To walk with God, we have to learn how to hear the voice of God.
Learning to hear the voice of God is a journey, it’s not something that we learn quickly. But with perseverance we can learn to hear the voice of God daily, so that we can begin to be led by the Spirit.
To be led by the Spirit has to do with being spiritually mature. When our spirit becomes alive unto God, our spirit’s ability to hear and see in the spirit must be developed. When our spirit grows up in God then we are no longer children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
When our spirit is born again, we are given the ability to hear the voice of the Lord, but this ability must be developed. We must become friends of the Lord to hear his voice clearly.
We need to learn about spiritual blindness, spiritual deafness, what causes hard of hearing to develop spiritually and how we must deal with that.
We must develop a spiritual hunger to hear from God, it must become a quest; it becomes a pathway that is called the pathway of intimacy that leads to the pathway of responsibility in which we begin to walk in our destiny, our function in the kingdom of God.
When God speaks to us, he imparts himself to us. To hear from God is to become in our experience what he is speaking to us, so this becomes a pathway of spiritual growth. It is called the pathway of intimacy because we are developing a relationship with God that is being formed on the inside of us.
So, the voice of God becomes the vehicle where he penetrates us, where he enters us and spreads though us filling every part of us with himself and we become transformed into his image. So, when we are talking about the voice of God, we are talking about the way that he communicates to us, which is far superior to the human language.
We are talking about a relationship that is far more intimate than what a husband and wife have on a natural level. As we develop this relationship with the Lord, then out of this oneness of spirit, we can develop relationships with our brothers and sisters in the Lord where we become one body of Christ in the earth, so that we can displace the fallen angels that rule over our cities, so that we can have cities of refuge upon the earth, embassies of heaven in the transition of two ages.
To hear the voice of the Lord we need to learn the language of heaven, the language of the spirit realm. The language of heaven is a spiritual language, spiritual language is much more sophisticated than our native language; say English or Spanish or Chinese or whatever our native language is. The language of heaven is far more advanced than human language.
The voice of God does involve the spoken word, the audible word in English or our native language and the spontaneous thoughts that come into our mind. God will speak to us in English, as spontaneous thoughts in our mind. He will speak to us in our language. It does involve that, but it is much more than just that, because it also involves feelings.
He can speak to us and convey something to us by a feeling. He can convey to us by pictures, by impressions. He can convey to us by intuitive knowing. His language is far greater than just the spoken word. The language of heaven is far greater than human language.
Prophets have gifting’s that enable them to hear the voice of God and see in the Spirit very easily. They are gifts and the reason why he gives prophets gifting’s like this, is so that they can teach the ordinary believer how this works and how to apply it.
We are not supposed to be going to the prophet to get a word from God. The prophet is supposed to teach us how to hear the voice of God, but will give us words when we are babies in the Lord, until we can hear the voice of the Lord for ourselves.
So, we are not talking about gifting’s in hearing from God. We are talking about another level, the developing of a personal relationship with God on the inside of us.
Numbers 12. 6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. 8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold:
Moses had a walk with God; he could hear and see in the spirit, he had a face-to-face relationship with God, which is the desire of God for all of us. But this is something that we grow into.
God has given gifting’s to ministries, and people would look up to them as someone great, but these ministries didn’t grow in the divine nature and when they would fall short of the glory of God, it would cause the little ones in the lord to stumble.
God is teaching his little children to hear his voice through intimacy; they are learning the language of heaven.
John 16 25These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.
The language of heaven is very diverse (consisting of different things, made up of many different parts). The language of heaven is something we must learn. It’s something we learn to recognize. We begin to recognize how God is speaking to us. We are learning how God speaks to us.
Human language tends to go through the mind first and then the heart. God must work first in us to desire and then to do his good pleasure, and then we know his voice.
God must get hold of our heart first. The language of the heart is much greater. Feelings and moods and pictures are far greater than just the mind. A picture speaks a thousand words.
Walking with God involves spirit, soul, and body. He just doesn’t always speak to our spirit. He will convey, express, communicate, transmit, and transfer moods into our emotions to convey something to us. We need to be aware of that. He will convey feelings to our physical body.
He speaks in all three areas, to our spirit, to our soul and to our body. It starts in our spirit, flows into our soul and then our body.
