 I want to speak to you today about how to hear God, which is a very question is already wrong because the Bible clearly states from the beginning that my sheep, they know my voice. You can never take a child through a school and how to hear their parent. Hearing comes with birth. And if your child can't hear with birth, then your child has some kind of a disorder, has some kind of an illness. So for a Christian to hear God is just part of being a Christian. To know his voice is part of your spiritual birth. It's part of the blessing of belonging in this family. It's what makes God personal. It's what makes God not a force, but a friend. What separates our religion from any religion, if I could use Christianity as a religion, though it's not a religion, it's a revelation. But what separates it differently is that our God is a living God. And our God is a speaking God. And our God is not a force. Our God is a person who wants to be a friend. In fact, Jesus brought us so close home, he called him a father. And when he talked about prayer, he didn't say to address a impersonal force, a mother earth. He didn't say to address some kind of a, this being he said to address him as our father who is in heaven. I'm going to read two portions of scriptures in the Bible. The first one is first chronicles chapter 10 verse 13. And it says the following. So Saul died for his unfaithfulness, which he had committed against the Lord. Because he did not keep the word of the Lord. Also because he consulted a medium for guidance. But he did not inquire of the Lord, therefore he killed him. All right, rough words, but you get the point. He killed him because he didn't inquire of the Lord. Now I'm going to read to you right now a verse where contradicts this verse. In first Samuel chapter 28 verse 5. And when Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid. And his heart trembled greatly. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him. Neither by dreams or by your own or by the prophets. And so in verse 18, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord, execute the fears, judgment and amalek, God's like, I'm done with you. And I'm just going to read one more portion and we're going to contrast two guys, David and Saul and glean some practical truths on how to hear God. First Samuel chapter 30 and verse 6. Now David was greatly distressed for the people spoke of stoning him. That's a good reason to be distressed. Because the soul of our people was grieved. So people, a lot of times when they're very hurting, hurt people hurt others. Sometimes they don't mean it, they just, they're just hurting. For every man lost his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God. And verse 8. And David inquired of the Lord saying, shall I pursue? And then we see that the Lord answered him. So we see these two guys. One guy, we see at the end of his life, God gives like a little summary of his life. And he's like, hey, you were not faithful to me. You did not keep the word of the Lord. So not just the voice of the Lord, the word of the Lord. And by the way, you did not call upon me when you were supposed to dead. And then we actually look at the details of what happened there. We see that Saul actually called on God and God didn't pick up the phone. And so Saul got upset. He got impatient. He he's like, man, I'm going to find another way to get to not God, but Samuel. So we notice when God stopped talking to Saul, he didn't want to get another way or get somebody to get to God. He went and found a witch doctor to get to Samuel. And before the witch doctor was able to pull all of her little charms, Samuel just appeared now. I can't explain fully that different theologians disagree on how and what will it happen? I mean, God just kind of intervened. Samuel showed up and Sam was like, dude, you're dead. He's like, you disobeyed the voice of God, you're dead. I told you to resign a long time ago. There's another guy named David. He is the rightful king of Israel. If you would have resigned, you would have lived. That's my putter phrase. And so he's saying, you're gone tonight. You and your sons are going to die, period. And Samuel just leaves. And so, of course, Saul goes into battle and Saul dies and, and, you know, things work out sadly like that. I want to share with you four simple principles on how to discern or how to hear the voice of God. Number one, if you're more desperate for a word from God, then you are devoted to God. You will lose discernment. And fall into deception. Saul's first problem was this, his desperation for a word at the expense. Nothing wrong with being desperate for a word. But when it's at the expense of devotion to God, you can find yourself in extremely murky waters. And you don't need a witch today. Facebook profit will be enough. YouTube profit, Instagram mystic will be enough where you can find yourself in extremely polluted waters. And watch this. Saul got a word, but not a solution. People who get too desperate for a word at the expense. I'm again, here, don't hear what I'm not saying at the expense of devotion to God. See, God's first problem with Saul was this. He says Saul was not faithful, meaning when a person plays games with God, when they're not devoted to God, and now they're at the fork in the road. Now there are different challenges in life. And they're like, man, I need God to tell me what to do. I need God to tell me what to do. And instead of