How to Hear the Voice of God

[loolalooh]

Source: http://www.precious-testimonies.com/Exhortations/u-z/VoiceOfGod.htm

The Bible tells us that we need to be led by the Holy Spirit (see for example Romans 8:12-14 and Galatians 5:16-25). Therefore, it must be possible for every one of us to discern the promptings and guidance of the Holy Spirit within us!

You can hear the voice of God, and this article will teach you how.


It is not the purpose of this article to go into all of the different ways in which God speaks to us, such as dreams, visions, tongues and interpretation, prophecies, and so on, but this article will give you practical guidance in how to discern God's usual "voice" which He often uses to speak to us.



The Four Voices We Hear

There are actually four types of "voices" which we hear speaking to us, and it is important that we learn to distinguish each one so that we are able to discern the true voice of God:

The voice that is perhaps the most obvious is our own voice. In addition to our speaking voice, we also talk to ourselves inside our heads, we see images and pictures inside our heads, we have emotions and feelings and desires, and so on. Our minds tell us what we think, our wills tell us what we want, and our emotions tell us how we feel. The Bible refers to our minds, wills, and emotions as our "flesh nature," and this article will give you a better understanding of the "voice" of the flesh.


Another type of voice which clamors for our attention is the "voice" of other people. Sometimes people say things which are true, noble, and good, and sometimes people say things which are just the opposite. This article will provide some guidance to help you discern what you are hearing from the "voice" of other people.


The third type of voice is the "voice" of the devil. The devil has crafty ways of speaking to us which he has perfected over the millennia. He does not appear before us in a red, cloven-hoofed suit and speak out loud to us, he is much more subtle than that. What he does is to throw thoughts into our minds like flaming arrows, and he speaks to us through the worldly ideas and viewpoints that he has injected into other people. By the time you finish this article you will have a better understanding of how to "extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16).


The fourth and final type of voice is the most important, but it is also the most subtle. It is the voice of God. God does not speak to us in our minds, He speaks to us in our spirits because that is where the Holy Spirit lives. Unfortunately, we tend to spend most of our thought life in our heads, in other words in "the mind of the flesh" (Romans 8:7, AMP), focused on the sensory world around us where our physical senses and our thoughts, feelings, desires, and emotions are constantly being bombarded and stimulated in worldly, carnal, fleshly ways. We tend to live on the shallow surface, so to speak, rarely venturing deeper where the Spirit of God lives within us. The result is that many of us do not know where our spirits are nor how to hear and be led by our spirits. Because of this we leave ourselves wide open to fall for the many deceptions of the devil. This article will help you to begin recognizing the leadings and promptings that are coming from your spirit, and how to be more Spirit-led.

These are the four types of voices that we hear, and in the next several sections we will examine each of these more closely. Hearing from God is not a science, so I have tried to offer plenty of examples from my own experience to help describe some of the ways that God speaks to us. Please don't let this mislead you, however. In order to "teach by example," it is obviously important to offer examples of the times when I believe that I have heard from God. However, the danger in doing so is that it might give the impression that I am some kind of "spiritual giant" who always hears from God clearly and accurately and never makes any mistakes. Believe me, that's definitely not the case! How I wish I could hear God speaking out loud every day, telling me exactly how I can be obedient to Him and serve Him and honor Him! But that's not how He does things, and I'll elaborate more on this throughout the article. Like everything else in the Christian walk, hearing from God is a journey, and we are all at different places along the way. The journey never ends and no-one ever "arrives," and just like everyone else I still have a long way to go in this area of hearing God's voice. All I have to offer are some things I have learned so far on my journey, which may help you on your journey. I hope that my experiences and examples are helpful in describing some of the ways that God speaks to us, and I am trusting God that soon you will have plenty of your own examples to help someone else who feels frustrated in his or her journey of trying to hear and obey God's voice.



"The Mind of the Flesh"

Our greatest enemy

Here's an interesting question for you: Who is our greatest enemy? If you said it's the devil, you're wrong! Our greatest enemy is our minds, our wills, and our emotions, which the Bible sometimes refers to as our "sin nature" or our "flesh." Consider that if we did not have a sinful flesh nature then the devil would have no hold on us. For example, Jesus had a body made of flesh and blood but He did not have a sinful flesh nature as we do, and therefore the devil had no hold on Him (John 14:30).

