Hello and welcome back. We're on week 19 together of the series Restored, and I really, really hope that God's restoring all things to you. If you're doing this, I would really love to hear from you, and especially if you've got testimonies, things that God's been doing, restoring things into your life that you thought, oh, that's gone forever. Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's just part of your life that you feel was destroyed, and how could that ever be redeemed? And you're seeing God do it. I love testimonies. I love hearing stories of how God's working in people's lives, most especially you.
So, please write in. You have my email if you're following on the website, so please do that. Today I want to talk to you about hearing the voice of God, a really important subject for all of us who walk with Him. We looked last week at the written Word of God, which, as you'll see shortly, is the first way we begin to learn to hear His voice. But the first thing I want to say about this is that you can hear God's voice. I don't know if you've already resigned yourself to thinking, well, there are people that really know God, and they're really tight with Him, like people who are in ministry, or prophets, or people with the gift of prophecy. They really know how to hear God's voice, but me, I don't really understand it much.
You're in good company if you feel that way. A lot of people do begin that way, but I want to reassure you of something. If you heard the voice of God the first time you said yes to Him, what were you responding to otherwise? If you heard, if you can't hear the voice of God, then what was it that moved on the inside of you? Maybe you did hear the voice of a preacher, or it came through a podcast, or some other means like that, but it wasn't just mere human words that caused you to respond and give your entire life and your entire future over to the living God. It was because something inside of you, your spirit, awakened and recognized, hey, that's the real voice of God.
There are thousands of voices out there and thousands of opinions on every subject, but something in you at that moment, recognize that this is God. This is the voice of my Father calling me right now, and that's why we're here together. Here's what Jesus said about it. He was talking to a group of religious leaders who were very offended that He was calling Himself the Son of God, and He was basically saying to them, you know what, your problem is that you don't even care about whether you're sharing on behalf of God or not, and you're not shepherds who really lead the people of God into the presence of God.
You're shepherds who like leading the people of God to follow after you, and He refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd. If you want to read it, it's a precious passage, John chapter 10. But He said these words to everyone. He said, when He puts forth all His own, He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him. Why? Because they know His voice. The sheep follow Him because they know His voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but they'll flee from Him because they don't know the voice of strangers.
So Jesus said very clearly, the reason why people are beginning to flock after me is because, flock after me, see what I did there? Because they know I'm the Good Shepherd. They hear my voice, and they recognize, this is the truth that I've been searching after all my life. This is the one who is speaking words, as some of them described, like burning inside of my heart, or you're the words of life. We can't go anywhere else. There's a recognition of that, and you have that. So that's the first thing I wanted to do, is reassure you.
You do have the capacity to hear His voice. Now, the voice of God, just like every other voice in our life, gets clearer and clearer as we grow in relationship with Him. So maybe you're in this series because you're brand new in Christ, and you're just now learning how to discern His voice from other voices or other influences, from the voice of your own heart to the voice of all the opinions of others who are around you. I mean, so many of us grow up caring more about what other people think than about what we ourselves think about something, don't we? We want to fit in. We're influenced easily. But I want to reassure you that now is the time to begin to get your primary influence from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd.
I have a father. He's still alive. He's 85 years old this year. I know His voice. I can pick up, if you shut my eyes, blindfold me, and just let me listen to a hundred men speaking at one time, I can point my hand to exactly where my father is speaking from. Why? I've known him for 57 years. I know that voice because I've listened to it. I took heed to it. Well, most of the time. When I was growing up, I listened to it. I obeyed it. And I know it because I've had relationship with him for a long time.
And the longer I walk with my father in heaven now, as you'll discover, the more clear his voice gets. Because there are many influences and there's so many ways that we can think that God's speaking to us. So I want to share a few tips and tricks today to get to know the voice of God. And here's a truth. The voice of God is so familiar to us. It sounds so, so familiar. It sounds so common. We think, oh, the voice of God, it's going to be like, you know, Cecil B.
DeMille on the mountain with, you know, Moses on the mountain. Moses. And it's going to sound like this rich thing shaking the walls. And you're going to go, where did that come from? And I want to tell you, there are precious few people that ever hear God that way. There are some, from what I understand. I personally have never heard what we say. We call it an audible voice of God, like where I would turn around and look to see if somebody's in the room. That's the exception. Most often, God speaks from a voice that sounds like it comes from a place deep inside.