starting from point eight and say, Hey, you know what? As a sheep, I kind of drifted from the shepherd. Let me get back to the green pastures. Let me get back to the still waters. Let me get back to my shepherd. No, somebody tell me what to do. When that attitude begins to come on a person who claims to be a Christian. The problem with that is this, we can get a word. But we might lose the sermon. The sermon of the Holy Spirit, the sermon, whether the Holy Spirit is speaking, will always, will always be contingent on your devotion to God. When you're devoted to God, you can have the prophet come to you and give you a word. And your discernment will tell you way off. And you will thank him. You will do the courtesy. Thank you. But you'll walk away and you'll say, but God's already dealt with me about this. I already know. Prophet came bound himself one time to Paul and he's like, this is the man who's going to be the, the, the, the, and Paul's like, yeah, I know. Thanks. Great, great word, by the way, great sermon illustration I could do really well on YouTube and this whole thing that you did. But I know, I know, he's like, don't, don't persuade me. I already know, not in an arrogant way, Paul did not ignore or somehow belittle the prophetic voice. But see when your devotion, even if you are not a prophet, a pastor, have a Bible degree, your devotion to God, it's the same thing as when a child is with the parent. The child might not have a degree, but the child already knows the sermon between the parents voice and somebody else's voice. Your closeness to God gives you the sermon and your discernment protects you from deception. Why am I saying this? I don't have a beef with anybody in particular on Facebook. What saddens me is amounts of people that message me, Papa prophesy, Papa, give me a word. What saddens me is seeing believers who then message me, this man of God took all of my money, this man of God, because all the prophets this man of God, because all the prophets, many prophets on Facebook are for profit. If you don't, so you don't get a word. People are going to sit there and just prophesy. Only hungry Jen just kind of ministers. And only at the end when everybody looks off, we're like, hey, by the way, you can give people don't do that. If people do that for living and understand workers worthy of his wages and everything, but so much ripoff that happens. And then you find out the lives of these people where they are toxic, where they are hurt, they are rejected. Listen, and just because you can prophesy really well, it does not mean that you have a character. It does not mean that you have marriage. It does not mean that you are not watching porn. It does not mean that you're not smoking drugs or taking mushrooms. It does not mean that if you switch religions, you cannot go in and become a professional psychic. Some people that I hear, I'm like, man, you can be a perfect psychic. And there's no Jesus mentioned. There's no salvation. Everything is about just speaking goodness and love and peace and all of the stuff. So we have to be very careful as Christians. I'm not saying to walk around being afraid. I'm talking about being devoted to God, that we are not desperate at the expense. And what I want to encourage is this. God wants to communicate to you within your community. God spoke to David, but have you noticed from a priest? Probably some kind of a small guy that didn't matter. God spoke to him. When Saul tried to communicate to God in his community, God was silent. The problem wasn't the lack of the gift in his community. It was the lack of the character in Saul. It wasn't the soul now needed to find another because there was no other prophet. It's not that Saul now needed to go against someone else. Saul needed to fix the connection. And so sometimes people would switch churches or they were like, man, but I don't hear anything from God. Well, it will help if you come to church. It will help if you will be in the community. It will also help if you develop a quiet time with God, where your phone is turned off and you actually connect to the Lord. So if the Lord is not communicating, don't rush to switch the community. Watch, say, is there a connection personally with me? Because this God communicated before God communicated to Saul before. The fact that God stopped communicating. It wasn't a reason for Saul to start going right now, DMing every person on IG or DMing everybody on Facebook and say, give me a word, give me a word, give me a word. All Saul needed to do is to find where is the reception? Is my receiver off? If I put it on mute, wait, do I even have it? Where did I lost it? And we're going to see in just a moment what happened with Saul, why God stopped speaking to him. But I want to encourage you to listen to God in the community. Your pastor, your leader, your mom, your dad, your spiritual brother and sister who helps you to walk along, does not have to have a prophet in front of their name on Facebook to discern God's will for your life. I remember when I was extremely passionate to move to Seattle, this passion and vision to start a church in Seattle, birthed out of the fact that I offered my pastor one idea and he rejected it. And after that, I started to feel strong discernment that God is calling me out of hungry Jen, weird. And all the things start lining up right away. I start gathering and this vision to start a church in Seattle wasn't