The Bible very clearly encourages us to have this kind of walk with God. In John 15:15 it says henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant does not know what the Lord is doing. Many Christians are like that. They do not really know what the Lord is doing or what he is saying to them.
But I have called you friends, for all things I’ve heard of my father I’ve made known unto you. That is a relationship and that’s the kind of walk that he wants us to have. That’s the Lord’s desire for us.
In learning to hear the voice of God we encounter a problem. God is a Spirit and to make it more difficult, he is an invisible Spirit. So how do we become friends with an invisible Spirit? How are we going to become a friend with a Spirit that we can’t see, we can’t hear. God is invisible and yet we are encouraged to have a relationship with Him.
Now how can we do that? How can we become friends with an invisible Spirit? The answer is simple, but maybe no one has ever really explained it to us. We must learn to enter his realm; very rarely does the Lord enter our realm, in outpourings of His Spirit. Occasionally, sovereignly he will do that, but it is very rare. We must enter the realm of what is called the Spirit, the spirit realm.
And this is what it means to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is a spiritual dimension that becomes real to us when we are aware of the presence of God. We become aware of him when we hear his voice. We are aware of him when he is communicating with us. We can feel the Spirit of God. We can sense the working of His Spirit in our heart. We can experience the moving of the Spirit of God inside of us.
The kingdom of God is as close as the air we breathe, it is inside of us and all around us in what is called the unseen realm. The senses of our soul and body are not aware of it in the natural realm, until we become conscious of his presence. When the life of God is flowing into our spirit, then our soul and body become aware of it.
When heaven invades earth and we see healings and miracles with our natural eyes, Jesus says the kingdom of God has come upon you.
We can be in a church service where we are doing our religious thing, but if God shows up in the atmosphere around us, everything changes. But it usually happens when a least one person has broken through, worshiping God with all their heart, creating an atmosphere that God can inhabit.
One person can break through and then what they experience can be conveyed to the other people around them. God can speak a word to one person in such a way that that word fills them with His Holy Spirit and then it will touch others around them. This is the unseen realm of God’s kingdom becoming manifest in the natural realm; it is the convergence of heaven and earth.
Everything of the spirit is communicable, it is transferable. It comes through exposure to it. When one person is filled with the Holy Spirit, then other people who are in contact with that person can become exposed to it also.
John said I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard, and I saw. He couldn’t hear and see until he was in the Spirit. The Bible makes it very clear that we must enter his realm.
In 2 Peter 4:22 it says this- the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. With your spirit, that’s where communication happens in the first place with your spirit.
Revelation 1:10- I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet. But to John it was a voice. We are a spirit being and our spirit is cloaked, covered, shrouded with a soul and a body. But we must enter his realm in order to fellowship with him.
1 Corinthians 2: 14But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
We must develop a conscious awareness of the presence of the Lord. The spirit realm exists inside of us and alongside us. There are Angels around us right now, this is a fact, but they live in their world, they live in a different dimension than our soul and body. To be able to see them and to be able to hear them, we must enter their realm. They are not going to come into our realm unless God directs them to. We must enter into their realm.
John said I was in the Spirit- then I heard and saw. Paul said, the Lord be with your spirit. Not with your mind, not your soul. He said with your spirit. There is a realm of spirit that we are going to start becoming aware of.
Jesus had real difficulty getting this across to his disciples. He said to them in John chapter 3: 12 if I have told you of earthly things and you don’t believe how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things. Then he said in the next verse, no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven even the son of man which is in heaven. When Jesus walked on this earth he also was in another dimension, he walked in two realms.
The son of man which is now on earth who is also in heaven. He walked in the heavenly realm; he walked in the realm of spirit, as well as walking in this natural realm. Jesus is saying here in these Scriptures that he was in heaven and on earth at the same time. He walked in two parallel dimensions. How can this be? You see Jesus had access to both worlds. He could be in the presence of his father at the same time as being with people on the earth.
Now if our spirit is alive unto God, we have constant access to the Lord. We have constant access to the realm of the spirit if we know how to move into it, if we know how to perceive that, if we know the feel of it. The problem is that no one has ever taught us about it.
In Ephesians 2:6 it says and he hath (past tense) raised us up together and made us to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is a present fact of reality. He has made us to- sit with Jesus in the spirit realm. The realm of spirit, heavenly places, this is a present fact. Once we know this and once we believe this, as we become a bondservant it then becomes the passport of entering into that new realm.