As a proverb or a psalm refers to it, deep calling unto deep. And you could hear words that you've heard a dozen times before. But when you hear them from the Father, there's something that moves on the inside. And there's a knowing. I recognize that voice. That's the voice of my Father. So we can miss the voice of God because it sounds so familiar. As a matter of fact, there was a prophet in the Old Testament named Samuel. You may have already come across a couple of books named after him.
First and Second Samuel. The prophet Samuel was called when he was a young boy to be a prophet. And the scriptures describe him as a prophet whose word never fell to the ground. Which means anytime he said, thus says the Lord, it came to pass exactly like he said. So people were like, wow, this guy really knows how to hear the voice of God. Well, the first time he heard the voice of God, he was about 12 years old. And he was in the temple with the high priest whose name was Eli.
And he was just going down to bed for the night and he heard somebody calling his name. And so he got up out of his bed. He went to Eli the high priest and he said, here I am for you called me. And Eli said, I didn't call you. Why are you in my room? Go back to your bed. After the third time, Eli figured out, you know what? I think God's calling you. The point is, the voice sounded so familiar to Samuel that he thought it was somebody he really knew.
And that's how God speaks. The first thing to recognize is don't look for God in the strange, extravagant, weird way that he shows up. But get to know him as an intimate. Remember, you have Christ in you right now. Where is the voice of God going to be found? You ever hear music playing? And if you're in a certain environment, you kind of start looking around to know where's that sound coming from? And, you know, where's the speaker that's playing that music? And you look around and finally you could zone in sometimes and figure out, oh, it's coming from that area right there.
The voice of God, as you will hear it now, because Christ in you, the hope of glory lives inside. You tune in and that voice is going to be starting right on the inside. Again, sometimes God does speak externally. Sometimes he uses his people to speak his word. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But most of the time you're going to find that God is speaking you on the inside. What happens, though, is that we can be prone to hearing what we want to hear. And here's a danger with listening to the voice of God.
Because we're listening for what we hope to hear, we can tune out things that are said that we don't want to hear. And we can do that with God. We can actually miss the voice of God because we don't want to hear what he has to say. So just here's six things just to get you started on really leaning in to listen to the voice of God. And all of these, I hope, will lead to one destination, that you don't make it too complicated and that you eagerly desire to hear his voice. And that's the first thing that I want to say about hearing the voice of God. For those who eagerly desire to hear it, he won't disappoint.
When we go back in and talk some more about prayer, I'll share this word of wisdom with you. But prayer should not just be us talking at God, making our requests known. All of that's important. And we need to tell God what's on our heart. We need to pour out our heart and our needs and requests before him. But prayer also involves sitting quietly long enough to hear his voice. And sometimes hearing his voice requires some long periods of quiet. Why? Because our soul is so restless and our mind is so filled with thoughts upon thoughts.
And before we know it, we sit there to say, okay, God, I need to hear from you about this. But our mind's flooded with a thousand other thoughts. And the first thing about hearing the voice of God is that we've got to clear the decks and sincerely desire to know, what are you telling me right now? So getting to know the voice of God begins with getting to know what he has already said. I can't say this strongly enough. This Bible that you have and that we've been studying together is your first way of knowing what God is saying. Why?
Because we're prone to deception. Yes, we can hear the voice of God, but we can also be deceived. Adam and Eve, think about this. Adam and Eve got to walk and talk with God. We don't know how he showed up, how he physically manifested himself in the Garden of Eden. But we find on the day that Adam and Eve sinned that there was God ready for his daily walk in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. They knew God intimately. They knew his voice. And even they could be deceived by the voice of the serpent who said things basically indicating that God was holding out on them.
We can be deceived. And here's the problem. The problem with deception is it's so deceiving. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but the point is if we're deceived, we don't know we're deceived. That's the point. We know when we've been told a lie sometimes. But if we're deceived by a lie, it means we bought it hook, line, and sinker. And we can actually think that God said something that's exactly opposite what God said. That's how good the enemy is at deception. So here's what the scripture says. If we turn to Hebrews chapter 4.
