Listening to God...

"And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father." John 14:13

So many of you have asked me questions about how I know when God is talking. This is a great subject and an extremely important one too. For several weeks now I have written about listening to God during the hard times in your life, and how to grow your faith. This is likely to be long (no one ever said I was short-winded), but it is so important and key to staying in the battle of growing your faith. And this is a battle I have been fighting so hard, but am confident that I am winning.

When you are going through a bad time in life and trying to keep your faith and grow it, looking for God's answer is critical. The problem is that when you feel you don't hear Him, or you cannot tell if it is Him talking to you, your faith comes under attack. Those horrible doubts creep in and some people think, "See there is no God, and if there is He doesn't care about me." Then they get defensive and think, "I am doing all of this for nothing. He isn't going to help me through this. I'm just going to fix it myself." And this is the pivotal moment when everything can go horribly, horribly wrong.

PREPARATION TO LISTEN: CLEAN OUT YOUR EARS AND CLEAR YOUR MIND

As a Christian, you have two enemies. One is obvious: Satan. The other is often less apparent: the flesh. You yourself are your enemy. Sounds nuts doesn't it? Actually it makes sense. You were born into a world of sin and rebellion. Your instincts are prone to sin. You are "in this world" right now and the world can be just pure evil. So stop for a minute and think about that - you are trying to let God guide you and in the meantime you are at war with the Devil and your own body. That is tough, and that is why so many give up.

Let me tell you how I have learned to hear God in these moments. This may not be how you hear Him in your life, but at least I can provide you with a way to try and recognize it. First, know that when those doubts start to creep in, and you feel like God is not listening to you and has abandoned you Satan is watching. That is exactly when He steps up because you are weak. You are on a battlefield and you just bent down to pick something up while your enemy has you in the scope of his gun ready to fire. You are completely vulnerable at that moment.

He will fill your head with doubt. He will use the one method that will cause you to sin 9 times out of 10: your flesh. Your flesh is prone to doubt, confusion, anger, envy, greed, jealousy, and so much more. He will bring those feelings up and if you don't learn to fight back you are letting your enemy cause you to shoot yourself on a battlefield and he won't even have to waste a bullet of his own to take you down.

First, when you are trying to listen for God's instruction in your life know that Satan will seize that opportunity. As humans, we want something dramatic. We want God to come down on a cloud and talk to us in a big, loud voice. This is not usually how it happens. God has appeared in various forms to talk to people. For Moses, God appeared as a burning bush. But most of us won't have that experience. If you do, great. If you don't then keep reading this.

When you are praying for an answer you will find many thoughts creeping in. Not all of those will be God. Recognize this - that is the first step. Learning that will prepare you to truly listen because you will know that the enemy is going to talk to you also.

Second, learn to look for the good in an answer even if you don't like it. Sometimes what is "good" is not what you want to hear, and you will become resistant. Go ahead and prepare yourself to accept His answer. Don't tell God "no" please. The scripture above tells you you that if you "ask" for it in Jesus name, He will do it. Watch out now. Know how to read a scripture as a whole. Read the entire scripture out loud. "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father." John 14:13. This does not mean that you get to ask in Jesus name that you win the lottery and blame God when you don't win. You have to be willing to accept the answer of what you ask for. There are several other key pieces to this scripture. First of all, you have to ask it in HIS name. Asking it in HIS name means that you are throwing all your ulterior motives out the window, admitting it is what He wants and not you, and you are willing to accept the answer that is given to you whether you like it or not. Second, it has to be something that allows the "Son" to bring glory to the "Father". Does it allow Jesus to bring glory to God if you win the lottery? Come on now. Be serious. You have to be asking for something that is His will. This is a "Thy Will Be Done" deal. You are giving up your own will - the will of the flesh, and seeking His Will no mater whether you like the answer or not.

