Different Ways God Speaks to Us

well last week we started a two-part series on hearing God and we looked at ways in which we can put ourselves in a position to better hear God and we also looked at several things several ways in which we can judge what we hear to discern if it's coming from God or if it's coming from the world because we have more than one voice coming to toward us so today we're going to look at four more common ways now in which God speaks to his children and then we're going to talk about some pitfalls to watch for so that we won't get deceived by the enemy now number one we usually think that the highest way of hearing God is just to hear his voice you know to hear him speak in an audible voice and I'm certainly not minimizing uh being able to hear that way uh because that is of course one of the ways that God speaks but he has a number of ways that he speaks to us and so I just want us to look into some of them so we can start recognizing when God is speaking to us you know and um uh because he has so many different ways I think he has a lot of different ways to speak to us because he wants us to hear so badly now he spoke to Samuel in the temple with an audible voice when he was just a little boy and Samuel thought it was Eli calling to him the the hearing was so clear now I've shared this before but when we started trying to sell the Pepsi Plant the Pepsi Cola Company out of New York was trying really hard to force the the small bottlers especially down here in the South they were trying to force them out of business now a lot of the bers were forced out with very little money after years of owning their own business so it really was sad so Jack and I were praying to know what to do and I had dropped off to sleep when Jack just suddenly he woke me up and he he had heard an audible voice and he thought I'd heard it too and the Audible Voice said call Joan Crawford and it was so clear that he just said surely you heard that it was it was like a voice just called out to me well John Crawford's late husband he had been the he at that time was the CEO of the pepsicola company and um so he had heard write Joan Crawford but it didn't make any sense to write her she really did she didn't have that much to do with the pepsicola company but we composed our letter the next day and sent it off never heard a word from her so uh Jack was a little disappointed because he knew he heard and he was a little surprised that nothing came of the letter but later we did have a barer come through and when the Pepsi uh lawyers out of New York came to our surprise they worked so hard for us you would have thought that they were our lawyers we we were just shocked and u i I thought well do they think we were the ones paying them you know well after the sale was complete out of curiosity Jack asked them why they had changed their positions and had started helping us and they said and this is a quote because I wrote it down it was because of the letter you wrote to Joan Crawford we were told to buy your plant at any price of course they waited until after we had already signed the contract otherwise we would have known we could have gotten more money but anyway we were just excited to hear that that it sold so God will speak audibly at times because sometimes that's the only way we can hear sometime you'll hear a word come up out of your spirit and it'll be so clear that you almost feel like you've heard it audibly and sometimes you'll receive sometimes a word of knowledge sometimes you'll have a Word of Wisdom sometimes you'll hear something out of a sermon or or maybe off of a teaching tape or sometimes directly out of the mouth of a prophet when God's wanting to speak something to you now I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one because this one is is pretty obvious we understand this one but we need to remember that even the audible voices have to be judged you know we've talked about that last week we don't want to just take a word just because we think it's coming from God because there's more than one voice to discern okay now the second method of speaking to us is probably the most common way it's a knowing that you get now it's sad because so many people feel like God hasn't spoken to them and uh uh when they haven't heard it audibly they just think well he speaks to everybody else but he doesn't speak to me and they want to hear a voice you know many times we do want to hear something out of our own language and that's because we want him to meet us on our communication level how we think we hear best and that's fun and exciting when it happens that way but I told you last week uh how excited uh when when God speaks uh when God spoke to me about the germs through the the pasture that was exciting and goodness I thought about that and talked about it for a long time but it's also very important to realize that you don't have to hear sentences in your own language to have communication with God and so God's wanting us to expand our thinking and not ever put God in a box now God gave me this illustration he said if a child who could hear perfectly was born into a deaf mute family and had no real contact with the outside world the communication that child would be accustomed to would be maybe sign language or facial expressions or maybe the touch or sight that would be what he was used to that would be normal communication for that child audible words would seem foreign to him you know because he even though he was capable of hearing normally but later if that child was put out into the world and he began to hear words they wouldn't mean anything to him you know and he would want communication with sign language he would want communication with what