At the very end of the chapter, it says this. Therefore, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And it pierces as far as the dividing of soul and spirit into joints and marrow. And it's able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That's how powerful the word of God is. It's like a sword. And you can imagine a surgeon's scalpel. Inside of us are some thoughts that originated in heaven and other thoughts that originated in other places. And the word of God comes to us when it's clear and in writing.
And it can discern, you know, that thought that you have right now that's wrong. It's counter to God's way. It's counter to God's love. It's just not from God. And the word of God sometimes can come and say, no, actually, you're wrong. And that's why, as we've said many times, it's so important to approach our newfound walk with God with humility, like a little child who's able to be taught. And I encourage you again, as you read the word of God, to read it like you've never heard it before. And don't assume for a moment that you know anything unless the word of God's revealed it to you.
I've even encouraged you to question everything that I share on these teachings. I'm just a man who's sharing from the word of God and from my life's experience what it's like to walk with God. But this word will convict. Mark Twain famously, he was very funny with his quips, and he talked about the Bible. And he said, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me. It's the parts I understand that bother me, meaning I feel convicted by this, and I want to do things my way. And I don't like that the Bible has another idea about how I'm supposed to live my life.
So, when we live in the word of God and make this our daily bread, we're beginning to understand the voice of God. One thing we can say for sure is that God will never tell us to do something opposite or contrary to what he's already written in his word. This word is certain, this word is sure, and it's always right. And if we disagree with it, it's right, we're wrong. So that's a basic principle of understanding the voice of God begins with hearing what he already said. Second, I encourage you with this, have a predetermined yes in your heart. So say you're seeking God about a decision you have to make, or you want to know, is this good or is this not good for anything, whether it's a small thing in life or whether it's a big decision in life.
If our heart has already determined whatever God says, my answer is going to be yes. Then we're not pushing away and we're not fighting against what God might be saying. Next week, we're going to look at what's called strongholds, spiritual strongholds. And we tend to sometimes think they have to do with demons and supernatural realities, which is the origin of all lies, to be sure. But strongholds represent things in our life where in our thinking or in our beliefs, we hold something really, really dear to us that's contrary to the will of God, contrary to the ways of God. And if we're not careful, we can find ourselves arguing with the word of God and fighting against God. Well, I don't need to go too deep into this.
We're not going to very well hear the voice of God if we're rejecting it. You remember being a teenager and you probably went through a short, hopefully short, rebellious period where your parents' voice was the last voice in the world you wanted to hear and you didn't take their advice, you didn't take heed to their counsel, and so you kind of pushed them away. Then maybe you had the glorious experience or your parents had the glorious experience when you got in your 20s of coming back and saying, you know what, I'm ready to listen now. I think you were right in what you were trying to say. So I urge you, don't do that with God.
If we push the voice of God away by saying no repeatedly or arguing with the word of God rather than saying yes, my heart says yes, I'm already ready to go, we're at risk of losing our ability to hear the voice of God. And that's the next thing I want to kind of dig in a little bit. Learn to respond to those small promptings. Again, it sounds like it originates on the inside. It's a small prompting to do something or not to do something. Most often, if you're like me, it's a prompting that says, don't do that. It sounds almost like in the cartoons that had the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other going back and forth.
And it's a little bit like that. But more what it is, is we have a conscience and a spirit that's been awakened inside of us that already has communion 24-7, 365 with the Spirit of God. So if God's communicating to us or warning us, hey, don't go there. To me, it sounds like this little voice, don't do it or don't say that. And I can hear it. And if I ignore that voice and push on through and do something that I knew I shouldn't do. Remember back to Romans chapter 7?
Why do I keep doing the thing I don't want to do? And I don't do the thing that I want to do. And there's this war going on inside the heart. That is, by the way, what a stronghold is. Why am I at war with my own self? Because there are strongholds of thinking and belief that are so deeply embedded. We don't know why we do the things that we do. And when we respond to the small promptings, that enhances our ability to hear the voice of God. It's like a good feedback machine.
