And the Lord Said #2 How Does God Speak To Us
Hearsay,
unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not
part of one's direct knowledge
In a court of law hearsay is inadmissible.
In determining a case the court wants to hear about your
direct knowledge.
I was told that He said that she said…
Objection your honor. Hearsay.
Too much of our life in Christ is built on hearsay.
Even when an expert brings a report of their experience, their findings,
You believing that report is still hearsay.
Even though you believe the expert to be reputable.
Until you have direct knowledge or experience,
You’ve based what you believe on hearsay.
I feel that we have a lot of hearsay Christians.
They believe a lot of good things based on the experience of others.
But something is missing.
1 John 1:1-3 (MSG)
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we're telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we're telling you…
I’ve got a lot of the being told,
What I want is I heard, I saw, I touched.
What I want is first hand experience.
We started a series of messages dealing with the first hand experience of God
speaking with you.
We know that in order to live your life to the full,
everything rises and falls on relationships.
Trust is the foundation of every righteous relationship.
And communication is totally indispensable for creating that trust and
creating intimacy in the relationship.
Communication is not a monologue, it’s a dialogue.
Relational communication is 2-way.
Involving both speaking and listening.
Last time we learned that it is a normal part of the Christian experience to
have a dialogue with God.
We discovered we have to prepare for converse.
we must eliminate distractions
we have to remove spiritual hindrances
we have to have an attitude of submission and obedience.
Today we are going to consider the various ways that a continually articulate
Creator speaks to us.
I made a quick survey of the different ways people have reported that God spoke to
them.
Just remember this is all hearsay.
I am reporting on what someone else says they experienced.
Let’s start with the more dramatic ways—
Dreams, Visions and Angels.
A dream obviously occurs when you are asleep.
Job 33:15 (NLT)
He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds.
A vision occurs when you are awake—
Revelation 1:10 (MSG)
It was Sunday and I was in the Spirit, praying. I heard a loud voice behind me, trumpet-clear and piercing:
An angel is an encounter with a messenger of God.
Luke 1:26-28 (MSG)
God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her: Good morning!
Because of how God put you together,
Or the urgency of what He wants you to do,
Dreams, Visions and Angels have been used by God to speak to his
people.
“God will speak to you according to how He has uniquely wired you.
His messages will tie into His unique purpose for your life.
Don’t compare yourself to other people’s ways of hearing from God;
simply seek Him yourself and trust the unique ways He speaks
to you.” (Whitney Hopler http://www.crosswalk.com/11582752/ )
Dreams, Visions and Angles for me are rather dramatic,
Maybe for you its common experience.
Another method of communication not quite so dramatic but still very
awesome is prophecy.
Prophecy is something that I have experienced.
A prophecy occurs when God speaks a message through one person
for the benefit of another.
God uses another person to be His voice.
There are unfortunately a few Christian brothers or sisters who think being a
prophet is their vocation.
They tend to be manipulative.
In my experience a prophetic message,
Someone telling me what God has told them to tell me,
Either calls out my potential,
Or confirms some action that is already in my
heart.
My Spirit agrees with the message.
I leave the encounter encouraged,
And full of thanksgiving for God’s Word to me.
The last message from God I received from one of his true prophets
was that I have
“a spirit of fatherhood upon me concerning HBCC.”
That might not seem like much but it spoke volumes to me at
the time and answered a couple of questions I was
wrestling with.
Less dramatic but equally amazing is when God uses
Natural things and Circumstance
By natural things I mean the physical creation.
The sunset in the Barren Islands up in Alaska was my most
recent experience of God speaking to me through the
beauty of what He created.
The message was very simple: “Enjoy this life I have given you.”
Circumstances and happenstance may be orchestrated by God to send you a
Message or direct your path.
Something unexpected happens and you know,
That God’s hands are all over it.
Communicating something important to you.
I just happened to be over at teen challenge and one of the guys on the
program asked me for a bible.
And God said: “Make that a priority”
So I delivered, I had no idea that in about a year
Robert Farmer would be here at HBCC working as our
intern.
Here’s a happenstance that God used to speak to me.
I thought it would be nice to take Carol to see a chick flick.
We went to see the movie Hope Floats.
There is a scene in that move that brought me to
Sobs right there in the theater.
And God said: “Mike, that’s your deep pain too.”
And that word sent me on a journey of inner healing.
There is a very unwelcome messenger that God can speak to you through.
That messenger is Pain.
I’ll mix in trials, tribulations, afflictions and reoccurring problems.
God speaks to us through pain.
That’s a method I have also experienced.
Ever wonder why your life is so screwed up?
Why things don’t seem to go your way?
Why even what you think are the good things God wants you to
accomplish meet with frustration?
I’ve experienced times like that and the message was simple:
Mike you’ve got the light, but that hasn’t motivated you to change,
So here’s a little heat.