he was used to so that's an example of what we do so often we want God to communicate with us in words that we're used to our spoken language uh and we want it to be comfortable we don't want to have to do anything that's outside of our comfort zone uh but I'm not going to put down now hearing God's voice audibly but I just want us to be open today to think of some other ways in which God speaks to us and in 2 Corinthians 12:4 as Paul was caught up into Paradise if you remember he heard inexpressible words he said which man man was not permitted to speak so he word he he heard words but not words that he could express in his known language then in Romans 8:28 it says that the holy spirit will make intercession through us with groanings that are too deep for Words any groanings that we can't even express by words so we see that there are times that there is communication that goes out beyond our ability to be able to express it in words now at the end of the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul talks about the fact that uh when we come face to face with Jesus we're going to all of a sudden just know we won't have to hear words uh we're going to know it says the Bible says as we are already known and uh so we'll suddenly just know things without having to be spoken to now I've read some of the stories written by people who have had outof body experiences and practically every one of them say that when they're right there with Christ no words are exchanged they just simply know everything it's just it's just a knowing and the only way of coming into this kind of communication now is by developing a very intimate relationship with the Lord so this is what I want to tell people if you want to hear God the most important thing you do is develop a very intimate relationship with him a love affair that goes Deeper Than Words and that's what he wants out of us anyway I think that that's why he has so many different ways for us to hear is because he's trying to bring us to the place where we search every way in which we can come into His presence and hear his voice and most of you have experienced this at times even in the natural those of you who are married or or maybe you have a really close friend you've had times when you know what that mate or that close friend is thinking without having a word spoken you just knew because of this intimate relationship that you had with them you just knew them well enough to know what they were thinking and what they wanted uh you to know now that is uh the ultimate of what God would have us seek and when this happens you're going to find that he communicates many times it's almost like he communicates in paragraphs rather than words okay now let me explain sometimes it'll be a whole idea that comes to you almost instantly in your spirit kind of like when Jack heard the word uh those three words right Johan Crawford it's just something that's just there it's in your spirit you have a knowing in fact it comes so quickly that there's times uh to uh you know that that you you know the whole situation at one time you really don't have to hear anything now those are the times when you find yourself ministering to someone and without even thinking about it you just know what they need you know you know what to pray for it it's just suddenly known what the problem is and then the answer is right there with it and suddenly you'll just see the whole picture and it becomes so clear that so many times you think that uh you know I've never thought of that before I didn't think that before but now I just know it you know now these kinds of messages from God will always have a ring of truth it's kind of like oh yeah that's right I hadn't thought about that it's just something that God just drops down in you and your spirit man is ultimately he's just bearing witness and when God gives you this kind of Revelation knowledge always write it down because you're going to want to share it with somebody else but you're also going to want to remember it yourself you need to keep a little notebook and and these kind of Revelations write them down because you'll use them more than once now if you'll remember when Jesus was walking with the two men on the road to EMAs he began explaining the scriptures and instantly they just understood they understood what the scripture meant uh their eyes were open and they knew it was kind of like a supernatural knowledge just came on them okay the third way in which God will communicate something to you is by Leading you to a particular scripture now this can be fun so often we don't realize how Supernatural this really is I know you've had times when you're reading the word of God and suddenly your eyes are just flooded with light and you have spiritual insight and all of a sudden you just understand what that scripture means and Revelation knowledge just comes up and suddenly you know what God is trying to communicate to you you just know what he's trying to say it becomes clear now when God does this it's just as Supernatural it's just as relevant now for the things you're going through as hearing L literal words sometimes it's even more important to you now this written word is the logos word but when God points a specific scripture out to you it becomes Rama uh logos is the written word but when God makes the word come alive it becomes the Rama word to you now at that point that scripture has the power to pick you up out of the depths of Despair I know you've all experienced this where you were just down and all all of a sudden uh God just brought a spirit up out uh a scripture up out of your spirit and all of a sudden I mean you were just revived again and it gives you hope that's going to activate