CONVERSATIONS WITH OUR CREATOR

CONVERSATIONS WITH OUR CREATOR

  • Encountering the Father, Hearing God's Voice

CONVERSATIONS WITH OUR CREATOR

I encourage you to read these together as a family and strengthen your spiritual hearing together. Pray aloud, “Holy Spirit, I invite You to come and fill my heart with peace (stop for a moment and receive His gift of peace). Come teach me about the Father’s heart to communicate with me. I grant You permission to remove everything and anything acting as earmuffs blocking my ability to hear clearly. I don’t want to partner with any thoughts, beliefs, or feelings that aren’t in alignment with Jesus or Your Word. I long to have an intimate and deeply connected relationship with my Father and grant You permission to highlight things to me. Come have Your way with me and open my heart to receive all that my Father has for me. In Jesus’ name.”

John 15:5-8 (MSG) says, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation is intimate and organic, and the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing that will last. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”

Did you catch that? When you make room to hear what HE has to say, the harvest is abundant. It doesn’t say when you labor really hard or do umpteen good things. It says when you listen to what HE has to say! The key is doing what you hear the Father telling you to do, NOT what religion, the Jones, or fear of your mother-in-law tells you to do! The first thing each of us has to settle in our minds and hearts is this: “Does Father God speak to His children?” If He does, then you must stand in faith that it will happen. If you don’t believe His voice is for today, then you are walking in doubt, and that alone can block your ability to communicate with Him. If you do not believe that He wants to speak to you as a parent, you will have difficulty acknowledging when He is speaking to your children. Often, we expect God to scream in our faces, and THEN we will believe He speaks. While He can do anything, our faith typically allows us to experience the Kingdom. The more WE honor His voice, the more we will honor when He is speaking to us.

For today’s assignment, I encourage you to really soak in, chew on, and digest this question deeply: DOES THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE HAVE THINGS TO SAY TO ME PERSONALLY? I encourage you NOT to respond immediately but to spend the day allowing Holy Spirit to reveal to you your faith level and what you truly believe. Be at peace and allow Him to show you as you reflect on the question.

**If you are feeling stuck or have the revelation that deep down you don’t really believe He communicates today or with you personally, then we have to go back to the Word and allow it to transform our minds. It’s okay to press into this issue and allow Him to teach us. Do a Bible word search on the subject. I can teach you how to hear and widen your understanding of what it looks like, but I can’t give you faith or make you receive! That’s an inside job that each person must decide on their own. 

DOES GOD STILL SPEAK TODAY?

Before you can teach your children how to hear their Father, you will need to align your thinking with heaven. First, you have to resolve the following question in your heart – does Father God speak to His children? If He does, you must stand in faith that it will happen. If you don’t believe His voice is for today, then you are walking in doubt, and that alone is an earmuff that blocks your hearing. If you do not believe that He wants to speak to you as a parent, then you will have a tough time acknowledging when He is speaking to your children. Often, we expect God to get our attention by screaming at us, and THEN we will believe He speaks. While He can do anything, typically, it is our faith that allows us to experience the Kingdom. John 11:40. 

Let me give you an example: A child learns in Sunday school that Jesus wants to speak to him, and he BELIEVES it. He goes to bed that night and asks Jesus to speak to him in his dreams. He wakes up the following day and runs downstairs to tell his mom that Jesus took him all over the world and showed him that he would go before a king and tell him about Jesus. The mom says, “Ha, that is a wild dream, all right, but you can’t really go around the world like that.” The child declares, “No, Jesus took me. I saw Him, and He told me I would tell kings about Him.” Mom smiles and assures Junior that kids aren’t allowed to see kings for they are too important. No matter how much Junior insists it is real, Mom teaches him about reality. The child walks away, partnering with his all-knowing mother, and pushes the silly dream aside. These are generally the kids who are most hardened to the Christian faith down the road because they tried it and felt burned. Guess who the enemy uses the most to put earmuffs on a child? Yep, the unbelieving Christian parent. What if Mom responded, “WOW, Buddy, that is amazing. I believe Jesus speaks to us and can do it while we sleep because He never sleeps. I believe He created you to be a powerful mouthpiece for Him and that He has plans for your future far above your wildest dreams. How about you draw me a picture of your dream?” 

Which parent do you want to be? Go ahead and spend a moment honestly processing your belief. Does God speak to His children today? 

A – Absolutely! 

B – I believe but haven’t experienced it.

C – I haven’t seen it, so I don’t believe it.

