Everybody, we’re gonna be looking at the voice of God, how to hear it, how He speaks, how we hear it.
And then after we hear Him speak and we’re listening to Him, what do we do with it?
Once it gets into our hearts and our minds listening to the voice of God, hearing God speak, being able to discern that and then telling the world what it is that God is telling you that’s coming up next podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture today.
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Now, open your hearts to what God’s word has to say to you. Here is Jack hips.
Everybody listen. Um If you were to get into looking around and seeing what is some of the most asked questions in Christianity, um It certainly right near the top is how do you hear the voice of God?
So here’s what we’re gonna do for the next three podcast. We’re gonna unpack that we’re gonna be looking at.
We’re gonna be considering the voice of God, having the ears to hear the voice of God.
And then after God speaks, what do we do with that? With our mouth?
In other words, why would God speak to us if we don’t intend to say anything uh in that what he’s given us, he’s going to speak.
So we need to listen with the intent to announce what it is that God is saying.
So, um listen, as always, we love this challenge that it’s time for you to live out what you believe in.
It’s time for real life. So let’s dive into this right now. The voice of God.
How do I hear the voice of God? How do you hear the voice of God?
Now, first of all, let’s just take a flyby of how God spoke in the Old Testament.
The Bible tells us that when God spoke in the old Testament, he just flat out spoke.
He just audibly spoke. And you say, well, why would God do that then and not do it now, we’ll, we’ll answer that soon, but I’ll just give you a little hint.
Uh It’s called the Bible, for example, the book of Hebrews tells us that uh in the early days when God spoke to the fathers, he did so by the prophets, but when we back up, we kind of go to the original profit in the sense of Abraham could be argued.
As a prophet God spoke to Abraham and God spoke to Abraham audibly.
So mark that down, we know that God spoke to Adam and Eve audibly.
I mean, that’s an amazing situation to where God even walked with them in the cool of the garden and the perfection of the garden.
God walked with them and spoke with them.
I personally believe that it was none other than Athena fans or Christopher Jones in the garden.
I believe Jesus Christ walked with Adam and Eve in the garden.
Um But when, when you look at the Old Testament, you’re talking about God speaking.
And um as we graduate, for example, uh to the life of Moses, God said regarding Moses, I’m gonna speak to Moses face to face like a man speaks to his friend.
So God revealed himself to Moses in amazing ways. He spoke. God shook the mountain of Mount Sinai.
Uh The Children of Israel trembled at the shaking of the mountain and at the voice of God.
Uh then we moved forward and we hear that uh that God spoke to Elijah in a very, very still small voice.
The point is this God speaks. How do we hear fast forward to our age 21st century?
How do we hear God speak now? This is gonna require you and I discipline.
It’s not because God’s not speaking you and I live in a time where we are so bombarded with external noises, it’s hard for us to hear.
So listen to this. God gave us the Bible.
There’s a reason why this book is still preserved to this hour.
In fact, technically, uh we have this book, the world has this book either in hand or on a device and even for people in remote parts of the world, uh they have been given crank up uh Bibles, you can crank it and it’s, and it energizes the little device and the Bible is read to them and their language.
It’s remarkable. Why is that so important?
Because in our day and age, how do you hear the voice of God?
It’s by reading the word of God.
He said, well, Jack, what if there’s a place in the world where there is no Bible?
That’s pretty cool. Great question. Great concern. We need to get them the Bible.
But don’t worry, God’s got that covered in Romans chapter one.
God says he’s speaking to all those in the world.
He’s revealing himself, even his eternal Godhead and power to them so that they are without an excuse.
So we don’t need to worry about the people running around the Amazon jungle that we haven’t reached yet.
Thank God, there’s groups of people trying to reach them, but God has always already spoken enough to them so that they know.
So how do we hear this voice? Jesus said my sheep, my people hear my voice and they follow me.
So when we go to the Bible and we read it, we, we need to expect God to be speaking to us.
See, well, Jack, how does God speak to you? Always in my life.
God will use the word of God to speak. So can you tell us how that happens?
It goes this way and this is where I mentioned a moment ago. It takes discipline.
We need to take in the Bible.
Now, look, I’m an old guy but back in the day when computers were being invented, there was this um this little jingle, I think it was called um G go Garbage N G I garbage N G O garbage in garbage out.
In other words, you put into the computer garbage and the computer is gonna spit out garbage.
