I had a good friend in the Lord text me this morning about having met with a young believer recently who passionately insisted that God no longer speaks to his people apart from the Bible.  I was schooled in that theology for many years and know the warnings attached to it about the devil deceiving us if we receive any direction other than from the Word of God. The expression I always heard was that the Holy Spirit only speaks through scripture in this day and age.  Since we have the completed text of the Bible we need nothing else.

The idea is imbedded in the whole Cessationist view that God no longer works miracles as he did in the Bible and the Holy Spirit no longer bestows the power gifts of healing, prophecy, tongues, miracles, etc. as he did for the New Testament church.  The idea is that God only operated in those ways to confirm that Jesus was his Son and that those who wrote the Bible were indeed inspired. Once the New Testament was completed there was no further need for the miraculous since the record of such miracles should be sufficient. God speaking to men apart from his written word seems to land in that category of the miraculous so he must not act in those ways any longer.

Those who follow this view divide biblical history up into dispensations or eras in which God operated differently – especially the dispensations of the Old Covenant and the New. One was a covenant of Law, an earthly priesthood, the temple, animal sacrifices, and so forth.  The New Covenant is the era of grace, the gospel, the Holy Spirit, Jesus and the church without an earthly priesthood and animal sacrifices.  A mindset that divides the Bible into neat modules of time then leads one to ask how God will act differently in this age than he did before and so this theology ascribes miracles to times past but not today including God speaking to people apart for his written word.

Here is the problem I have with that view.  The attributes or the nature of God does not change in any dispensation.  Some attributes and some activities span all of history because they reflect who God is.   God expects righteousness in every generation and dispensation.  His call for sacrifice began just this side of the Garden of Eden and extends through all time by the eternal blood of the lamb and our lives (living sacrifices) and worship.  He has always operated as a covenant God and has always pursued a chosen people.  When we see God’s attributes in every dispensation recorded in scripture them we must believe that he displays those same attributes today unless there is a clear commandment to the contrary.

We can argue about many things but God has always spoken to his people apart from the written Word.  Of course, Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob preceded the written Law handed down on Sinai. But, since Elohim is relational and relationships have always been formed through personal, two-way communication, he spoke to the patriarchs and their sons.  Once the Law was given we could argue that Moses and Israel had the written record that was all they needed to live for God and keep his commandments.  But in addition, God gave Israel the Tent of Meeting where he could be sought out for personal communication. Even though Israel had the written word, he spoke apart form the written word to Moses, Joshua, all the judges, the prophets, and often priests.  He spoke to simple carpenters, virgins, and elderly widows who spent their time in the temple courts.  He spoke by his Spirit, by angels, by fleeces, by prophets, and so forth apart form the written word – the Torah.

In the New Testament we see the same pattern. God speaking to people through angels, dreams, visions, prophets, and his Spirit and these people were not all apostles or writers of the New Testament.  They were people who needed a specific word beyond what could be found in the scriptures.  In Acts 1, Peter declared that they must appoint an apostle to take the place of Judas.  Jesus had given them all the qualifications for an apostle but when the moment came they had a problem.  The word Jesus had already given them was not sufficient because they had two men qualified to be apostles but only one position. So…they asked God to speak to them apart from the Word that had already been given because only God knew the hearts of the men who were apparently both qualified.  They cast lots and Mathias was chosen.

We have the same dilemma time after time in our own lives. We love the Word, study the Word, and derive principals for godly living form that Word.  But on occasion we need more than principals – we need a clear word of direction or “leading” from the Lord. To say that we sensed God’s leading from circumstances is to admit that God gives us direction apart form his word in miraculous ways Even Cessationists pray for leading and direction in marriage, selection of pastors, missions, and so forth. Why not just look in the book?