mine. It was my pastor's vision. He wanted us to start the church in Seattle. We prayed for a whole year here after worship, after our worship. And so a month and a half, I'm already developing a team. I already talked to a few people in our church. They're like, yeah, we'll move with you. And so I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah and stuff. But, you know, when that is fostering on the ground and the soil of a fence already, it's not God. And so I remember right there in the last row with the pastor, it was evening, we're sitting. And so and I was like, so this, you know, Seattle idea, I'm like, I'm willing. And I was willing to sacrifice, sell the house, give all the money away, move from zero, move into apartment and start everything from zero. Again, I was willing to die. Literally, I was willing to die. And I'm telling my pastor, what am I willing to do? And he said, you don't need to do that. He says, you need to be here. He said, you know, you need to be the one to release other pastors to start campuses. He says, this is your home. This is your base and you shouldn't be going anywhere. I said, you sure? I said, what happened? Who's going to go to Seattle? He says, we're praying to God. Let God figure that out. He says, you don't have to be the one. He said that just that. He's like, when you will be there, he's like, you will be alone. I was like, I'll be connected to Hungry Jen. He's like, yeah, three and a half hours. He says, that's it. He put a needle in my little awesome revelation to change my life. And I thank God he saved me. I thank God. And I left, I told my wife and I said, like a truck load is off of my shoulders. I mean, I know what it's like to start construction of the church, building the team and everything here from from the beginning. I know the pain, I know the suffering. I'm still dealing. We're still growing, growing pains and everything. Why in the world that I want to move to Seattle to start that again? Like, I don't know. I see when you develop in my case, it was little offense. They slowly took root that then anything as long as I could just simply, you know, find my own ministry and everything. Not that I had no problem that I had a problem here. And so when God dealt with that, when God dealt with that, all that my pastor had to do, he didn't say, does says the Lord, thou shall not go to Seattle. He simply said, yes, I don't think it's not a right time. And then I remember the same thing that happened with Pastor Ilya. You know, I was like, OK, we're going to find, you know, a scapegoat. Send Ilya there. Ilya volunteered and stuff and so. But I did not have peace about it. Ilya goes to Shepherd Bushiri's Church, Bushiri, you know, God is giving you Seattle. And that's Bushiri, that's a man of God, that's a prophet. I just don't have peace about it. And so I told my pastor, I said, pastor, I'm not a prophet. I was like, I just see all the red flags. I don't know, I just don't have peace about it. So I talked to Ilya. I was like, bro, I know I'm not your Papa Bushiri. I'm just your friend. But I was like, bro, it's a disaster. Please don't go. He's like, OK, I got it. I won't. And I was like, what about the Bushiri? He's like, that's his prophecy. He's going to be accountable for that. He's like, he's like, I have a pastor and I'm not a prophet in that. But honestly, looking back, if we were to launch it right before the pandemic, it wasn't. It's not that instead. What happened is that an online church, online church would have not been launched and stuff. And so I really, really believe in my heart that we have to submit to the body, submit to the body as a pastor. I have to submit to the body. The body has to submit to the pastor. As a husband, I submit to my wife. As my wife, she submits to me. I'm not talking about we're just one way street, but we are able to hear God even in a community. That's why we got to be in a community. Even if your community is small, it doesn't matter. Even if your community doesn't have necessarily apostles or prophets yet who function in that, or maybe even the community doesn't have a pastor yet, but be in the community. There's a protection there. And if God doesn't speak in the community like, man, I'm reaching out, God doesn't speak, I'm going to give you a few other tips that maybe you and I just need to explore on. Second thing is relationship with the Holy Spirit is more important than revelation from the Holy Spirit. So what I mean by this is that make sure you don't go to ask God for a word until you go to ask God for His presence. I want you to see these two people. David is distressed. David is upset. David is burned out. David feels he just got rejected by the Philistines who didn't want to have him fight alongside with them. So David is coming back. All of his wives were taken. His children were taken. Everything he built was burnt down. He pretty much experienced bankruptcy, divorce, loss, death, everything. All in one day, because all of them are gone and he doesn't know if they're dead or not. All of that in one day, David is upset. The Bible says he was very distressed. His guys are handling this different. They're like, we know who the problem is. David is, let's cut his head off. How is that going to help us? I don't know, but we're upset. We need to kill somebody. So they're thinking about killing him. David is upset and the Bible says instead of blaming God, Philistines, his