1 Thessalonians 5:23 says that we are made up of "spirit, soul and body." Your body is aware of the physical world around you, your spirit is aware of God within you, and everything else is your soul, which is aware of "self." Your soul is made up of your mind (what you think), your will (what you want), and your emotions (what you feel). Our spirits were "regenerated" (made alive) the moment we were saved (see for example John 3:3-8), and our bodies will be made immortal when Jesus returns for us (1 Corinthians 15:51-53), but we must wage a daily battle against our "flesh nature." For example, how often do we say or hear things like, "I know I shouldn't say this, BUT" or "I know I shouldn't do this, BUT" or "I know I probably shouldn't eat this, but I'm going to eat it anyway"? Our "flesh nature" pushes us to do what it wants to do, and we often obey our "flesh" even when we know better!



Our flesh is unGodly

You see, the problem is that our "flesh" is unGodly, it is our sin nature, and that's why the Bible tells us to "crucify" our flesh (as we'll see in the next section).

For example, try telling Jesus every day, "Jesus, You are my Lord and I am desperately in love with You. I will do anything and everything You say, without questions or hesitations or reservations. I will say what You want me to say, I will go where You want me to go, I will do what You want me to do. I am all Yours, Lord, live Your life through me and receive great glory and honor by my devoted, loving, and unswerving obedience." Isn't this the attitude that He wants us to have? Then why do we find it so difficult to say this and to live this way? It's because we are afraid of what He might call us to do! For instance, you might have a great job and make lots of money and have an affluent lifestyle, but God might call you to leave all of that and to go spend the rest of your life ministering in remote African villages. He has done this before! You might be a shy, self-conscious stutterer, but God might call you to hold large healing and/or evangelism crusades all around the world where you will be speaking in front of thousands and thousands of people. He has done this before! You might be a comfortable, middle-class person successfully climbing the corporate ladder and enjoying the "status" of being a member of the "right" clubs or social circles, but God might call you to turn your back on all of that and to begin spending your evenings or weekends in the "slum" areas of town ministering to the homeless or ministering among youth gangs. He has done this before! You might be a small-town housewife with a high school education, but God might call you to go on the road most of the year preaching several times a week in churches, universities, conferences, and so on. He has done this before! God has done every one of these things in certain people's lives, and there is always the possibility that He might do it in our lives as well. Now, be honest, some of these things just scare the daylights out of us, don't they? We are afraid to completely give ourselves over to God's plan for our lives because we are afraid that we might be called on to do things which might embarrass us or stretch us out of our comfort zones. Our flesh doesn't like the idea of having to go through these sorts of things, even though God will only call us to do things which are best for us. God always has our best interests at heart, but our flesh wants to cast its vote and make its wishes and desires known, and we tend to follow what our flesh wants rather than what God wants. Isn't it fairly clear that our "flesh nature" tends not to want to obey God?

What does the Bible say about our "flesh"?

Now let's take a close look at what the Bible has to say about our minds, our wills, and our emotions:



"And He said to all, If any person wills to come after Me, let him deny himself [disown himself, forget, lose sight of himself and his own interests, refuse and give up himself] and take up his cross daily and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also]." (Luke 9:23, AMP)

 

[loolalooh]

The Amplified Bible is often a useful study tool because it provides various shades of meaning to help us more fully understand what the original Greek words mean. According to these shades of meaning in the original Greek, Jesus was saying that we must follow His example by denying ourselves and our own agendas, by disowning ourselves, by forgetting ourselves and our own agendas, by losing sight of ourselves and our own agendas, by refusing ourselves and our own agendas, and by giving up ourselves and our own agendas! This is what it means to "take up [our] cross daily." This is because our natural interests are contrary to the will of God, our natural feelings are contrary to the will of God, and our natural reasonings are contrary to the will of God. The cross is a place of death, which means that we should daily lose sight of ourselves (as in the verse above) in order to hear and obey God.