It’s because we need a specific word for a specific circumstance and the written word cannot tell us whether to turn left or right.  If God leads apart form the Word through circumstances, or dreams, provision, or open and closed doors then he communicates apart from his Word.  Hearing his voice is not different. And we should not be surprised because God has spoken to his people in that way on nearly every page of the Bible as an example of his hunger for relationship with his children. To say he spoke from Genesis to Revelation apart from a written word but became silent as soon as the last apostle died is to deny the very nature and the patterns of God across the ages.  Even those who don’t believe God speaks hear him.  They simply don’t know that what they are hearing is from the Father. They miss so much and miss so much of the relationship.  My hope is that you hear from him today – through his written word and in many other ways.  Listen…. God is speaking.   Be blessed.

I really enjoy Graham Cooke. In his book, Approaching the Heart of Prophecy, he relates a story that you need to hear this morning. “Many years ago, I was in a Pentecostal church. There was a time of worship that was absolutely excruciating to be a part of. I was squirming in my seat and apologizing to God because I couldn’t join in. I knew the songs – I just didn’t think they should be sung that way.  “Lord, I’m really struggling with the worship,” I prayed. “I’m sorry.  To be honest, we’ve had fifty minutes of mindless singing and I’m really quite bored.”  “It’s alright for you, your only visiting this place,” I heard God whisper back to me. “I have to be here every week.”

Here’s the theology gem from that story.  God has a great sense of humor.  He laughs often and he wants you laugh often as well.

That’s not what this particular blog is about but I thought the story was worth repeating. One thing God has taught me over the past few years is that our mind evaluates and reasons while our heart just responds.  We have been taught over the years not to trust our emotions but rather to be lead with our heads rather than our hearts.  At some level that is good advice but not always.  It is good advice only if your heart is not in tune with God.

Revelation comes to our hearts rather than to our minds.  When Paul was praying for the church at Ephesus to receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation he prayed that their hearts might be enlightened rather than their craniums. Who has ever heard an altar call for Jesus to come into our heads instead of our hearts?  The process of revelation is that the Spirit takes from God and gives that truth to our spirit which then reveals the heart of God to our hearts and then we become conscious of the revelation.  God calls us to have a renewed mind but he promised to give us new hearts.

The mind always wants more information, another class, and a little more training before jumping into a challenging mission or situation.  The mind puts off obedience while it is calculating the risk, the cost, and the likelihood of success.  The heart simply jumps in when God calls. I’m not saying there is no place for planning but unless the spirit rules the heart which then rules the head, our reason will talk us out of obedience until our mind can determine a way to obey God in our own strength.

As Jesus was strolling across the Sea of Galilee, he encountered the twelve rowing hard against the wind.  Peter declared, “Lord, if it is you, call me to come to you on the water.”  Jesus said, “Come” and Peter leaped from the boat.  I’m pretty sure the other eleven had reasoned their way clear of such a rash act.  But Peter responded with his heart not his head. The result was that he actually walked on water until he noticed the winds and the waves and began to reason rather than operate by revelation. As soon as he took a “reasonable” look at his situation, he sank.  When challenged to feed the 5000, the apostles took a reasonable look at their inventory (five loaves and two fish) and immediately wanted to break up the party.  Jesus reasoned with a faith that came through revelation that had penetrated his heart.

Since revelation is the key to faith and since revelation comes to us through the heart, then we should take special care of our hearts in things that pertain to the spiritual as well as the physical.  Distortions in our heart will also distort revelation. Lies from the enemy, unforgiveness, bitterness, distrust, and fear are all conditions of the heart that distort God’s revelation to us and so hinders our obedience.  A broken heart does not discern the heart and mind of God clearly and often defaults to a fleshly mind to determine how we will live and serve God.

To live by faith and to hear God clearly, we need God to do a lot of work in our heart.  We too often worry about cleaning up our behaviors rather than sifting through the debris in our hearts.  David was wise to pray, “Search my heart O God and show me if there is any offensive way in me.”  If we want all that God has for us we must be unrelenting in our forgiveness of others, relentless in pulling up the weeds of half-truth and Satan’s lies in our hearts, and relentless in guarding our hearts from the things that defile our souls.