Third, examine your motives. What are you asking for? Most importantly why? Are you asking God to talk to you about something or help you with something that will make you better? Remember He has your best interests at heart. His best is always what you will get. Know this - God cannot sin. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Galatians 5:22-23. Asking God to give you something that will only cause you confusion, strife, anger, envy, jealousy, etc. in the long run is pointless. He cannot give it to you because He cannot sin. Asking God to sin is like asking Satan to feel sympathy for you. When you think of Satan think of a sociopath who can kill people with no remorse whatsoever because that is what He is. Satan can never feel the good.

When you are praying for something give yourself over. Tell God that no matter what He wants that you know it is in your best interests and you will accept His answer and live with the consequences.

Fourth, don't doubt yourself. When you are examining your motives give yourself some credit. Thanks to Adam and Eve and the apple sin, you now know the difference between good and evil. You know what is right and what is wrong. You know when something is not good for you, so if you have that deep down feeling don't ask for something bad and expect God to give it to you. My children love drinking Coke, but they get juice because I want them to be healthy. Listen to that deep down nagging telling you whether something can be good or bad for you. If you have been praying for something you know is not good and you keep praying for it anyway you are showing God you are resistant to His answer. Why should He tell you if you aren't going to do it anyway?

Fifth, if you are resistant expect God to stand back. God is not doing bad things to you ever. He is not up there to torture you trust me. My experience with God though is that when I fight Him He will stand back. In the Old Testament, when Israel would begin to sin He would stand back. This is the "Okay, fine have it your way" situation. He didn't send people to attack Israel necessarily (depending on what book you are reading), but when someone came to attack them He wouldn't jump in and protect them as He had in the past. They had not needed Him and were living in love with the world for years, why should He jump in just when every sin they had been committing started to cause them pain? Take today as example, we all know it is wrong to drink and drive. That is one of those "knowledge" of good and evil deals. God won't put a police officer behind you just because you do it, but if one gets behind you don't expect Him to keep you from swerving and getting pulled over. If you go against Him be prepared to live with the result. He needs you to have an open mind with no ulterior motive when you come to Him. Ask that His will be done even if that means you will get pulled over and arrested. As crazy as that sounds, you have to put Him before you. He can see the big picture. You getting arrested one night may keep you from killing someone and spending 15 years in prison and He can see that big picture at all times.

Sixth, talk to God all the time - in good times and bad. The more you talk to God the more you are likely to put Him in charge of every little thing in your life, and the more likely you are to hear his response.

If you remember and follow these steps you have now prepared yourself to listen and shown God that you are ready to hear what He has to say. All of these points require faith and obedience. I don't mean obedient as in you will never commit a sin again because you will. What I am talking about is obedience in faith: trusting in Him and accepting His Will for your life whether you like the consequences or not.

LISTENING TO HIS CALL

Now that you are prepared to listen (and the first section is a requirement not a maybe cause it is not likely to work otherwise), learn to look for Him in life. There are several ways I have learned to recognize when God is telling me to do something. This is my personal experience, and yours is may be different. I am telling you this in the hopes that it gives you a starting point to learn to recognize His voice.

For a little background, know that I used to be the most negative person in the world. My mind was a constant battleground. I would get so impatient waiting for God's answer I would take the problem back and try to fix it myself. God loves us all, and by His grace we are forgiven. However, when you are trying to hear Him you have to do some work. Obedience is key. This takes a lot of faith. But He wants to give you the answers trust me. He just needs to know you are ready to hear them. Taking the preparation steps will show Him you are ready to accept what He has to say and make it much easier on you to recognize what to do.

First, God talks to us through the Holy Spirit. This is so confusing for so many people, so I will just tell you the way it makes sense to me, and the way I was taught based on His Word. When Jesus died on the Cross, His Spirit was left to live within all of us as Christians. My Pastor explains it as a sponge in a bowl full of water. Your sponge will never get out of the bowl because by God's grace you have been saved. He has given you the Holy Spirit through Jesus sacrifice. So you have it.

