Discerning God's Voice

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The Bible

We know that God actively speaks to us today and reveal His truth to us. Jesus said so in John 10:27, "My sheep hear My voice." That means He actively speaks to us today. Therefore we want to get to know God better, we want to learn to hear and discern His voice more clearly. This is not usually something we arrive at instantly, but a process that God takes us through. We get to know Him better over time and our ability to discern His voice from "not His voice" grows and improves as we get to know Him better. We learn His nature and character, things He would or would not be likely to say. And the closer we draw to Him, the easier it gets to recognize His voice. The more we practice listening to Him, the better we become at it. And over time, the Lord expects us to learn to know Him and to discern God's voice with a fair amount of clarity and accuracy.

The process would be so much easier if His voice was the only voice that ever spoke to us. But the problem is that there are two other voices that will, from time to time, try to jump in and imitate God's voice. So when we have a revelation or an experience with God, it might not really be from God. It might be the imagination of our own heart/mind. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" In other words, sometimes our flesh and our own desires will come along and try to convince us that these desires of our heart are really God speaking to us and promising them to us. Or what we hear might even be the devil trying to imitate God's voice to confuse us and get us off track.

So the issue becomes: how do we tell these three voices apart? How do we know when it is really God speaking to us or when it is our own heart and desires or when it is the enemy imitating God's voice?

One of the ways that we discern true revelation from the other true voices is by knowing the truth. When we know God's truth, we can identify when we hear something that does not line up with that truth. God will work in our lives over time to seed us in His truth.

He uses two things we use to test God's truth: His written word and personal revelation, where He reveals Himself to us. God has given us the Bible to show us what He is like. It lest us know how He thinks, what He expects of us and what He is likely to say to us, etc. And God also reveals Himself to us as we grow in relationship with Him. Both of those are very important in evaluating what we hear to see if was really from God.

We are to use His truth to evaluate what we think He is say to us regardless of whatever mechanism He uses to communicate with us... be it that "still small voice" or supernatural revelation or even an open vision or direct and tangible encounter with God. When God speaks to us, we bounce what we hear from Him against His truth. If it is really from God, it will always hold up to the test of His truth, because God is truth and His communication to us today remains consistent with His truth.

The first of those two things is His written word, the Bible. That is what we will talk about in this first lesson. It is the thing that we must rely on the most heavily. Scripture is very important because it is the "measuring rod" by which we evaluate all experiences with God. We know that God does not change and we know that the Bible is His word, that it is true and reliable. Therefore, we know that God will not do or say something now that contradicts what He has already said in His written Word. And the more we get to know Scripture, the more we get to know what God is like. If we ever have an experience that contradicts the Bible, we use the Bible to evaluate that experience as faulty or "not really God."

Let me share an example to illustrate this point. One time I got a phone call from the a pastor of a small Cuban church in Florida. He asked me to minister to him because he was upset and needed a boost to his faith. The issues was that God had made him some promises and these promises were delayed in coming, so he wanted me to encourage his faith. He also wanted me to stand in agreement with him in prayer that God would bring these promises about to him speedily. Even though the request sounded reasonable, I felt a bit of a check in my spirit, so I decided I better get more information from him before I prayed anything. I asked him what promises he was talking about in particular, what were these promises?

The story came out that he was very attracted to this one lady in his church, but she happened to be married to someone else, and she was very much in love with her own husband and did not even notice him. By the way, this pastor also happened to be married, but he was unhappy with his own wife/marriage. He felt that God had seen his misery and had given him a love for this other married woman. He really believed that love was from God. He read psalm 37:4-5, which said, "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." So he figured that God would give him the desires of his heart. And what he desired was to be released from his current wife and married to this other lady.

So he started to pray about that, and after a while he had this supposed "encounter with God." In this encounter, God told him that He was going to kill the people who stood in his way (the husband of the other lady and his own wife) in the very near future. And that after they died, this lady would realize her love for him and they'd be married, and then he would be happy again. That experience had been over a year ago, and the pastor was upset that these two people were still alive. He wanted God to hurry up and kill them so that he could marry the lady that he thought he loved. And he wanted me to stand in agreement with him for them to die quickly so that he could have this other man's wife soon, as he was beginning to burn with lust for her.