guys, himself, why he didn't leave some guys to protect. Instead of blaming himself, why he attacked Amalekai secretly and told the Philistines that he was attacking Israelites. And so instead of taking a blame game, David does this. He goes to the Lord. I want you to notice he's not asking God, what should I do? He went to the Lord to get strength. Before he said, God, what should I do? He went to God and he said, God, can you just love on me? Can you get me out of this little thing that I'm I don't know. I got a glitch right here. I can't my mind can't stop like thinking on its own. God, get me out of this. God, can you can you just cover me right now? God, I need your strength. I don't know how he did it, whether he prayed in tongues, whether he worshipped, whether he read his own Psalms that he read, whether he laid on the floor, I don't know. Whatever he did, the Bible says he strengthened himself in the Lord. And then out of a place of I'm strong, situation is still bad. He says, Lord, what should I do? Saul, on the other hand, is afraid, scared. He says, God, what did I do? Nothing. What would have happened if Saul would have went into the presence of God first and out of that, he said, Lord, what would you have me do? Your relationship is more important than a revelation. And the problem why sometimes we don't hear anything from the Lord is because we are not near to the Lord. If we want to hear, we got to be near. God does not like to be treated as a vending machine. You punch the right number comes out. God wants to be a personal with you. God wants a relationship with you. God wants you to grow closer to him as you go through what you go through and then come out of it so that you will give him the glory. You won't drop him like a hot potato because now he got you out. And God was really not the goal of your life. He was the means to get you to the goals. And God's like, I want to be your friend. I want to be your father. I want you to prioritize relationship with me. Strengthen yourself in me. Find your courage in me. Find your protection in me. Come on, somebody dropped a fire emoji on YouTube right now. God says, get me into you. Holy Spirit will guide you if you let him be your comforter when all comforts fail. Until you renew your strength, you can't receive from the Holy Spirit. God wants to be your source of strength before he is a resource for our solution. Go to God to be filled with him before you go to him to be led by him. The key to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit is first to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit when you are confused, scared, toxic, bleeding, oozing, toxic waste out of your attitude, don't run to God and say, God, give me a word. Run to God and say, God, give me you and say, God, here is me. Fix me. Fill me. Help me. I'm scared. God, I'm worried. God, I'm mad. God, it's just the way I am right now. I'm not feeling good. Recalibrate me, restore my soul, renew my strength. God, I wait on you and those who wait upon you, they will renew their strength, renew my strength. And the moment your strength is renewed, say, Lord, what should I do? Until you are in that place. You can be misguided. If you are hearing from a place of toxic emotions, if you are hearing from a place of hurt, you can hear very negative words that could not might not be God. I love David's principle. When you're hurting, when you're afraid, when you're lost, go to him for strength. Yes, God sees you need direction. Be like Esther, when you are desperate for deliverance, invite the king for a date. Esther did not come to the palace of the king and give him a tantrum. You allow that to happen. What kind of a husband are you? It's been 30 days and you hang out with all these women and you never once asked me for a date, you never asked me how I feel. My country is being wiped out and you already conquered them, killed my parents and now you're going to wipe them alive. How dare you do that and walk away. I'm pretty sure she felt doing that. I'm pretty sure she thought of every scenario, but she looked at that and she's like, he's a king. He's going to get me shot and killed. So instead, when she came and the king asked her, what do you want? Esther, this would be a good moment to give her. I just want one thing, save my nation. And Esther says, I just want one thing. I have a dinner prepared for you, a banquet. And by the way, bring that Joker Haman. Why? Because I'm strong enough to eat in the presence of my enemy. And while they were eating, the king is asking, so Esther, come on, Esther. I know you didn't just invite me for a banquet. I know you women. I know you want something. What do you want? She said, if it really pleases you, can you come for a banquet again tomorrow? I mean, the girl is cooking him. She's literally, she's like carrying it like this. And he's letting be led like that. Because when the king knows that you're interested in him, not in what he can do for you. Not only you got the king, but the king has got you. The second day, Haman shows up again and see now something shifts. When the king has finally ate her request now will not fall on deaf ears. And when she asked the king, she just says for one thing, save my life. Guess what started to happen with Haman? This little jolly, little happy camper guy. The Bible says he got on his knees and started to beg. You want to get your enemy on your knees, on their knees, on