your faith and change your whole situation when Angela was in the sixth grade she W wasn't doing very well emotionally and so I was desperately praying for her one day praying for her healing and God supernaturally took me to Psalm 139 and he made it come alive to me so much that he had formed her and her mother's womb that he had known her he had loved her since the before she was born and that no matter what she might be she could be on the the highest Heavens or she could be in the the depths of the sea and she would never be lost to his spirit and it wasn't that he spoke those words to me it's just like uh it just came up out of my spirit to know that and I remember it was over with and I knew she was going to be okay didn't matter what I was seeing at the moment it was kind of like God poured warm oil over me because I knew that God had spoken to me as clearly as if it had been an audible voice so we don't need to minimize now that way of hearing God when we hear him through his word now the fourth way of hearing God is through a vision or sometimes through a dream now this was a very common way of hearing God in the Old Testament as I've been reading through the Old Testament I've noticed how many times God would give These Old Testament men and women Visions uh our Old Testament Covenant was given to Abraham through a vision in Genesis 15:1 it said after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying do not fear Abram I'm a shield to you I'm a reward and U and and it's what what I'm going to do is going to be very great okay now let me give you several examples because this method now it's seldom uh discussed yet it's an a very effective way because what God's doing he's combining the visual and he's com B the audible now in First Kings 3:5 in gibian the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and God said ask what you you wish for me to give you okay dreams that are from God um many times they're called not Visions especially if they have them you know in the middle of the night and so uh God spoke to Solomon that way Joseph the carpenter had several night visions when Jesus was a baby because God was speaking to him where to take Jesus so that he would be protected the Magi had dreams that warned them to go home another way they had these night visions uh to protect Jesus but we have to be careful now not to give God credit for every Vivid dream that we have you know most of our dreams may be coming from what we ate the night before so we do have to check them out make sure they're coming from God but by the same token we never want to overlook a spiritual dream we never want to fail to recognize what it is that God's trying to tell us you know years ago when I was sick and I needed Deliverance but I'd never heard that that there was any such thing as Deliverance I didn't know that but I'd been crying out to God for help and he led me to juel 232 and and he took me there supernaturally it it was it was really exciting and it said whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered well that's just another example of God speaking through certain scriptures I didn't know what Deliverance meant but it told me whoever calls on the name of the Lord so I went outside and I was just calling to God God I need Deliverance having no idea what Deliverance was and then I started thanking him that he was going to deliver me uh because he said whoever calls on the name of the Lord so I said Lord I'm calling on your name I'm a whoever and so God will speak to us any way we're open to hear him now the following Sunday Jack had gone to church early and I was getting dressed and all of a sudden I saw a picture or a vision out in front of me I wasn't in a trance but I was totally absorbed in what I was saying I was unaware of anything going on around me well in the vision I was SE sitting in what looked like a dental chair and there was a man in white he was talking to me and he said you have a badly infected wisdom tooth now that wasn't in the natural realm that was something spiritual that he was talking about and in the vision he had me opened my mouth and I saw this black tooth in my mouth and suddenly my body became transparent and you could see those black roots now from the tooth going down the trunk of my body down my arms and down my legs and then the man reached over and he pulled the tooth roots and all he pulled it out and when it came out it left holes down through the trunk of my body down through my arms and legs and then he started packing those holes all the way through my body and it took a long time I mean I I remember watching and and it seemed like it took a long time that he got the legs full and in the arms and and finally he told me to look in my mouth and in the vision I opened my and there was a totally healed area now since I didn't know what Deliverance was at the time you know I just thought it happened while the vision was going on so boy I was excited you know God was speaking to me and uh I I I just knew that it had already taken place I I was dancing all over the room there was going to be a progression though of events that was going to take place before the actual deliverance and also that where the Lord was packing uh those areas there was going to be a packing period perod and that packing period by the way was the time that I spent in the word after my Deliverance having my mind renewed I I was reading the word hour after hour after hour that was the packing period of course I didn't know that ahead of time but that Vision was speaking hope that kept me going while I was literally going through all that packing period while I was going through all that I didn't put it together right at first with the vision