Where there are wounds, we can’t put off finding healing because the wounds distort the revelation of God in our lives.  Where there is disobedience we must declare the Lordship of Jesus over our hearts and step out in faith even when our reason rails against it. Where we have built up walls of protection in our hearts with unforgiveness and anger we must ask Jesus to tear down the walls.  Broken hearts are like faulty GPS monitors.  They will lead us astray and so we think we must trust our reason and our intellect.  But reason pushes back against obedience when what God is asking us to do seems unreasonable – which describes most of the great things God has ever done.  Jumping out of boats, commanding the dead to rise, marching around walled cities blowing trumpets, or calling on God to send fire down from heaven would get a thumbs down from reason every time.

So…let’s get busy on our hearts because the more debris we clear away, the more clearly we will hear God and the more willing we will be to obey.  Heart health is critical to life both in the natural and the spiritual realm.  Be blessed today and guard your heart.

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,       I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:15-20)

This is a text that I often go to when ministering freedom and healing to broken and oppressed believers. Most of us continue to live with our brokenness because we don’t truly understand who God is, what he has provided for us, or who we are in Christ.  Through the years you have probably known someone that continued to live in a hurtful, abusive situation year after year. Perhaps they were in an abusive relationship or a job where they were underpaid, overworked and never appreciated.  They clearly hated their situation and it was clear that it was taking a toll on them emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  And yet, they would not take steps to free themselves from the relationship or to seek different employment.

I have visited with a number of individuals in those situations.  Some finally made the break after they became absolutely desperate.   I asked them why they had stayed in those hurtful situations so long when everyone they knew encouraged them to get out.  Inevitably the same reasons always surface.  One reason was fear of the unknown.  As bad as their situation was, they knew what they had and feared having nothing at all if they left the relationship or the job.  Most of us would believe that nothing was better than what they had, but fear that the future might hold something even worse kept them where they were.

Others viewed themselves in such a way that they truly believed they didn’t deserve anything better.  The messages from their past had convinced them that they were worthless, low achievers whom no one would ever love or value.  Their abusers or unappreciative employers reinforced those beliefs so they thought life would never offer more because they didn’t deserve anymore.  So … they stayed.

The third reason was that their mothers or fathers had modeled that life for them by continuing in abusive relationships or staying in dead end jobs with a sense of resignation that the world would offer them nothing more. These abused and oppressed people in some way believed that what they were experiencing was “the norm” because they had watched their parents endure it all the years they were growing up.  In some subconscious way they probably sought out what their parents had modeled because that was familiar.

Our spiritual lives can be the same.  Many believers continue to live with a sense of insignificance, a painfully negative view of themselves, oppressive thoughts, addictions, and general sadness because they believe there are no real alternatives for them or because they simply don’t deserve more in this world.  Some even believe that God has visited their misery on them so that continuing in their pain is a way of “paying for their sins” even though Jesus had already paid for every sin.  Many have simply taken on an identity of pain, rejection, and failure.  They can’t imagine being anything or anyone else and so they stay in that place for decades.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul affirms their faith and love and his excitement about their newly found life in Christ. He then lets them know that he has been constantly praying for them and asking God to give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. He says that he is praying for the Spirit to give these believers both of those gifts so that they might know God better.

We can come to know God through study, teaching, conversations, etc. to an extent.  But if our faith and understanding of God stay at an intellectual level then God remains a concept more than a person. We tend to know about God rather than knowing God.  Revelation deposits truth in our hearts – in our core being – and that is where profound change and healing occur.  Wisdom is knowing how God perceives people and situations and acting in accord with God’s view of things.  To know how God thinks is a huge step toward knowing God. To know how he feels about people, especially ourselves, is also a huge step toward knowing him.   Paul is really asking God to reveal both his mind and heart to the believers at Ephesus so that they might truly get to know him.  And as they say, “To know him is to love him.”  To know his love for us is also the most healing thing in the universe.

