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Wanna Hear The
Voice of God?
from Doug Perry - www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
- click here for printable
PDF version
First, what
exactly are we talking about? Does really God speak to people today?
Yes. In a whole
bunch of ways from a gentle nudge, to instruction through the Word,
to using other people and circumstances to speak to you, to sending
dreams and visions (or angels) – and/or even conversing directly
with you.
You can hear
God audibly and converse with Him?! You’re kidding, right?
Not kidding. You
can absolutely talk to God and He’ll talk back. There are
millions of people all over the world that rely on God for constant
daily instruction on all sorts of things. But, there’s a
difference between hearing God audibly (with your natural ears,
outside of your own head) and hearing the inner “still, small
voice”. It’s pretty rare for God to speak to people
audibly (like thunder), but there are plenty of folks out there that
say they’ve heard Him – and the evidence is that once they
did, it changed them forever! Many of the house churches in
China are under such persecution that they can’t set a regular
time for meeting or even tell each other when the meeting will be
– they all just pray and God Himself sets the time and place and
tells each to be there. This is totally for real and the birthright
of every believer!
Wait ...
people hear the God of the Universe tell them stuff? Like what tie to
wear and whether to turn left or right? What job to take? What to
have for dinner? Not just big stuff?
Sure. The Bible
says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your
paths.” (Prov. 3:5-6) What do you think “ALL your ways”
means? And how is He going to direct you if you can’t hear Him?
But my pastor
said God doesn’t talk to people like that!
Hmmm. Well, God
used to talk to people all the time in the Bible. Wonder when He
stopped? Did He say He was going to stop? Isn’t He the same
yesterday, today and forever? If anything, once the Holy Spirit came
in Acts 2, there were LOTS more people talking to God directly!
Never mind the MILLIONS of people who you have to conclude are
thoroughly and certifiably nuts – including many of the most
effective leaders of the church – in order to sustain that
argument you have all kinds of logic problems.
Consider this;
IF God used to
talk to people but doesn’t now, THEN we must not need to hear
from Him anymore. Can that be? By all measures we’re worse off
than ever. If there is a war between Good and Evil, we’re losing
pretty badly right now and really desperately need to be getting
commands directly from Headquarters, not from flawed man-made sources
and tradition-soaked interpretations of Scripture!
IF there is a
battle between Good and Evil, THEN who would benefit most if the
people on the “Good” side were told they couldn’t
ACTUALLY talk to their Commander in Chief? Now, you know the Evil
side is absolutely clear to EVERYONE that if you try to talk to THEIR
leadership you WILL get an answer REAL fast! Even Christians are
afraid to mess with Ouija boards and call on the names of demons
because somewhere inside they believe something VERY real will show
up almost instantly. But at the same time, the forces of
darkness want us to buy that OUR God is mute! Doesn’t that sound
like something the snake would say in the Garden? Despite hundreds of
examples in the Bible that He is available and accessible all the
time, we have too often bought the lie that God is unwilling or
unable to actually talk to His children. It’s a lie from the pit
and we’ve bought into it for too long.
IF we receive the
Holy Spirit when we are saved, THEN 1/3 of the Godhead is living
INSIDE of us all the time! (I John 4:13-17) But He doesn’t have
anything to say?! He’s not interested in our daily activities?
God’s not big enough to know what we should have for lunch? He
knows the hairs on our head and monitors our every coming and going,
but has no opinion about it or desire to give us advice? What kind of
Father is that?! IF we’re dead and it’s Christ in us that
lives, THEN shouldn’t HE be running the show? (Romans 7:4-6)
But my pastor
says even HE doesn’t hear God like that!
Ok, well, you see,
Matthew 18:18 says that, “what you bind on earth will be bound
in heaven and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
It goes on to say that if two of you on earth agree about anything
you ask for, it will be done for you by the Father in heaven. (v.
19) So, could it be that we have whole groups of Christians
that have agreed that God doesn’t talk to people? And if they
were convinced of that, don’t those verses say that God will
honor it? So maybe the problem is that if you’re convinced God
WON’T talk to you that way, He probably won’t. And who
would you blame? The pastor? Probably not – in fairness, we
gotta lay it at the feet of the snake and the generations of
tradition that have been built up to keep us from being truly “Spirit-led”.
There could also
be other problems that would keep a person from hearing God. One
possibility is that they’re on the wrong team - even if they
think they're not. You know it's possible to make up your own
"Jesus" and you'll get a response from that one about as
good as if you were praying to a stick of wood. Another is that
they have unrepented sin that stands between them and God – and
God has convicted them of it so many times that He's just given up
trying to talk to them.
