Hearing God's Voice

Hearing God's Voice

CONVERSATIONS WITH OUR CREATOR

Hopefully by now you have worked through and settled the question if God wants to speak to you. Faith is an important ingredient in our relationship with our Father. In fact, Hebrews 11:6 says that it is impossible to please God without faith! Ponder for a moment what life would be like if you went mute and had to try to teach, train, and love on your children without words. Seriously, think about how many times a day you use your words to guide your children to teach and train them, encourage them, cheer them on and help them. How often do you use your words to lavish love all over them and tell them how precious and beautiful they are to you? Now, how many times a day do you let your Father speak to you? Stop for a moment and ask yourself.

Why not spend the next hour with your children and tell them you are all going to play a game. NO TALKING. Each person has to communicate what they want to say without using words. Too many believers have limited their relationship to God with the written Word (which is very important), 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 whole wide world” sense but had never fully understood how much He loved THEM personally until they heard Him speaking to them (John 10:27; Revelations 3:20). The purpose of the cross wasn’t only for forgiveness but also to grant us a relationship with God. God paid a pretty big price to offer us a relationship with Him. Do we not really believe that He wants to communicate with us (John 14:6)? We often pray, fast, believe, declare, hope, meditate, quote Scriptures, seek medical help, strive, ask others to pray, do it on our own strength and lean on our own understanding, but have we simply just asked Him?

I recently heard that people who hear God’s voice (and seek Him) are successful people. I agree – God is all-knowing all the time, and desires to share His answers with us, but we need to ask and then be quiet for a moment and listen to His response. Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is God’s privilege to conceal things, and the king’s privilege to discover it.” The reason why the Creator of the universe would concern Himself with speaking to us is for one reason alone – He loves us (Romans 5:8)! Many of us have been bruised by life circumstances, past relationships, or parents who parented out of their own wounds which can make it hard for us to grasp the depth and width of God’s love for us (Ephesians 3:8). But that’s the whole point of the Good News – we are LOVED! Radically wanted and loved in a way no human ever has and with a depth so deep we would never be able to consume it all. A proper response to His love is hunger – hunger for MORE of Him! Some of the greatest encounters with God are when we get to a place of such holy dissatisfaction with the reality there is MORE of Him and cry out for it. While we have all of God available to us when we first believe there will always be more of Him to discover, explore, experience, and encounter – always! How hungry are you for Him? Hungry people do what it takes, go great distances and pay the cost to get food. Spiritual hunger is a good thing. Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

How hungry are you? 

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. 

JESUS WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I could write a book of all the revelations, encounters, and wisdom that has come from teaching my children to ask this question often!

“JESUS, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?”

FIGHTING KIDS

How would you answer this question? “When my children fight, argue, and yell, I feel _____.” Siblings are going to have challenges because it is part of their training ground in learning how to respond to others in love. HOWEVER, if you are being triggered every time they have conflict, you will only add to the chaos. They need a loving parent to step in and teach and train them how to resolve their issues, grow and mature in areas and how to increase their love for the ones God has given them to care for. 

OBEYING ME WAS EASY

I heard this testimony and can’t get it out of my mind. A mom shared that her son was hungry to learn how to hear from the Lord. He worked at a ski resort and heard the Lord tell him to jump on the ski lift and ride up with a perfect stranger. He did and wondered what to say to him. Nothing came to mind the entire trip. He kept asking God but wasn’t hearing anything. They got to the top, and the stranger got off and began skiing without exchanging a single word. A tad perplexed, my friend asked God what that was about, and God said, “See, obeying Me is easy.” I LOVE this. We associate God with asking things of us that are so hard or cost us something dearly. While at times that is a part of obedience, He is saying the yoke of listening is easy.

YOU ARE THE LEADER

A mom taking our online JOURNEY class shared this:

“I put some worship music on. My daughter and I laid down with our eyes closed and just soaked in God’s word. After about 5 minutes, she got fidgety. I got her settled in again for about a few more minutes and asked her, ‘So did God tell you anything?’ My mistake; she got upset.”