Paul goes on to say that he has asked the Father to enlighten the eyes of their hearts that they might also perceive what they have in Jesus.  In short, Paul declares that they have hope, riches, and power in Jesus.  They have hope because God has a future for them that is full of life and blessing if they will trust him enough to receive it.  They have the riches of heaven available to them if they will receive his promises by faith.  They also have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and that created the universe working on their behalf. Most of us have read those truths and promises in scripture and would say we believe them.  But for many of us, the belief is an intellectual position rather than something we have “written on our hearts.”

The work of the Spirit is revelation and revelation writes truth on our heart.  When we get the truth in our hearts it changes things.  Believers who stay in their brokenness and oppression don’t know God, who they are in Christ, or the riches that are theirs if they will pursue them.  They hear these truths but haven’t received them in their hearts.  They need revelation.  They need an experience with God, a fresh and personal word from God, or a teaching to explode in their hearts.  They need the Holy Spirit to give them wisdom and understanding to know what God has just done in their lives and to receive it as a gift from him.

I believe that we need to pray Paul’s prayer constantly for ourselves and for those who are struggling in their faith. We desperately need divine wisdom, the revelation of God’s truth, and for the “eyes of our heart” to be opened so that we might fully understand everything that is ours in Jesus as well as the power our Father is willing to wield on our behalf. When we grasp those things we can let go of the present and step into the future. We can exchange the devil’s view of who we are for the Father’s view of who we are. We can lay fear about the unknown aside and trust that God already has it worked out in marvelous ways.

Today I pray that God will give you the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation that you may know him better and that he will open the eyes of your heart so that you may know the hope, the riches, and the power that are yours in Jesus Christ.  I hope you’ll pray the same for me.  Be blessed.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. (Dt.6:5-6)

And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.  (Dt.10:12)

He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the greatest and first commandment.  (Mt.22:37-38)

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Mk.12:30)

He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. (Lk.10:27)

Most of the verses above are very familiar.  If you have been in Christian churches for any length of time you have heard them quoted.  I want you to notice something about these verses, however, that is almost counter-cultural to the American evangelical church. In every one of these verses we are told to love God with our hearts before we love him with our minds. The pattern is consistent throughout the Bible.

There are two ways to understand “the heart” is these passages.  One way is to understand that our emotions and affections, which flow from the heart, are to be turned toward God.  That would certainly be the way many of us would understand the passage.

The second way to understand the passage is that the heart is the place where revelation is given to us by the Holy Spirit and that love for God is going to be released in us by the Spirit through an act of revelation. In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul writes, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.            I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” (Eph.1:17-19)

Those of us who believe that salvation comes by grace believe that we could not even respond to the gospel without the Spirit giving us an understanding of spiritual things. Paul clearly states that the man without the Spirit cannot understand spiritual things but considers them to be foolishness (see 1 Cor. 2:14). To love God with all of our heart then means that we are to love God based on the revelation that is constantly released into our heart by the Holy Spirit.  You may have had that conversation about your faith and the  “insight” or “understanding” the Lord has given you about something.  That is a great definition of “revelation.”

But here is the counter-cultural part.  I was always taught to love God with my mind before loving him with my heart.  In the fellowship where I was first taught the word of God, the heart was considered to be the seat of our emotions and those emotions could lead us to deception.  I was taught that the mind (our intellect) was to be the guardian of truth in my spiritual life.  And yet biblically, the Holy Spirit is the guardian of truth for believers as he “leads us into all truth.” We are to love God with our hearts and even our soul before the mind is mentioned.  Most of us, however, are trained to develop our minds rather than our hearts. We are trained to think with our intellect rather than to hear and understand God first within our hearts. Paul also tells us that we if we confess Jesus with our mouth and believe in our hearts that he are Lord we shall be saved (Rom.10:9-10).  We are to accept and understand a truth in our hearts even before we understand it intellectually.

When God speaks about changing people he speaks about giving them a new heart rather than a new mind as the first step to transformation. Undoubtedly the mind is to be renewed but not by intellectual arguments.  It is to be renewed by revelation that comes from God’s Spirit to our spirit and then to our hearts and then to our minds. This chronology of belief is important because many pastors have been taught in seminaries to take a strictly intellectual approach to scripture and to discount the notion that God still speaks a fresh word to his people by his Spirit.  The result has been the rejection of many biblical truths by intellectuals because the intellect that is unsubmitted to the Spirit argues against the miraculous moves of God which seem irrational and illogical in the natural.

