https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iNFv7r5sxU
My testimony, and just how it relates to hearing God and Spirit and in truth, from the beginning of my journey, walking with Jesus has been getting to know his voice, understanding how to follow him in Spirit and in truth, recognizing his voice compared to the voice of people who are trying to be the Holy Spirit.
For you, you know, people that are pretending to be men and women of God, but who are snakes. They always say, you know, God speaks through the the scripture, he speaks through the Bible, he speaks through the worship music, he speaks through the pastor, he speaks in all these ways. And I always thought, what if God was testing us, and he chose not to speak through any of those things, but in one particular way, would we even recognize it?
Remember, in Elijah was in that cave, in it, and God came by, and there was the fire, the whirlwind, the storm, there was all that calamity, and it kept on saying, and God was not in the fire. God was not in the storm, but he was in a still small voice. What does that mean? Obviously, God chose to manifest himself, his voice, his character, to Elijah, in a way that caught his attention, and that Elijah knew his voice through that still small voice when he was praying and communicating with God. But all these other things that were obvious that would have been obvious to you and to me, Elijah did not recognize as the specific voice of God speaking to him. What if God were testing us? And maybe you're in church and you're hearing the pastor, and people are saying, God speaking through the pastor.Would if the Lord's voice is not in the pastor? Would you recognize that? What if there were a bunch of different worship sets, and you listened to each one, and God was not in any of those worship sets? Would you recognize that? Or would you be duped like the rest of the world, thinking that God is speaking through these pastors, through all these churches, through every single one of these individuals? Would you fall right in line with that trap?
The question is, do we know how to distinguish God's voice from all the other distractions in the noises of the world, even our own mind, our own thoughts. Do we know how to do that? I want to share you, share with you a bit of my testimony of how I started to learn to hear God's voice and to be able to distinguish who he is compared to all the other voices. Number one, you have to realize God is Spirit, and he doesn't speak to you as a normal man. A normal man speaks to your ears. You can get the message you want to hear right away. Satan also speaks to people like this. So if you think that you're going to hear God just in your ear, you better watch out, because a lot of devils will also just speaking in your ear, pretending that they're the Holy Spirit, and you're likely to be deceived if you just hear God in your ear. People will say, oh, watch out, brother. I heard Jesus speak to me out loud in my ear. Well, you better watch out, because God speaks to us in Spirit and in truth. Just as Jesus said, he can do anything. He could speak into our physical ears if he wanted to.
After all, Jesus was flushing blood, and he spoke physically to his disciples. But everything Jesus said was Spiritual, and the disciples had to understand what Jesus was saying in Spirit and in truth. There were other disciples around. They heard Jesus, and even though Jesus was speaking physically, they had no idea what he was saying. All they heard was nonsense. They heard parables that made no sense to them. So what it comes down to is understanding him in Spirit and in truth. What does that look like? That looks like practically observing how God speaks to us through situations, not denying the fact that he speaks to us revelations. Progressively as time moves forward, we have to learn to see him through life experiences.
In other words, if you pray for more faith, what do you think going to happen? You think that your faith, you're just going to wake up in the morning and go, oh, it seems like my faith is now at a notch five, and I was a notch three before. What do you expect is going to happen when you pray for more faith? E.g., when you pray for more faith, God is going to put you through a trial. You're going to have to endure through a certain trial, and will you come out of that trial with more faith?
I was praying for more faith and to be fruitful, and I ended up without the job that I worked for the past seven years. And it truly was a blessing, because that is how God answered my prayer. For a span of about the last seven years, I worked a particular maintenance job, and I became good at that job. I knew it like the back of my hand. And even the owners appreciated me, and I became valuable, mainly because I knew the trade quite well. They didn't care what religion I was, as long as I could do the task at hand, they didn't care. And that really was a blessing to me, because I could be the Christian Jesus has made me to be, without fear of another Christian persecuting me. But as time progressed, that particular job became more demanding of the ways of the world. They really want to keep all the standards of the world. All of us know that, e.g., if you work in the school district, you can't just openly speak about Jesus. If you do, you could get fired. But because for myself, as a man of God, I will speak openly about Jesus, even if it's breaking the rules. I get myself into trouble because I speak about Jesus. So I get pulled into the office occasionally at work, and the more antichrist a place is, the more they don't like you, the more they want to play by the rules of the Antichrist, the more that you will be pushed out as a Christian. And because I put Jesus before work, I put the love of my neighbor, the love of brothers and sisters, but truly the love of God before anything. The world doesn't like that, and for that reason, after seven years had transpired, I no longer was able to work that particular maintenance job.
