Are We Just Pretending To Hear?

I have learned there are a lot of people who claim they hear from God or from the Holy Spirit who told them to do something, but often times it’s nothing more than justifying their own desire. It seems they just want to say it’s ok to do something they want to do and God’s voice becomes their “Rubber Stamp” of approval. Granted, there are people who do hear from the Lord but maybe, just maybe, there are more pretenders than practicers in the body of Christ than we realize.

To be fair, I do believe God speaks to many of us through the Holy Spirit, but what I’m trying to get at is that many of us desire things, maybe good things, that we want to feel are ok to do so we “Project” to ourselves and others that “God Told Us” to do it. I’m not talking about doing evil things, though that can happen as well, but I’m talking about the desire to buy some new shoes or a new TV or any number of things that come from our human desires and not from God. Granted God could be saying “YES” to our desire, but we generally can’t discern when it is and is not God’s will in our choices. Truly hearing God speak takes discipline and experience that many don’t engage in, and so I doubt their hearing is genuine.

Secondly, I fear that a vast majority of Christians believe that God only, or mainly, speaks to them through scripture. God does give us scripture to lead us in our choices, but often not as we might expect. Scripture teaches us the principles of God’s kingdom where Christ is the authority, but scripture is not meant to be the primary way we hear God’s voice. It is our relationship with the Holy Spirit that should be the way God communicates with us. Scripture should be the back stop by which we evaluate our choices to see if it was God’s voice, our voice or Satan’s voice that we think we have heard.

Consider that the early church, for at least 30-40 years after the resurrection, only had the Old Testament to evaluate God’s leading. People didn’t carry it in their back pocket like a Gideon bible, but it was at the synagogue where they heard it read aloud. Today we we have many bibles of our own in each of  our households. The early believers did not have these. They had to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and then check it against the Old Testament when they were at synagogue. Much of the New Testament was not written until after 60AD and beyond, which again should convince us that the early church did not rely on the New Testament for daily guidance as we do today.  

Many times when the average Israelite said they heard God’s voice it was actually when some manifestation caught their attention. Even then they often had to defer to prophets to tell them what God had said.

Deuteronomy 5:24 

You said, Behold, the LORD our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with man, yet he lives.

Moses was a unique man who knew God’s voice even more than the prophets before him. God said he spoke to Moses like a man speaks to another man face to face.

Exodus 33:11

Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

God spoke often about hearing his voice through what was written in the law of Moses. The children of Israel understood that “HEARING” had to do with understanding and following what was written, while today many professing Christians claim to “HEAR” God speak either audibly or to their hearts, rather than through scripture.

Exodus 15:26 

And He said, If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the LORD, am your healer.

Here is the difference between the people of God in the Old Testament and people after the resurrection of Christ: We have been given the same ability of the prophets of Old to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said he would give us the Holy Spirit for this very purpose so we wouldn’t only have the scripture to know the heart and mind of God, but we would have a “COUNSELOR” to guide us in our day-to-day lives. This doesn’t mean the scripture is no longer our clear understanding of the will and purpose of God, but the Holy Spirit is a relational voice to enhance our understanding of his will. His intention was for us to love him and not just his book the bible.

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be given, and compared him to be like “Living Water” because we can hear God any time we desire to hear him. His voice is like water that refreshes and sustains us.

 John 7:38-39 

If anyone believes in me, rivers of living water will flow out from that person’s heart, as the Scripture says.

Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been raised to glory. But later, those who believed in Jesus would receive the Spirit.

So back to the original statement about people claiming to hear God tell them to do or buy something: we should realize that God does indeed speak to every one of his children, “however” listening takes practice in order to discern God’s voice, Satan’s voice and our own. One of the surest ways to tell if someone is regularly hearing from God is seeing how their life is matching up to God’s word. If we are indeed hearing the Spirit of God regularly then the fruit of the spirit will also be flowing out of our lives. If not, then we probably are assuming God is speaking to us when he is not.

God is more interested in us hearing his voice than we are, so we can be certain that he does speak. The problem comes down to a few things to make curtain we are hearing His voice.

1. If we are not regularly in his word then we have no way to know for sure if we are hearing God’s voice.
2. If we are not regularly asking the Holy Spirit to search our hearts for any hinderances or sins we have committed we probably are being hindered in our hearing as well.
3. We all need spiritual counselors in our lives to help us discern the voice and will of God. Having mentors is also essential in order to keep us heading into maturity and not falling into foolishness. A concern of mine is that the greater body of Christ does not have mentors actively engaged in their lives . We never outgrow the need for such help. No matter how old we are in the Lord we need mentors in order to finish the race set before us all.

Questions:

1) How sure are you that you hear God’s voice? Are you in the word each day and have a mentor speaking into your soul as well?

2) On major issues of life like taking a new job, marriage, etc. do you regularly submit those to trusted counselors or do you just make the decisions on your own? Remember, the Word says that in the “Multitude” of counselors there is victory (Pr 11:14)

May we all hear more when God speaks,

Pastor Dale