"the mind of the flesh [with its carnal thoughts and purposes] is hostile to God, for it cannot submit itself to God's Law; indeed it cannot. So then those who are living the life of the flesh [catering to the appetites and impulses of their carnal nature] cannot please or satisfy God, or be acceptable to Him." (Romans 8:7-8, AMP)
The apostle Paul said that the mind of the flesh has carnal (worldly, sinful) thoughts and purposes, and that it is hostile to God and cannot submit to God! Paul went on to say that if we are living according to our "flesh nature" then we cannot please God.



"The Lord knows the thoughts and reasonings of the [humanly] wise and recognizes how futile they are." (1 Corinthians 3:20, AMP)
God says that our human thoughts and reasonings are futile!



"walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh [of human nature without God]. For the desires of the flesh are opposed to the [Holy] Spirit, and the [desires of the] Spirit are opposed to the flesh (godless human nature); for these are antagonistic to each other [continually withstanding and in conflict with each other]" (Galatians 5:16-17, AMP)

The apostle Paul tells us that our "flesh" is our Godless human nature, and that our natural desires are opposed to the things of the Spirit and are continually in conflict with the Spirit. The solution, Paul says, is to walk and live habitually in the Spirit, always being responsive to and controlled by and guided by the Spirit within us. When we are busy analyzing things in our minds and trying to figure out the solutions to our problems and so on, it hinders us from hearing the Lord clearly.

Now, obviously we need to use our minds and reasoning abilities throughout the day in order to do many of the things that we need to do, but the problem is that we tend to use our reasoning abilities almost exclusively and never bother to consult God on any of the decisions that we make.



"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20)
Paul said that his "flesh nature" had been crucified and that he no longer lived for himself. Instead, he allowed Christ to live His life through Paul, and this is the attitude that all of us should have.



"those who belong to Christ Jesus, the Messiah, have crucified the flesh (the godless human nature) with its passions and appetites and desires." (Galatians 5:24, AMP)
"Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires." (Galatians 5:24, NIV)

Once again Paul said that our "flesh" (which is made up of our minds, wills, and emotions) is our Godless human nature and our sin nature, which must be crucified with Christ.



"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. ... But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." (Colossians 3:5-10)
Here Paul said that it is up to us to put to death whatever belongs to our "flesh" (our earthly nature).

As we can see, God has some pretty strong things to say about our "flesh nature," and none of it is good! In the passages above we are told to deny ourselves and to lose sight of our own agendas. We are told that our minds and thoughts and purposes and impulses and desires are naturally hostile to God! We are told that our reasonings are futile and that our natural desires are antagonistic to and opposed to and constantly at war with the desires of the Spirit. We are told that our "flesh" is our Godless human nature and our sin nature and that it should be crucified and be put to death on a daily basis.

Those are some pretty strong words from the Lord, but the way to begin hearing God better is to quit listening to our flesh so much. That's not an easy thing to do, but in order to hear God it is important to turn off our reasoning and to put our emotions into neutral when we are listening for an answer from God. Our flesh is always going to cast its vote on what it thinks we should do, but we need to ignore all of that voting and listen to our spirits instead. For example, if we are determined to do something no matter what anyone says, then we might not hear God when He is telling us not to do it. If we have weighed the pros and the cons and we have made the choice which seems to be the most rational to our minds, then we might not feel the need to ask God about it (even though He might guide us to an even better decision). If we really, really want to do something, then our emotions can drown out God when He is trying to prevent us from making a mistake. This illustrates how our wills, our minds, and our emotions can hinder us from hearing the voice of God.

 

[loolalooh]

Jesus was "dead to self"

Jesus heard from God better than anyone who ever lived, and one of the main reasons is because He chose to deny His own opinions, interests, goals, thoughts, and so on, and He only did what the Father told Him to:

"Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."" (John 5:19)

"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." (John 5:30)

"So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me."" (John 8:28)

"Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." (John 14:10)

What it boils down to is that "the mind of the flesh" tends to be unGodly and tends to be directly opposed to the things of God. The reason I have been emphasizing this so strongly is because we are living in a war zone, and to a large degree the battle against the devil takes place in our minds. If we are led by our own reasonings and our own feelings when we make important decisions then it can leave us wide open to be deceived by the devil, and our lives might end up being useless for the kingdom of God.

