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Hearing the voice of God
I have been saved for 24 years, and I have accually been following God for about 16years. I seek Him daily and have even when I was not following his direction. I know that we always hear people talk about hearing the voice of God, but do we accually hear it? I know that very few people in the Bible Audibly hear the voice of the Father, but many saw his works and miracles. In these days I believe it is very very important to hear the voice of the Lord, wether Audible, or through the Word, or through a prophetic message, or even letting the Holy Spirit speak through somthing as worldly as a movie! I remember in 1999 I was walking through a time when I could not see anything good in my life and everything seemed dark and gloomey. I felt alone and ashamed of who I was. I was def not hearing God in anyway shape or form.One evening I rented a movie..."Pleasantville". I cannot recomend this movie at all, but when I saw this I was blown away. A modernday black and white film! That as events occur color becomes very vivid and these people see it for the first time! They are over taken with it. Anyways about half way through the film, the characters are either all for this new thing called "Color" or they
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Stevo on -
I prefer to call it - "open to the lessons He has for me". It means letting Him show you where you're weak and seeing how the hard things in life are there to strengthen you.
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Permalink Reply by Chad A. Martin on -
What denomination are you?
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Permalink Reply by Chad A. Martin on
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I am just tryin to figure out why you constantly disagree with my words. "Lessons He has for me"? Are you so afraid of offending someone that you write how you feel in ways that only partially show the light God has given you? God is not a God of theology, a God of religion, a God of comfort, a God that only hears you when youare honest. God is a God of "Uncomfortableness" that is my favorite thing about him. The second I get comfortable, I know Jesus is calling me deeper, and I need to listen. God wants you out of your comfort zone and completely dependent on Him and HIm alone. He did not call us to a life of ease. The great comission does not say to go into all the world and make disciples with out offending someone by the truth. Please understand that God has called us to "Let your light shine for all the world to see". I am all about showing the love of God but I will not ever only show part of the truth, or sugar coat anything God speaks to me, or has spoken to the writers of the Bible. I will not down grade the truth revealed by my Father to a"lesson he has for me" .Do you think that Joseph sugar coated his dreams or anything God spoke to him?! I encourage all of us to do the same. Listen HE desires for you to hear Him speak....even thrrough a movie.
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Permalink Reply by Stevo on
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I was trying to express it in such a way that it didn't come across as disagreement or judgement. It could be that we're generally on opposite sides of some issues. I don't believe I've ever had any kind of revelation from God personally. On a daily basis, it's just His word and the work of the Holy Spirit in shaping and convicting me. That's quite enough. Why the sermon?
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Permalink Reply by Allan Midgley on -
Chad, Different strokes for different folks, there are people on this forum that just love to play assassin and fire their machine gun from their tree. Why, not sure, but maybe to hide their own heart from things that are being revealed here or maybe it's their daily dose of logical tug off war; just don't take it personally.
It is biblical that God talks to people and that includes different cultures, gender or age. Either directly or through other means, and not everyone may be privledge to hear or on the reverse side unlucky. God is God and sometimes when He speaks it's as a King and Creator and things happen. To me the Holy Spirit seems to gentlely nudge this way and that when I need it.
But, I believe I have heard God directly while I was praying on the way to work and the answer I got was 100%. I could not know it any other way as it was confirmed by the very person it conserned. This happened again later with a sick child in hospital , again the message was not for me but for others. How often does it happen , not many times in my life but when it does YOU KNOW and it can be confirmed - I mean the outcome or what God has told you about.
Not being super spiritual in any sense of the word, and not hearing directly from God for many years, it came as a surprise/ shoke to me. Even mentioning it to some people, they tend to treat you like you mentioned you seem a UFO. lol
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Permalink Reply by Toni on -
Is your 'question' asking if and how we hear God ourselves?
For me, it's often a quiet voice inside, sometimes 'knowing' something I didn't know before, sometimes through objects having a clear meaning and likewise sometimes bible passages being clear when they were previously obscure or carried a different sense. Audible? Not for me so far.