The sad part is that he really thought that this was a promise from God to him. Part of the reason he thought that was because he did not check his experience against what God has said in His word. If he had bounced that experience against what God said about marriage and lust, he would have known better. The bible makes it pretty clear what God thinks on this matter.

His phone call came on a Saturday night and it sort of freaked me out a bit. So the next day, I mentioned it to a couple of my friends at church. One of their kids, who I think was in either fourth or fifth grade at that time, happened to be standing in earshot. She overheard the conversation and offered this comment. "That is not right! The Bible says we are not supposed to covet our neighbor's wife. He should known better!" Amen -- this child was able to see a spiritual truth that this adult pastor apparently missed. That was because she did something he did not do... she used God's word as a measuring rod to evaluate the spiritual experience that he had. The experience did not measure up to God's word, so it needed to be rejected.

We learn to lean on the word and trust it as a guideline in evaluating our personal experiences with God, because we know the Bible is true/accurate and will never led us astray. However, we also know that it is possible we may hold to an interpretation or theology of the word that is incorrect, and God may occasionally want to fix our misunderstanding of His word. So we need to make sure we baseline off of the word itself, and not off of some doctrine or theology that we have been taught about that word. One of the best ways to do that is to invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us as we read God's word, to teach us and from it and to lead us to a deeper understanding of His truth. We must lean heavily on God's word to know what He would or would not say/do.

The Bible must be our first and highest criteria in judging whether or not what hear is really God. But it is not the only truth that God has given us to use in this process. We are not discount our experiences with God, either. At times, God reveals Himself to us directly and shows us what He is like. He does that because He wants us to know Him better, He wants us to know more and more of what He is really like. The more intimacy time we spend with Him, the more He reveals Himself to us. And we get to know to know His nature and His character through experiencing Him. God expects that to be a normal part of our relationship with the true and living God. He does not want us to just have head knowledge about Him, God interacts personally with us and He expects so to experience Him. We will discuss this in more detail in our next lesson.

Experiencing God

John 10:27 tells us that >God still speaks to us todaynot everything that claims to be God's voice speaking to us really is His voice. There are two things that try to imitate God's voice to us to deceive us: our own hearts/minds/desires and the enemy. Because of that, we need to prayerfully judge and evaluate what we hear in order to make sure that it really was God speaking to us.

We judge/evaluate by measuring what we hear against God's truth. There are two tools that God has given us to know His truth: His written word and direct personal revelation of Himself, of His character and nature. Our last lesson talked about using His word to judge what we hear. When we judge things, we always put the greater/higher emphasis on Gods written word, the Bible, because we know that is the infallible word of God that cannot lead us astray.

But we also must not discount the times when God has revealed Himself directly to us. He does this in two ways: through experience and through direct supernatural revelation. Let's talk about experience first.

God loves to reveal Himself to us through relational prayer, where we come before Him and over time, He makes one of His characteristics more and more real to us by showing it to us over and over again: maybe His love or maybe His holiness or maybe His power, etc. He allows us to repeatedly experience that aspect of His nature and over again until it becomes fully real to us. Let me share an example from my own life, the way that God make His love real to me.

I used to struggle with whether or not God could possibly love me the way the Bible said He did. One day when I was praying, God told me that He was going to make me secure in His love for me. I heard Him speak that into my thoughts, but I sort of discounted it, figuring it was probably just my imagination. But for months and months after that, every time I came into God's presence, He would surround me with His nearness and just love on me.

One day I fell in an old recurring sin that I thought I'd gotten the victory over. I repented, but I felt terrible about it. I was sure God would be mad at me and disappointed in me. I was afraid to come into His presence. I figured He would not want to be anywhere near me because I had messed up. But I came anyhow. And to my amazement, God did not rebuke me nor did He hold back His nearness from me. He met me just like always and He loved on me. It was so amazing to me that He could love me on the same day that I had sinned against Him!

Over time His love became more and more real to me and I really started to become secure in it. He allowed me to experience His love so many times that it became very tangible to me. And that is one of the ways that God reveals Himself to His children. He shows us one of His characteristics and He lets us keep experiencing it over and over again until it is real to us.