The Voice of the World

As I said, we are living in a war zone on planet earth. As Christians, we don't belong to the world, we are aliens and strangers here (John 15:19, 17:15-17, James 4:4, 1 Peter 1:1, 17, 2:11). We are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) serving as ambassadors here (2 Corinthians 5:20). The whole world is under the control of the evil one (1 John 5:19), and we should be very careful not to become ensnared in the world's ways of thinking and the world's ways of doing things.

The devil speaks to us through worldly views

In the world we are bombarded by loose morality, by various forms of spiritualism and the occult and New Age philosophies, and by other worldly, unGodly messages. This is why the Bible tells us to guard our hearts and minds from being contaminated by the world (see Acts 20:30-31, 1 Corinthians 16:13, Philippians 4:7, 1 Timothy 6:20, 2 Timothy 1:14, 4:14-15, 2 Peter 3:16-17). We live in the world but we are not of the world (1 Corinthians 2:12, 7:31, James 4:4, 1 John 4:4-5), and we should be very careful about what we are hearing in our daily lives. This is why it is important to be well-grounded in the Word of God.

Sometimes it is easy for the devil to deceive us simply because we do half the job for him by not reading our Bibles in a prayerful, honest, thorough, unbiased way, and we help the devil by being complacent in our Christian life. It is my prayer that by the time you finish this article you will be better equipped to listen with discernment to the Spirit of God within you as you study His Word. Even your pastor is not immune to these biases and "filters," which is why it is important for you to develop your own spiritual sensitivity and to study the Bible for yourself, allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate to your spirit whatever He chooses to reveal. We should be careful not to let our feelings or our logical reasonings or other people's opinions be our source of "truth," but instead we should read the Word of God and listen to His Spirit within us. That is why God gave us both of these things!

 

[loolalooh]

The devil can speak to us through Christians!

It is so natural for us to become caught up in what makes sense to us that we forget that often the things of God are far above our understanding. This makes it easy for the enemy to speak to us even through the voice of well-meaning Christian friends, family, pastors, and so on. For example, when God called me to this Internet teaching ministry, I wasn't sure at first what the call was. I began applying to missionary organizations to see if that was the direction God was leading me, but when I mentioned this to Christians that I knew they sometimes tried to talk me out of it by saying things like, "Why would you want to be a missionary and maybe end up in some remote part of the world?" People mean well, but remember that they are not sensing the same call that you are sensing, so you should be careful sometimes about telling other people, even strong Christian friends, about what God is speaking to your heart.

Here's an example from the apostle Paul's life. In Acts 20:22-24, Paul said that he was being compelled by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. However, in Acts 21:10-15 a prophet told Paul that he would suffer in Jerusalem, and Paul's traveling companions pleaded with him not to go there. Paul knew that he was being compelled by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem, yet all of the Christians around him kept trying to talk him out of it. If Paul had allowed himself to follow his own reasonings and opinions and to be swayed by what other Christians thought, then he would have disobeyed God.

Another example in the Bible concerns the apostle Peter. In Galatians 2:11-14 the apostle Paul said that Peter was swayed by the opinions of others into separating from Gentile Christians, and in turn Peter swayed other Jewish Christians to do the same. In this case, an apostle was led astray by the "voice" of other Christians, and an apostle led other Christians astray! It is easy for us to be deceived, which is why we need to know how to discern whether or not our spirits are bearing witness with what we are hearing from the "voice" of other people (more on this in a later section). All of us have preconceived biases which act as "filters" when we read the Bible, and therefore even your pastor or my pastor can be deceived and teach us things that are incorrect. If an apostle can be deceived then certainly a pastor can! This is why it is important for each one of us to study the Bible for ourselves every day and to ask God for discernment so that we can recognize the Truth when we see it.

Here's another example. When Jesus told the apostles that He would suffer and die, Peter took Him aside and tried to talk Him out of letting this happen. Do you remember Jesus' reply? He said, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men" (Matthew 16:21-23). The devil was speaking through an apostle! Peter was not possessed by the devil, of course, but he was still choosing to follow his own thoughts and reasonings and opinions and emotions, and these are the very things that the devil uses to deceive us. In the very next verse, Jesus then told the disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). Only by choosing not to be slaves to our own reasonings and emotions can we win the battle for our minds and begin hearing the voice of God within us.

