Part 3 What Helps You Hear Gods Voice

Fresh Manna 2009© by Pastor Tim Burt

James 1:25 But if you keep looking steadily into God’s perfect law and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

Every follower of Jesus Christ was given a gift – the ability to hear the voice of God. It isn’t like hearing an audible voice. It’s more like an impression in your heart that happens. It does happen and it is real! Learning to hear the voice of God can be the most wonderful of all continuing life experiences

Yesterday, I left off here: If you are a parent, you probably understand the blessing it is when your children pay attention to you and what you say. You know you want to help them. When they disregard you, they’ve literally stopped hearing your voice. When they esteem your voice by paying attention and listening, and do what you say, then you are blessed and they are blessed. This is what increases our ability to hear the voice of God – esteeming His voice and learning to do what He says. James 1:25 says, But if you keep looking steadily into God’s perfect law (His ways and precepts) — the law that sets you free — and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. Allow the words and if you do what it says to become illuminated within you.

The point of God speaking to us beyond sharing His love and encouraging our hearts, is to instruct us in life – so that we may learn what we should pursue and gravitate toward and what we should avoid and flee from. What He leads us to pursue will bring blessing to our life. What we should avoid will steal, destroy, and bring the touch of death to our life. God spoke to His people and said, “Choose life that you and your descendants might live! Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey him and commit yourself to him, for He is your life…” Deut. 30:19-20

Blessing is God’s desire for you. DOING what God says is what enables you to continue to hear God’s voice most clearly and most often. If you read and allow God’s Word to hold the same value as all the other voices that speak through mankind, then you’ve devalued God’s Word – His voice. Again, Psalm 29:4 says, The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. Doing what God says is what helps you to continually hear God’s voice. Hearing and doing is what trains your heart to hear more and more clealy. So then, the question becomes, how can we become better at doing what God says?

People have no idea of how much pride works to creep into their life. Many people would say, “I’m not prideful. I don’t act cocky or arrogant. I don’t even have that great of a self esteem.” That doesn’t mean someone doesn’t have pride. Here is the greatest indicator that pride is an issue. The second you think you can do life without the help of God, you’ve got pride issues. The day you think you don’t desperately need His Word to instruct and lead you, you’ve got pride issues. The day you think you can “get the job done” without the help of the Lord through prayer, you’ve got pride issues.

People often feel secure in themselves and what they can accomplish until that security blanket has been pulled out from underneath them. Crisis most often exposes vulnerability and need. Pride will work to blind you of your need for God and His help in your life. Knowing daily of your desperate need of God’s grace and help is the only vital health sign that you are not overcome with pride.

Shortly before Jesus was to be taken, beaten, and crucified, He told His disciples that this would be happening and that they would abandon and desert Him. Peter declared, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.” Matthew 26:33 That was Peter’s pride speaking. Jesus went on to tell Peter that his only chance of survival of not denying Him would be through prayer. He told Peter, “Satan wants to sift you like wheat.” Jesus told Peter that He prayed for him so that he would not completely fail. From there they went to the garden where Jesus prayed. He repeatedly asked them to pray along with Him. Instead they slept. When Judas and the soldiers came to take Jesus, His disciples fled and deserted Him just as He said they would. A revelation of a desperate need for God’s help through prayer was missing amongst each of them because of pride. But not for Jesus! He prayed and He fulfilled what God asked Him to do. He was a doer. He heard God’s voice and He did what God asked.

You’ll never in your own strength be able to do the kinds of things – even the smallest of things that God asks you to do or change in your life if you don’t understand that the strength to obey God lies in the power of prayer.

Go read the story of Daniel. He was the godliest of men in the most ungodly environment possible. Yet, he was mightily used of God. How? He heard and he obeyed. How did he manage that? He had no pride. He stayed desperate for help and strength through prayer all of his life. Daniel 6:10 But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.

This is the only way to hear the voice of God in the way He intended. He intended it for you! Learn to hear and obey and you will soon learn that you hear His voice even more!