Well, we know this in our dietary life, you eat junk and you’re gonna have a junk of a life.
Your liver’s gonna fail. You’re gonna get sick. Why?
Garbage in garbage out here’s the cool thing when you start ingesting the Bible Bible in Bible out when you have Bible, when you pick up and read the Bible, why should I read the Bible?
You want God to speak? I sure do. Well, guess what? You need to eat Bible.
You need to eat it by reading it as you read the Bible. God’s word gets inside of you.
It’s a supernatural. Hey, can I put it to you this way. I just saw a commercial this morning.
I gotta break down and buy this stuff.
I’m, I’m convinced, Um, it’s this, uh, nature’s nature’s friend or nature’s fruit or nature’s vegetable, nature, something.
I don’t know what it is.
It’s, but everybody’s taking it and if you listen to everybody talking about it, I’m 90 years old and I took nature’s whatever it’s called and now I feel like I’m 13.
Wow, I don’t know about that, but everybody’s talking about how great it is.
And so um what’s happening supposedly, if you take this, this stuff, it’s all natural.
It’s in a pill and you get like, you know, 17 carrots and celery and celery and tomatoes and you get all these things and then this bottle’s got all the fruits if that’s true or not.
I don’t know, I need to buy it and check it out. Take that principle regarding the scripture.
The Bible is that way when you open up the word of God.
And if you’ve never done this before, you should start in John’s Gospel because you will be given the revelation of the deity of Jesus Christ.
As you read that you become familiar with who Jesus Christ is, how he spoke to those to which he came in contact with.
How did he deal with certain situations it’s contained in the scriptures here for us to read.
If we ingest the Bible, it gets into us like that pill, you take the pill, the Bible and it becomes part of you so that when I know this is gonna sound corny, but it’s true.
God speaks to me most when I’m in my yard or I’m unplugged from demands, even ministry can kill you.
I’ve got to unplug from ministry life.
If God’s gonna speak to be, speak to me about my own life.
Secondly, I cannot receive a sermon from God and Bible study without getting alone.
I’ve often said that being a pastor, teacher is a very lonely life to live.
You see, Jack, are you crazy? You’re on all kinds of media all the time, all the time. Listen.
The only way that that’s possible is that I shut down and get away from humanity on Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays.
And you hear what I’m saying? You gotta get alone to get fed for something to come out.
You’ve got to get alone with the word to have that experience of hearing what God is saying.
So friends, listen, God is speaking. His voice is crystal clear. It’s the Bible that he uses.
He’s gonna use scripture and believe it or not.
What’s fun about that is I could be at the beach, I could be gardening.
I could be taking a walk. I could be doing something that is allowing my mind to relax.
I’m not on the phone, I’m not texting, I’m not distracted and when that moment begins to happen.
The realization of His voice is so present where, What he is saying lines up 100% with the revealed will of God, which is the Bible.
The Bible is God’s will when he voices his will, you know it.
Um Somebody might ask, what do you hear? Do you hear a Bible verse?
I could sometimes, yes, but most often I hear this is, this is fun.
I hear in my mind, I hear God’s word and it’s paraphrased in a manner that it gets my attention.
It’s, it’s unique enough. Not that God’s word isn’t unique.
Of course, it’s unique, but it might come to me like this.
God might speak to me and say, don’t, don’t trust in yourself.
Jack, don’t listen to your own counsel, listen to my counsel.
If I am speaking to you, you don’t have to make a mistake.
Just wait on my word, listen to what it says.
But don’t lean on your own imagination here or your own ideas, Jack, that thought will enter my mind while I’m mowing the lawn.
I know it’s from God because number one, I wouldn’t have said that to me.
And it’s unique enough to where it’s got the identification of God’s authenticity on it.
It’s truth, it’s divine or from this uh prospect of another world. How about that?
It’s not the wisdom of this age, it’s from above.
And so when he speaks, it’s in absolute correlation perfectly with scripture.
Now, this is an important thing to point out because people today will say, and I’m really tired of it, aren’t you?
It’s quite dangerous. You know, Pastor Jack or your friend will tell you, God spoke to me.
You do understand right? When you say that God spoke to me, you better be careful what you’re saying Because you know what you are actually saying in the 21st century, thus Saith The Lord.
You know, you can get yourself killed in the Old Testament for saying that if you said thus saith the Lord.