 

[loolalooh]

God can speak to us through other people

In examining the "voice" of the world, we should recognize that God speaks to us through other people as well, but the only way to know that it is God is if we are listening for discernment deep inside ourselves. For example, after the Lord taught me about healing and I had begun writing the articles in my Healing Training Course, I was at a friend's house and as I was leaving I saw that their 10-year-old daughter had a cold. I debated within myself whether I should offer to lay hands on her or not because I didn't know how well the idea would be received, and I missed my opportunity to possibly relieve her of her cold and to give Jesus glory. When I got home, my three-year-old son (Michael) wanted to show me something in his room, but he walked right past the light switch without turning the light on. Normally he is proud that he is now big enough to turn on the light, but that day he began whining that he couldn't do it, even though he had come back and was standing right next to it and could easily have turned it on. There was a flash of discernment within me which caused me to see that as Michael was whining, "I can't do it, I just can't do it, I don't know how to do it," it was God's way of showing me that this was how I was behaving when I debated with myself about laying hands on the 10-year-old girl. I could easily have done it and she might have been healed, but I allowed my mind to talk me out of it. In this case, it seemed that God was speaking to me through my child. On another occasion I was trying to teach Michael something, and I realized that he wasn't quite old enough and mature enough to grasp what I was trying to teach him. Once again I got that flash of discernment within me, as if God was telling me that as I become more mature in the Lord then I will be laying hands on people when the opportunities arise. These are just a couple of examples of the way that God might speak to you through other people (even if they don't realize that God is speaking through them), but it requires being sensitive to your spirit within you in order to recognize that God is speaking to you.

Here's another example. My wife used to work with computers all day long, and when she got home she didn't want to see another computer. However, one day in 1995 she said that perhaps we needed a new computer. Immediately I suspected that God was saying something, and we prayed about it and ended up buying our first laptop computer. I had recently written several articles on evangelism, and I felt that there might be something that I was supposed to do with those articles, but I just had not been able to get any discernment about it. They were too short to be turned into a book, but they didn't seem to be written as magazine articles either. After we bought the laptop, I got a book on how to create a website, and literally the next day I had these articles almost ready to go online. It turned out that they were perfectly suited for a Web ministry, yet I had never even been on the Internet before! Soon "Evangelism 2000!" (the original name of my website) went online and my Internet ministry was born. I was involved with the JESUS Video Project in Houston at that time, and at the very next meeting the directors began discussing about creating a website for the Houston JESUS Video Project. I had my new laptop computer with me and I was able to show them how the Internet works and answer almost all of their questions about creating a website, yet I had just learned all of these things for myself only a week earlier! The point of this story is that when my wife suggested that we look for a new computer, it was so out-of-character that I suspected it might be God speaking through her. Neither of us "felt" anything, but we turned the whole thing over to God and He led us to buy a laptop, and that laptop came in handy for giving birth to two Internet ministries. All of these things (and several other amazing "coincidences") that just "fell into place" at that time were God's leading and confirmation that I was to put the evangelism articles online and create a Web ministry. Ever since then, when I have tried to take part in other ministry activities that are not Internet-related, they have often been very "dry" and have not worked out very well. However, when I come back to this Web ministry and work on the articles that the Lord has put on my heart, I just can't seem to type fast enough to get the words out that are burning in my heart! It's because this is where my calling is for the moment. Anyway, this all started when God spoke through my wife that day, even though she didn't "feel" anything inside of her to indicate that God was speaking through her (except for the fact that she couldn't believe she was actually suggesting that we buy a new computer!). Who knows what would have happened if we had not had the discernment to recognize that God might be telling us something, and if we had not submitted it to God, and if we had rationalized away all of the confirmations which God was giving us, and so on? This Web ministry might never have come into existence, and I might never have been in line with God's plans for me in this area.

 

[loolalooh]

Other people might say that they have a message for you from God

There may be times when people tell you that they believe they have a word from the Lord for you. This is a perfectly valid thing and is perfectly Scriptural (Acts 9:10-17, 21:10-15). God does give people words of knowledge or words of wisdom or words of prophecy for someone else, but you should be careful here. No matter who gives you the word from the Lord, no matter how accurate their track record might be, you should make sure that you have heard the same thing from the Holy Spirit within you before you act on what they told you. If someone gives you a word from the Lord for your life, thank them but set it aside until God specifically tells you the same thing. Don't run your life based on what someone else says that God says you should do, because you can easily get yourself into big trouble that way! A word from the Lord that is delivered by someone else should always confirm what God has already spoken to you (or what He will speak to you sometime in the future). It tends to be a confirmation from the Lord, not a command.