It is the beginning of all things becoming possible to us. We must believe it’s possible to enter this realm. We must know that our spirit is seated there. We must know this from the word of God. Once we know it and believe it- then we can begin to access that realm, entering the presence of the Lord.
John17:24- Father Jesus said, this is a prayer of Jesus. I will that they also whom you have given me (that’s born-again believers, he is speaking prophetically) be with me where I am. Where did he live? Be with me where I am, that they might behold my glory which thou has given me. For you loved me before the foundation of the world.
We are talking about the spirit realm now. Every time we behold his glory, we are transformed into the same image that we are beholding. The reason we are not experiencing transformation is because we have not learned how to enter this realm. Jesus on the earth said father I pray, I ask that they may be with me where I am right now, living in the heavenly places with you. This is a spiritual dimension that we become aware of when we encounter the presence of the Lord. How do we behold the glory of the Lord? We can’t do that with our natural eyes. It is a spiritual experience. It is something that our spiritual senses become aware of, and it flows into our soul, so that the senses of our soul become aware of it.
Jesus said I pray father that they will be with me in this realm, that they can enter my realm and walk with me and be my friend. Learning to be in Spirit is a matter of knowing that we can be.
This is very important. The first lesson in learning how to hear the voice of the Lord is to be able to enter the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. This comes by practicing the presence of God, learning to be consciously aware of his presence during the day. This is something we must work at.
As we focus upon the Lord in love and worship in our heart for him, we will enter his realm. We will connect, we will become conscious of his presence with our spirit and our soul and physically. We lose that connection off and on during the day, but as we practice this, as we learn to enter it, it will become easier and easier. To walk with the Lord requires that we walk with a conscious presence of the Lord, a conscious awareness of his presence.
We must learn how to do this. We do not have to see him, but we must develop an awareness of him, we must be aware that he is there. And this takes practice, it takes focus, it takes refocus. We lose our focus, and we must refocus again a dozen times during the day. That’s okay; we are just learning how to walk in that and how to stay in it.
If we are going to hear the voice of God, we got to get into the conscious presence of the Lord. We got to enter his realm. We got to have a conscious awareness of him.
The voice of God and the language of heaven is very diverse, and it is something we will have to learn.
We must recognize when he is speaking. Most people don’t recognize when God is speaking to them, because he speaks in so many ways.
We must learn to enter his realm; it is like a parallel universe between the spirit realm and the physical world. He is not going to come into our world, we must enter his presence. We enter his gates; we enter into his presence with Thanksgiving.
We come before him; he doesn’t come before us. We draw near to the Lord and then He draws near to us. We must enter into his world and that is a conscious awareness of the presence of God, which can lead to a visual awareness of the presence of God. But initially it’s just a conscious awareness of the presence of the Lord. And it’s in that way that we begin to hear the voice of the Lord, by becoming aware of his presence. If we are not aware of His presence, we are not going to be able to hear his voice.
Once we become conscious of the presence of the Lord, then we can begin to recognize what his voice sounds like.
We are learning to communicate with an invisible Spirit. Now this can be difficult and it’s important then to develop a consciousness of the presence of the Lord. Because when we are conscious of the Lord, when we have a conscious of the presence of the Lord then it’s a lot easier to hear the voice of God.
When we have a conscious awareness of the presence of the Lord then the senses of our spirit, soul and body are heightened.
The language of the spirit realm is so more sophisticated than our natural realm and includes mood, feeling, intuitive sensing, knowing, impressions, pictures all that kind of thing. It’s far more sophisticated than just the spoken language.
When we have a conscious awareness of the presence of the Lord, we are going to encounter God in the words that we are hearing, the words that He is speaking; we are going to encounter God in our feelings.
The first thing we must realize that we need to be aware of is the fact that not all our thoughts are our thoughts. Did you know that? Not all your thoughts are yours.
Our own thoughts are analytical, when we are leaning on our own understanding, we are trying to figure it out.
Thoughts which come from the spirit realm are spontaneous. This is something that we must learn; sometimes it takes people some time to understand this.
The thoughts, the voice of the thoughts of the Holy Spirit are spontaneous. The thoughts that come from our analytical mind are thoughts that we start.