God told me to do this or to do that or to whatever boy, you better be right or if you’re not right, you’re dead because you’re invoking the name of God and you are actually incriminating God by saying He told me to do this.
So watch this. A lot of people who don’t know their bibles, but their spiritual will say things like this.
Oh God told me, God told me that I should divorce my wife because he wants me happy.
Guess what? God just told me that He didn’t tell you that why?
Because God’s Bible makes it very, very clear. That’s not how he speaks. He’s not gonna say that to you.
O God told me that He wants me rich. No, God didn’t tell you that.
I’m telling you right now. God didn’t tell you that.
But see when people are in the vicinity or the neighborhood of what they want.
They will be so bent on achieving their own desire that they’ll cloak their decision making process with, with bible, with, with Christian ease.
They’ll wrap it with a Christian bow and they’ll say, God told me, don’t ever say that you’re gonna get in huge trouble with God.
You should be very careful.
In fact, even in my own life, when I know God spoke to me, if I’m gonna say something publicly about that, I have got to say, I believe God spoke to me about what I’m going to share with you.
You be the judge according to God’s word. If what I’m saying is true, okay.
It’s very important. So be careful, know God’s voice and you can know his voice by judging what the thought process, what the thought conclusion is in your mind by judging it against the word of God.
When Paul the Apostle spoke to the Bavarians, right? They tested everything that was spoken against the Bible.
So imagine that Paul is preaching New Testament truth, right to the Bavarians. What did they do?
They went through their Old Testament to see what Paul was saying was true. That’s amazing.
Imagine, would you love to have heard his sermon?
Paul would have preached a New Testament sermon with Old Testament doctrine epic and they could have, they could have qualified everything Paul said against the Bible.
So what, what are they discerning? Hey, God speaking through this guy.
That’s exactly what Isaiah said, that’s exactly what Michael was talking about. And Joel, oh my goodness.
What, what Peter just said, that’s right out of the book of Joel.
Wow, that’s discerning the voice of God. And let me wrap it up by saying this.
Don’t have your life be led by people who come up to you and say, God told me to tell you, oh boy.
Well, pastor, don’t you believe in the gifts of the spirit? Every single one of them?
I do as long as they’re operated in accordance with the scripture.
You said, well, what’s the problem with what you just said? A moment ago?
A friend of mine had a word for me.
Well, why did, why couldn’t God tell you the word himself?
Well, because God was using the voice of a profit in my life.
Watch out the New Testament Burbage given to us and the gifts of the spirit regarding prophet is one who heralds forth the word of God.
One who puts forth the word of God.
If your friend tells you, hey, the Lord told me to tell you that you need to give me your brand new car.
Okay. Your friend’s a lunatic. He’s manipulating you and that’s not God speaking okay.
Now, if God says to you, hey, I want you to give your new card to your friend.
Let God confirm that to you in the word in the Bible.
Apply that to dreams.
Gosh, the things I listen, people who say, I know this is gonna happen in my life. Why?
What was said, I had a dream years ago and then a friend of mine said he had the same dream.
This is gonna happen. Maybe.
Let’s see how we gonna know if God was speaking, judging against the Bible against the word.
See, listen today. Can you imagine if every Christian around the world took this book, God’s Word and let it be the authority of their lives.
The church would get cleaned up overnight and Christians would go to church on Sunday morning and listen, I love this.
I operate under this, this um authority that God has given his people.
I better be teaching the Bible on Sunday morning rightly, because the church that I pastor, these people eat up the Bible, they read it every day.
They’re animals. You just can’t parade somebody out in front of these people. They’re gonna bust them.
The church is gonna call them out. Wait a minute. Okay.
That’s great because number one, it means actually that I’m doing the job I’m supposed to do by feeding them the word of God and staying out of the way.
And the second thing is they know enough to hold me accountable to what is being said is in alignment with scripture.
That’s how you wanna roll with your life.
So the next thing is hearing how to hear, but that will have to say for part two So listen, we believe this, we believe that it’s time for you to live out what it is that you believe in.
That’s why we say it’s time for real life. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing here and now.
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And then uh as always pray for us, we just want to bring you truth that you can judge against the scriptures.
And so, um listen, we’re gonna be talking next time about hearing God’s voice.
What kind of beers do we want to have?
Is it appears in our head or is it ears in our heart?
What did Jesus mean when he said, listen, take heed to what the spirit of God is?
Saying next time right here. God bless you guys.
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