The Voice of the Devil

We have now looked at the "voice" of the flesh and the "voice" of the world. In examining those, we saw that the "voice" of the devil is often indistinguishable from our own internal thoughts and feelings and from the "voice" of other people. The battlefield where the devil wages his warfare is in our minds. This is why it is crucial for us to know the Word of God (by reading it every day) and to be able to hear the voice of God within us so that we can recognize when the enemy is planting thoughts and feelings in us. By knowing God through His written Word and His spoken Word (which I will describe in the next section), we can recognize the schemes of the enemy so that the devil is less likely to outwit us (2 Corinthians 2:11). Our struggle and warfare is not against flesh and blood, our struggle is "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:10-18). We are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20) living in the "dark world" (Ephesians 6:12), and there are various levels of demon powers and principalities who are assigned to attack and oppress us in our minds and in our bodies. This is why Jesus' earthly ministry included healing all who were under attack by the devil (Acts 10:38, Luke 4:18, 7:17-23, for example).

 

[loolalooh]

Resist the devil, don't fear him

Many Christians seem to be afraid of the devil, but notice what James 4:7 says: "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." When your life is lived in daily submission to God then you have power over the devil. However, submitting to God means that you have to give up your "self," because the more that you are dead to "self" the less there is in you for the devil to grab hold of. Try repeating Scripture out of your mouth several times a day, such as these, for example:

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:22-25)

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you." (James 4:7-8)

Try repeating these Scriptures (or whichever ones you choose) out loud several times a day so that they get through all of the "junk" inside you (which we all have) and really sink down deep into your spirit and become a reality in your life. It's not enough to read a verse of Scripture just once, because it doesn't become an integral part of us and change our lives until we repeat it enough for it to "catch hold," so to speak. Now, God can hear you even when you just repeat these passages in your mind, but it's important to say them out loud when possible so that the devil hears them and so that you hear them. You see, the devil can't read your mind, so you have to let him know in words and in actions that you are submitting yourself to God and resisting the devil. The Bible says that it is your job to make the wisdom of God known to the evil rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 3:10). The other reason for repeating Scripture out loud is that faith comes by hearing the message through the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17). So speak the Word of God out loud until it sinks down deep into your spirit and changes your life. God said that His Word will not return to Him empty, without accomplishing its purpose (Isaiah 55:11), so return His Word back to Him out of your mouth and believe that it will accomplish what He sent it to accomplish.

Remember, you have authority over the devil when you know who you are in Christ and when you are walking in submission to God. Greater is He who is in you (Jesus) than he that is in the world (the devil) (1 John 4:4). It is very important that we learn some things about the enemy so that we don't fall into his traps and so that we know how to cast demons out of our lives and out of other people's lives, because this is part of the Great Commission that Christ turned over to us (see my Healing Training Course). Don't be afraid of the devil, but learn enough about him so that you can walk in authority over him and his fallen angels. I have several articles which may help you in your study of spiritual warfare and which will show you how to cast demons out of your life and out of other people:

(See website for links)

 

[loolalooh]

How to Recognize God's Voice

In order to hear God's voice and to discern His leading for your daily life, there is one key point that you need to be aware of. If you can grab hold of this one key point then you'll be hearing from God in no time! Here it is:

Don't expect God to speak to you in a sensational, spectacular, supernatural way!

You see, we have a natural tendency to want God to speak out loud to us in some obvious way so that we know that it was Him and so that we know what we are supposed to do. God occasionally does speak to people in "the audible voice of God" or in some other sensational way, but those are not His usual ways of speaking to us. Why? Because God is into faith, and without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). The thing about faith is that it requires that we don't have all of our questions answered! If God were to speak out loud to us all the time so that we know it is God speaking to us, then we wouldn't need faith to hear Him. On the other hand, if God speaks so softly to us that we need to get into the habit of listening closely to our spirits and drawing closer to God in order to hear Him better, then there is a lot of faith involved, and it requires cultivating a deeper, more personal, more intimate relationship with the Lord. This is exactly what God is after!