Oh, and by the
way, you’re going to have to get over that thing about the
pastor being more “holy” than you. This is a one-on-one
relationship with Jesus you’re supposed to have. You can’t
do it by proxy through the guy that gets paid to hear God (especially
if he admits he’s NOT hearing God!). We are ALL the Church. We
are EACH temples that hold God’s Spirit. Any one of us that are
adopted sons of God have the ability to petition the Throne directly
and seek His face. God loves each – in fact, He’s
especially fond of those that come to Him with faith like little
children. Sometimes pastors have a hard time with that.
This is just
crazy! How could this be true and I never knew it before?
Wouldn’t somebody have told me?
Well, I think you
underestimate the damage the enemy has done and how long he’s
been plotting this. The vast majority of the church in the West
doesn’t live the “normal” Christian life. That is,
Biblically speaking, we’re to be full of power and might,
we’re to be free of the bondage of sin, we’re to NOT
conform to the world, we’re to be dead to ourselves, we’re
to be ONE Body and loving and serving each other with all our heart.
That’s just a few. Can you see how far away from that we
actually are as a “church”? We’re not even CLOSE!
There MUST be something missing. Somebody left something out! It has
to be this – God is supposed to be directing you and you’re
supposed to be listening and OBEYING. Now ... who would benefit
most from us leaving that little piece out? Yep, the guy in the black hat.
Now, what do you
think a close encounter conversationally with the God of the Universe
might do to a person? Trust me, it would change everything. It would
show them the power of the relationship they have as adopted sons,
they would lose all fear, they would sacrifice anything to keep
hearing Him, they would obey and walk in HIS ways, they would know
(really KNOW) that God Himself lives IN them and they would want more
of Him, they would do the things on HIS heart – like feeding the
hungry, clothing the naked, saving the lost. Probably would be a lot
fewer chandeliers in the sanctuaries. (Probably be a lot fewer
sanctuaries, for that matter.)
So, if this is a
war between Good and Evil, wouldn’t our most immediate and
urgent need be to get people to where they can hear clear, timely,
reliable commands from Headquarters? If you have a guy in Basic
Training that refuses to listen to the Drill Sargeant and does his
own thing, wouldn’t you want to leave him at home? He’s
just going to get himself killed when the enemy starts shooting and
leadership says ‘DUCK!’ and he can’t or won’t
hear them. He’s no good to anybody. Maybe he could be a supply
clerk – but he really shouldn’t be on the front lines.
But we have the
Bible. God’s Word is what we are to use to direct our paths!
Ok, sure. Not got
anything bad to say about the Word! Everything God tells us to do
will line up with His own Word. But no matter how well you know the
Bible, it can’t accommodate for every possible situation and
what you should do. There’s lots of stuff not covered in there
– like which of these two jobs God wants me to take. And
there’s stuff in there that men have been arguing about for
centuries without ever getting agreement. Lots of wasted time trying
to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. (By the
way, which side benefits most when God’s people fight over
stupid stuff? You getting the hang of this yet?)
Think of it like
this. You’re in the Army and they give you a Manual. All kinds
of stuff is covered in there – what to wear, how to salute, how
the weapons work, how to survive in a battle, what to eat in the
forest, how the chain of command works, even what the enemy is like
and how to resist them – there’s even stuff in there about
what the enemy WILL DO one day, whether they like it or not! It’s
a REALLY good Manual – in fact, it’s inspired by God! It
covers an amazing array of stuff and could probably handle most any
situation. So would the Drill Sargeant ask you to read it, maybe even
memorize it – and then send you into battle with nothing BUT
that? Are you going to be able to know what to do when the
bullets start flying? What about group strategy and deployment of
forces and anticipating enemy movements? Is the Manual going to
accommodate for every possible scenario on a rapidly changing
battlefield? Are you sure you’re interpreting it right? Is there
time in the foxhole to be arguing with other soldiers that are
reading it differently? What if some idiot published like TWENTY
different translations and paraphrases of the Manual?! Then what?!
Isn’t there a chain of command? Isn’t there somebody in
charge calling the shots that’s supposed to tell you what to do
next? Aren’t you supposed to be listening and OBEYING?
Want to go into battle without the Manual? No. Want to rely on it
alone when you have other resources available? No. Want to take an
order from somebody that goes against the Manual? No. When the
bullets start flying, do you want to hear personally and directly
from Headquarters so that you can know that help is coming? You betcha!
I don’t
know. This is kind of scary. What if I hear wrong? What if it’s
the enemy messing with me? Maybe this is all in your mind.
Wow! That’s a
whole mess of stuff. Let’s try this one at a time.
Maybe it’s
all in your mind.
Well, it’s
not just me. There’s hundreds of millions like me that hear God.
In fact, most of the growth in the Church worldwide is because of
those people. The “mainline” denominations are shrinking.
It’s the Spirit-led revolutionaries that are exploding into new
territories and pushing back the darkness.