Spontaneity is the voice of the spirit realm. A lot of stuff comes to us that is spontaneous and we don’t start it. We didn’t initiate it. It came from the realm of the spirit. And it’s highly likely that you have been spoken to from the realm of the spirit several times in any day. Most of which comes from the enemy, until we learn to recognize the personality behind the thoughts.
We need to understand this. In 2 Corinthians 10 :4 it says- for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal not natural but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God or the truth of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Now why would we want to bring every thought into captivity? Because some of them come from the demonic spirit realm. Now the Holy Spirit will speak to us from within us. It’s not an external voice it’s an inner voice.
1 Corinthians 6:19- know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God and you are not your own?
There is someone else living on the inside of us, that has thoughts, has a voice, has feelings, has mood- that is the Holy Spirit. The Bible says he’s living on the inside of us. And when He speaks to us, we will experience His personality. How can we distinguish what is our thoughts and what are the thoughts of the Holy Spirit or the voice of the Holy Spirit?
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would flow through us and flow out of us like a river. Now the river is a spontaneous thing, it is a spontaneous flow.
In John 7: 38 it says he that believeth on me as the Scripture has said out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water but this spoke He of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Another words Jesus was saying when you receive the Holy Spirit, he will flow through you like a river. His voice is like a river, it’s a spontaneous flow, a spontaneous flow of thought, a spontaneous flow of words that we speak when we are filled with the Holy Spirit and are conscious of His presence.
Now spontaneous thoughts don’t come from our logical mind, they are not thoughts that arise out of us, they are not premeditated. They come from the spirit realm. They flow out of heaven into us; it is part of the language of heaven.
What does the voice of the Holy Spirit sound like? He sounds just like our thoughts, because His voice is being conveyed via our spirit, the Holy Spirit to our spirit to our mind. The flow from our spirit to our mind is so quick we can hardly tell the difference.
The thoughts that come from our spirit are inspirational, but it must register in our mind for us to begin to take hold of them and grasp them.
The voice of the Holy Spirit sounds just like our own thoughts. Many Christians are trying to hear a voice which is different from their own thought. And we can really struggle with this if we don’t understand it.
There are times when His voice may seem distinct, but this is because He must bypass our mind because we are not in tune with Him, we are not hearing Him, He must invade our world because we are not tuning into His.
When the Lord speaks in our heart it is not premeditated, it is spontaneous it just arises out of our spirit into our thoughts, like a flow, a river and if we’re looking for a voice different from our own, we will miss God. When God speaks in our heart it sounds just like our own thoughts.
When we are going through a trial, a difficult time and we get kind of upset, suddenly comes through our spirit into our mind, a thought- it is going to be all right. We didn’t initiate it where did that come from? The Holy Spirit, now it feels like it’s in our mind and that’s because it is in our mind. It must eventually register in our mind. But we didn’t initiate it and that’s the difference.
It was a flow of the Spirit through our spirit, and it was spontaneous. We weren’t thinking of trying to hear from God it just occurred within us. The inner voice of the Lord is sensed as a spontaneous thought, contained in it is His personality and it flows through our spirit as thoughts into our heart where we can feel it.
We are created in such a way that the spirit world can assess us as spontaneous thought into our mind. As we begin to learn the language of the spirit realm, we can begin to tell the difference between what is from the demonic and what’s from the Holy Spirit.
We need to understand that every form of communication carries a personality with it. When familiar spirits or demonic spirits are speaking to us, the thoughts carry a personality.
When the Holy Spirit speaks to us, he imparts his nature in the words. When he speaks the fruit of the Spirit is imparted in it. The enemy will try to impersonate the Holy Spirit, but he cannot counterfeit the fruit of the Spirit because he has none.
The enemy will accuse us, he will put us down, he will lie, he will condemn, and his thoughts are destructive, they can come as destructive flashes in the imagination.
God is different; His nature comes through when He speaks. It edifies, builds up, teaches in truth, it is creative, it encourages. We need to ask ourselves, how does what we are hearing make us feel? What or who is behind it? There is a personality behind every voice and every thought that spontaneously flows into our mind. As we learn to recognize the personality behind it, we are going to learn how to hear the voice of the Lord.
How does it make us feel? Does it make us feel proud or humble, does it condemn, or does it build up, does it trouble us or does it bring peace? Whose personality is behind who is talking to us.
Spontaneous thoughts have a person behind them. They are thoughts which we didn’t start, they have a person behind them and every day we can be sure that we have had spontaneous thoughts, that we have been contacted from the spirit realm, that the spirit world has made connection with us.
