 Today we're going to be talking about how to hear God. You know, hearing God is one of the basics, one of the fundamentals of our Christian walk. But unfortunately, I feel like sometimes people can be years into Christianity or into salvation and not know that they can hear the voice of God. John 10, 27 tells us, and this is Jesus speaking. He says, my sheep, they know my voice. If there's one thing that I want you to know is that you know God's voice. It's not necessarily an audible voice. And in fact, most of the times it's not. There are very few people that I've talked to that have actually heard the audible voice of God. So when I say that you hear God's voice, it doesn't necessarily mean like you're hearing my voice. It can sound a lot of different ways. Sometimes it can be a feeling. Sometimes it can be a certain emotion that sweeps over you. Sometimes it can be him speaking through his word to you and it hits you a certain way. Sometimes it can come across like an encouragement. Sometimes it sounds like your own voice, but it's something very positive and uplifting. And so I just want to tell you, and I want to instill in you, that you hear God's voice. You know his voice. His sheep, they know his voice. The first thing that you need to know is that you hear God's voice. The second thing you need to know is that he's always talking to you. The word of God tells us that more than the sand on the ocean shores, more than that are my thoughts toward you. So if you think for one second that he doesn't have something to say to you, you're wrong. He always has something to say to you. He always has an encouraging word for you. He always has a word of correction for you and his Holy Spirit is constantly speaking to us. You know, knowledge is power and God does not want the prideful to be powerful. Therefore, God hides his word so that only the hungry and the humble have access to his voice. Luke 10, 21 says, in that hour, Jesus rejoiced in the spirit and said, I thank you Father, Lord of heaven, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in your sight. It's just another way of God saying that if you remain humble, you're gonna hear my voice. You're going to be able to get fresh revelation upon fresh revelation because you're seeking it out. You're not looking to yourself for answers. You're looking to God for answers. All over in the word of God, specifically in the gospels, Jesus teaches in these parables. These parables would leave people baffled sometimes. And you know, the reason why Jesus did that was because he wanted the individual hearing the parable to seek God out for the answers, to seek God out for those hidden treasures found within those parables. In Proverbs 25, 2, the verse says this, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. So it's as simple as that. God wants us to rely on him. You know, sometimes we can be proud and arrogant and think that we have the answer to everything, but truly God is the one who has the answer to everything. If we have not heard the Lord speaking to us in the last 24 hours, we may need to take a step back and say, okay, God, remind me of your voice. And you know, the easiest way to do that, the easiest way to calibrate God's voice in your life is to read the word of God. What God says to you will never go contrary to the word of God. And if you feel like you're having a dry spell of not being able to hear God, the best thing you can do is go right here. Anybody who is an author, they have a writer's tone. And what it is, it's a specific, almost a signature of the way that they write. And some people could not know the name of the author, but because of the tone that they write in, people would be able to distinguish who the writer was. And it's just like that with God's voice and with God's word. He has a specific tone. And when you learn his tone, you know what that tone sounds like. And you can be sure that it is God. God's goal is always gonna be relationship with us. And that's why I love the fact that we can hear our creator's voice. You know, Christianity is very distinct and very unique in the fact that we have a two-way conversation with God. That's one of the things that's so drew me and so pulled on my heart and really kept me in my faith is knowing that I could have a conversation with my creator. I know for a lot of you, it's probably been the same thing. You know, it just is such a privilege and such a beautiful thing when you can sit nearly face-to-face with your creator and he can encourage you and he can pour into you and you can worship him and you can praise him for all that he is. God doesn't want to simply impart information, but rather the goal is to draw us into a deeper relationship with him. If we begin to use prophetic as a tool to expand our ministry rather than accepting it as an invitation to a deeper relationship with Jesus and his church, he will change his language. And what I mean by this is, God doesn't change his language to cut us off, but God is in a continual pursuit of us and it's the same way. God wants us to be in a continual pursuit of him. So maybe if you're not hearing his voice as clearly as you were, maybe you need to change the radio station just a little bit. You know, I wanna go over again really quick that God's voice is not always audible and very seldom is it actually audible. The more that we realize that, the more that we can take the constraints off of what we think God's voice should sound like so that we can actually start hearing him. For each and every person, God is going to speak to them a little bit differently. For me, I've never once heard the audible voice of God, but I know he speaks to me. I know what his voice sounds like to me and for me. And this is something that you're gonna pursue as well in your Christian walk. For me, a lot of times it comes through a feeling or emotions or I'll be writing and I know that I know. It lights my spirit on fire and I can tell that it is a direct download from my creator. Other people will have visions. They'll see different things and they'll know, man, there's no way I could have thought about that. Some people will have dreams. Some people will hear the voice of God audibly. So I don't want you to think that God's voice sounds one way. God