Ok, let’s try
it from the opposite direction. It all sunk in for me one day when it
struck me that satan never creates anything – he just makes weak
copies of whatever God is doing. He’s a liar and a deceiver and
a fake. So ... while it may seem far-fetched, most folks (even
Christians) will admit that evil is a real force in the world and the
supernatural is real. (The Bible verifies repeatedly that witches and
mediums and sorcery are real, by the way ... and that you’re
headed for hell if mess with them. – Deut 18:10-12, Col. 5:20)
The enemy has psychics and mediums and astral-projection and Ouija
boards and demons and zombies and spells and curses.
So where’s
OUR stuff?! If this is a war, why does only one side get cool
weapons? Was my church leaving out important stuff that I needed for
warfare? Because in the first century they had amazing weapons and
defenses available to them. They had the Holy Spirit telling them
stuff they wouldn’t have known (Acts 5:1-11), they had people
hearing from God (Acts 13:2), they had people writing stuff as God
dictated (Rev.), they were caught up in the Spirit to heaven (2
Corin. 12:2-4), they had dreams and visions (Acts 10:9-23), they saw
angels (Acts 12), they saw Jesus Himself (Acts 9:1-22), they cast out
demons (Acts 16:16-18), they were bitten by deadly snakes and
didn’t die (Acts 28:1-10), they spoke in other languages of men
and of angels (Acts 2, I Corin. 12 & more), they healed people
(Acts 5:15), they prayed and miracles happened (Acts 5:12, Acts 12)
– even teleportation (Acts 8:39) and they raised the dead (Acts
9:32-42)! They even had people who were against them drop dead (Acts
5:1-11) or go blind (Acts 13:6-12) – on command! (And
that’s just ONE reference for each! There are lots more!)
Now, the argument
is that all that ended when the Bible was done being written –
but it didn’t end for the other team, so how come just all OUR
cool stuff got taken away? Wouldn’t it have really benefited the
enemy a LOT to spread that story around for a couple thousand years?
Do you see? This is no kind of way to fight a war! There MUST be
stuff we’ve been leaving out! The enemy has us twisted up into a
thousand pieces (33,000 denominations to be specific) and we
can’t STAND because we’re not ONE Body. Because of all the
arguing over stupid stuff – which we would NEVER have done if we
had all been hearing the voice of God personally and reliably and
walking in the Gifts!
This is kind of scary.
No kidding!
It’s the biggest thing ever in your life! That the God of the
Universe wants to be intimately involved in everything you do and say
and eat and wear and think. That’s massively scary! And yet, we
can never have peace and joy and victory until we have relationship
with Jesus and are led by His Holy Spirit. You see, under our own
power, we just screw everything up. There has never been any strategy
of Man that has led to anything good in the long run. Oh, it might
work for a little while, but you get enough sinful people involved in
it, add money, mix in a little satan – and it’s toast.
Or worse, you get Communism or Fascism or something and millions of
people die. There are just two options – if it’s of Man it
will fail and if it’s of God nothing can stand against it.
Since the “church” in America is failing, somebody other
than God must be in charge. See a logic problem there?
Anyway, yes,
it’s scary. But what a payoff!! To walk in holiness because God
Himself is fighting off the temptations and snares of the enemy, to
hear Him all the time and get direction on anything and everything,
to know that He is completely and totally in charge at all times in
every situation. How are you going to find peace WITHOUT hearing from
God? How is what you have NOW working for you?
And hearing His
voice is not even a GIFT of the Spirit! It’s just an automatic
for every believer! We haven’t even talked about prophecy and
discernment of spirits and knowledge and wisdom and tongues and
healing and all the other Gifts God gives His children! Trust me, the
payoff is amazing, but it’s going to cost you everything –
but everything you THINK you have isn't yours anyway, so who cares!
What if I hear
wrong? What if the enemy is messing with me?
Well sure, that
can happen. He’s certainly going to try to confuse and frustrate
you. We are specifically instructed, “do not believe every
spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John
4:1). That MUST mean that other spirits are potentially messing with
us, and since there is no indication that this ended when the Bible
was completed, then there must still be demons putting thoughts into
our heads. And if there are still demons putting thoughts into
our heads, then we must still have a need to test and see if they are
from God. And if they’re NOT from God, then we resist them and
they flee. But it must also mean that one of the possibilities is
that the spirit we’re hearing IS from God! (Again, proving the
point that God speaks to us.)
You see 1 John 4
goes on in verses 2 and 3 to lay out how you can know what it is that
is talking to you and from where it comes, “This is how you can
recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that
does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the
antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in
the world.”
When we get a
thought in our head we have to figure out who it is. There are only
three choices: You, God or the enemy. Sometimes other people
tell us stuff, but they’re still playing to one of the three.