and then later I thought that's what the vision was that was the packing period now God has used Visions to speak me to me several times I Was preparing this Le lesson and I started counting up and realized that God had given me a vision before five major events that were going to take place in my life number one he gave me a vision before my Deliverance the one that I just described number two he gave me a vision and showed me who I was going to marry I was dating somebody else at the time but I had met Jack in typing class and we'd become really good friends it's a wonder we we she didn't really dock our grades because we talked we were right at the back and she just kind of let us talk um I never saw him outside the class and I was a junior and he was a senior and uh when the end of the year came summer came he went his way and I went mine and we never saw each other again but we had become really close friends and I was still dating this other guy and we had talked about marriage after college and one day God gave me a vision and at that time I just thought I was was daydreaming but a spiritual vision and daydreaming now they're not the same thing A lot of people do a lot of daydreaming but that's not a vision from God we have to see the difference but I didn't know about Visions at the time and so uh in the vision I saw myself in an apartment and I knew I was married and I was getting dinner on the table and I was expecting my husband to come home at any moment well in the vision I heard a car door slam so I knew he was home and all of a sudden the front door opened and I looked up expecting to see this other guy that I was dating and to my surprise Jack walked in I I really y'all I remember that day I stood there for the longest time I couldn't take it in it it it shocked me so badly so you can imagine my surprise uh and and how that Vision left me because I didn't know what to do about it Jack was gone he' gone his own way and um I never saw him and I thought Lord what does this mean so you're going to know if it's a true vision from God because if it's from God it will come it will come to pass at some point if it doesn't come to pass you'll probably wonder of God but we have to be careful not to try to make it come to pass it when it's God it's in his timing when he told Abraham and Sarah they were going to have a baby it was a long time before they had that baby so we have to realize that sometimes God will speak something to you and it's a while before it comes again just like every word you hear has to be judge every Vision has to be judged as well now if you have a vision of being stolen from if you have a vision of something bad happening that vision is either coming from the enemy and if so then we need to take authority stand on the word or if it's a warning you still need to take authority you need to do something about it and God will show you what to do God does not give us a vision of something bad happening just so when it happens we can say oh yeah I knew that ahead of time he doesn't do that and um uh we had a neighbor that when my mother's house was burning he came down and he said oh yeah I've had a couple of Vision seeing her house burn and God doesn't give us a vision just so we know it ahead of time one girl I knew uh she said that she had a vision of her husband being killed in the plane crash and instead of taking Authority and standing firm on her Covenant of protection uh she she just told everybody what was going to happen and she accepted it and she lost her husband you know so don't neglect your Authority and let don't let the enemy Rob from you if God's giving you something use your Authority and do something about it one mother said that she was washing dishes and in a Flash she saw her child behind the wheel of a car and the child was asleep and she said there was a huge truck coming with blinding lights and she saw that and she said when she saw that she just started screaming and she said devil you are you're not going to have my child no in Jesus name and she just kept screaming that and in the vision then she said she saw the daughter suddenly wake up and later the child described the same scene and they calculated the time and it was the exact time then um of the vision so don't neglect your Authority when God reveals something to you he's not going to reveal something to you if it's not important the third Vision I received was during the time that Angie was sick and God had given me a vision and I saw her and I saw her healed and she was outside running with this big smile on her face and her hair was flowing back in the Wind and it was a very Vivid picture that I saw well God was speaking hope to me through that Vision to keep my faith going well later after she was delivered and after she was healed I was looking out the window one day in our backyard and I saw her doing exactly what I'd seen in the vision months before she was running with a big smile on her face and the wind was blowing her hair back so God when he gives you something ahead of time it's it's very accurate hang on to it grab it uh the fourth time God gave me Psalm 91 in a dream it was a night vision uh I'd never read Psalm 91 before I'd never even heard the word Psalm 91 and um so anyway I was asleep maybe five minutes and uh God quoted a portion of that PSAL to me in a dream and I'd never heard it before and when I came awake I knew that I knew that it was Supernatural and I started he had said in your day of trouble call me and I will answer and um so um I didn't know where to look for that I didn't know it was a Psalm I didn't know what it was but I just kept crying out to God give me the answer Lord I need this answer and sure enough he did and then