The other way is through direct supernatural revelation, which is often in the form of a vision or of a divine visitation. I am going to share one of these vision type of experiences with you of a time when God revealed an aspect of His nature to me. It is a very precious experience for me and one that I did not think I would every share publicly. I have kept it private for years and treasured it. But now it seems that the Lord wants me to share it in this teaching, to give you an example of what I am talking about.

This experience took place several years ago in the form of an open vision. The vision started with God the Father meeting me during my prayer time. Just before the vision began, He told me that He lived in all times at once and was not limited to any one time. While He was here with me right now, He was also at the moment of my birth, and at the moment of my death. He inhabits all times because He transcends time. And because of this, He could be with me now and also be at the very moment when Jesus had the last supper with His disciples, just before He laid down His life for us.

The Father said that He was with Jesus just before He laid down His life for us. And He wanted to minister to His Son by bringing some of the people that Jesus saved to see Jesus, to show Him what His sacrifice would do in people's lives. The Father said that He wanted to show Jesus some of the lives that He was effecting as He laid down His life for our sins, in order to strengthen Him for what lay ahead. The Father asked me if I would like to be one of those people and I said "Yes."

I don't know if this was simply a vision for my own sake, or if this was something that really happened for Jesus sake. I don't know whether or not I was really transported back through time to have an encounter with Jesus that was real to Him back when He still walked on the earth. Either way, from my perspective, it was an incredibly powerful encounter with the Lord.

Suddenly I found myself in an open vision. I was no longer in my prayer room, but in the house where Jesus had His last supper. I was standing just outside the upper room. Some of the disciples had already left the room and others were still milling about inside. I glanced down at myself and discovered that I was no longer in my regular clothes, but wearing what I assume was appropriate attire for women in that era. I did not have time to ponder this change of attire, as two of the disciples came out of the room and almost bumped into me. I moved out of their way.

Somehow, when God told me that I was going to see Jesus, it never occurred to me that I might see His disciples as well. I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious in being around the disciples, even though they seemed sort of ordinary in this setting. I became worried about what they might think of me being there. So I decided to pretend I was a serving girl and tried to look like I "fit in" to the environment. Part of me wanted to go straight up to Jesus, but I was afraid to do so. Instead, I walked in the room and began picking up dishes as if I was clearing the table.

Within seconds, I heard the Lord say, "Teresa, what are you doing?" I tried to stutter out an answer about not wanting to look conspicuous. But before I could get any words out of my mouth, He said, "Put that down and come here." I obeyed His command. It was a relief to have permission to approach Him, and to drop all pretense about why I was there. It felt much better that way because He was truth and pretense felt "wrong" around Him.

I was not sure what to say to Him. I could see pain and great sadness in the Lord's eyes, and that really bothered me. I am not sure that I had any clue of how hard it was for Him to face the crucifixion until I looked into His face in that vision. My heart absolutely melted. I felt such gratitude for what He did for me, but such dismay at the suffering He was about to go through. There was no doubt that Jesus fully comprehended every detail of what lay ahead for Him and of how hard it would be for Him to go through that. I could see the pain on His face and I wanted to comfort Him.

He looked at me and it felt like His eyes were looking directly into my soul. I realized that He was fully knowing me -- every detail of who I was and what I experienced. Even though He was physically at that point in time, He seemed to be instantly seeing my life in every detail. He was silent as He looked into my heart. The silence felt awkward, so I decided to say something to Him. It did not come out all that well. I tried to tell Him how much I loved Him, how I had dedicated my life to serving Him and how grateful I was for all that He did for me in saving me.

I had somehow assumed that He would feel that it was all worth it when He saw the effect His sacrifice had on my life. I was presumptuous in that. I mean, I knew He loved me and He was pleased that I had put my faith in Him. But before that experience, I saw the crucifixion all wrong. I had always been told it was about me, and people would say things like "Jesus loves you so much that if you had been the only person on earth to receive Him, He would have still come to die for you." But it was not really about me. It was about Jesus and the Father, and about Jesus' commitment to obey the Father and whatever He commanded Him.