will speak to you in the way that you will hear him. There is this continual war going on and that war is to make you think that you do not hear God's voice. Please let me reassure you in this. You hear God's voice. Jesus told us that my sheep, they know my voice. So you, my friend, you hear God's voice. You do. You absolutely hear God's voice. But there is a continual war going on that will try to tell you you don't hear his voice. That wasn't God. You know, maybe that sounded like God, but that wasn't God. But the more you grow in this relationship with God, the more you understand the way he speaks to you, the less effective those lies are. There's a parable that speaks about a sower of the word and it's talking about how this farmer went out and he sowed seed onto the ground. Well, some of it fell on rocky soil. Some of it was sown and the birds came and they took it away. Some of it fell amongst the thorns and then other of it fell on good soil. And this is a perfect example of how God's voice in your life can be stolen. It cannot take roots or it can land onto good soil. The seed, that's not up to you. The word of God that comes to you, that's not up to you. But the soil that it falls into, that is up to you. And that is directly based on the value that you put on that word. Now, we can receive things from God and go, oh, that's great, that made me feel so good, I love it, and then you'll walk away. But sometimes God will bring a word to you and he doesn't just want you to consume it. He wants you to consume it and do something with it. He wants you to use it as energy to go and do something. So not all the time does God just give you this idle word to make you feel good. A lot of times God will put a download into you or put a seed into your life so that you can go and produce fruit. So I wanna say that again, is that the value we place on the word will determine the power we will receive from it. That all has to do with your heart and that all has to do with what you decide to do with that word. The same thing is true with like prophetic words. So I was specifically talking about how you hear God's voice, but sometimes there's a little bit of a different avenue that a word can come through and that's through prophecy. And this is more of like an external word coming in. So maybe a man of God comes to the church and he gives you a prophetic word or maybe you're in life group and one of your fellow life groupians, I don't think that's a thing, but maybe one of your fellow life groupians, maybe they give you a prophetic word. Okay, so that's great. But you need to value that prophetic word. And Matthew 10, 41, it says, he who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. Basically what that is saying is if you take that word as the word of God through the prophetic man or woman and you value that as the word of God, then you take the correction or you take the advice that he gives you and you do something with that, then you're gonna receive the reward that came from that. Valuing the word of God means that we value hearing from the Lord. You know, sometimes, once again, we can take in the word of God and not really do anything with it. But valuing it and doing something with it, you'll be able to differentiate God's voice more and more because you're being obedient with what he has given you. Some of the reasons why God's voice falls silent in our lives is because we're not giving it any weight. And so his voice becomes quieter and quieter and quieter because your flesh is taking more space than your spirit is. But the more you heed and the more you're obedient to the voice of God, the more that you're gonna take it as the end all, be all. You know, this is a step in growing God's voice in your life. He's always speaking to us, but we're not always hearing. That takes practice. It takes practice and it takes knowing that you hear God's voice. So that's one avenue that you'll hear God's voice. Sometimes it's more of the internal conversation that you have between you and God. Some other times it comes through a prophetic man or woman of God, but with both of those things, it is so important to test which spirit it is coming from. So now we're gonna talk a little bit more about discerning God's voice. This is not something you need to be scared about. This is not something that you need to be worried about, but it is something that you need to give some attention to, to make sure that you are dividing well what is God and what is something else. This is gonna come in very handy in your Christian walk. So testing the spirit. In verse John 4.1, it says this, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. We must recognize that not every voice that you hear is going to be from God. John says that we are the beloved. We are the ones who are able to hear the Holy Spirit, but he also warns us that we're able to hear the wrong spirits as well. At this time, I want to talk to you about the fact that the enemy can be very sneaky sometimes, and he can try to masquerade himself as the angel of light. And so dividing whether you're hearing from the Holy Spirit or whether you're hearing from a different spirit is very important, and valuing the word of God, valuing the words that God is speaking to you will help you discern this, because if you value so much to hear God's voice, then you are going to be in his word. You're going to be talking to Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit, the more you speak to him, the more he speaks to you, the more you acknowledge him, the deeper your relationship can go there, and the less that you will be able to be fooled. Now, as a young believer, a lot of times you'll hear different deceiving voices, like, well, you just need to be a little bit better so you can hear God's voice. You shouldn't have sinned like that, because God won't talk to you anymore. And as a young believer, you might be like, oh, wow, you know what? That might be right, I don't really know. But as a mature believer, you can stand up and say, you know what, no, I am the righteousness of Christ, and a righteous man falls down seven times, but he gets back up each and every single time, and you can shut down the lies of the enemy. You know, anytime Jesus was faced with the lies