the fifth Vision I had been praying for several years for a certain person that I was really close to I wanted them to come into a walk with the Lord and God gave me a vision and I saw a side view of that person's face and they had their arms uplifted and they were praising God well again God was speaking hope for me to hang on to and it it took a while but several years later they had indeed come in and I looked over one Sunday morning and I saw the exact side view arms uplifted praising God and same thing that I'd seen in the vision now some of these Visions came before I even knew what a vision was you know but I knew it was from God I knew it was Supernatural uh but they were each one crucial for my faith for me to stand until that major event happened and so many times what God does when he gives you something it's to give you hope it's to give you something to hang on to you know so that you know that you know it's going to be okay God's good about doing that now when God was getting ready to move Peter out of some old prejudices he gave him a vision a great sheet came down out of heaven and all kinds of animals and birds uh that the Jews would have considered unclean was in that sheep eat and God told him Peter get up and eat well Peter said Lord you know this unclean I can't do that and the Lord told him through the vision he said don't call any man Unholy or unclean so he wanted Peter to realize that he wasn't just sent to the Jewish people he wanted him to go out and take the gospel to the world and um so that was a time when God spoke to Peter through a vision so Visions can be another way that God speaks to us that's very uh legitimate and and we really need to not cast them aside uh and so that you won't forget because many times we forget things you need to have a book of your prophecies and your vision write them all down date them put every every detail that you have and it may some of them take years to come about but keep them there so that it keeps your faith and your hope up okay now I want us to end by looking at some pitfalls to watch for when we start learning how to hear the voice of God when we start training ourselves to do that in a deeper depth than what we've been accustomed to then the enemy would love to throw something their Pathway to Sidetrack us that's one of the big things the enemy tries to do do so number one Pitfall is fleecing people fleeced in the Old Testament or at least we know about Gideon Gideon put out a fleece God had told him that he was going to fight against the midianites so he put out the fleece of a sheep and he said Lord if you want me to go go just let the ground be dry and the fleece be wet well the next morning the ground was dry and the fleece was wet and so I thought uh Gan reminds me of myself he said let's Lord let's turn that around let's do it the other way so he asked for one more confirmation he said this time please let the ground now be wet and the fleece be dry and God honored his prayer again now God had already spoken to him but fear had made Gideon want a little more Assurance he wanted to make sure that it was God and so many people today they do the same thing if God does this particular thing then I know that I'm supposed to do what he's told me to do you know but that was Old Testament and we don't really find any examples in the New Testament of this because we have the Holy Spirit now then when God tells us to do something we need to let the Holy Spirit then guide us into that truth and give us the confirmation we don't have to have a a fleece put out uh but there are many people now who have gotten into to a pitfall with the fleece I'm going to give you one example that I knew about we had this girl call and she told me that she had been diligently seeking God on a certain matter and she said now I'm I've heard from him but she said now I'm going to fleece God to see if my hearing was right and she said if my child grows one inch in the next month then I'm going to know that I was hearing God and U she felt like that was what God had told her to do well that was the during this child's growing years and I thought you know the enemy could really play Havoc with with a prayer like this and so I told her I said be careful because these are growing years you know and lots of children are going to show growth during this period of time and uh so God is wanting us to come to a place to hear his way we're his sheep he wants us to hear by the power of our holy of the Holy Spirit coming up in us okay so uh the number two Pitfall is when you pray and immediately a situation arises and it just looks like an instant answer and I have to admit those those are fun anytime an instant answer comes it's easy to automatically think oh God thank you and immediately we think it's God but we can certainly get ourselves into trouble if we're not willing to judge what it is that we hear and uh uh you know I've given us four or five ways here that we've talked about so use use some of these and and just check it out back when Jack was in Pepsi he desperately needed a Salesman one time and uh so he had asked God to send him send him a Salesman well I was praying too because I was afraid if he didn't find a Salesman pretty soon he might put me on the truck I knew I didn't want that so anyway we were praying well one morning we had prayed fervently and that very afternoon a guy came in and he looked so good you know it almost too good to be true Jack said that it was all he could do not to just say oh my god really sent you when can you start he said that's what he wanted to say but he said he had a cross in his spirit and he just kept saying God I can't believe he could be this perfect and I've got this cross in my