Jesus was full of grief and sadness at what lay ahead for Him. He knew He would obey the Father, but He was not looking forward to the experience at all. He seemed to be truly dreading it. I could not stand seeing Him in that kind of pain, so I tried to comfort Him. Jesus stopped me. He sort of rebuked me and put me in my place and loved on me all at the same time.

I can't remember His exact words any more, but He said something to the effect of, "Do you think My suffering and death is such a light thing that you, My creation, are able to comfort your God? My sorrow is bigger than you can possibly comprehend but it is not your place to try and alleviate it."

He was not unkind, but He spoke truth and I knew He spoke truth. It was not my place to try to comfort God. As He spoke, I knew He was right and that I had been out of line. But I also knew that He was not angry with me. I felt very humbled, but I could not feel ashamed before Him or afraid of Him because there was something so wonderful about being near Him. I knew that He could see every detail of my life, the bad as well as the good, the sin as well as the obedience. But He loved me despite all He saw, and His love was incredibly powerful. Even in His sadness and even in His agony, He still loved me. I was undone.

I did not try to say anything else, I knew I was not expected to. I could not bare to see how He was suffering, but I also knew that I could not do anything to alleviate it. He was the Lord and the master and I was not His comforter. It was not the creation's place to try and comfort the Creator. I knew it would be great presumption to behave that way again. I am not sure how long I stood before Him. It might have been just a few minutes or it might have been much longer. Or perhaps we were transported out of the realm of time all together? But I knew Him as My lord and master. He had put me in my place, yet it felt good and right to be there. I was so in awe of Him that I can not begin to describe it.

The vision lasted a little longer and then suddenly it was gone. But the impact that it made on my life still effects me today. This was a very significant event in my walk with God, a place where God revealed some of what He was really like to me. A piece of His lordship and sovereignty became real to me through that experience, and I have drawn from it at times when processing revelation. I will give an example of that in our next lesson.

Discerning Our Own Hearts

There are two things that will try to imitate God's voice to us. We talked about the first one in our previous lesson: the devil will sometimes try to pretend He is God speaking to us.

But the other things that imitates God's voice strikes much loser to home: our own heart and desires and issues and fallen nature. And we all have fallen natures, don't we? Even when we love God with all of our hearts, we still have a carnal fallen nature to deal with. And it can definitely get in the way of us hearing God speak to us.

Even the Apostle Paul struggled with his fallen nature. Many consider Paul to be one of the greatest New Testament believers, a hero of the faith, a very mature and godly man. But look what he says about it in Romans 7:14-20 (NLT):

14The law is good, then. The trouble is not with the law but with me, because I am sold into slavery, with sin as my master. 15I don't understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. 16I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. 17But I can't help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things.

18I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can't make myself do right. I want to, but I can't. 19When I want to do good, I don't. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. 20But if I am doing what I don't want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it.

The sad fact is that we were born with a sinful nature, and that nature will continue to effect us until the day that we are perfected in Christ. Yes, the Holy Spirit is at work in us, transforming us to be more like Jesus as per 2 Cor 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Unfortunately, the transformation process will not be completed until we are with Jesus in glory and have been given our new eternal bodies that no longer carry the sinful nature. In the meanwhile, we continue to struggle with our fallen nature. The sad fact is that we have wants and desires that don't always conform to the perfect will of God.

And at times, we can want something so bad that our own heart/desires will try and convince us that God is going this to us. Jeremiah17:9-10 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind..." In other words, our own hearts can deceive us, but they can't deceive God. And when our heart tries to imitate God's voice to us, that imitation won't stand up to the scrutiny of God's truth.

And the heart can get "selective hearing" at times, where it only hears what it really wants to hear and it ignores everything else that the Lord and the bible have to say. I would like to illustrate this point from the life of one of my dearest friends, who has since gone home to be with the Lord.

I first met Faye when I was in high school. She was about 20 years older than me, but we became very close friends. One day her husband of almost 20 years announced that he was leaving her for another woman. Faye was a believer but her husband was not. He had been unfaithful before, but she had always forgiven him and taken him back. This time, however, he did not want to come back. And Faye could not believe it. He conceived a child with the other woman. Faye felt hurt and betrayed (what woman wouldn't?) but she was not willing to let go of the marriage without a fight.