D – I was taught He doesn’t speak.

ANCHORED TO HIS LOVE

The Bible says we love others because He FIRST loved us. It is out of that place of deep security that we are loved, enabling us to go forth and love others well. To have that in reverse leads us to hardship and pain. Encounter Him by #1. Sit for a moment and focus on your love for Jesus. Take a moment and admire Him with your thoughts. Dwell on His goodness (do this before reading on). #2. Now reverse the flow and focus on His love for you. The radical love of God that released His Son to die so that you could know Him. Soak in His fierce affection for you. People generally do not have a problem with loving God; their issue lies in receiving love from Him.

Focus on intentionally saturating your mind, body, and spirit with His lavish love. Now lead your children through this same exercise. When children are taught that God loves them and they know how to walk securely in His love, they will be empowered to walk in who they are called to be. Love matters! Teach them, and in the days ahead, when they are upset, hurting, or discouraged, remind them of His love and ask if they want to re-encounter His love. 

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

MORE LIKE JESUS

 If I were to ask moms if they wanted to be more like Jesus, most would eagerly raise their hand with a resounding, “Yes!” Yet few of us understand or enjoy the process of becoming more like Him. Let me explain how God gives us an opportunity to be more like Jesus the moment we become parents.

Every home we have lived in had an open floor plan and my four children (very close in age) would begin in one end of the house and zoom in and out of the kitchen, dining room, living room and then repeat over and over at record speed. I am a very fun mom and can handle noises and messes, but it was like they would hit a certain octave and my blood pressure would shoot up. I would cash in on my parental authority and command that everyone switch gears to something more peaceful. I couldn’t shut it down fast enough. This would go on for years and I could never really figure out why I was fine one minute and not the next. One day when I was barking orders for peace, I heard God say, “What are they doing wrong?” I replied, “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” I began to see that maybe this was my issue and not theirs. For the next month, whenever the kids raced around the house, I would go in the back room and process my heart. I felt anxious, scared and uptight, yet my ears were hearing joy, laughter, and connection. Why was this so upsetting to me? God began to show me that when I was little and my siblings and I would get crazy, all hell would break loose and someone would get punished severely. You didn’t want to be on the receiving end, but worse yet was having to endure listening to your siblings get the wrath. He showed me that joy scared me because it meant someone was going to get hurt. He gave me four bundles of JOY to restore what was lost in my own journey. I began to cry at the reality of just how anxious joy made me feel.

Of all the things I have endured in life, the hardest to walk through has been the healing process of receiving the GOOD. And more times than not, it was something modeled through my children (joy, play, silliness, trust, lavish, loyalty, laughter). They are made in His image, not mine, and God knits them with gifts, talents, and a personality to redeem and restore what was lost in mine. God continues to parent us through our children. It’s like He gives us one set of parents to raise and train us and whatever area was neglected or shut down He continues the job when we become parents and uses our children to parent us (our kids don’t parent us, but He parents us through them). This is why family is so important to Him. He is building something in us and the generations are interconnected.

HeartWork – Get out your journal and recall the last time you had an above average reaction to something your child did. Ask Jesus some questions and allow Him to minister to your heart (do not be introspective, but rather ask and listen to what He has to share). “Jesus, was this their issue or mine?” If it was your issue, ask, “Jesus, what was my heart feeling at the time?” “What made my heart so uncomfortable at that moment?” “When was the first time I felt that emotion?” “What did my heart need?” If your reaction to something is on a scale of 1-5, chances are you are just feeling a response to the event, but if your reaction is a 6-10, there is a good chance you are being triggered from previous situations that brought pain. God wants to heal that place so that you can respond in love and walk in peace.

Use these questions the next time you are triggered with a higher than usual response to your child and allow those uncomfortable moments to be the times you are molded to be more like Jesus. We don’t want our wounds or lack parenting our children. We want to parent from a place of wholeness and freedom. Understanding this is so important because oftentimes we react to our children who aren’t doing anything wrong, yet our reaction (out of a wounded or hurt place) teaches them that it is not okay to be who God made them to be, such as joyful (in my case). Allow Him to parent you through your child!

P.S. I am proud of you for doing the hard things so that your child doesn’t need to reap the fruit.

CONVERSATIONS WITH OUR CREATOR

If there was ever an hour to discern God’s voice, it is today! Your children can be empowered to go to the Father in their time of need, but it must be cultivated in the time of peace through their relationship with Him. Parents, you have a profound responsibility to lead your children to Him. I am so passionate about equipping families to hear their Father that I am gifting you this digital download resource for FREE. At check out, use coupon code: Hear4You. Please note there is a limit on your number of downloads on this offer. 