My point is not to throw out our intellect because we are to love God with our minds as well as our hearts.  But I want to encourage us to begin to focus even more on developing a heart that has eyes that have been opened to the move and the voice of God.  It is in our hearts that we will behold God and fix our eyes on Jesus. The heart trained by God to perceive and believe will then train the intellect to align itself with God rather than argue against what it cannot fully understand or control.

There has been a recent surge of criticism and warnings against the idea that the Holy Spirit still expresses himself through miraculous gifts and revelation.  Those who criticize the  “charasmatics” are brilliant men who love God with all their minds.  But without the revelation of God being fresh in their hearts, they will not know the Lord as Paul prayed for the Ephesians to know him.  Let me encourage you to constantly pray for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation and for the eyes of your heart to be opened so that you may know God better and know the riches that are yours in Jesus Christ.  Let’s be as diligent in developing our spiritual hearts as we have been in developing our intellect.  Be blessed.

In his book, The Days of His Presence, Francis Fragipane has a thought provoking section on the nature of times and seasons in the Bible.  This particular section discusses the kind of period that the Greeks referred to as a kairos.  According to Frangipane, this kind of season followed long, flat periods of history where very little changed in the world but suddenly the world was overtaken by incredible shifts and transformations in nations, knowledge, and faith which often included sweeping religious reforms and spiritual activity.

For instance, between Malachi and Matthew, there were approximately three hundred years of silence when little or no revelation occurred in Israel. But suddenly the coming of Messiah that had been foretold since the Days of Adam swept in and the power of God rocked the world of those who witnessed it.  Paul tells us that in the “fullness of time (kairos) God sent forth his Son.”  The idea of a “fullness of time” suggests that God had been storing up events to be released on the earth that would alter the course of nations and individuals.

Kairos seasons do not always happen in days or weeks or even months.  Sometimes they happen over a period of years or decades.   But relative to history, these events seem to catch us off guard and explode onto the scene.  Noah preached for 120 years while God was putting everything in place to release a cataclysmic kairos when in the fullness of time he released the flood.  For those who had not heard God, it seemed to come out of nowhere.  Israel was in Egypt for 450 years while God arranged the chessboard so that in the fullness of time Moses would arise, plagues would be released, and a nation of over a million people would walk into the wilderness.  After that, world empires would arise, seem invulnerable for centuries, and then suddenly fall in a matter of hours or days as God had shown his prophets.

These kairos moments are orchestrated by God for centuries while he puts every piece in place until the fullness of time. When that time comes, the changes are so sweeping and so universal that it seems that the whole world has tipped off its axis. God often speaks of “shaking the world” or “shaking a nation.”  That is the feeling when kairos is released.  To those in the center of the storm, everything feels like chaos, but to the director of the storm everything is being realigned for his purposes. Those who are closest to the Lord in such times can fall asleep in the boat even while water is breaking over the bow.

Frangipane makes the case that we have been in a kairos season for a century. Technology and knowledge has exploded across the globe. Two world wars have come and gone. The nuclear age has been ushered in and great nations have risen and fallen – some seemingly overnight like the USSR.  The Holy Spirit has always given revelation to man and manifested in miracles but now the church is moving in evangelism, healing, miracles, and revelation in ways not seen since the book of Acts.

This is consistent with biblical history.  In each kairos, God revealed himself in new ways and manifested his power through his people. The enemy too rose up in unprecedented ways in response. Of course, God always wins but during these kairos events spiritual activity seems to ramp up exponentially as it did in the gospels.

As you view the activity of God around the globe, we see millions of Chinese coming to faith in an avowed atheist nation.  Million have come to faith in Africa in the past few decades. Korean churches are bursting at the seams. Every mission report or campaign outlines miracles from radical conversions to radical healings (including raising people from the dead), along with miracles of protection and provision, dreams and visions, and thousands coming to Jesus in a day.