We’re to bring every thought into obedience with Christ (and the
Word). That means our own thoughts that are out of line AND the ones
inserted by the enemy.
Could you screw it
up? Sure. Particularly if the voices are VERY sneaky. Which they will
be because demons are smarter than us and know the human condition
very well after all these years of torturing and twisting us. Without
God fighting for you, you haven’t got a chance. You have to be
constantly on guard, constantly armored-up and expecting anything
from any direction.
OK. I'm getting
that it's possible, but I'm going to have to hear Him for myself.
I'm willing to try. What do we do?
Well the first
thing is to ask the Lord to show you anything that stands in the way
between you and Him. It's like this;
The point of the
church coming together should be so that we can crucify pieces of
ourselves so that Christ in us can live. Said another way, it's to
help each other identify the things that stand between us and Jesus
and pluck them out.
The most common
thing we put in the way is our belief that God won't talk to us.
That's got to go! If you don't think He's a Living God and active and
able to speak and desiring relationship with you, then you're going
to have to lay that down.
One of the other
possibilities is that you're worshipping the WRONG Jesus. Paul said
that would happen, that someone would come preaching another Jesus
and people would accept it. It's very simple; if you make up your own
Jesus, don't expect and answer when you pray! Prosperity-Jesus,
Emergency-Only-Jesus, Not-Quite-As-Good-As-The-Virgin-Mary-Jesus, and
a zillion others are all MADE UP. If you make your own god from
scratch, expect about as much response as if you were praying to a
stick. Those are NOT Bible Jesus - who doesn't like to be toyed with
and put in a box.
Other things in
the way are a reliance on someone else for your holiness or
connection to God (Pastor, wife, mother, etc.). That's got to stop.
This is a ONE-on-ONE relationship with Jesus. Nobody is going to do
it for you. Other pipeline blockages include addiction, pride,
selfishness, bitterness, anger, laziness, fear and so many others
that keep us from experiencing the fullness that is IN Christ.
Ask the Lord to
show you what is in the way and He is faithful to ALWAYS do that if
you'll listen. Ask some other folks to pray with you if
possible and just pray in agreement that the Lord will make Himself
very clear to you about what to do next.
Here's another
illustration that may help. We all have a cup. Lots of verses in the
Bible about that - jars of clay, wineskins, vessels, vials, bottles,
bowls, etc. So the question is, "What's in your cup?"
How the Cups work:
Because of our
fallen nature and the fact that satan owns us, we all start out with
just "Us" and "Sin" in our cups. At some
point, if we're lucky, we get "saved" - which really just
means we admit we need God and He stands in the gap between YOU and
SIN and starts telling you to get it out of there. The
"World" is always working to foil the plans of God. Since
they can't snatch YOU out of the hand of Jesus, the enemy just
neutralizes us by keeping us a constant slave to sin. The best
method is to shake the whole thing up like vinaigrette so you can't
slow down long enough to figure out what's really wrong. Ever feel
shook up like that?
What prayer is for
is to settle out the layers real fast. If you hear the Holy Spirit
and obey, you'll displace the SIN with more God. If you can be so
full of God that nothing else will fit anymore, then you can displace
the SIN. But this is a DAILY thing, not once and for all. He's our
Daily Bread. We need to be full of Jesus all the time.
But if you can get
the red stuff out, the Bible says "The steps of a righteous man
are ordered before him." So He'll start running your life for
you. Which is better anyway, because the YOU in your cup really has
no idea what it's doing. Eventually the Holy Spirit will look at the
YOU in your cup and start pouring that out too! If you can walk in it
and be a good steward, He'll give you a bigger cup full of Him
(expand your territory, extend your tent, etc.). Then, even if
there's just as much of YOU as before, there's lots more of HIM, so
the balance of power starts shifting more and more.
If you want your
SHADOW to heal people like Peter's in Acts, you better have a cup
like an oil tanker and it better be full of blue stuff!
If the prayer of a
righteous man availeth much, the prayer of a kind of righteous man
availeth practically nothing. If you're not being obedient to HIM,
why is HE going to answer your prayers? If there's red stuff in your
cup, He's only interested in hearing ONE thing from you -- I repent,
Lord please fill me with Your Spirit. That's what happened in Acts 2.
They got great big cups full of Jesus.
That's ALWAYS
inside His will. Can you pray that and mean it? If you do, I have NO
idea what will happen. He could send you to Africa, He could make you
speak in other languages, your shadow could start healing people -- I
have NO idea. But I know He's a good Father and He won't give
us a stone when we ask for bread. You CANNOT seek the Holy Spirit
with a pure heart and something else sneak in there instead. The very
foremost thing on God's heart is for you to be full of Him. There is
no peace and joy and victory without that.
Just pray and
believe. He'll come.
Click
for lots more about the "cups"
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