This is where most parents back off and conclude it doesn’t work or their child isn’t responding. But I encourage parents to continue to be the spiritual leader of their home and KEEP GOING. Five minutes to a child is like 45 minutes to an adult. When she was done – she was done – that’s okay. Build upon it next time. Praise her for doing it this time. Kids get fidgety, and it doesn’t always mean they aren’t paying attention. It can mean they have some pent-up wiggles that need a release. A parent’s response to fidgeting can pull them out of experiencing God and into feeling pressure to perform or do something. Be sensitive with how to respond to a child when they are learning how to encounter the Father. Praise her for doing it at all! Tell her how the Father feels about her spending time with Him (if you don’t know – ask Him). A while later, come to her and lovingly ask, “Do you remember when we were listening to the worship music? Why did that upset you when I asked you what Jesus said?” Listen to what she is saying, as she will give you clues as to what she was experiencing. I would keep going and do it again. If she isn’t interested, then YOU do it and allow her to feel the atmosphere of when you are encountering Jesus. Invite her again… and again. But please do not allow her experience to shut you down as the spiritual leader of your home.

JESUS & SNOW ANGELS

God cares about both parent and child. I love how parents are beginning to see just how much their children are used by God to still parent them. 

“My son was playing and making snow angels, and I asked him, ‘Do you think this is a time when God is speaking to us through nature? Look at this beautiful snow, blue sky, beautiful trees…’ He said, ‘Yeah, I wonder what He thinks of my snow angel.’ I said, ‘Ask Him.’ Instantly he said, ‘He said He loves it.’ Today, God showed me the carefree joy that my son modeled and that I do not fully rest in His joy and peace like he does. God is amazing!”

JESUS PRAYS FOR YOU

I love asking Jesus questions. And I love hearing what He has to say. Recently someone invited me to ask, “Jesus, what are You praying for me today?” And the concept messed with me a bit. We are in a significant season, and we will step into all that we have been contending for in the past season. It’s a powerful moment for me personally, as well as Let the Children Fly. The resistance, warfare, and battle in the spiritual realm has been real – very real. I asked Jesus what He was praying for me today, and I saw a proud parent watching their child play in a school band recital. The joy on the Father’s face was more beautiful than the music. But then the scene changed, and I saw a father and child with backpacks on as they began to climb a mountain – together. I got emotional as I realized the Lord was saying He has been praying for me to learn how to do things WITH Him (the climb) and not just FOR Him (the recital). That is exactly what He has taught me in this season and what brought me to this place of profound breakthrough. We can only go alone so far, but when we learn how to walk with Him in our journey, He takes us further, deeper, and higher.

CHILD’S PURITY IN HEARING

Children hear the Father so clearly because they do not have filters such as: “What if I get it wrong?”, “What if I make a fool of myself?”, “What will they think of me?”, “What if they reject me?”. They have no shame, fear of man, or worry of rejection. They are pure in their spiritual hearing until taught otherwise. Look what my friend shared.

“My husband got a prophetic word from a girl in our church the other week… He got SO wrecked by the Holy Spirit, he could hardly stop crying. She was so accurate.”

LEARNING HOW TO PLAY IN THE KINGDOM

“I really wanted to start teaching my 3-year-old daughter to give based on hearing the Lord’s voice. We went out to dinner, and the Lord gave me a vision of a Rice Krispie treat. I told my daughter that Jesus wanted us to buy a Rice Krispie treat for someone in the restaurant. Once purchased, I asked her to ask Jesus who He wanted to give this treat to. She repeated after me and asked Jesus who it was for. She then pointed to a young woman and said, ‘her.’ So we went up to the gal who had a book out and was clearly studying/taking notes, and my daughter said, ‘Jesus wants you to have this Rice Krispie treat.’ The woman said thank you, and we went to our table to eat. While sitting, The Lord kept telling me the woman needed to know He loves her, that He likes her and that she is beautiful. We finished our dinner, and as we were heading out the door, I stopped and explained why Jesus wanted her to have the treat, that He loved her, liked her, and that she was beautiful to Him. She then replied, ‘You don’t understand, I just bought this book (turning it over so I could read the cover – it was a study on all religions… Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc… She currently was taking very detailed notes on Judaism). I’m at a very spiritual place in my life. I was raised Lutheran, baptized Lutheran, converted to Catholicism, married a Morman, and have several Muslim friends. I bought this so I can study and choose what religion I’m going to become.’ She was in complete awe of what just had happened. I know the Lord will water this seed. Even if I didn’t go back to tell her that Jesus loves her, Jesus still gave her a Rice Krispie treat at the very moment she was studying which religion to become. I love our God! All this was possible because of your ministry, encouragement, and example, and my daughter learning to hear the voice of the Lord. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Thank You, Jesus!!”