his knees? Give your king a banquet. See, some of us give our king a blame. Some of us give our king a piece of our mind. Some of us don't even go to our king for strength. If you want to hear the Lord, draw near him. Be in the community. Number two, just draw near him. If you've never heard the voice of God, if you've never heard what the Lord wants you to do and you are today. This whole topic of hearing God's voice is so strange for you. And you're not one of those people who's willing to put God's head in front of every single thing that comes into your mind. You're very you have a fear of the Lord. But to hear God's voice, don't focus on hearing, focus on being near. You won't miss his voice. He's your shepherd, you're his sheep. He's your father, you are your his child. You will hear him when you're near him. Are you with me? Number three, when we are filled with God's word, we will become familiar with God's voice. Have you noticed that it says in here about soul in chronicles? He died for his unfaithfulness, which he had committed against the Lord. So we covered that he wasn't near God, he didn't seek to be near God. But I want you to notice another phrase. It says because what was part of his unfaithfulness? Because he did not keep the word of the Lord. He didn't keep the Torah. This is not the voice of the Lord, which we're going to talk about in just a second. He also disobeyed the voice, but he did not keep the word of the Lord. In other words, he came to God, say, Lord, speak to me. And when God has given him the word, he didn't keep it. Read it, study it, dwelt in it, obey it. You know what saddens me about my generation is that it's a generation of God said. When Jesus was on earth, he always said it is written. Our generation, even little guys, literally, just God delivered yesterday and every other word in their sermon. God told me, God told me, God told me, God told me, God told me. And so I teach our young guys less of God said, more of it is written. Not that I doubt your ability to hear God. It's the reason why you say God said is because, you know, people don't trust you. So you think that if you just simply put God's name in front of everything that comes out of your mouth, it makes you more spiritual. But most of us who've been around the block a little bit, we know. All of this is you're just a young teenager. You're just a young person. I want you to notice when Adam was in the garden with Eve and Satan came, he says, has God said because there was no word of the Lord. There was just a voice of God. And therefore Satan poked around the voice of God and he says, has God said? And Eve says, yes, God has said. In the wilderness, Jesus replies to the devil when the devil tempts him. And he doesn't say, well, God said. He said, it is written. All Jesus had to do is say, I said and the devil would have trembled. All Jesus had to do to say, I am the word. Devil, shut up. He didn't do that. He said, it is written and the devil is not dumb. He comes back and he says, well, it is also written. And Jesus is like, oh, I don't know what to do. And he's stuck around. It is written again. The third time devil came and Jesus says, it is written. This is what I realized about us. People who get extremely sensitive to the voice of God, who don't live in God's word. Wilderness wipes them out. They're good as long as every prophetic word comes true. Everyone gets healed. The paychecks are coming in. Everyone accepts me and loves me. The moment life throws a curveball, they don't know what to do. Because you can't throw at the devil. Well, God said, wait, that word was actually supposed to come in December of last year, that didn't come true. And the devil will punch you back and he said, did he? Yeah, good point, devil. The word didn't come true. It was supposed to come true, actually. Yeah, what about the other word? And what he will do is he will punch you right in the face. And that's why as a Christian, your best weapon is not to try to explain to the devil why the prophetic word didn't come true, what happened with that prophet, what happened with this one, what happened with that word, that you really felt like God spoke to you in the morning. Your best defense and God wants you to know if you want to hear my voice, keep my word. It is written, study the Bible, read the Bible. My friends, it's time for us Pentecostal Keresmaniacs to get back in the Bible. Open our Bible and read the word. Highlight the Bible, memorize the Bible. Keep the word of the Lord, your word of hidden in my heart that I will not sin against you. His word is the light. His word is the seed. His word is the hammer. His word is the honey. His word is your sword. His word is his voice. His voice is there. And if you are stuck in the wilderness right now and you heard the voice of the Lord at the River Jordan, I'm going to tell you one thing. What will get you through the wilderness is not the voice in the in the Jordan. What's going to get you is the scripture. Is you're going to have to open up your body, your mouth and begin to speak. It is written, God said he will never leave me and will never forsake me. God says he loves me. Therefore, he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. God said that greater is he that is in me than the one that's in the world. God said that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. God said that if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your