spirit but anyway he told him he said well I'll pray about it and I'll talk to you later but he said it was so hard to let that man go because he he he was so excited about him but it wasn't long before he found out that this guy was part of a really bad cult and it it was hard to turn him away because of the need but um when he found that out he realized that we have to check these things out and but God was so good because God gave him another man who was an excellent choice and that happened as soon as he was willing to turn this first man loose now even if the answer seems to drop Straight Out of Heaven 10 minutes after after you pray at least still check it out get it confirmed and uh then number three thinking that because something is good makes it automatically God can be a problem we need we need to realize that good is the enemy of the best now Satan will often put good things in our Pathway to keep us from the best so just because something really good comes along just get on your knees and pray and say God I want the very best you have I don't want to settle for the good so get it confirmed several ways and God's more than willing to confirm it to you he wants you to hear it the right way okay number four Pitfall is people pleasing false obligations when we get caught up in what man expects out of us it's going to be very hard to hear God it's really easy to fall into that trap because we want people to like us everybody wants people to like them but God spoke this very clearly he said you're sacrificing the ability to hear me in order to please people I'm going to say that one more time because it's so important you are sacrificing the ability to hear me in order to please some person or to please people and the irony is that when we compromise to please people and when we do something out of a false obligation at the expense of pleasing God ultimately it's not going to please even the ones that we're trying to impress that's what I've seen you know I mean we think oh you know they're going to be so pleased that I did this it never works out that way but if we are determined to please God then God's going to take care of everybody else we've seen it too many times we just need to examine our motives people pleasing and false obligations are usually always coming out of a fear of rejection we just don't want people to reject us and the fear of rejection is big on Christians they want people to like them uh but compromise will never buy a lasting acceptance never does okay the number five Pitfall is when you feel such an urgency or just an unrest in your spirit that you have to hear something right now you know when you just feel D driven that's when you need to put up a big beware sign you know now God May at times answer quickly and we love it when he does that but there will just be a calm quiet knowing on the inside when it's God it's just where you know that you know that you know now when I move on something uh simply because I'm feeling that I have to make a decision right at this moment I've got to have a decision I don't have another Another Day most every time I've missed it okay number six danger signal uh is is an unrenewed mind now we've had years of practice here he in the enemy because living in a fallen world so we've been listening to the enemy for a long time Satan is the God of this world therefore this world speaks his language and our ears are in a habit of listening to it kind of like uh that child that was born into the home that uh the parents were deaf mutes uh he was used to listening to their kind of communication we have to realize we're used to listening to the world lah Moon said that she lived in China for so many years that here hearing Chinese spoken to her was much more natural to her than hearing English even though she had been born and reared in America you know so she'd heard English she knew English uh but at the same time hearing uh the world has become more natural to us many times because we've gotten used to hearing it that way and that's why we think God's way is backwards because we've been trained to hear the voice of the world until it sounds right to us but God's way is not backwards the world's way is backwards so we have to remember that now this Pitfall is overcome as we have our minds renewed to the word of God okay the number seven Pitfall anytime you have to hide or you have to cover up or slip around to do what you think God has told you to do then you need to examine it very very care carefully now I'm not talking about giving arm sometimes God will tell you not to let your left hand know what your right hand's doing that's different and I I'm really not talking about those times when you feel impressed to fast a lot of people really don't want to tell it when they're fasting I'm taking um I'm talking about a a word from God that is so mysterious and so fascinating and you feel that it's going to be too spiritual for everybody else to hear they're not going to understand be careful because the enemy wants to get us all puffed up in Pride where we feel that we're hearing something that no one else is hearing and that's usually a big danger signal okay number eight traditions of men a lot of religious doctrine that put you in bondage ignorance of the word Rebellion self-will reasoning uh anytime we're stubbornly determined we're going to do it our own way we better be careful because those are not the times when we're going to hear God clearly and uh we won't accurately hear his voice when we're in that kind of a mode a fear of what God might tell you to do will hinder you from hearing God's voice fear usually always hinders our our walk with with something and sometimes we're afraid God's going to call