Of course, the cynical among us can reject the reports and videos and write it all off as demonic deception or emotionalism.  But the same believers will proclaim that we are certainly in the last days.  If we are finally coming to the end of the last days, then this is certainly a kairos and God is moving in the fullness of time. In those seasons God had always moved in power and done epic things through his people.

I believe today is no different.  I have personally seen the healings, deliverance, radical conversions, and miracles of provision and protection.  I have been told on numerous occasions by trustworthy people who have been eyewitnesses to Jesus appearing to Muslims and entire families renouncing Islam and coming to faith.  I have heard from trustworthy people who have seen with their own eyes the dead being raised in the name of Jesus and entire villages coming to faith as a result.  All of this sounds amazing and almost beyond belief but did it not happen in the book of Acts in the fullness of time?  Why must we doubt that God would use the miraculous power of heaven to bring in a great harvest now at the end of this season?

If you have been taught to reject or doubt the gifts of the Spirit and the power of God, I hope you will not sit cynically on the sideline while God is inviting you to play in the greatest game ever played.  If you can’t bring yourself to trust believers who talk about such things, then honestly ask God to show you his power if he is indeed manifesting in such ways today.  But when you see it, don’t return to the bench. Get in the game with all your heart.

Think about it, in these kairos moments, doctrines and orthodoxy never won the day. They were important and faithfulness and truth were keys to God moving on behalf of his people.  But power won the day. Pharaoh did not surrender to doctrine but to manifest power. The Torah never convinced Nebuchadnezzar, but three men emerging from a fiery furnace and another walking out of a lion’s den convinced him that there was one God. Even Jesus said, “If you don’t believe me, believe the works I do.”  This is a time, a kairos, when we must not be suspicious of the move of God but embrace it because the miracles themselves reveal God to us and to those who need him desperately.  Remember, to reject what God is doing, is, in part, to reject him.

When we believe that we may have heard from God, we are to test what we have heard or sensed.

     Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. (1 Jn. 4:1)

The first test for determining whose voice we have heard is always the Word of God.

We must determine whether or not the thought is consistent with God’s truth as revealed in His written word.  If not, disregard what you have heard. Of course, that also places a burden on us to know the Word of God well enough to test what we have heard against scripture.  We must always be aware that God will never contradict his word but He may contradict our understanding of His word.  Be open to the Holy Spirit giving you a new understanding of familiar scriptures as well as scriptures that catch your eye for the first time. If you are unsure whether a thought, a word, or an image lines up with scripture, share it with a spiritual mentor who has a strong biblical foundation.

There are four other good tests in addition to the Word of God.

1.  Does the “voice” or message seem consistent with the character of God or Jesus?

The character of God is revealed in the fruit of the Spirit passage of Galatians. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. “ (Gal. 5:22)

John tells us that “God is love” (1 Jn.4:8) and Paul gives us a working definition of love.  He says, “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:4-8).

The message and the “spirit” or “quality” of the message, then, will reflect those characteristics if it is from God. If the “voice” you hear is accusing, condemning, rude, boastful, mean, angry, or demeaning, it is not from God. If the voice asks you to do something contrary to scripture or if it violates his righteousness, it is not from God.

2.   Does the message produce peace in your heart?

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you.  My peace I now give and bequeath to you.  Not as the world gives do I give to you.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”  (Jn. 14:27). Paul also spoke about peace.  He said, “But the mind of the Spirit is life and peace, both now and forever” (Rom. 8:6). The fruit of the Spirit includes peace.

Sometimes God speaks things we don’t fully understand.  Sometimes He may send conviction about sin in our life.  Sometimes we may receive a word of discipline or a message about changes or even hardships we will be facing. But when God has finished speaking, there is always a sense of peace that surrounds His word.  God does not have plans to hurt us, but to bless us and, in our spirits, His word leaves that assurance.