stuff, they comfort me. God said that he will prepare a table in the presence of my enemies. God said he will anoint my head with oil. God said goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. God said that if you will keep this word and if it will not depart your mouth, God says that you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success. And God said that you will be like a tree planted by the rivers of living water and you will bear fruit in this season. Your leaf will now wither and everything that you do will be blessed by him. God said it is written. Come on, somebody shout it is written. Come on, somebody shout it is written. Somebody touch your neighbor say learn the Bible. Learn the Bible. Touch your other neighbor that you didn't think about first. Study the word. Take a seat. Say this with me. If you can't get a word from God, get into the word of God. If you want a word from God, get into the word of God. I'm not in any way belittling or saying that it's not important. What I want us is to build our foundation as a church on the word of the Lord. If every other word comes out of your mouth, is God said, God said, God told me to quit my job, God told me to leave my wife, God told me not to be with my kids anymore. God told me to do this, God told me, God told me, God told me. But your whole life doesn't resemble of it is written. It's in the Bible. Ninety percent of every direction we need in life is right here. The rest of it, God will reveal to us as we seek him in prayer. And last tip on how to hear God and why I believe some people don't hear God anymore. If you can't hear God's voice today, it's because you did not heed his voice yesterday. I want you to notice for Samuel 28, 18, it says this, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord yesterday. What was Saul's problem? When God spoke, he did not do what he said. So now he wanted God to speak again. If God spoke before something to do and you did not follow through and you found yourself in the fork where God is not speaking. Can I invite you today? Go back to where he spoke and do that thing. He will speak again. You are responsible for for heeding the voice you are hearing. We are responsible when I was younger and I did not discern the voice of the Lord as I as I know that today I was my prayer. I remember even fasting for days. God here, speak to me, speak to me, speak to me. I did not know the weight that I will have to carry off the word to do that word. Because in my mind, I thought hearing God's voice will implement that I'm going to give everybody prophetic words or words of knowledge. But of course, I asked him to speak to me about my life. And when he started to speak to me about giving, about forgiving, my prayer after that, say, Lord, speak less. I got enough right now. Lord, I know what to do. I got it. I got it, Lord, unless he's just encouraging me, which God doesn't just gives direction, he also gives encouragement. He's our father, you know, I don't just tell my wife what to do. I also tell her I love her, I tell her, you know, I'm with her. And so don't get this view of God that he's just like tells you like like navigation map, you know, or he's your map guidance. No, he's your father, he's your is your guide. But when it comes to Lord, what should I do next? What should I do next? Ask yourself a question if you're not hearing God today. Has he spoken before? Where you said I don't like that. I'm not going to do that. Why should he speak now if he did not get the proper honor of his word being followed through? And that's really what happened with Saul. God said, destroy Amalekite Saul said, yeah, he did it halfway. God says, you're no longer a king. Yeah, I'm going to still be a king. You'll see, I'm going to still hold on to my crown. And then God stopped speaking. And then Saul just lives his own life on his own. And then finally he hits crisis. He cannot get his head wrapped around. He can't figure out a military solution for that. He's trying to reach God and God stops speaking. And then Saul goes outside of Christian community and talks to somebody who's a medium. He gets a word from Samuel, but he still dies in a battle. And the scripture gives us a real reason why he wasn't faithful. He didn't keep the word of the Lord and he did not obey the voice of the Lord. When God speaks and you don't obey, the next time he speaks quieter. The next time it's not that he speaks quieter. It's that we hear him less. Every time you disobey the voice of the Lord, it's like on a computer, you know, you have that button where it lowers the volume of whatever is playing. Each time you disobey, you're hitting lower volume, lower volume, lower volume. Music is still playing. You're just hearing it less and less until comes a point. You're like, man, I don't want to hear and you hit mute. The music is playing and all you got to do today, you don't need to get a new computer. You don't need to fix your speakers. You just need to unmute whatever is playing in your computer. And same thing has to happen in our relationship with God. All we got to do is we got to repent. We got to come back to the Father and say, Lord, where I have disobeyed and sometimes the Lord will bring it to you. If he doesn't bring it to you, don't look for it. If God doesn't bring it to you, don't go in your background trying to figure out where you disobeyed God. Trust me, you're going to find