RECOGNIZING GOD’S VOICE

 

I wanted to share today about knowing God's Voice. In the beginning of God’s creation of the world, we are told, The father breathes man into existence.

“then the lord god formed a man from the dust of the ground into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living SOUL.“ Genesis 2:7

Man is created spirit, soul and body! 

The LORD automatically equips our DNA to hear, see and perceive spiritually from the The Father.  He has provided each one of us with a physical and spiritual sense. Hallelujah!

When I was a small child, I was told I had a 6th-sense or what I believe the world dems as ESP.  I could guess the numbers of fingers my mom would hold up behind her back when trying to select one of my sisters or I for a special activity or snack. My sisters would get so mad because I would guess how many fingers she was holding up correctly, every single time. 

But, as a Christian, we know that the Holy Spirit was guiding me. 

Our gut-feelings or 6th sense is simply a way of saying we are spiritually aware - - -we are receiving from our Heavenly Father. 

And as we grow from child to adult … our senses get stronger and our rational mind & physical senses begin taking in all the world perceptions.  As our intellect builds, it becomes stronger making our soul our strength while our spirit is neglected and becomes weak.

Many believers continue on this spiritual road unaware that their rational mind or soul in the driver's seat, not their spirit. 

However, we serve a gracious God, Don’t We?

He provides little glimpses of His Communication to draw us to Him even in our wilderness.

AND because our spirit was created in God's image and designed to hear... allowing us to hear our creator even when our soul is driving!

So let’s talk about how to strengthen our spirit to hear his voice: God speaks in multiple ways and He speaks to each of us in a way that we can understand. 

I am a verbal person, so of course I hear by words given to me in my mind and often times I am given pictures. But my husband he’s a nature guy so for him to hear from God we gotta get outside. God knows this, so a couple times a year he makes a way for us to get in the woods. When we are all out in the woods, my husband’s spirit is fed by nature. God’s landscape of nature is fuel for his soul. 

What fuels your soul?

Another way to hear God speaks is through His Word when we read it. I'll be reading a verse and some of the words will stand out on the page. I have heard people say that their words lift up and float, but for me I can’t passed them by. I will continue reading, but His Spirit will nudge me and bring my thought back to these words until I go back to the them.  This is God through his spirit speaking to me. 

Other ways He speaks is through other voices, for instance… He will use a sermon, a Friend. A Youtube video, a podcast or tv program or even lyrics to a song that I am listening too.  

He can give vision, pictures or dreams.

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if any understand, if any seek God. Psalm 14:2

God is always drawing us!

He can speak through our personal emotions especially through the presence of peace. 

If you have unrest or no peace then he speaking to you about a matter you should take care of.  He has given you unrest  —- meaning you need to do something in order to enter His Rest or peace again.

In my case, unrest, would come when I would want to say something and my heart rate would go up. A fast heart rate does not indicate God’s voice. I would immediately enter his unrest after speaking something spoken from my soul not through the spirit of God. 

We have a wonderful God, he even sends little warnings through our physical body not to speak… hold your tongue. It took a  a long time to learn this for myself. 

Eventually, I learned what I see in others, he wants me to pray about not speak to them!  We are all called to be Burden Bearers. If we see something in others to pray about it then do it!  We can avoid being out of God’s will!  Praise God! 

I usually pray something like, “Lord I lift them up to you, let your will be done.”

God will also speak using circumstances like he did with Jonah in the whale or through the donkey in Numbers 22. He opened the donkey’s mouth to speak because Balaam could not see the angel of the Lord standing in the road, but the donkey could. It took a donkey speaking to get this fellow to listen.  

How often has this happened to us?  

Has God sent you a donkey?  God can send someone to speak to us to shed some light?

And other times, God’s voice is completely spontaneous. We will be going along and a word bubbles up and usually unfamiliar phrase comes to mind. I have learned to stop and write it down and then do some research because almost always it’s something I am foreign too, but is very beneficial. I have received huge growth in my walk by paying attention to God’s quiet voice.

So ….our hearts and minds cannot be cluttered. We all live in a such hurried busy world that our lives are filled with many many things.  Our thoughts are literally racing like a freight train so what we need to put these distractions down. 

I like to say, “Jesus I lay everything at you feet.” 

Taming our minds and emotions — takes practice, but we can do it with practice. 

May I suggest, the best way in which to do this …  is to carve out some quiet time and space in your day. This can be hard, but make it a priority.  

God is awesome, but He will not take your left-overs.  

In fact, He tells us this in Malachi 1:1. God says he loves Jacob, but hates Esau. 

Jacob gave God his very best, but Esau kept the very best for himself. So what does God do for Esau? He says, I will make his mountains a wasteland. Meaning, he will not hear the voice of God and he will be fed to the jackals.   

So when we are in the wilderness unable to hear God’s voice… could it be we heaven’t given God enough?  