So we hear God, we say, yes, Lord, we do what he says. There comes a peace and a joy on the other side of that obedience. It reinforces our capacity to tune out the other voices and tune into the voice of God. When we say no repeatedly or we ignore that little voice inside of us, we can actually make even the voice of God, like the adults in all the Peanuts cartoons. Remember, if you've seen those old Charlie Brown cartoons and all the adults, like the teacher, they sound like wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Do you know you can do that with the Holy Spirit where that voice becomes so muddled?
Why? Because we haven't been tuning in and listening to it. So our simple obedience and the small things, our response to those small promptings is huge in learning how to hear the voice of God. Now, if we have a big decision to make, we're discerning something, you may want to get some counsel from people who already know how to hear the voice of God, who have been walking with God for some time, and they will help you. Hopefully, you have a mentor that's been walking with you through this series and teaching you in the Bible and helping you with these things like this. Ask them, hey, does this kind of line up with what the Scripture says? Or here's what I feel like I should be doing right now.
Do you have any input? And if they're wise, they'll pray with you and say, let's talk to the Lord together about this, and I'll share my perspective on it. But mostly, what you want to find are people who know how to draw out of you what we already know. I find when I walk with people who are trying to hear God's voice, they already know what God has said. They're looking to me for a confirmation. Or they know that they should do something, and they don't want to do it. And they want one more voice to give them some iron in their spine to say, no, I'm not going to do that thing, as enticing as it is.
And I'm helping give them moral support to do the hard thing or not do the hard thing. So check in with a wise friend or two before you make a big decision, especially when you're new, trying to discern the voice of God. At the end of it, the simple phrase about discerning the voice of God from all the other voices is to follow your peace. Follow your peace. That sounds really simple. And again, if we've done the things that I've been sharing with you, make sure the word of God lines up with it, where we've learned a lifestyle of yes, Lord. We've checked and taken counsel with some friends and really endeavor to hear the voice of God.
I got good news for you. God doesn't play hide and seek with his will. He's not going to make things difficult for us to discern. He's not going to hide when we say, God, should I buy that house? Should I take that job? Should I move to this new place? He's not going to say, well, I hope you can figure it out because I'm not going to make it easy for you. I assure you that God wants to make it easy. It's we who make it complicated. Follow your peace simply means when we've gotten to that place of prayer and we've submitted our will to God's will, we've in sincerity, we've said, I'm not going to try to convince God to see it my way.
When we're in prayer, if we're doing that game of I'll take any answer except the ones I don't want to hear. If we've not done that with the Lord, but we've said, I really want to know your will. Well, there comes a peace with the decision. There comes a peace. The scripture refers to it as a peace that goes beyond comprehension. So in other words, sometimes there's a peace about doing something that seems scary. And the only reason why it seems peaceful is because we have a confidence that God is in this.
The safest place in the world is dead smack in the center of God's will. You could be in a battlefield with mines and explosives all around you and ordinances going off left and right, and you are safer there in the will of God than you are in a cell being protected outside of the will of God. Um, so following your peace, if you are ready to make a big decision and you still feel this angst about it inside of you, and that angst isn't based upon fear or anxiety because you're overthinking what might go wrong. If there's fear or there's some feeling, I don't know about this, then I would say stay in the presence of God and listen a little bit longer. Again, God's voice doesn't always come immediately, at least to our ears, because we sometimes have to work through all of our anxiety and fear and other things interfering with our capacity to hear the voice of God. Um, and then finally, I'll close with this.
I'm going to give you a few tips and what we're going to revisit this, um, down the road a little ways here, but pay attention to the small things, the things you may not even consider that God may be speaking through. One of them might be more obvious than the others. There's prophecy. Christians all prophesy. I'm going to say that again. Every Christian prophesies. Meaning, when we open our mouth, prophecy is simply hearing something from God and then saying it out loud. It's really not more complicated than that. Now, some people have a gift of prophecy, and it seems like they know things that no human could know.
And they're saying things that nobody could possibly know by natural knowledge. That's a gift of prophecy. But every Christian who speaks the truth of God's word, uh, like if you have a friend who just says, you know, I just want to encourage you with something. I was praying for you this morning, and I want to give you a word of encouragement right now. They are prophesying to you. And all I'm saying right now is take those words seriously. Write them down. If you're like me, I've got a head like a sieve.
