechism of those years in the ’40’s. During those first years, while teaching my adults and teenagers, who came to instruction classes in preparation for membership, I taught them to use four parts of prayer at night before going to sleep: (Praise) Thank you! Jesus… But I am not worthy (confession) . . . But You died for me (absolution) . . . (then requests.)

I taught them to begin with praise, but that was for night prayers just before going to sleep. I never even thought of using just the praising section as my own pre-preparation for meetings and services which I was to coordinate or present.

I have a beautiful prayer from my dad’s study, which Luther had posted in his sacristy and read before he went out to preach in the pulpit. But it does not praise God. It is a sinner’s prayer with absolute dependence on Jesus.

God often has to teach us a number of times the secrets to fellowshipping with Him.

In my senior year at the seminary, when I could not sleep one whole night for the pain that was moving up and down the center of my chest, I went to the doctor.

The X-ray shows that you have spasms at both ends of your stomach. If you continue on this road, you will have bleeding ulcers there, the doctor said.

He gave me a prescription for Banthene pills and a diet list. By the time I got back to the seminary, some One had convinced me that worry was my problem.

That evening, at study period, I became absolutely certain of the cause, when the bile came up my throat again as usual. I caught myself with tight muscles across my shoulders, as I tried to settle down to study for the very difficult exam on dogmatics, the study of Bible teaching. We were required to memorize as many as ten parts of an answer to questions the professor gave us. In class, all we did was underline the answers to those questions in our text book.

I tried throwing my arms down and relaxing at the desk. That didn’t work.

So, the Lord led me into the bedroom, face me down on my bed into my mind came praising the Lord and repeating the verses I had learned in confirmation. I repeated the words over and over:

"Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside You. My flesh and my heart fails. But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.¹³

Between repeating these verses, I was praising the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Comfort whom, four times, Jesus promised to send us.¹⁴

Within a few minutes I was sound asleep. When I awoke, I was totally relaxed and went back to my studying. I only had to do this a few more evenings. I never took a Banthene pill nor worried about my diet of roughage.

God had talked when He wasn’t talking. I never heard a scolding from Him about worry. I never heard Him say, Go in the bedroom and praise Me. He just took over my mind when I submitted it to Him and miraculously, He healed me of my painful beginning of ulcers, but only after I had begun praising Him until the sores in my stomach were healed. That healing took less than a week.

Is all this triggering memories in your own life, when God was talking to you without audible words? Think back. Don’t be afraid of learning from your own past, otherwise, as the proverb goes, You could be doomed to repeat that past. Take your time.

Please let me rehearse another example of how God talked to me without His inaudible voice. Meanwhile, try to think of similar situations in your own life. As soon as you begin to see similar situations in your own life, you will be the more able to see what Jesus is trying to show you in this book.

Where did I see this praising trick in operation?

During my nine month trucking days in 1990, fully 44 years after leaving the seminary, I frequented a black church in the populated area south of Chicago below Lake Michigan. A number of times I met this young black postal worker at his church. He was always cheerful, though he had a young family and this growing church of less than a hundred.

What burdens he must have had, but he never expressed them nor showed them!

He would open