HEARING GOD
SPEAK
Hearing
the voice of God speak to you is as natural as hearing your closest friend talk
to you, but to hear His voice, one must be ready to listen. The
Bible declares, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God" (John 1: 1). It also says in another place, that
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting and training in righteousness" (II Timothy 3: 16). In Old Testament times, God spoke
directly with certain people like:
Ø
Adam
Ø
Noah
Ø
Moses
Ø
Abraham
Ø
Ezekiel,
and
Ø
Isaiah
He still speaks today with His people
in many different ways, audibly being the way He chose to speak to me. For
instance, additional ways God communicates to man:
Ø Through Prayer
Ø
Through
His Word
Ø
Through
our thoughts
Ø
Through
conversations with others
Ø
Through
circumstances
Ø
Through
the television, and
Ø
Through
the radio, and I’m sure He has even more ways that He communicates with man
This is a
quote by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian
University, this
excerpt is taken from an article that was in Christianity Today titled “Does
God still speak today? I know he does. So what does all this mean? I'm a
theologian, and I should know. But I can't spin out a fancy theological formula
for God's guidance and provision. What I know is that God spoke to me and used
a gift he had already given me to provide for a young man being called into His
service. It all started when I said, "God, please use me!" All it
took was a specific need and a specific plea combined with the determination to
be obedient. I don't know if it always works that way, but it did this time for
me and my young friend. So what has this done for me? Probably more than what
it done for the young man bound for ministry. My faith in the living, personal,
loving, and providing God, has been renewed and deepened. Now I know, more than
intellectually, that God still speaks.
Let’s read another quote from John
Piper, who said “Let me tell you about a most
wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after
six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. You
can find the entire article online at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2007/2021_The_Morning_I_Heard_the_Voice_of_God/
Although God speaking audible to man
in this Grace Age Dispensation is not as frequent as it was back in the days of
the Old Testament. God asked Saul a question while he was on the road to
Damascus, He was asked, Why do you continue to persecute Me? Paul did not have
to think about who may have been speaking to him; immediately he recognized
whom it was, and wanted to be sure so he replied, “Who are you”, adding,
‘Lord’?1 There are many people in the world, who
don’t know God as Father, but I
tell you He knows each of us intimately and personally, and when He speaks to
us, we will automatically recognize who He is by His voice. Believe it or not
the same is true of hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit and Satan. When Satan
speaks we are able to discern:
Ø
That
this voice is not the voice of God; we perceive intuitively
Ø
That
Satan’s voice is not the good voice2
I
can speak on this first hand because I heard the voice of God speak audibly and
at length to me on Wednesday night, August 21, 1980. I’ll never forget that was
the night I was born from above,
made totally brand new from the inside out. That night, I cried out to God, and
He found me in a mental place that was lower than my lowest point. I needed a
Savior and somehow deep down inside I knew it. On that astonishing night when
God spoke to me, I also heard the voice of Satan speaking trying to persuade me
to kill myself. I had heard Satan speak to me throughout my childhood on
multiple occasions. Satan had robbed me all of my life until I was Born-Again.
He totally robbed me of:
Ø My childhood
Ø Friendships
Ø Identity
Ø Employment, and
Ø My relationship with my mother
God in His generosity allowed my
mother and me to resurrect a relationship for two years before she went home to
be with Him. She longed to see me, and all of her children saved, something she
prayed for night and day. After I was Born-Again, I remember sharing with her a
spiritual experience that I had, and did not understand. After completing the
story, she informed me that God had given me the gift called discerning
of spirits and that I should pray and ask Him to develop that gift in
me. This gift is what kept me on my toes after I was Born-Again. The night I
was miraculously saved, Satan almost succeeded at convincing me to commit
suicide, but God stepped in speaking to me audibly at exactly twelve o’clock
midnight. The voice of the Lord cannot be compared to anything that we have
ever heard or known in this life. There is no word in the English language that
can describe the sound of His voice. Scripture writers describe His voice as
the sound of many waters.3
Not only does God speak audible today,
but the Holy Spirit also speaks audibly to the children of God. There is a
distinguishing difference in the voice of God and the voice of the Holy Spirit.
