This week on the Forerunners of the Age to Come Blog
10 Ways to Improve Your Ability to Hear God
Hearing God - Part 1
Before we get started, I feel compelled to ask you to invite a few of your friends to read this episode. I am not into numbers but I do want this message to reach every person it who it can help live a better life of faith. You don’t have to be a writer to share in this ministry. Please take a few moments and invite your friends to read this article and or to subscribe to this channel. Blessings, Paul
Learning to hear God’s voice is among every believer’s highest priorities because a relationship with no communication is dead and empty religion. As important as hearing God is in developing relationship with Him, it is also a sign of His ownership of us. “My sheep know my voice.”
Of the many commandments of the Bible, it’s impossible to keep them all, all the time. Yet we are challenged throughout Scripture to do the will of God. We can’t be obedient to God’s word unless we know specifically what He wants us to do. To Moses, obedience was leading the Children of Israel to the Promised Land. To David, it was to overcome Israel’s enemies. To John the Baptist, it was to live in the wilderness and proclaim the coming Christ. Each person has a unique and specific call and purpose to fulfil. These patriarchs of our faith had robust relationships with God. Their ministry was a result of their relationship. No relationship, no fruitful and legitimate ministry.
Following
To assume that we should do this or that because it is in the Bible creates constant confusion, frustration and guilt. Yet without a vision for your life and a purpose, there is no “life” in your life. Christ joins us in our journey and gives us abundant life. The abundant life of which the Gospel speaks, is IN following Him. Following our purpose in life requires of us to hear God and to be obedient to our specific call. For most of us, that can get complicated. Relationship with God, however, is supposed to be simple and easy, and it is, when we realize that all we really need to do is focus on following Him. We set aside all our ideas and desires and just follow Christ. He is responsible for everything. We put Him in charge and give up our life and become a “follower”. We don’t need to carry burdens. We follow because He has gone ahead of us to prepare the way. We don’t need to ask for His provision; we just need to find what has already been provided for in our journey. We follow because He knows where His provision for us is stored. We follow because only He knows where we are going. In order to navigate to our destination, we must be in constant contact with our leader. He is our GPS. Our life and our ministry are the result of our relationship, and our relationship with God is built on communication. Hearing God is at the center of our relationship and it, too, is easy.
Fruitfulness
Hearing God is important – very important! We complicate the process and stress about it because we want to get it right. It is comforting for us to realize that we are already hearing from God every day. He is speaking to His people all the time. In fact, He is speaking to all people all the time. It is only believers who by faith acknowledge that it is the Holy Spirit who is speaking. Even the most ardent atheist is hearing God. He/she knows His voice, but just doesn’t know His name. We are so used to God speaking that we can take Him for granted. Sometimes we don’t recognize that what we’re experiencing is Him speaking to us. So the first step to improve our ability to hear God is to acknowledge that He is speaking and that we need to improve our listening.
Learning to Listen
Hearing God is a ‘learned’ ability. We learn how to recognize His voice amongst the chorus of other voices because His voice is unique. With just a few words God can explain the most complex mystery. His voice is clear and strong, yet it resonates as truth deep within us. Sometimes He speaks quietly and calmly in the midst of the storm. In other cases He speaks with great authority and power. The tone and form, may be different but the message always impacts us; it always expresses God’s love, elevates our perspective, and reveals something we have never seen before.
God speaks in many ways. We may see a picture in our mind’s eye, or hear a voice in our head or heart (spirit) that does not come from us. How God speaks is always creative and fresh and impossible on which to put limits. How He speaks is not the important part of hearing God. Each time we hear Him we build our faith, experience and confidence in walking with God. It’s our “job” to ask Him questions, and to learn of Him as if we were 2 years old; and it’s His role and His delight to answer them. There’s a lot to learn and understand in the Kingdom of God and in the universe. Our prayers should not be just about things. Ask him for understanding, revelation and wisdom. These are the valuable treasures. Like any parent, He delights in taking the responsibility to make sure we understand. It is His pleasure to show and explain His Kingdom.
10 Ways to Improve Your Ability to Hear God
1. Invite - ask Him to speak to you in every meeting, every day, at every opportunity. You can’t ask for too much or too often. Hearing God and praying His prayers for the things that matter to Him are the basics of building relationship.
2. Honor - when He honors you with His words, you honor Him with your words. Honor begets honor.
3. Respect – show respect for Him by treating Him as if He was physically present and one of the greatest people on Earth. He is worthy to be treated as well as any earthly king – even better.
4. Authority – if He truly has authority in your life, then you will do as He says promptly and as a high priority.
5. It’s a conversation – subsequent questions are welcome.
6. Make room for God – invite Him to speak about things He wants to speak about. It is not all about you and what you want to talk about. Let Him lead the conversation and your prayers. The most wonderful word I ever received was, “I have so much to tell you.”