As the divorce proceeded, Faye cried, she prayed and she called out to the Lord in her pain. Faye became convinced that God told her that her husband would come back to her and she clung to that promise. However, after the divorce was final, he married the other woman so they could raise the child together. Faye was convinced that God was going to separate her ex-husband from his new wife and return him to her. In fact, she thought that she would get to raise this child for her husband. Her youngest son was almost full grown, he was in high school. She loved the idea of raising another child, so her heart began to imitate God's voice. And she truly believed that God had promised her that her husband would return to her and bring the child with them, and the two of them would raise this baby together.

And she claimed that God had confirmed what He promised her from Scripture, quoting 1 Cor 7:10-11, which said, "10Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. 11But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife."

The part about being reconciled really jumped out at her. She felt that his second marriage was unlawful in God's eyes because he was still married to her even though they had been legally divorced. She saw this verse as promising her that they would be reconciled and that her ex-husband was not allowed to divorce her. Faye wanted the marriage to be restored so badly that she "heard" God promise that to her ... only God never made that promise.

What happened was that Faye applied selective hearing to the Bible, quoting 1 Cor 7:10-11, which was written to address two believers. Her ex-husband was not a believer. Yet she held on to this promise for all those years. And she never saw the three verses immediately below that passage. And those three verses she never saw were the ones that were written to address her specific situation. 1 Cor 7:12-15 says,

12But to the rest I, not the Lord, say: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. 13And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.

15But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace.

God said clearly in verse 15 that if a unbelieving spouse leaves a believer, then the believer is to let them go. Faye was not willing to let her unsaved ex-husband go. She selectively held on to verse 11 (a husband is not to divorce his wife) but ignored verse 15. Her own desire for the marriage to be restored convinced her that God had promised this to her. She wanted it so badly that no matter how many times she read 1 Cor 7, she never saw verse 15.

This went on for many years, and the child she hoped to raise grew up with her ex-husband and the real mother. Faye was never reconciled to her husband. She eventually died and her ex did not even come to the funeral.

Faye's story is the example of a very intense desire of the heart. And in general the more intensely that we want something, the greater the level of deception our heart will apply in imitating God's voice. Most of the time when our own heart imitates God, it will not be at that strong of a level of intensity as what I shared in this teaching. Let me give you an example of a less intense desire.

There was a time when I was suffering from hypoglycemia. The Lord told me that I was not eat anything with sugar at that time. But I was visiting some friends in Canada and they took me out to eat at a very nice restaurant. When the dessert menus were passed out, I really wanted some dessert. The pictures looked SO good, and everyone else was going to have some. I knew God had instructed me not to eat any sweets. But I really wanted some. So I asked God if I could have a dessert. I thought I heard the Lord say to me "Sure, Teresa go ahead with My blessings. I promise you that you can eat dessert and not get sick."

Now, who do you think told me that? Was it God or my own desires? I was immediately reminded of the way the Lord had instructed me not to eat sweets because it was bad for my health (because of the hypoglycemia). Some Scripture came to mind. I remembered John 14:15 (about obeying Jesus because we love Him). Could that have been the Holy Spirit speaking to me to correct my "mishearing?" I choose to ignore it. Then another passage came to mind, the passage about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit and not our own (1 Corinthians 6:19). I choose to ignore that as well, holding on to what I heard that I could have dessert. So I had dessert and it tasted good. But about an hour after I ate it, I had a hypoglycemia attack and was sick for the rest of the night.

In my case, the Lord used Scripture to try and show me that I'd heard the desires of my own heart instead of His voice. He is faithful that way, when we hear wrong, He will usually try to speak His truth to us. But often times we choose not to listen because we heard something we really wanted to hear, so we give in those desires. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, our hearts are desperately wicked. At times they will imitate God's voice to tell us what we really want to hear. We need to make sure we apply God's truth to the situation instead of immediately giving in to our desires. If I had listened to Him just before ordering dessert, then I would not have gotten sick that night. God was faithful to speak to me and let me know that He hadn't really said that. I was just unwilling to listen because I wanted to hear that it was ok to have dessert.