Proverbs 20:30 (NCV)
Hard punishment will get rid of evil, and whippings can change an evil heart.
I believe that the circumstances of suffering are unique in each individual
Occurrence.
Pain is not necessarily the medium for a message to clean up
your act from God.
Sometimes pain is part of what the Apostle Paul calls
“the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Phil 3:10 (NIV)
Maybe pain, trials, tribulations, afflictions and reoccurring problems
Are present just to help us to listen.
We are considering the various ways in which God directly speaks to His children.
God speaks through Dreams, Visions, Angels, Prophecy, Natural things,
Circumstance, and Pain.
For me the medium I most often hear God speaking to me is
through the Bible, through His teachers, and prayer.
God speaks to us though the Bible.
And on this, the Bible speaks for itself.
2 Timothy 3:15-17 (MSG)
There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
And the Lord said…how do we know, it’s written down.
It is amazing to me when I sit down and start reading the Bible how
God speaks to me through what I am reading.
Not only am I reading the words but there is a dialogue
going on.
That’s way you can read the same passage over and over and get a
new understanding, a new message from God from it.
I have taught you that there are seven spiritual disciplines
And that you must, and I mean must, be practicing 6 of them daily
Bible Study, Prayer, Fellowship, Service, Worship and
Obedience—those are disciplines to be practiced daily.
The 7th is Contemplation to be practiced when
necessary.
You know that as you practice the spiritual disciplines you are asking
for an audience with God.
The spiritual disciplines send the request for an encounter
with God.
Through each and every discipline there is opportunity to hear
God speak directly to you about what is going on and
what you need to do.
It’s been my experience that I hear God most often speaking directly to me as I
read His Bible.
If you feel God is never speaking to you,
Examine how much time you spend practicing those spiritual
disciplines, and specifically how much time you spend
reading and studying the Bible.
I know that there is a direct correlation.
God speaks to us through His teachers.
1 Thessalonians 2:12-13 (NLT)
…he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory. Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.
His teachers come in the form of pastors, and authors, and church history, and
spiritual mentors.
The words that they say might be the very message God is speaking to
you.
When I preach and teach, like right now,
I understand that God is using the words I say to speak something
specific to you.
Folks will say
“Mike your message today was for me, it’s like you’ve reading my mind.”
Or they will tell me something that I said that moved them.
And I realize I never said it at all.
Why does this happen?—God is speaking to them.
Prayer is also another medium through which God speaks to his children.
Prayer is a spiritual discipline so what I said about the Bible is true about
prayer.
I have experienced that I hear God speaking to me through prayer when I
journal.
If you are interested in discovering what journaling is all about
I will be glad to give you some pointers.
In a nut shell its writing down your prayers and
thoughts.
When God speaks to me its usually through His Word, or through one of His
teachers, or through prayer.
God also speaks to me through Pain, Natural things, Circumstance and
happenstance.
We’ve seen that God can speak to us through
Dreams, Visions, Angels, and Prophecy
So God uses various mediums through which to speak to us.
You may be wondering, does God speak to me in an audible voice.
Can’t rule that out.
Acts 9:4-5 (NIV)
He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied.
I want God to speak to me in an audible voice, but so far He hasn’t.
An Audible voice I would rank with dreams and visions and angels.
It is my experience that God speaks to me through Impressions.
John 14:26 (NLT)
“…when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.”
God the Holy Spirit will remind you, “He will bring to mind.
For me that means God gives us impressions.
He gives ideas,
He gives us hunches,
He gives us these gut feelings.”
(Rick Warren, Sermon Series: How to Hear God Speak part 2)
An impression is a thought that I did not have before.
It comes to me, in all these various ways we’ve considered today.
This idea, its new, its often not what I would have thought of to do or
to say or to plan.
I recognize that this notion is not my own.
God the Holy Spirit has spoken it to me in my
mind.
Next week we are going to learn how to distinguish Godly impressions from the
other voices that disguise themselves as God’s
Today we’ve learned various ways that a continually articulate Creator speaks to
us.
The mediums of communication are as varied and unique as we are.
One thing is for sure, God wants to communicate directly with
us.
The most common ways God speaks directly to us is by impressions in our thought
life.
We make ourselves more receptive to those impressions as we
practice the spiritual disciplines.
I know that if you can move pass the hearsay, and into personal experience,
It will revolutionize your spiritual life.
I want you to experience hearing God’s voice,
Speaking directly to you,
Conversing with you,
Guiding and directing you.
Such experiences bring great confidence that God is with you.
Hearing from God strengthens your relationship with God.
This is what I would like for you to do to prepare for next weeks message on
recognizing the voice of God.
Every chance you get this wee, ask God to speak to you?
Continue to ask God for His direction in the simple choices of
the week.
Be ready to listen, be attentive, be submissive
ask God to speak to you.
And be aware of the impressions that result,
The thoughts that come.
They just might contain the first hand experience
you’ve been longing for.