Conversations with our Creator eBook – Let the Children Fly

SWEET DREAMS

I got up early to finish some computer work, and Ellie came to me. She said she had a really bad nightmare. I held her for a moment, but it was too early for her to stay up. As I tucked her back in bed, I whispered to her, “Sweetie, ask Jesus where He is right now.” Still half asleep, she smiled ear to ear and said, “He’s right here with me.”

PRAY FOR INCREASED DISCERNMENT

Discernment is knowing, sensing, the ability to determine right and wrong, and having eyes to see what isn’t in the natural. It is a spiritual gift that we can ask for more of. We had picked up one of the two moving trucks, and after loading it, I noticed one of the tires was low. We filled it, and it appeared okay after the 30-minute drive home. Others kept telling me it was okay, but I had the discernment that something wasn’t right and that it should really be checked out before we hit the road. The service crew came out and changed THREE different tires. He said the tire was splitting and would have blown once we got on the road. Thank You, Jesus, for discernment and the ability to determine that something isn’t right even when our eyes can’t see it in the natural.

Pray – “Jesus, thank You for giving your life so that we can access the Kingdom of heaven. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for the gift of discernment that leads and alerts us. Father, I ask for an increased measure of discernment. Strengthen my ability to see and hear what others cannot so that I may respond to Your voice in all areas of my life. Show me how to trust and listen to the gift of discernment as I partner with You. Teach my children how to walk in discernment. In Jesus’ name.”

GOD WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU!

Too many believers have limited their relationship with God with the written Word (which is very important and must be our anchor of truth), but He wants us to relate to Him, hear Him, feel His love, and experience Him. I liken the difference to wives whose husbands are overseas; while they may exchange beautiful love letters, it is not the same as the wife whose husband is there every night holding her, kissing her, and protecting her. The latter is the kind of love Jesus wants to have with us. We all know no marriage would be healthy or survive without communication. That is how personal God wants our relationship with Him to be. How could anyone find that level of intimacy with someone without talking, listening, and responding to each other? I have often heard people say that they believed God loved them in the “He loves the world” sense but had never fully understood how much He loved THEM personally until they heard Him speaking to them. 

Let’s invite Holy Spirit to do what He does best. Pray out loud: “Holy Spirit, I invite You to come and remove everything and anything acting as earmuffs. I want to hear my Father’s voice more and more. I grant You permission to teach me anything You want about my Father’s voice. Come and have Your way with me.” Do we think that after all He went through to get us to come to Him, He suddenly has nothing more to say to us? God wants to speak to YOU!

PRAY FOR GOD TO ENCOUNTER THEM

I came to my spiritual mentor crying over the choices of someone else. I was enduring suffering at the hands of their brokenness. I will never forget his response to me. He said, “Lisa, turn all that emotion into prayers that God would encounter them because one encounter with Jesus can heal their heart, align their mind and restore what is broken inside them.” At first, I couldn’t do it. I was too hurt to love them ‘that much.’ I then began to see that deep down, they weren’t trying to hurt me, but their brokenness was hurting not only me but them as well. It positioned me to intercede for them in a whole new way. Sometimes we get hurt because there is stuff in our hearts that God wants to heal and restore. Other times we get hurt because those around us need freedom.

LET’S ASK JESUS

Picture jumping into your Father’s arms in the pool. Ask, “Jesus, how can I trust You more today?” Let Him show you the answer.

Gather as a family in the living room, in the car, at the dinner table, or bedtime, and ask Jesus together. This is so empowering for children because they get to witness how God communicates with you, which increases their faith, and together you get to encounter Him. Spiritual hearing is a muscle that is strengthened by worshiping and praying. The more you do it, the stronger you become at it.

GOOD ENOUGH

Do you find your worth attached to your performance? During one of the teachings from the online JOURNEY class, I asked if they had parents who called out the good in them as a child. Many did not, but for those who did, the response is always something along these lines, “Yeah, they called out the good, but it always seemed to be the good about what I DID, not who I was.” When we dish out praise based on behavior/performance, we are teaching children that their performance pleases us and dictates their value. That is not what God says or how He operates with us. He LOVES us because of who we are, not what we do! So why not try it today? Ask, “Jesus, when You look at my child, what do You see?” Write it out on their mirror, on a piece of paper. Be creative and have fun; you have permission to connect with them!