The still, small voice of God

The plain and simple fact is that God usually speaks to us in such a quiet, non-spectacular way that we are almost never going to be 100% certain that we heard Him speaking to us, and we just need to get used to that. Once we get past the "hang up" of needing to hear from God in spectacular, loud, supernatural ways, then we will find ourselves beginning to recognize the still, small voice which He usually uses.

For example, have you ever done something that bothered your conscience? Deep down inside you knew that it was wrong, but how did you know? It was because there is something way down inside of us that knows when something is right or wrong. Somehow our "knower" knows these things, and it bothers our conscience when we do things that our "knower" knows is not right. This "knower" which we sense way down deep inside of us is where God often tends to speak to us. There is nothing spectacular about it, there is nothing sensational about it. It is the still, small voice of God.

God's voice compared with the devil's voice

You see, the Holy Spirit lives in your spirit, which is sometimes called your "heart" (2 Corinthians 1:22) or your "inner man" (Romans 7:22), and that is where you will usually hear Him speaking to you. In a previous section I said that the voice of the devil often sounds like our own internal thoughts or feelings, or like the "voice" of other people. Now, here's where it gets interesting, because the voice of God can also sound like our own internal thoughts or feelings, or like the "voice" of other people. However, there are some major differences in the way that God speaks to us compared with the way that the devil speaks to us. The devil shoots condemning thoughts into our minds, but the Spirit always builds us up. The Holy Spirit will convict us of sin in our lives, but He never brings condemnation, and we need to learn to discern the difference between the two. Conviction makes us aware of our actions that were sinful and that need to be confessed and repented of, but condemnation makes us feel that we are bad or worthless. Self-pity and self-condemnation come from the devil, so always resist these impulses and don't allow yourself to give in to them. The Holy Spirit always speaks in line with the Word of God, and this is why it is so important to get to know the Word of God, which is the will of God. If we don't know what the Bible says then we don't know God's will or His character very well, and then it becomes easy for us to be led astray by false doctrines that make sense to our minds. The apostle John said that the Word was with God and the Word was God, and then the Word became flesh and dwelt with us (John 1:1, 14). God and His Word cannot be separated, so if you do not know the Word of God very well then you do not really know God very well. Think about that for a moment! I don't mean for that to sound harsh or judgmental, but if you will put your mind and your emotions and your pride into neutral and listen to your "knower" within you then you will see the truth of that statement. In fact, some Bible teachers point out that you do not love God more than you love the Word of God, so if you treat the Word of God with disrespect by not reading it and not feeding your spirit with it then you are treating God with disrespect. So, how have you been treating the Word of God lately? Have you been feeding your spirit by feeding on God's Word daily? It's something to think seriously about, but don't get into self-condemnation over it; just resolve to begin getting to know God better, starting right now!

 

[loolalooh]

You just know

I hope you're beginning to see that the "voice" of God is not actually a voice at all (at least not usually). It is more of a "knowing" deep down inside of us. Sometimes you will sense a single word or a phrase or a picture inside of you, and it might be accompanied by a momentary "flash" of knowing what that word or phrase or image means. It's sometimes like a camera's flashbulb lighting up momentarily, and you just know what God means because He has illuminated it to your spirit. Your "knower" will know what God means, but it is usually very faint and easy to miss if you are not habitually listening out for God down inside yourself, and it is very easy for your mind and your emotions to make you think that it wasn't really God speaking to you. Your flesh is a whole lot louder than God's voice within you, and He speaks softly and quietly because He wants you to choose to focus on Him rather than on your fleshly desires and reasonings.

I can't emphasize enough how easy it's going to be for you to convince yourself that it couldn't have been God speaking to you. You'll think that it just didn't "feel" supernatural or God-like, and often it won't make any sense to your brain. For example, I recall a story by a prominent intercessor who got the impression one day that God was nudging her to go outside and watch her dog going to the bathroom. If such a thought popped into your head one day, wouldn't you naturally think, "That can't be God speaking to me! Why would He want me to go out and watch my dog going to the bathroom?"? That's our natural reaction, but that is exactly the type of reasoning that we need to guard against! With practice you will sometimes detect that ring of authority in what you are sensing, but again it is very faint and it is experienced in your spirit, not in your brain. Anyway, this intercessor did what she thought God was prompting her to do, and God gave her some special new insights concerning spiritual warfare and the demonic realm as she watched her dog "marking his territory." So when you find yourself thinking, "That can't be God, why would He want me to do that?," try to squelch that reasoning. It's your spirit that's hearing from God, not your brain, so don't use your brain to figure out if that was God speaking to you!