Jesus is the lamb that allows our access to God. All we have to do now is sit at His table to eat. We don’t want to be like the people Malachi is speaking to…these folks only offered defiled food at the alter of God. Offering here in this verse represents “prayer”.  

Throughout the Bible God uses all sorts of hidden words we must dig to decipher and learn their true identity for today.

I got myself a Strongs Concordance book to help translate the words for today. 

In Malachi 1:10, we read the table of the Lord is contemptible in other words….contemptible here means awful or terrible offerings 

So how do we properly sit at His Table?

Our table today is set through Yahshua (Jesus) and all we have to do is pray and invite Yahshua into our hearts in complete devotion.

By making our minds still and praying to the Father through His Son Jesus, we can begin to learn how to sit at His Table with a pen and notebook and our bible of course!  

To begin, I suggest you play harp or instrumental music as you learn to quiet your mind. I had a busy, noisy & cluttered mind in the beginning and the music helped, but over time even the music was distracting.

You see if your mind is cluttered so is your heart.

I learned to offer up all my garbage lingering in my mind to Yahshua, Jesus before I even tried sitting with him.  

I literally said, “Jesus I lay this….. blah blah blah at your feet.” 

Immediately, my concerns were gone and I could focus.

Some of you are carrying such deep wounding all you can hear is your soul speaking. I sympathize, I too walked this path. 

To hear The Father’s Voice properly, we must take care of our heart.  In His word, it’s called circumcision. When our hearts are circumcised, we can properly serve the Father and Hear Him speak. All of this takes time, and no Rome was not built in a day as my mom use to say. So don’t give up, keep trying until you get an answer. 

As we begin to hear The Father’s Voice, we are able to discern His Voice from the other voices in our minds and begin to sift & rebuke those voices that do not line up with His Word.

For instance, we read in Mark 4:39, Jesus rebukes the storm. He knew God’s power or voice did not come displayed with loud winds and crashing waves. He said, “ QUIET be STILL”.  There in an instant everything was calm. 

God comes to us in quiet and in calmness. 

So, we know He is heard in a gentle blowing wind & a gentle whisper. 

How can we settle ourselves to hear?

The best way that I've found is to read scripture. Choose a Psalm like 91 or 23 to begin! In fact, read all the Psalms.  By the time you have finished, I bet you will be hearing from God.

As we read scripture - The scriptures open to us through His Spirit.  

Our anxious minds are calmed by His Word, Just like Jesus tells us!

The storm in our hearts begin to calm, we allow for our minds to concentrate on the meaning of His Word.  His word comes alive and an understanding will come over us.  Sometimes, you might feel a warm glow or a peace within yourself that you will come to know is GOD!

The carnal man cannot understand what the Bible says, in fact using our logical mind to perceive the scripture will literally put you to sleep. AND some of the false teachings are formed this way too!

We must have His Spirit to interpret His Word and to receive an understanding. We read this in John 3:6, That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit!

As I'm sitting reading scripture with my note pad not judging anything I am writing or reading, just enjoying the flow of His Spirit as it begins to flow From God to me…. 

I don’t worry about misspellings or sentence structure, I just write….  

Eventually, I begin to hear God voice in the text I am reading. I continue writing, my thoughts are His Thoughts. If some random thought comes into my mind, like go ride your bike, I turn my focus back to Jesus or the cross to quiet myself to begin again to hear His Voice.

In Pslam 46:10 tells us to stop striving let go relax and know that that he is god. 

Be still and know that I am god. 

Sometimes,I have a question and will write the question down and then He will direct me to a verse in His Word like, 2 Corinthians 10 or Acts 14 and His Word will answer my question perfectly.  This is confirmation that I am hearing correctly too!

Before I knew the books in the Bible he would direct me to the Index and pick books for me to read. I would hear start at chapter 7 and along the way I would hear stop. His Spirit would direct my writing.  Eventually with practice our journaling becomes a two way journal. You are asking and God is answering. It takes time and effort, but the mysteries within His Word begin to open to reveal revelation for our lives that are life changing. 

As I have shared before, Lots of times, His Voice is spontaneous and His Words come to mind come when I am busy doing something quiet like knitting or doing dishes without any hesitation or judgment, I quickly write these thoughts down, so I don’t forget. Later, I will find how the Lord is revealing a wonderful revelation that I can practice in my walk with Him.

Recently, I read the monks liked to stay busy because if they were working while praying, their body was quiet and their soul could hear God.  

As we practice Hearing God's Voice, He will leave you a little bread trail of things to encourage you to keep going.   

Hopefully, by my sharing you are inspired to seek the Father more deeply and begin to recognize His Voice when he speaks. After a while you will realize He has been speaking to you your whole life.  

As your spirit becomes stronger your soul gets quieter because it is at peace. Our souls are always talking because there is work to be done within our hearts. This can be painful work, but when we take every thought captive and every emotion to the cross of Jesus, it’s a pretty quick process!

And Once we identify His Voice, there is no stopping us.  I pray His voice beckons you today while your moving throughout your day!  AND you will stop and listen.