Do you struggle to hear God’s voice but you sense His Presence? God’s Presence is His voice. It’s in our nature to hear from God, and our main challenge is not that we don’t hear God’s voice, but perhaps that we don’t recognize the different ways He is speaking to us. You were designed to hear God’s voice
it’s in our nature as a believer to have
faith
but it’s our nature as a human being to
hear from god
people will say well i just don’t hear
god speak well then you couldn’t be born
again
because our conversion is in response to
his invitation it’s never initiated by
us
it’s interesting you can have a
gathering like this and
preach on evangelism and people will
come to christ
and i don’t know that any of that them
that came
would say i clearly heard the voice of
the lord
and yet they became aware of their
unsaved condition and their need for god
what is that the result of
it’s a result of hearing from god
see
comprehension
is not the evidence we’ve heard
comprehension is not the evidence we’ve
heard we
tend to put god on the same
level
as we are as humans talking to one
another and yet god’s languages are so
diverse
and oftentimes he speaks things that are
so deep and so profound and so beyond
our pay grade so to speak
that he speaks to our spirit man in a
way where he makes a deposit that may
take days weeks or even months to unfold
but it is true
many times people
perhaps in business you
you make this decision for your business
and it just turns out to be
just this goldmine decision and
others of you make a decision for a
family member maybe as a gift that you
give and it was unusually timely and you
didn’t know you had no clue and
and you make that phone call it could be
any number of things but
what happens is we oftentimes
make that brilliant idea not realizing
that god actually ministered to us in
the night weeks before the event because
he knew it was coming and he spoke to us
and he prepared us for that decision
that we think is brilliance and it was
actually the product of the voice of god
he
speaks
how many of you have been in moments or
seasons
where you
you would say i just i’m not hearing i
don’t hear from the lord very well in
this season
but i but i sense his presence how many
of you say that all right that’s his
voice
he is the word
when the word shows up
his effect
is voice
we don’t interpret it as voice and yet
it is
it’s as clearly the voice of god as
anything we’ve ever heard
he speaks by presence
in luke chapter 4 jesus quotes this
verse
out of the old testament
man shall not live by bread alone
but by every word that proceeds from the
mouth of god
man shall not live by bread alone but by
every word that proceeds from the mouth
of god
we are alive because he speaks
we live
as an evidence of his voice
you sitting there
doing nothing but listening to a guy
talk
is evidence
he speaks
if it were possible for someone to not
have an ability to hear from god
the moment he spoke they’d have an
ability to hear from god
because he creates when he speaks he
spoke the worlds into being
in romans 10 it says
faith comes by hearing
and hearing by the word of god
faith comes by hearing hearing by the
word of god why don’t you quote that
with me faith comes by hearing and
hearing by the word of god
i grew up
hearing people teach on that and and the
most common thing i would hear is that
faith comes from hearing the word of god
it’s not that’s not what it says
it says faith comes from hearing
hearing comes from the word of god
we listen to god’s voice not to find
something in addition to scripture but
to clarify what’s been written
round of warley gave us an illustration
so many years ago where the father spoke
to abraham
to sacrifice his son and as the sword is
coming down the lord spoke and said
never mind
and he emphasized how happy
isaac was that his dad kept listening to
the lord
many isaacs had been slain because
people
listened to what he had said but not
what he’s saying
it’s the present tense voice is actually
the cause of faith
the very nature of faith implies i am
hearing
you just have a situation come up and
you just believe god for this
breakthrough how did you get it he spoke
i hope that what happens as a result of
today is that we broaden our perception
of how god speaks to us
we’ve talked before on the multiple ways
god speaks and it’s always fun the
stories are fun and we all have
unique
experiences in in the voice of the lord
i’m not wanting to go into that today i
just say it’s bigger than you could
imagine
but what i would like to emphasize today
is that you have already been designed
to perceive into here
it’s already
in your design
the passage out of hebrew hebrews 5 says
having your senses trained to discern
good and evil having your senses such
human physical senses
can actually be trained by immersion in
the presence can actually be trained to
recognize good and evil
i know you already know this but
when they train
people who work in the banking system to
recognize counterfeit money they only
study real money
they never study counterfeit money
they just become so exposed to the real
that the
the
counterfeit stands out they may not even
know why they just know there’s
something wrong with this
and that’s how you discern good and evil
is you don’t discern evil by studying
evil you become immersed in the person
and anything that doesn’t fit in there
is evil
it’s immersion in presence
and the emphasis that i
one primary emphasis i want to make
today is the very fact that presence is
voice
and i’m not always ready to to
understand or to move in what he’s
saying to me that’s why you’ll be in a a
time like we had this morning where the
worship team is leading and it’s just
this unusual aware of god’s presence
don’t be quick to try to figure out what
he’s doing
just be the pliable child be be the the
sailboat with the sail that just is
moved by wind we just catch with god we
just catch the fact that he’s here
and i i don’t discover him through
analysis
i discover him through surrender
it’s not that understanding is wrong he
commands us to pursue wisdom and
understanding
it’s vital
but the problem happens when we only
obey what we
understand because then we have a god
who looks a lot like us he’s our size
and what he’s looking for is a people
that are yielded to him who say yes
before he speaks
and we’ll look at it in a moment if i
remember
um that the yes before he speaks is
actually what attracts his voice
so we have this
statement in romans 10 faith comes by
hearing and hearing by
the word of god god will not speak
inconsistent with his written word
that’s why exposure to this is what
helps us to recognize
that which is outside of his word
i
heard this funny story i don’t think i
have all the details right but it’s
close enough you’ll get the picture
this family is driving on a mountain
road and
and their little boy
just out of nowhere declares there’s a
there’s a big rock in the road right
around the the turn
and the father was
driving was somewhat stunned by the word
and went around the corner a little
slower than normal and sure enough
there’s this huge rock in the middle of
the road they were so impressed that
their kid could hear from god
they said what else is he saying he said
we need to stop at mcdonald’s when we
get to town
[Laughter]
[Applause]
which sounds very typical for all of us
i got it right once let’s see if i can
extend it into my will
i’ve got a great plan for your life so
let’s
so faith comes by hearing
but the capacity to hear comes from
exposure to his word if it was just
the recording of his word i’ve got
multiple
translations on my phone i could play it
all night long and by the end of the
week i’d have the faith of wigglesworth
if he just came from hearing
scripture
i don’t want to downplay that because i
do that i love to listen to the word of
god
but faith comes
from
hearing
the the living voice the one who is ever
present who in that moment i don’t know
what he just said i just can tell that
he just deposited something in my life
i’ll never forget oh 40 goodness 40 some
years ago i was on staffing with my dad
and i remember i i had this period of
time where
i was reading through isaiah and i got
to isaiah 62
and while i read beyond that chapter
stumped me and it was almost like it
reached out and grabbed me
and i i would read it and reread it
reread it and you could ask me what does
it say and i would have to say i do not
know all i know is that when i when i
read it it grabbed me
and it spoke to me and i don’t
understand it i could never explain it
but something’s happening inside of me
because of what i read
i believe that that is biblical learning
where your spirit man learns before your
natural man
but it doesn’t mean we’re not supposed
to pursue the understanding i want to be
able to explain i want to be able to
illustrate but
often times the lord speaks to us here
first
and it’s that sensitivity to the fact
that he’s here
what is he doing
i don’t know but i’ll cooperate whatever
it is
i don’t want to dictate him
i want him to dictate me
and then all of a sudden you just have
this seemingly passing thought
seemingly passing thought i should call
so and so and you do and you’re at a
crisis moment
that
if you weren’t leaning into the fact
that presence’s voice
you might have missed it
presents his voice