One thing that is certain concerning both, the voice of God, and the voice of
the Holy Spirit is they can be discerned immediately and are recognized as good
and loving. There are times when:
Ø
The
Holy Spirit speak, and we hear Him, but we do not take heed to what we hear out
of uncertainty, or maybe disobedience, and
Ø
There
are times when He speaks, and when we hear Him, we discard His words as our own
thoughts not adhering, until it downs on us later that the small voice that
spoke to us was the Holy Spirit trying to communicate a thing to us
Ø
Then
there are times when He speaks in a voice loud enough for us to hear and take
heed
In this Age of Grace, we have the
written Word and God doesn't have to necessarily speak in an audible voice, but
there are definitely occasions when He does. As I stated earlier, God spoke to
me August 21, 1980 in an audible voice from 12:00 midnight to 8:00 in the
morning. We discussed many things concerning my past and future. He caused me
to understand events of my life and how to place those events in their correct
perspective. When our time
together was ended, it seemed as if we had only conversed for a matter of
seconds, yet in reality, it was an eight-hour time span. God accomplished
wonders in me that night; He educated me on what had happened to me in my
childhood, being demon possessed at age eleven. He changed and made me a new
creation in a matter of moments.
I could actually feel Him draining out
from my feet the old ugly demon possessed person that I was, and pouring in a
new me from the top of my head; making me the new creation that is before you
today.4 I learned from my Born-Again experience
that everything in this life waits for God, because God moves in His own timing
and time stands still when He enters. God doesn't have to appear to us in the
miraculous, but sometimes He does. I learned that man cannot and should not
ever place limits on God’s ability, after all, He is the Creator of the Universe, and He can
do anything.5 To prove this, God hid
the Plan of Salvation in His
heart from the beginning until the time came to reveal it; because of that, we
can conclude that there are multiplicities of things that God has not revealed
to man in His written Word.6
Not everything known to God is
revealed to man, nor will it be in this lifetime. Just because many issues are
not addressed in the Bible, there is no reason to assume that God cannot or
will not do a thing. Nothing is too hard for God. God is not silent in this Age
of Grace, He is speaking, but the masses are not listening to Him. I
don’t understand people who make statements like God doesn’t speak audibly
today. Comments such as this are made solely on the basis that God has not
spoken to that individual audibly. Those making such comments make them because
they do not have that testimony, and refuse to belief that God can speak to
anyone else audibly. People making these statements do so in error and are
placing limitations on God. Frankly speaking, their personal opinion do not
make the Truth that God speaks audibly, even under the Dispensation of Grace,
to those that He chooses any less true.
When people make this type of
statement, they make the persons that God has legitimately spoken to audibly
out to be liars in the eyes of some. Even before God spoke to me audibly, I
knew he could speak audible because Satan had spoken audibly to me for years.
This is my Truth based on the truth that God came to me, and spoke to me in an
audible voice. He came into my life saved, and delivered me from years of demon
possession on that very night. If God has not spoken audibly to you in an
audible voice, the truth is you can’t give a witness concerning whether or not
He speaks audible to people today at all. One should not comment on this kind
of fellowship with God one-way or the other if they have not had the
experience. The wise thing to do would be to keep silent and continue to pray
that He will one day speak audibly to you, instead of spewing out negative
comments towards persons to whom He has spoken.
Everything about God is beyond
splendor when He appears or speaks to us. At the time when He spoke to me, His
presence was all around me filling up the room in an unexplainable way. Many
things were happening inside me all at once as He spoke and I understood Him
perfectly. Looking inside, He confirmed His words with different feelings that
were quite overwhelming. All of the feelings that He put on me could be read as
if they were labeled, or as if they were neon signs inside. As a child, I grew
up feeling un-loved, yet in a moment of speaking with Him, I knew, felt, and
experienced genuine love for the first time. I realized a love I never knew
existed (John 3: 16). From that moment, I was made able to give love and
compassion to others and receive love - a quality that I lacked prior to being
Born-Again.
The last words God spoke to me on that
wonderful night were, “You are exalted this high” (only He and I knew how high
the experience had taken me), He went on to say, “But you are going to come
down and when you do, BEWARE OF SATAN because he is
going to be on you with both feet”. This statement continues to be true in my
life today, but with the help of the Holy Spirit I am victorious. God doesn’t
expect us to be timid or fearful when it comes to waging war on His enemy and
ours. He expects us to be:
Ø
Bold
Ø
Strong
Ø
Confident,
and
Ø
Courageous
knowing that He is with us to bring victory in our battles7
Believers
are equipped with all that is needed to stand as more than conquerors to an
evil devilish regime.8 God is
so very loving towards us and because of that love; He prepares us for satanic
encounters and equips us for spiritual battles.9
Because believers are in Him, the wars of life rages on, but the battles we
face daily are won, whether in the physical or spiritual. Believers should
never place limits on God’s ability. We should neither allow nor accept it when
others place limits on God. We must always remember if something is not written
in the Bible, as far as God’s
ability to do is concerned - that doesn’t restrict or limit His Power or
ability to do in any way. He is God
the Creator of all things, and He can do anything but fail.10
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