My nickname in college was Blayer Brain, because I'm forgetful. So I used to write things down in a journal. Now I take notes. I have an app on my phone called Evernote. And so I write things down. If I feel like God just communicated to me, I'm going to take that seriously. I'll take it seriously, second only to the scriptures themselves, because it's the voice of God. It's God communicating to me in a way that I heard clearly. Man, I want to know and remember all of that. And so I write things down.
I have a whole book full of prophecies and words that I heard from God through the mouth of others and through my own spirit. And I take it seriously. I pray into those things. Don't forget the things that God said, in other words. I also encourage you to start paying attention to your dreams. We spend about a third of our life sleeping, some more than others. We spend so much time in this unconscious state and some of us remember our dreams more than others. You may be like, you know, some of my family members remember their dreams and every day they got something else that they remember.
Now, knowing which ones were the pizza you ate before you went to bed and which ones were from God, that's a matter of discernment. But what I'd encourage you to do is if you have a running theme going on in dreams that you remember when you wake up, like the same person keeps showing up or the same event keeps happening or the same kind of event keeps happening, start writing that down and take it seriously and bring it to the Lord and say, are you trying to show me something? I mean, when you think about it, we spend so much time sleeping and it's a time that we're not arguing with God.
If God speaks to us in our dreams, we're not there to say, yeah, but what about this? He can communicate directly to us and it's a great time. And many people in the scriptures, as you read through, you'll see that God spoke to them in dreams and visions. And in other words, he bypassed the brain needing to understand something and got right to, as we say, a picture is worth a thousand words and a moving picture is worth a million words. And that's how God speaks many times. Also pay attention to things that are repeated when you're awake in everyday life. If you keep hearing people say the same thing to you, like two or three people give you the same word of encouragement or maybe the same word of warning, I would pay attention to that.
Sometimes if you're like me, you need to hear something more than once before it really penetrates and sinks in. And God's faithful to do that. He'll send the same word, the same message more than one time. Maybe the same event will keep happening to you. Sometimes the same numbers will keep appearing in your life. Like I'll give you one crazy testimony. My wife and I experienced to close with here. I was just getting my heart opened to this way of God speaking. And we kept seeing on my clock twice a day for like three weeks straight, every day, twice a day, 11-11 on the clock.
Now, not every time you see numbers on a clock does it mean something. But after a few days of seeing 11-11, both a.m. and 11-11 p.m., got my attention. So my wife and I were laying in bed one night and she said, you know what's weird? I keep noticing that I'm seeing 11-11 on the clock twice a day. I was like, I'm seeing 11-11 twice a day. Let's pray and let's see if God wants to, maybe he's communicating something to us. Now, as it happened, I was getting ready to teach the book of Hebrews.
So I was reading through it as is my practice. I read through it a few times before I begin to process and make notes. And I remembered as soon as we set our hearts to prayer, I began to laugh. Because my wife and I really wanted to have another child. And it was burning in our hearts. And we'd had a really painful miscarriage. And we were going through a lot about it and being discouraged as we were waiting. And we were getting older. We were in our 40s at this point.
And we felt like, no, I really feel like we're supposed to have one more child. Hebrews 11-11 is about Sarah. And it says this about her. By faith, Sarah received strength to conceive even when she was past her age. Now, you could say, well, that's just coincidence to us. It was the voice of God. And it confirmed to us, we are going to have another child. And so we prayed that night and we stood in faith. And just a little, well, about nine months later, Anya Blayer was born, our fifth child.
And so that's another way. All I'm saying is don't dismiss those things. Because God does communicate in creative, clever ways. If our spirit's open to it, we sincerely desire to hear the voice of God. We will, you will hear the voice of God. So begin to practice those things. Be open to it. Respond to it when you hear it. And please do share the testimonies at times. Hey, I heard God say this thing to me. And it came to pass exactly like you said it would. Because that's really encouraging to you.
And it would be encouraging to me to hear too. God bless you as you hear the voice of God. May your ears be open to hear everything that the spirit of God is saying to you today. Amen.