3.    Do spiritual mentors sense that what you have heard is from God?

It is always valuable to have one or two spiritual mentors who have learned to hear God’s voice themselves and to share with them what you are hearing. They will often have a sense about the quality and content of what you are hearing that will help you develop your discernment.

4.  Confirmations

God is not offended when we ask him to confirm the word we believe we have received from him. In cases where we believe God is calling us to drastic action or significant changes in our lives, it is wise to pray for confirmation. Gideon asked for confirmation through the exercise of a ram’s fleece (see Judges 6:35-40) before he led Israel in battle. Jonathan sought confirmation through the verbal response of his enemies (see 1 Samuel 14:6-14) before he and his armor bearer attacked a Philistine garrison alone.  When we believe God has called on us to act in some life altering way, we may want to seek confirmation that we have heard him correctly.

Remember, we are not doubting God. We are simply making sure that we clearly heard from him and understood his intent. Confirmation can come in a variety of ways. Perhaps, circumstances line up in extraordinary ways or provision comes to us in miraculous ways. Individuals may come to us and tell us that God spoke to them about what we have been considering. We simply put our own “fleece” forward and ask for that confirmation just as Gideon and Jonathan did.  God honored their requests and we can expect him to honor ours. There will come a time when we will know God’s voice so well that confirmation will not be necessary, but as we are growing in this spiritual realm we may well want to seek his confirmation before acting.

More on Discerning God’s Voice in the next segment of this series.

Revelation:

One of the reasons many Christians don’t believe that God speaks to them is that they don’t recognize his voice when they hear it and don’t understand the ways in which the Holy Spirit reveals God’s heart to us.  Paul helps our understanding with the following passages.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:10-14)

 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  (Rom.  8:16)

 In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul reveals the process through which revelation comes to every follower of Jesus. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit searches the mind of God and Christ, takes their thoughts or feelings relevant to us, and reveals those thoughts and feelings to our spirit.  Our spirit, then, opens up those thoughts to our conscious mind so that we can perceive the mind and the heart of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).  Because of that, we often hear the voice of God as a thought, an impression, a mental picture, a dream, or a vision that rises from our spirit into our consciousness.

Because this “download” from God’s Spirit to ours is experienced in the same way that we experience our own thoughts, we often dismiss a word of revelation from God as something we have intuitively known or discovered ourselves. Nearly every Christian has thought of someone spontaneously whom they had not thought of in days or weeks.  But suddenly, out of the blue, they think of that person and sense that they should give him/her a call.  When they do call, they discover that their friend or acquaintance was in desperate need of prayer or encouragement.  Then, that Christian goes on his way thinking about what a lucky coincidence all of that was.  What that person experienced was a revelation from God.  It was a “word of knowledge” about that friend and a prompting to make the call. God just spoke to that believer through the Holy Spirit but it seemed like an intuitive thought.

Many believers have had premonitions or foreboding thoughts about an event, an accident, or a disaster that they cautiously avoided.  They simply call it a premonition as if something had been floating around in the atmosphere and they had randomly sniffed a whiff of the future. What they actually experienced was a prophetic warning by the Holy Spirit.

Nearly all believers who study the word have had a moment when one scripture pointed to another and then another verse came to mind and suddenly a string of theological dots were connected that seemed like brilliant insight. What that person experienced was the Holy Spirit leading her into all truth and reminding her of things Jesus had said (Jn.14:26).  God had just spoken truth to that individual through the Holy Spirit.

My point is that Christians who don’t believe in the miraculous gifts of the Spirit or God speaking to his people today, have nearly all operated in those gifts themselves and have heard from God on many occasions.   They just call it something else because they have not been trained to expect the voice of God to come to them in a variety of ways.

The scriptures also tell us that God communicates with his people through dreams and visions. If we do not expect God to speak to us in those ways we will simply “write off” those dreams as something produced by our own minds and imagination.