7. You Can’t Handle the Truth – I remember asking God for a solution to a particular unpleasant situation. He promptly spoke His answer to me. The problem was that I couldn’t accept the answer He gave. I had been taught that He would never say what He said. Over the next 17 years, I asked the same question many, many times with no answer. What would be the point of Him speaking again if I couldn’t receive the answer? I eventually became desperate enough to be willing to do anything to solve the problem. When I asked the question this time, He answered, “I already told you.” I remembered His answer 17 years earlier. This was the perfect answer to show me that the silence wasn’t because of Him, it was because of me. I couldn’t handle the truth. We limit God in what He is able to speak to us by our wrong perceptions of who He is.
8. Thank Him - His words are life and understanding and are precious to us. Let Him know you really, really love when He speaks to you. His words feed us and sustain our spiritual life and give us understanding, wisdom, courage, faith, meaning and more. Nothing wrong with telling Him how much His word mean to you.
9. Confidentiality – like any relationship, some conversations are private. Some things shouldn’t be shared. If you want to have intimate conversations don’t be a ‘blabber mouth’. God speaks to everyone, so don’t be proud of the fact He speaks to you – it’s normal.
10. Guidance – the best way to get God’s direction in a matter is to prayerfully get to the place where you have no desire and no preference or bias in the matter. God can make either choice “perfect”. He can give you what you want and make it wonderful but He can also give you what you need and advance His “work” of sanctification in your life. So leave the choice in His hands and He will elevate His guidance to you to a new level.
Hearing God requires you to take risks. You have to be willing to be wrong, make mistakes and look dumb. It doesn’t happen very often, but you have to get to the point where you want to hear God above being right. It is the collective revelation of the Body of Christ that is the clear understanding of any one matter. Our part is only a small portion of that understanding. We need each other to complete the picture. We need each other, because we are one.
Hit The Ball
Some people say that conversations are like tennis. You hit the ball across the net and then it is the other player’s responsibility to hit it back to you. When we ask a question of God, it is His responsibility to make sure we receive the answer. He able to send lightning bolts and earthquakes as part of His response to make sure you receive His answer. He, however, is more inclined to teach us how to hear Him in the subtle ways He usually speaks. If we pray sincerely for God to teach us how to hear Him, I can assure you He will teach you. Trust Him!
I Never Knew You
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matt. 7: 21-23 NIV)
These believers got so busy with their ‘work’ that they let their relationship with Christ break down. Like a marriage to a workaholic, all they had to show for themselves was what a great job they had done. They no longer were justified by faith in Christ; they named their good works as their reason Christ should save them. Their own words condemn them.
This scripture also warns us that ministry can be duplicated without the collaboration of the Holy Spirit, and that surrender to Him is the foundation of relationship with Christ. We are also warned that in these days, there will be counterfeit Christians who will do miracles and deliverance, but in their own power. Power can be faked, but a love relationship with Christ can never be faked! People’s prayers reveal more about their relationship with Christ then does their ministry.
In Relationship We Are Protected
A lot of doubt and unbelief has been cast on having a relationship with God in which He speaks. Some people say that the Bible is your “everything”. It will protect you against all enemies. The Pharisees thought this same thing. They depended on their understanding of Scripture but missed the Messiah when He came! They didn’t just miss Him, they murdered Him! They were regarded as godly men but were in fact, enemies of God. We can learn about faith from others who have walked this road, but God’s word is more powerful and meaningful to us when it is specifically to us. God’s word to Moses or Jonah, or David is like taking a conversation someone else had with God and taking it out of context. It is an assumption, it dishonors and displaces God in your life. Remain “helpless” and God will speak, protect and deliver you. The Bible alone cannot protect us from error. It can confirm what God is speaking to us by His Spirit, but it was never intended to be our teacher, comforter or protector. That job has been given to the Holy Spirit by God. If we hit the ball to Him, He will take the responsibility to keep us from error or harm.
Our needs become our point of contact with God and the basis for relationship. Relationship is God’s purpose for this entire experiment with humanity. Will He find faith on the Earth when He returns? He is hoping He will. Will people want to hang out with God and find out about His Kingdom and His plans to invite ordinary people into the Trinity? He is hoping they will. He is inviting us into a conversation with Him and a deep and intimate relationship. He is hoping we will.
Fruitfulness is the result of abiding in Christ. Fruitfulness happens naturally. Ministry is the outcome of relationship. It is not a burden. It is never wearing or consuming. We are strengthened and empowered by God flowing through us. We walk, we talk and we listen to God. We are God-people because we are together with Him, and out of that, fruitful ministry flows. Ministry is the outcome; because relationship is the reason we exist.
The “Test” for This Week is: Please join the conversation by commenting or asking a question.
About Our Name: The “Forerunners of the Age to Come Blog” is written for followers of Christ who are praying for His return as the final victory in the conflict between Truth and lies. As Forerunners of the Age to Come, we are called to prepare the way by praying, walking in the Spirit, and through prophetic declarations and manifestations of the Kingdom of God on Earth as a sign of His coming. Our prayer is that this ministry will empower, equip, and inspire you to become the pure Bride for whom Christ is returning. People, get ready!