But my testimony about it is a few days before, or even a few weeks before, I really started to pray and say, Lord, if you still want me at this job, I'm not going to complain against you. I'm not going to, um, want to be somewhere else. If you really want me here, I'll work this job with the joy of God in my heart. Because after all, you have given me the ability to have the freedom of speech at this job. You've given me the ability to have provision to feed my family through this job. So I'm not going to complain against God. But I said, if they're somewhere where I could be more fruitful. And I also prayed, if you had increased my faith, and let my faith be increased, let me be more productive somewhere else, let me bear good fruit. And it wasn't but a few days later that that job came to an end. Seven years to an end. And what a wonderful blessing. It wasn't the management there that got me out. It wasn't just my own will to leave, but it was the hand of God, and I recognize it as the hand of God, because as a man of prayer, I am learning to hear God's voice. And what a wonderful blessing it is to be able to see the hand of God in our life and to know it's Him, not to just say, “man, I lost my job because they let me go. They didn't like me. Woe is me who suffers persecution.”
You know, all of us will suffer persecutions for Jesus. But we have to recognize that the Lord is with us. He leads us, he guides us, and he wants us to be fruitful. And we need to learn to worship God and to hear him in Spirit and in truth. How did God increase my faith? How did he speak to me by making me more fruitful? By increasing my faith through this situation going? Does my servant trust me to provide for his family? Does my servant trust me that I will provide for him? Or does he trust his workplace? And God will put you through that test. If you ask him to increase your faith, he will test to see if your faith really is in him.
Do you believe that your MANNA really comes from heaven, or does it come from your arm? That can be a scary thing if you don't know the God that you serve. It's easy for the pastor to have faith for his congregation. But it's not easy for you to have faith in God if you don't really know Jesus, if you don't really know how to hear him in Spirit and in truth.
So if you want to really hear God's voice, you're going to have to learn to hear God in Spirit and in truth. And you need to ask yourself a really honest question. You need to ask, do I really know Jesus? Do I really have faith in him? Really? Look into your own heart and into your own life and ask, do I really have faith in Jesus Christ? Do I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I hear his voice? Do I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have more faith in him than in my own arms, the ability to provide for myself and my family? Do I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would part the red sea for me if I asked if I needed him to? Do you have faith that Jesus will come through for you and your family because he loves you? Or do you just think to yourself, well, it happened in the Bible times, I know God can do those things, but I don't know if he would do it for me. I just don't know.
A lot of people know, they they believe in their heart that, you know, God provided for Noah, he provided for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He did one wondrous miracles. You know, they know that God does that, but they just don't believe that God would do it for them. They don't have any faith, and they don't know what to expect When they pray, God, increase my faith, or Lord speak to me. They have no idea what to expect. And then they don't recognize when God is speaking. All they think is, why is the Devil coming after me? Why did God allow these things to happen? They don't know how to recognize God's voice through trials, tribulations, persecutions, hardships, when the road gets rough. They don't know how to overcome with Jesus because they don't know his voice.
But I want to encourage you to have your faith built up with the Lord by learning to hear his voice through life experiences. Know that God does not speak to you as a man, not as your physical brother or sister, your mom or your dad or a pastor. He speaks to you through life's situations, and you need to learn to hear him speaking through everything, through nature itself. Learn to hear him through all the hardships that you go to and learn, or that you learn from and learn to overcome through each of these situations. And if you learn to see Jesus Christ in each of these situations, then your faith is going to increase, because you will know that it is God who is in control, not just the Devil, causing all these things to happen to you. Nothing happens due by the power of Satan. It happens by the power of God. It happens because He is allowing you to be tested and tried, to be refined in the fire, as gold is going to be refined. And if you want that refinement, you have to let Jesus draws you, purify you, pull out all that unrighteousness from you and make you as pure and righteous gold.
Continue to pray. Seek the Lord with all your heart..Don't let anything stop you or discourage you. Just when you pray, ask him, Lord, show me how to hear your voice. Show me how to distinguish your voice from my own conscience. Just pray and say, Lord Jesus, help me to distinguish your voice from what people say. Help me to understand who you really are. Even from my own understanding of the scriptures. Speak to me, Lord, in a way that makes sense to me, that I may grow in my faith and know you for real so that I may have true provision. I don't want to lean on my flesh. I want to be with your Holy Spirit, guided by your Spirit, which gives life. And if you can pray that prayer and allow the Holy Spirit to start leading you and guiding you, then you will start to become a man or a woman of God, guided by his Holy Spirit. And he certainly will increase your faith. But learn to see him and hear him through everything. Know that God is in control, not men, not conspiracy theories. You're certainly not in control. It is God who is in control of everything. Learned to see him and hear Him through these situations in life, and if you do, he will start to increase your faith and teach you and guide you. I hope this helps someone out there to start hearing God's voice, to grow in their faith, and just to be encouraged in the Lord. May the grace of Jesus be with you.
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