The enemy works in secret, once we learn how to recognize his voice, then it is very easy to disconnect from him through our focus on the Lord.
As we learn how to be filled with the Spirit, we give off a light in the spirit realm and the enemy doesn’t come around us.
The personality of who is behind those spontaneous thoughts will come through. There is a sifter the Bible gives us as a filter which whereby we can put all our thought life through them, all our imaginations and all our thought life we can put through this filter.
It is found in Philippians chapter 4 and verse eight- finally brethren whatsoever things are true, now we can use our mind, we can think, we can reason, okay is this thing truth, is this true what this voice in my mind is telling me. Whatsoever things are honest? Is this voice telling us to do something that is honest? Whatsoever things are just, is this communication, is it conveying something which is just or is it unjust. Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely? If the thoughts are not lovely, we know where they come from. Whatsoever things are of a good report if there be any virtue or goodness if there be any praise, think on these things, in other words whatever is coming through in spontaneity through our mind, if it doesn’t go through this filter, if it doesn’t fit with this. Then we are to cast it down. Every imagination, every thought that exalts itself against the very nature of God, we cast it down. We must put it through the sieve.
God’s communication carries with it his nature. And if we understand this we won’t get into so much trouble. It is very, very important that we understand this.
The flow of thoughts when God is speaking to us comes without strain. If we are straining to hear, our own mind is going to get involved and block us from hearing God when He speaks to us.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit will also bring back something to our memory that we heard Him speak to us before. The bible tells us the Holy Spirit will bring things back to our memory. This is an important function of the Holy Spirit, sometimes He will speak to us getting us to recall something which we probably would never have remembered but it just flowed into our memory.
Normally we would have not remembered that thing, but just out of the blue that thought has been recalled. The Holy Spirit will do this, to gain our attention to something. We must learn how to recognize that.
The enemy will also bring things back to our memory to condemn us. The Holy Spirit will never do that, He doesn’t condemn us like that. He will bring something back to our memory to try and show us something, to give us some insight and understanding that will be good for us.
We are learning the ways of God’s communication to us. Now they come without strain, without tension, without pressure, they are light, they are gentle and they come as a flow into us.
There is a special feeling about these thoughts. When the Holy Spirit speaks to us, when God is speaking to us there is a feel that comes with it. There is a personality, a person behind the communication. It brings the presence of the Lord, it generates faith, and it brings peace and joy.
That sensation, that feel, is very important to learn. There is a special feel; there is a witness of our spirit that comes with it. It’s important to learn to recognize this witness of the spirit.
The voice of the enemy has a wrong feel about it. And through time and through experience we get to learn that feel. Often it doesn’t line up with the word of God.
In Romans chapter 8 and verse seven it says the carnal mind, the natural human mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can it be. Our own premeditated logical thinking is not reliable, because it is us. And it may be right, but it may be wrong. When God speaks it bypasses the natural mind with a spontaneous flow. It takes us unawares, it kind of sneaks up on us.
The Lord wants to fellowship with us, but we must know how He communicates. We are communicating with an invisible Spirit. We are becoming friends with an invisible Spirit. We must learn how He communicates with us without speaking audible words.
We can learn how to enter the realm of the spirit and walk in it. We can learn how to have conversations with the Lord, to ask Him questions and hear His response. We can learn how to hear the voice of God and be led by His Spirit.
We can learn how to walk in the spirit, where we become conscious of the presence of the Lord and become directed by Him. The life that Jesus came to give us is exciting, but it takes time to develop it. We have to spend time worshiping Him, getting into His presence. Learn how to be still and wait on the lord. Learn the art of meditation where the word of God becomes a doorway into experiencing Him.
A casual seeker of God will never come into a walk with God. Jesus has torn the veil between heaven and earth; we can learn how to walk in this realm of spirit with the lord.
But the realm of spirit is a dangerous realm because there are other voices. There is always the personality behind the voice which you can check out and put it through the sieve. If it doesn’t fit into that sieve (Phil 4:8) which we are given in the word of God, then we cast it out.
We can learn to walk with God, but we must learn how to hear his voice. We must become a bond slave of the Lord, one who loves His master, who has had their ear pierced. This leads to becoming a friend of God and progressive relationships with the Lord.