If you, as a believer, have not been open to the voice of God coming to you, God has undoubtedly spoken to you or revealed himself to you on numerous occasions, but you simply did not know it was the Lord.  As a young man, the prophet Samuel heard God’s voice clearly and strongly on several occasions but believed it was a human voice calling to Him.  He finally asked Eli, his spiritual mentor, about the voice and Eli discerned that God Himself had been speaking to the boy.  It was then that Samuel began to recognize the voice of God in his own life.

As we come to expect God’s voice, we will learn that it has qualities that set it apart from our own thoughts.  Often there is a spontaneous quality when God speaks to us.  We simply know that the thoughts we are experiencing are not thoughts that have come from our reservoir of experiences nor are they expressed in ways that are common to us.  God speaks directly to us, not about us.  Dreams from the Father tend to be vivid and unforgettable.  Eventually, those who hear his voice on a regular basis will intuitively know it is God speaking to them as the Father, the Son or the Spirit.In addition to the inner voice of the Spirit, we may also hear from God in other ways as well – angelic visits, the audible voice of God, prophetic words, circumstances, dreams, etc. God desires to speak to his children in a myriad of ways and does so. .

Part of the joy of the Christian life is hearing personally from our heavenly Father in a variety of ways.I want to encourage you to begin to sense all the ways in a day that God has revealed himself to you and to begin to scan your own thoughts when you are in the Word or have been in prayer to sense the Father speaking to you.  Invite him to speak. Then listen.  Write down whatever you are hearing even though it will most likely feel like your own thoughts or imagination.  Tomorrow, I will talk about discerning whether what you hear is from the Lord or another source.

This is the second part of a series about God speaking to his people.  In Part 1, we explored the heart of God that deeply desires to reveal himself to his people and all the ways in which he has done that through the centuries. In this part we will discover that God’s word frequently emphasizes his speaking and our hearing in addition to reading the written word.

There are actually two Greek words that are translated “word” or “the word” related to what God says.  Logos tends to emphasize the entirety of God’s written communication to his people which is the Bible.  Rhema tends to emphasize a fresh word from God, which is not a binding revelation for all believers, but something that speaks to a certain situation or an individual.  Both words are used in the N.T. and the natural reading of the New Testament would not suggest that God’s fresh word to individual believer’s or churches was confined to the first century. So, if you have been taught that God no longer speaks to his children apart from the written word, let me encourage you to take a fresh look at some familiar scriptures.

Although God speaks to us in many ways his primary agent for communicating with His people is the Holy Spirit. The written word of God is his most available communication to us but even when we are seeking to know God and his will through personal reflection on the scriptures, the Holy Spirit is the one giving us understanding and application of that word. We experience the Holy Spirit in those moments as insight or understanding, but without the Spirit “speaking” to our spirit, we could not even understand God’s word as he intends.  “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

But through the Holy Spirit, God also speaks to our hearts and minds apart from our reflection on the Word.  Note the following scriptures and the words or phrases that have been bold-faced for emphasis.

The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep…He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…his sheep follow him because they know His voice … they do not recognize a stranger’s voice … I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me.  (Jn. 10:2-5, 14-15)

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.  (Rom. 10:17)

But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; He will only speak what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.  (Jn. 16: 13-14)

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.  For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:10-14)

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  (Rom.  8:16)

This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it – the Lord is his name.  “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”  (Jer. 33: 3)

Notice that these scriptures use words that signify direct communication between God and his people.  It shouldn’t surprise us.  From Genesis to Revelation, the biblical record is that God spoke to individuals face to face, through his Spirit as the word of the Lord came to numerous men and women,  through dreams and visions, and through angelic visits.

God spoke in these ways in the Garden, from the Garden to the giving of the Law at Sinai, from the giving of the Law to the cross and, more than ever, after the cross and the sending of the Spirit by Jesus. Why would we assume he would suddenly stop speaking a fresh word to his people somewhere around the end of the first century when it is evidently the nature of God to speak to his children through his written word (whether the Torah or the New Testament) and through a freshly spoken word. Since, God is the same yesterday, today and forever should we not expect to hear his voice on a personal level since we are his children?