This is my weekend post and I have felt the Spirit prompting me to delve deeper into our verse this week – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will guide your paths.” Please take a few moments to read this post. Yes, it’s a long one, but I pray it will speak to you.
Here is a great example of listening and waiting on the Lord to speak. If you were at Metro today, you heard Pastor Joe’s message, “Hearing God”. Now I was wrestling with what God had for me to say, and frankly, yesterday during my quite time, I wasn’t hearing anything. Then Pastor Joe gave me, and you who were there, the message I was looking for! Wow! This got me excited and I hope it gets you excited! I didn’t know that Joe was preaching today, much less that his message was about “Hearing God”. He and I didn’t script this, God used Joe to be His vessel for helping us decern how we hear from God.
So let me recap Joe’s message today:
- How do we know that it is God who is talking? Joe outlined at the end of his message that we can discern God’s spirit because His word is instructive and encouraging, not destructive or discouraging. It may not always be what ‘we’ want to hear, but His word is constructive, and always in our best interest.
- He will never ask us to do what is forbidden in His word. Hearing from God rests solidly on His Word.
- It will always be consistent in His Word. We must incorporate God’s Word into our process of hearing from Him.
How we should react when God speaks:
- Believe that God wants to speak to you – This ties into our verse- “Trust in the Lord”
- Position your heart to hear His voice – This ties to our previous verse, Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God” You have to put aside Instagram and Netflix and all the other distractions and put yourself in a position to hear from Him.
- Learn the art of listening – It’s easy for us to request God’s help through prayer. It’s not as easy to sit back and wait to hear from Him. We must have receptive hearts in order to hear His voice. This is part of the transformation of our minds in Romans 12:2.
- Spend more time with God. Bottom line, you are not going to accomplish items 1,2, and 3 unless you spend more time with Him.
“IN ALL YOUR WAYS SUBMIT TO HIM”. I wrote about being submissive and dying to self; tough words for us to process. Both conjure up negative, maybe painful thoughts. But I want you to understand that being submissive and dying to ourselves is God’s blessing to us! Being submissive is being receptive to hearing from Him. Dying to self is leaning on His instruction and not leaning on our understanding. It’s not our nature to do these things, but our Father loves us so much He doesn’t want us to trust our own understanding because He knows it will harm us. Jesus spoke in John 10 about the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd takes care of his sheep and the sheep trust him and know his voice.
When we begin submitting ourselves to Him and dying to our own self-interests, we start to discern God’s will and purpose for our lives and we begin bearing fruit in our actions. You will create an atmosphere – you create your own atmosphere and you project the Spirit through your receptiveness to God’s word and His love and His guidance on your life.
My prayer is that we begin being receptive to hearing from God. Take a moment and listen to the words in “I surrender” by Hillsong and let God speak into you.
I thank God for His message to us today through Joe and through His Word. We love you!
Jim
God's Word for Fuel 