us to do something we don't want to do and so we we subconsciously shut a door God's requirements the Bible says are not burdensome so when God calls you to do something he's going to put a desire inside of you to do it that you're going to want it do want to do it with all your heart I never had a real desire to go and be a foreign missionary but the people that are called to do that they can hardly wait to go and so uh God not only puts a calling on you but he puts a desire for it he puts that desire so we can know that he will never ask anything of us that would not be the highest and the best for us and so that means uh when he calls us he's going to we don't have to fear a call that is outside of our our joy you know so if we're into reasoning if we're into what ifs is going to hinder our hearing God now the Bible says that Abraham troubled not his mind and I used to think what did that mean he troubled not his mind but in other words he didn't go by his reasoning when God spoke something to him he didn't come over here and think about it just say oh goodness if we did this this is going to happen he he didn't bother himself with reasoning he didn't trouble his mind if God told him to do it he just did it if he was ever going to trouble his mind it would have been I think when God told him to uh to kill his son uh put his son on on the as a sacrifice uh God will probably not waste his this time speaking to us if he knows that we're going to reason away everything that he says and if we have a spirit of reasoning we need to get rid of it because it will hinder our hearing God now I'm going to finish with a golden rule that I think that you'll find works most of the time God will speak from the uh inside up out of your spirit man and then it'll come in into your mind Satan speaks from the outside in he speaks to the Mind first and I don't know that it ever gets to your spirit man but anyway he speaks from the Mind first uh Satan will give us Impressions from the circumstances around us for example you'll hear a siren and you'll think oh my goodness I hope my kids are not in a wreck you know but that's from the outside in uh that thought is that's what the enemy uses so we need to hear in our spirit man first and uh that's really what happened the night when uh when Bill's uh uh Team didn't get back when they were supposed to well I was just saying okay they're not here and it's two hours past time but Jack was listening and he heard from the inside up and God was telling him it's okay you know we didn't know what was going on at the time but he was able to go right back to sleep because he knew it wasn't God speaking to him that way okay Isaiah 11:3 says that the Messiah will not judge by what his eyes see nor make a decision based on what his ears hear so he went by his spirit and that that needs to be our goal we need to say Lord I want to go by what you're speaking to me in my spirit I want to go I don't want to go by what my eyes are seeing what my ears are hearing I want to hear you up out of my spirit man um I'll give you an example uh when I told you that we woke up 2:30 in the morning Bill wasn't home that's what I was just uh trying to tell you then uh when Jack knew that he knew that he knew that his Spirit went was at peace and that's where we need to train ourselves where we come to a place where if if if we're if we've got peace on the inside then we can lay the these things aside and say Lord you'll show me what this means later but I've got a peace on the inside I'm going to trust you uh now I'm not saying that God will never warn us about something but when he does it's so that you'll pray and you'll use your Authority and then be obedient to anything God's telling you to do now the Holy Spirit told Jesus that Peter was about to be sifted and when he told him that Jesus started interceding he did something uh about what he had been told that was a problem and that's what we need that's what we need to do I mean if if we hear something and it's frightening and we think oh my if we really do believe it's something that's God's revealing to us in our spirit okay we need on our face we need to go and God will tell us exactly what to do to make it okay now we didn't cover everything but there are these are just a few Basics now that can really help us to discern which voice we're hearing and help us to come uh into a lot more spiritual maturity but that's what God wants from us father that is the desire that needs to be the desire of every Christian father that we will absolutely learn to hear your voice and father it does help when we have some uh things that to remind us father it does help when when we realize that you're going to speak to us from the inside up and when we're just hearing things from the outside or we're seeing things on the outside that's putting fear on us father I thank you that we can put our foot down and say no I'm not going there I'm going to hear from you Lord and so father I thank you we that you're going to help us learn to not just hear your voice but also go by the uh by the inner knowing that you put on the inside of us because Lord you're speaking to our spirit all the time help us to stop and learn how to listen the secret is listening father we thank you that you love us enough that you want to tell us these things and so father help us to want to hear badly enough that we'll say Lord I'll do whatever it takes to hear your voice and be obedient in Jesus name

Channel: Peggy Joyce Ruth Ministries - Psalm 91

Views: 19,048

Keywords: hearing god, discerning god, gods voice, voice of god, how to hear God, how God speaks

Id: mVm5dc8aT90

Length: 40min 21sec (2421 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024