of the enemy, he shut him down with the word of God. He would quote scriptures to him, and the enemy, he hates that. He hates God, he hates you. He's going to do everything he can for your demise. The word of God tells us that the enemy comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy. So if you listen to a voice and it caused destruction, it caused death, it caused chaos, then you can go back and you can say, okay, I'm not listening to that voice again, because that didn't lead me down the right road. But it also talks about how Jesus came to give life and life more abundantly. So if the word that you're listening to, if the voice that you're listening to is producing fruit and producing abundant life, then you know you can trust that voice when it comes and speaks to you. So I want to talk a little bit about the different voices that you may hear, or the different spirits that you may hear. And once again, I'm not saying this to spook you. I just am saying these things so that you can be more confident of knowing the difference between God's voice and others' voices. So the voice that speaks to us are, our spirit, the Holy Spirit, evil spirits, and angels. So our spirit, we are a spirit and we have a soul and we have a body. When we are born again, our spirit is made alive, making it possible to hear in the spirit realm, but not necessarily hearing from the Holy Spirit. Hearing from our own spirit is still a spiritual experience, and being aware of this will help us to discern which voice is speaking to us. You know, we do have a soul and we do have a spirit. And our spirit and the Holy Spirit are not the same thing. Now we are filled with the Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit does speak to us, but there is a difference between the two things. You know, at different times, our spirits can cry out. Even speaking in tongues that comes out of our spirit and it is helped by the Holy Spirit to help us pray for things that we don't even know. Sometimes, at least in my own life, there will be such a deep emotional hurt that it's cut down into my spirit. And without the Holy Spirit, I can't eject those things up out of my own spirit. And so that's how I know that at times, our spirit will speak to us, and sometimes we can't even really determine what's wrong with us, we just can feel there's something that's not quite right. And so our spirit will speak to us. The Holy Spirit, though, he does speak to us. This is God's spirit, the one with whom we are building a relationship and learning how to clearly hear. You know, the word of God tells us that the Holy Spirit is a still, soft voice. I love that about him. He's never gonna come in barreling through and causing destruction. No, the Holy Spirit comes to mend. He's our counselor. He's our guide. He's our friend. The word of God tells us that he's closer than our brother. He's closer than our breath. I love that. And so many times, we can almost feel like the Holy Spirit is a part of us and he is a part of us, but we need to realize the Holy Spirit comes from God. And so when we communicate with the Holy Spirit, we're communicating with God. The next thing that we can hear are evil spirits. And the more you grow in your Christian walk, the easier it's gonna be for you to differentiate what these sound like. Evil spirits are demonic spirits that can speak to Christians just as they spoke to Jesus when he encountered Satan in the wilderness, saying things like, oh, if you are the son of God, why don't you call down angels? Why don't you turn these rocks into bread? And a lot of times these evil spirits will come and question you, come and try and put a seed of doubt into you. But they can come with verses, but if it causes condemnation and guilt in you, then it's not from the spirit of God. If it causes you to look down on yourself, if it causes you to walk in unrighteousness, if it causes you to walk deeper into sin because you feel like you can't get out of it anyways, then you know that that is an evil spirit. Another thing that you may hear speaking to you are angels. According to Hebrew one, these are spirits sent to render service to the saints. Angels also speak to us the things of God. So many times in the Word of God, even with Mary, even with Joseph, they'll have an angel come to them and speak godly things to them. Angels, they can share the Word of God, but they're never going to go contrary to the Word of God and they're never going to create anything new. The only creator in this world is God. So if you haven't read it in the Word of God, you need to either go back and research and see if it is in the Word of God, but you just haven't read it or you need to throw it out because angels will never, ever go contrary to the Word of God. They are sent out to do the work of God and to help in rendering and bringing in the souls that God has already chosen. And so I want to encourage you with this. Maybe you don't feel like you hear God's voice very clearly, but there is always time to practice and to hear God's voice more clearly. So I really, I just want to leave you with this. I want to encourage you and I want you to take this in, that you hear God's voice. You know his voice. Do not put his voice in a box. Do not think that it's gonna sound any one certain way. You know, the one thing that it's always gonna bring is love. It's gonna bring joy into you. It may bring correction. That doesn't make it evil. Bringing correction means that God loves you and he doesn't want you to continue down the same road. So please, if there's one thing that you can teach your life group people, it's that they hear the voice of God. Knowing that you can hear the voice of God makes you so much more confident in your Christian walk. And knowing the voice of God means that they're not always gonna come running to you for an answer. That puts way too much pressure on you. I don't wanna be the voice of God in their life. I want God to be the voice of God in their life. So please, as I encourage you, encourage your life group people, encourage your disciples, that they too, they hear the voice of God. We are in the business of hooking people's phones up to God. All we are are the people who plug in the line and remind them that they hear God's voice.