The Holy Spirit illuminates the right Scripture at the right time

Sometimes as you read the Bible there will be a certain word or phrase that seems to stand out in some way. You may have read that same passage many times before, but this time you sensed an inner twinge when you got to the word "gossip," for instance. It would be very easy to miss that twinge if you're not paying attention to your "knower" within you, and even if you notice that twinge it is usually very easy to ignore it or to rationalize it away (after all, the flesh doesn't like to be told that something it likes to do is wrong!). However, that twinge is the voice of God reminding you that you have been gossiping lately. Resolve to be brutally honest with yourself and to be aware of the twinges that you get in your spirit, and resolve to act on these twinges (as long as they are in line with the Word of God). The more you begin to obey your spirit in all of the little, daily things of life, the better you will hear from God. Ironically, the better you begin to hear from God, the quieter He might get, because He always wants to draw you into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him. Jesus wants to be our first love (Revelation 2:4), meaning that He wants to be our priority love. We are His bride, and He is our bridegroom (see Matthew 9:14-15, Ephesians 5:25-32, and Revelation 19:7-9, for example), and we are commanded to love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Luke 10:27). Lovers do not need to shout to one another, lovers speak in soft words and whispers, and they know each other so well that they can speak volumes with just a single glance or a single eyebrow movement or by their body language or by just a single word. We are supposed to be so in love with Jesus and so in tune with Him in our spirits that we can hear His slightest whisper and His slightest nudgings within us, and we should be so in love with Him and to desire so much to please Him that we will instantly obey His every prompting without the slightest hesitation or the slightest concern for "self."

Sometimes the Holy Spirit will bring a Scripture verse up within you, just the right verse to meet your needs at that moment. However, the Holy Spirit won't be able to help you in this way if you rarely read your Bible and you don't have the Scripture verses down inside of you to begin with! The Bible says that "the Word of God is living and active" (Hebrews 4:12), but Scripture needs to be living in you in order for it to be active in your life. Here's an example of how this works. Joyce Meyer tells of a time when she was young in the Lord, and she was sitting at home feeling sorry for herself and speaking self-condemning words out of her mouth ("I'm no good, I just can't do anything right," or words to that effect). She began to feel an evil presence building up in her or around her, and the Holy Spirit brought a verse of Scripture to her mind. Immediately she began saying out loud, "I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ, I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ." Almost instantly the demon left her, and God explained to her how dangerous it is to speak words out of our mouths that don't line up with the Word of God (which Joyce was doing when she said, "I'm no good, I just can't do anything right"). The Holy Spirit knows exactly which verses of Scripture will help us in our time of need, if we will simply listen to Him (recall that Jesus defeated the devil in the wilderness by speaking the right Scripture passages - see Luke 4:1-13).

 

[loolalooh]

I didn't post the entire thing. For further reading, please refer to the link in the original post. This is really worth the read for those seeking to hear God's voice in their lives!

 

[Laela]

Thank you Loolalooh for this meaty post.... good admonishment about being wary and aware that even our own thoughts and reasoning can be influenced by the devil. This applies to everyone!

I was listening to an old sermon last night by Adrian Rogers, breaking down the complete amor we wear as Christians...so your post is timely.

 

[aribell]

Thank you for this. I really agree with the part about "knowing." I think that our spirits can and do perceive the voice of God and the Lord's truth clearly, but our own thoughts, feelings, and will get in the way and override what we know to be true.

 

[loolalooh]

@ nicola & Laela:

Thanks for the youtube video on the amour, Laela.

 

[sweetvi]

I like adrian rogers!!!! I tuned in to more of his sermons on YouTube. This is the type of preaching we are all losing in this generation but need!

 

[Laela]

My pleasure loolalooh! ... this is such an edifying thread!

@ nicola & Laela:

Thanks for the youtube video on the amour, Laela.