However, when you fight God and don't accept Him, you squeeze your sponge as tight as you can under the water and barely any water can enter. Let go of your sponge. Let the Holy Spirit work and let the water fill you.

Pray for forgiveness and ask God to let the Holy Spirit go to work. Another key denominational difference here, but what I understand is that the Holy Spirit can work in different ways. When you feel the nagging telling you "don't do this" or "you should not have" in reference to something bad you did, that is Him. He will "convict" your heart that what you are doing is wrong. You will likely feel guilt and shame but accept that and keep going. He has a lot more to tell you.

The Holy Spirit can go from that nagging feeling to a much stronger one. This is what I call "compulsion". He can make you feel SO strongly about something that you immediately do it. For example, take when a Pastor is called to ministry. He feels that "compulsion" pulling Him in that direction and any other career choices start to make no sense. This is when the nagging becomes a strong pull.

Often it is scary because the compulsion is pulling us into a direction we never thought of before and we start to doubt. We ask God, "Can I do this?" or "I don't have the money for this" or "I never thought you would ask me to leave my boyfriend. I was praying we would stay together." Remember you have to accept the answer and get out of the boat (see note "He is calling...").

Second, God will talk to you through your past experiences. Everything that has happened to you in your life is a learning experience for you. Take for example the subject I am working on in a note coming up - the "judge and be judged" portion of the Bible. When something bad happens to you ask yourself if you did the same thing to anyone in your past. Many Americans refer to this as "Karma" or "what goes around comes around". Everyone I have judged on an issue has come back on me trust me. Learning from past experiences can provide you with answers to handle a situation. God does not want any of your suffering in the present or the past to be in vain. Look back and see what you learned from the situation and how to apply it to this one. God is trying to teach you constantly.

Third, look for signs around you. Often God will open a window when a door is closed. So many people have strange things happen in life and say it is just coincidence. I always say if you are walking with God then coincidence isn't that lucky. Take, for example, a woman who is single and praying for a husband and family. Yet she keeps getting mixed up with guys who make her feel jealous, angry, and so many other bad emotions. Can she say she has fully given it to God to hear His response? No, she hasn't. Now assume she gives it over to Him, lets go of all the bad, and waits patiently. She goes to work every day where she has worked alongside a male co-worker for over 15 years. One day her car breaks down on the way home and someone stops to help her. It is the co-worker. He can't fix the tire, so he stays with her until help arrives. But the person coming to help also breaks down so they are left together for hours. They start to talk about God and she finds out he is very involved in his church and is a youth pastor. She learns how much he loves kids. Next thing you know they are dating and then married.

She never saw that man before because she was still trying to "fix" it herself by dating the wrong guys. When she waited patiently and truly gave it to God she let him work. Getting to know a man she worked beside for years is not coincidence - it is God.

Often we try to anticipate what God is going to do in our lives. We always say, "well it will be A, B, or C, but I cannot see C happening. A and B are way more in line with me." Trust me on this one - God will pick C. He tells us in the Bible He does things in a way to let us know that it is Him doing them and not us. Take your own hands out of it!!

Primary example - yesterday I received a lot of questions about how to tell when God talks. I started coming up with my answers to those questions through what my experience has been. Then before going to bed last night, I turned on the TV and saw a Pastor giving a sermon on how to know when God is talking to you and he touched on many of my answers. That confirmed the information that God was already putting in my mind through my past experiences to answer the questions sent to me.

Fourth, listen to your inner voice. God created you for greatness. You have so much potential inside of you that you cannot even imagine how great it is. So many of us fail to try different things because we think we are not good at them. Let God surprise you. When you come to Him and clear your mind and are ready to listen He will fill your mind with so much insight, so much knowledge, so much wisdom it is amazing. Your mind will become completely open and you will be able to see things from so many different angles. You will start to think, "Wow, I would have never thought of it that way." That is because you didn't - it is God.