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Sealey on -
The most common way of my hearing God's voice is simply sitting in His presence, worshiping Him. Very often as I start praying in the Spirit, he will give me revelation on stuff that's going on, and what needs to be done. When I get to that place of absolute intimacy with Him, He talks so much. I suspect it's a case of He's always talking, but we're not always in a place to hear. We have to get into that place of worship and surrender so we can hear Him
Your right about the film bit, Chad! I've had so much revelation watching films, especially in the cinema, where I'm not distracted. We could start a separate thread on films which have given us revelation. I'll throw in the obvious Matrix, for starters. I'll also add Lord of the Rings.
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Luce on -
STAR WARS!!
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Permalink Reply by Charles Wolff on -
Sorry if this drags us back to the topic of the thread ( :-), and I've probably told this story here before, but... early in my teen years, our family went to a Foursquare (Pentecostal) church, and I was at summer camp, and when you're at a Pentecostal summer camp, and you've never spoken in tongues, that's what the last night of camp is all about. So it was Friday night, and all of us uninitiated were in the meeting hall, at the prayer rail, and the pastor was coming around laying hands on people and praying for them. For whatever mysterious reason (as in, "God works in..."), he skipped me. So I was there praying, not sure what was going on, and I heard the voice of God saying, "Charles, I want you to write me some songs."
"Audible" ? I'm not sure, I guess, but I've always believed that I heard the voice of God that night. Now, at the time, I had written a bunch of greasy teenage love songs (think Herman's Hermits or early Beatles), and I was familiar with "church music," but I had never written any "Christian" songs. But a couple years later, our family moved, and we started going to this Baptist Church, and I discovered they had a youth choir and a smaller performing group that was doing contemporary Christian music - this is back when "Pass It On" and "They'll Know We are Christians" were the hot new songs - and it all kinda clicked, and I started writing "Christian" songs. Fast forward to a bunch of years later and I found myself putting together a contemporary worship service at a Methodist Church - this is when Vineyard, Maranatha and Integrity were the big publishers. And I started writing P&W songs.
So it appears that something came of "hearing God's voice" that night, however "audible" it may have been. The pastor of that Foursquare church is still around, and I was able to exchange some email with him a year or two ago, and even he admitted that despite my not getting The Tongues that night (and I never have spoken in tongues), God seems to have been at work that night.
In any case... to quote Sister Aimee - "that's my story, and I'm sticking to it" :-)
Charles
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Permalink Reply by Cory Zipperle on -
I'm always skeptical when people say "God told me" or when they claim that they heard God speak to them in an audible voice. Sit with them long enough and talk to them about their experience over time and you'll find that God didn't actually speak to them.
This said, I'm not sure I have actually ever met somebody that has heard God speak. I can testify that I have prophesied in the name of God and I have never heard God speak audibly. How does it happen that I can speak for God in these situations? I don't even know. It just happens.
However, what you say about hearing the Lord speak, whether through literal or metaphorical means is correct. We need to hear God's word. I believe that most of that comes from his Holy word, occasionally, I think people are occasionally called by God to go do something, the rest of the time, I think God just wants us to do right with what we already have.
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Permalink Reply by Stevo on
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It's hard not to feel that you should have a more tangible connection to the Lord when you read scripture. There are so many instances of supernatural revelation and personal encounters with God and the angels. But it's good to put it into perspective - over the thousands of years and through millions of Israelites that are written about, I would guess that fewer than 1% ever heard God speak audibly. And of those, it appears that there were only one or two incidents where this happened. Some, like Paul, had an abundance of revelations. One other point to make is that none of the recipients said "is someone talking to me?" The only question they seemed to have was "can you verify that you're actually God". And He gladly proved it to them.
But for the vast majority of us, there is and will never be anything tangible like a voice or an angel or whatever. And that's fine, it's not expected and it's not up to us, God chose the time and place for the encounter. Further, if we are in that rare circle of one or two revelations, most of our days are spent without revelation.
So what are we to do? What this tells me is that we're focusing in the wrong direction if we're constantly looking for God to "speak" to us. It also tells me that your comment is on target in that we really need to spend most of our time seeking his words in the Word. If we've built up that bank of knowledge, He will use it to guide us and support us.
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