something. OK, your backyard is not necessarily filled with treasure. It's filled with a lot of mistakes. OK, so do not go looking for an open door or some kind of a sin that you left unrepented. Please don't do that because if you do that, the devil will get you right on the hook. Bible tells us to look for his face, not for a sin. And as you look for his face, when the light comes on, you will see the dust and then God will give you the power to clean the dust. But if you go looking for the dust in the dark, my friend, you're going to make a mess out of your life. Our focus is the eyes of God. Our focus is the face of Jesus. Our focus is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Our focus is the glory of God. Our focus is the feet of Jesus. As you look for that, God will begin to remind you, hey, son, you did not obey me there. Hey, son, I asked you to forgive this person. Hey, son, I asked you. I mean, it was very clear in the Bible. Don't sleep with your girlfriend. You don't need a word from God for that. All you got to do is just obey that word. Son, obey my word. Keep my word and then you will hear my voice. Last final thing I'm going to say, if you've done all of this and you're like, Vlad, I still don't hear. It's because God is testing you. Have you been to school? When the teacher talks 30 minutes every day, you want the teacher to stop talking after a while. It doesn't stop talking until the one day on Friday. Little pieces of paper are handed out. It's called quiz or a test. And then that's when you want the teacher to start telling you everything. And the teacher goes. Muzzles her mouth. She quiets her tongue and you're like, hey. And she says, silence. You can hear flies in the room. You can hear your own heartbeat telling you fool. You should have studied yesterday, not play the video game. When the teacher doesn't speak, it's a sign you are taking a test. When the teacher doesn't speak, it does not mean the teacher left the room. It still means the teacher is there. It just means you're taking a test. God will speak again. God will guide again, but dwell in his presence, dwell in his glory, walk obedient to his word and you will see he will guide you. I believe in the voice of God. I believe if it wouldn't be for the voice of God, I wouldn't do what I do today. I heard my pastor, you're called to preach, but it was the voice of God that confirmed that upstairs in my room at 12 o'clock on Wednesday when I was about 16 years of age, it was honestly the confirmation of that that peace guidance is how I got married. It's how I gave a lot of cars away almost almost every single year. I feel that prompting. Sometimes it's in the service. The Holy Spirit just says, I want you to do that. And then I would see a breakthrough in that particular area of my life. It's how in the beginning of the year on the sixth day of fasting, we declared the 21 day fast. And I was in California and at my friend David Degas conference and I got on my knees. The presence of God was so strong and I felt strong sense. It was so clear as a day I could take a bullet for that word that it was God. And he says, I want you to do it for 40 days. Your ministry has never started. Your ministry should be started with a prolonged fast. My son did it. You're my son. You're going to have to follow his steps. I got up and I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew God called me to fast for 40 days. Mind you, I didn't the more and the more and the most I did was 18 days. I thought I want to die from it. God's supernatural strength sustained me through that. I saw my Vladimir Sovchuk ministry literally doubled. And in some areas quadrupled right after 40 day fast. I saw breakthrough that I didn't think even it's possible for me. Why did that breakthrough come because of obedience to God's voice? But why was that voice comes, my friend? We have to live in a community. We have to draw near to here. We have to stay in his word. And then we have to watch that the words were spoken to us by God. We are faithful with them. And then if we are in a season of silence, don't get discouraged. Stay close to God. And what do you do when you're taking a test in school? You remember what the teacher said before she stopped speaking. So when you're taking a test to remember everything God has promised, remember everything God has said, remember who he is and remember what he has done in your life. And you will see that season will be over and God will not only speak again. God will break through in your life again in Jesus name. Every believer is meant to live their life led by the Holy Spirit. Sons are led by the Spirit of God. God wants to lead your life. God wants to guide your life. God doesn't want you to guess through life. God doesn't want you to copy somebody else's life. God doesn't want you to just do everything that everybody else is doing. He wants you to be led by his spirit. But to be led by his spirit, we might stay in a community because we are a body. We're not an island. We're not Jack Bauer. We're not, you know, this Iron Man, you know, all of these, you know, Spider-Man and one man, we are a body. We're not one man. We're not a one man show. We are a body. We are to stay in his word. We are to stay committed to the voice that he has spoken before. And then when we hit a season of silence, we stay committed to God, knowing he is faithful and he has never, never, ever abandoned us. Amen.