Fifth, listen to those around you. This also requires obedience. Surround yourself with people that build you up and not those that tear you down. The Bible tells us not to be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers" and this is why. It is not so we can judge others, it is so we can be able to listen to God and stay on our walk with Him. Let those loving people around you help you interpret your pain. That is what they are there for and why God sent them to you. Go to those who you know have your best interests at heart and have a relationship with God. Learn to recognize those people. If the person you go to makes you feel guilty, confused, angry, jealous, etc. then it is not God. God can't sin remember? Other Christ followers will help you more than you could ever imagine. God will work through them to help you, and then you will know it is Him doing the work.

Sixth, keep working on your relationship with Him. Find a church and get involved. Look for those "Ah Ha" moments. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a specific problem and prayed about it constantly only to go to church on Sunday and have the sermon address the very problem I have been praying about. That is God's way of talking to you, and He knows you are being obedient in looking for the answers because you are at church after you came to him with the problem. This is not coincidence - this is God.

Read the Bible and get some help understanding it. The Bible has every answer in it you could imagine, and it is from God. He has talked to you already so start there.

Seventh, serve others. Even when you can barely walk because you are hurting so bad through the storms of life, get up and do something for God. So often we want to hide in the bed with the covers over our head. Give yourself to God. Get up and go do something to help someone. He will send you people that will teach you how to get through this, trust me. You will go in thinking you are helping someone else, but the truth is they will be helping you.

Eighth, DO NOT give up. The more God sees you working the more He moves in. If you draw nearer to Him, He will draw nearer to you remember? When those negative thoughts creep in get cocky. Tell Satan he won't win this battle. Tell God you will wait for His answer no matter how long it takes.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

Lately I feel God talking so loudly in my own life. It is a fantastic feeling. I would not trade it for anything in the world even though I may not always like the answers. I don't hear loud voices. I don't hear the Wizard of Oz talking loud and scary. I don't have visions. What I do have is God's voice automatically stamping my heart.

When someone says outloud "2+2" you automatically know the answer is 4. I feel the same way about what God says to me. It is an automatic knowledge moment. Something just "snaps" and it is knowledge of something that I become 100% sure of just like "2+2 = 4". It is knowledge that is put straight into my heart that I know is true beyond a shadow of a doubt and I do not question it.

I think about Him constantly and talk to Him all the time. I have dreams that I am talking to Him. I wake up with so much insight and so much more knowledge. The strange thing is I know I had a conversation with Him but I never heard Him talking, and I never saw Him - no lights, nothing. But I wake up remembering everything that was placed into my heart and mind. Yet I never heard a voice. That is the "automatic knowledge" I am talking about.

God wants to give us wisdom and knowledge. If I quoted every scripture that uses one of those words in this note Facebook would crash completely because there are SO many. And it may crash becasue this is so long anyway. I just wanted to give you insight into how this has worked for me. It has taken a lot of work and is a constant struggle of faith and being willing to let go and let Him do His will.

We all cannot even imagine what He can do through us. There is potential locked inside of you that could move mountains truly. But you have to show Him you are willing to take the good and bad. So many marriages break up because, as stated in Fireproof, people say "For Better or for Worse" but really only mean "For the Better". You have to be willing to accept the "worse" momentarily. God knows that any bad you are going through gives you an opportunity to come to Him, and allow Him to make you a million times stronger and better in the future.

We are so protective of our hearts because we don't want to get hurt. God is the one perfect constant in our lives who would NEVER take our willingness to give our heart to Him for granted. Not only will He show others how great you can be, but He will make you look at yourself the way He sees you - beautiful, wonderful, creative, loving, intelligent, and absolutely awesome. He will give you self-confidence and assurance.

You are prone to sin. Let Him protect you. Give Him your ears, your heart, and your mind. Give Him your soul. C.S. Lewis addressed the common failure of human instincts to do God's Will and said it best:

"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest. "

Start listening to the only one who knows you and the greatness you are capable of. Let Him show everyone how beautiful His creations can be.