Featured Can you hear the voice of God?

What post did I mention an audible voice?

 

Again...where did I say an audible voice?

 

Other people might say that they have a message for you from God...

There might be times when people tell you that they believe they have a word from the Lord for you. This is a perfectly valid thing and is perfectly Scriptural (Acts 9:10-17, 21:10-15). But no matter who gives you the word from the Lord, and no matter how accurate their track record might be, you should thank them but set it aside until God confirms it for you somehow. Don't run your life based on what someone else says that God says you should do. A word from the Lord that's delivered by someone else should always confirm what God has already spoken to you in some way (or what He will speak to you sometime in the future). Interpret it as being one form of confirmation from the Lord, not as a command from the Lord.

 

I figured that last one would have been attacked...

The Voice of the Devil


Sometimes it's easy for the devil to deceive us simply because we don't read our Bibles in a prayerful, honest, thorough, unbiased way, and we help the devil by being complacent in our Christian life. Even pastors and Bible teachers are not immune to these biases and "filters," which is why it's important for us to develop our own spiritual sensitivity and to study the Bible for ourself, allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate His truths to us. We should be careful not to let our feelings or our logical reasonings or other people's opinions be our source of "truth," but instead we should read God's Word and listen to His Spirit within us. That's why God gave us both of these things!

 

I know He did in the Bible...but I myself have never heard Him speak in an audible voice. I also do not put limits on God! Could he??? Yes!

 

I agree that the Bible is the testimony of Jesus! But when he sent His Spirit we all have access to hear from Him on a personal level too! I believe in a personable God...one that guides me through His Spirit to all truth! I can speak to HIm as a child to a Father...a friend to friend...on all issues in my personal life.

 

I agree that satan is all about deception! That is why we need to know the Word...and know the voice of God within us!

Many Christians seem to be afraid of the devil, but notice what the Bible says:

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)

You have authority over the devil when you're living in submission to God, because "the one who is in you [Jesus] is greater than the one who is in the world [the devil]" (1 John 4:4). We should not be afraid of the devil, but learn enough about him so that you can be aware of his traps

 

How to Recognize God's Voice

In order to hear God's voice and discern His leading for our daily life, there's one key point that we need to be aware of. If we can grab hold of this one key point then we'll be able to hear from God much more often. Here it is:
Don't expect God to speak to you in a sensational, spectacular, supernatural way!
You see, we have a natural tendency to want God to speak out loud to us in an obvious way so that we know that it was Him and so that we know what we're supposed to do. God occasionally speaks to people in "the audible voice of God" or in some other sensational way, but those are not His usual ways of speaking to us. Why? Because God is into faith, and without faith it's impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). The thing is, faith requires that we don't have all of our questions answered! For example, if God always spoke out loud to us so that we know it's Him, then we wouldn't need faith to hear Him. On the other hand, if God speaks so softly to us that we need to draw closer to Him in order to hear Him better, then there's a lot of faith involved. Remember, it's faith which pleases Him.

 

Why do you bring tongues out in every thread???

 

The still, small voice of God...

God usually speaks to us in such a quiet, non-spectacular way that we're almost never going to be 100% certain that we heard Him, and we just need to get used to that. Once we get past the "hang up" of needing to hear from God in spectacular, loud, supernatural ways, then we'll find ourselves beginning to recognize the still, small voice which He usually uses.

For example, think about a time when you did something that bothered your conscience. Deep down inside you knew that what you did was wrong, but how did you know? It's because there's something way down inside of us that knows when something is right or wrong. Somehow our "knower" knows these things, and it bothers our conscience when we do things that our "knower" knows is not right. This "knower" which we sense deep down inside of us is where God often speaks to us. There's nothing spectacular about it, and there's nothing sensational about it. It's the still, small voice of God.

 

God's voice compared with the devil's voice

If you're a Christian then the Holy Spirit lives in your spirit, and that's where you'll usually hear Him speaking to you. The devil tries to make us feel condemnation, but the Holy Spirit always builds us up. In addition, the Holy Spirit always speaks in line with the Word of God. He convicts us of sin in our lives, but He never brings condemnation, and we need to understand the difference between the two. Conviction makes us aware of our actions that were sinful and need to be confessed, but condemnation makes us feel that we are bad or worthless. Self-pity and self-condemnation come from the flesh or the devil, so don't allow yourself to give in to them. Notice that if we don't know what the Bible says then we don't know God's will or His character very well, and then it becomes easy for us to be led astray by false doctrines (from the devil) that make sense to our minds.