The sad fact is that, at times, our hearts do imitate God's voice to us. We need to be willing to bounce what we hear against God's truth and verify that it really is God speaking to us.

Our Ministry Hearing And Our Emotions

Jesus said in John 10:27, "My sheep hear My voice," which implies that God still speaks to us today. But the problem is that not every voice we hear is really God. There can be things that "sound" like His voice when He is not actually speaking to us. At times, the devil will imitate God's voice to us to deceive us or lead us astray. At when we want something really bad, our own hearts/desires may try to imitate God's voice, to make us think He has promised the thing we want to us. And at other times, we can get prideful or defensive and think God is speaking to us when it is really our own issues rising up.

This can happen in our ministry hearing as well as in our personal hearing. There are times when we try to speak for God, but our own issues rise up and cloud things, making us hear wrong. Of course, none of use want that to happen! None of us want to make mistakes when we speak for God. We all want to represent what He says clearly and accurately. But that sad truth is that those same things that obscure our personal hearing can also interfere in our ministry hearing. Therefore we need to apply His truths to the prophetic (and to judging prophesy), using the same techniques we use to evaluate our personal hearing.

There are three areas in particularly were people tend to get in trouble with their ministry hearing:

• prophesying from our emotions or opinions
• prophesying advice
• prophesying from pride or defending our words

We will discuss the first one here and the other two in our next lesson.

Prophesying From Our Emotions or Opinions

Sometimes when we hold strong opinions on a matter, we can end up prophesying our opinions instead of what God is really saying. That happens because our opinions seem to shout to us loudly and clearly at times, drowning out the voice of the Lord. Let me share an example of this.

This was this guy, let's call him Jack even though that is not his real name, who moved strongly in the prophetic. He was very accurate in many areas, but there was one area where he frequently fell into error. Jack held very strong personal beliefs in the area of finances. He believed that if we tithed, God was obligated to bless our finances no matter what. If you made a bad investment, then God was obligated to move on your behalf and supernaturally make that investment turn good. Jack thought that we did not need to exercise wisdom on constraint in our finances because God was obligated to bless us no matter what we did. And Jack put the Lord to the test in his own life. You might say he practiced what he preached.

Jack owned and operated his own business for a season. He ran it on the principle that God was obligated to bless it no matter what he did because he tithed. So Jack felt free to make bad investments, to take risks, to make decisions that were not backed up by marketing research, etc. For a season, Jack's business did well despite his unwise business practices. But eventually, Jack's unwise practices caught up to him and his business got into serious trouble. After that experience, Jack began to reconsider his opinion about financial blessings, and he stopped prophesying into that area.

But before it failed, Jack would often tell people that the Lord said to "go for it" financially. He prophesied financial investments and he prophesied financial risks. He truly believed God was speaking this to him personally, and he operated his business according to those principles. So he was not at all surprised that God would use him to speak the same thing into other people's lives as well.

The only problem was that Jack was in error, God was not saying this. People would follow the financial advice that Jack prophesied and they would loose money -- sometimes a lot of money. Jack assumed that their problem stemmed from their own lack of faith (or perhaps they were disobedient in tithing). He never considered the possibility that his financial words were in error. Why? Because the voice of his own opinions area shouted to him louder than the voice of the Lord. It imitated God's voice to him and Jack never stopped to double check his hearing. (There was a bit of pride and arrogance in there as well, which made him unwilling to consider the fact that maybe he heard wrong in this one area.) Jack would point to other areas (non-financial) that he spoke into, and he had a great track record. So Jack assumed that because he was accurate in those other areas, he was also accurate in the area of finances.

But the problem was that when Jack spoke into finances, he spoke from his own strong opinions on the matter instead of hearing what God was saying. His opinions interfered with his ability to hear God in that area. And over time, the local leadership noticed the error and danger in Jack's financial words. They could not sort out the difference between "bad prophesy" in one area and being a "bad" prophet in all areas. So Jack was labeled as a "false prophet" and lost is credibility. He was not allowed to prophesy to people in his local area any more. Why? Because he was driven by his own opinions in the area of finance and expressed them as a thus sayeth the Lord.

We all hold strong opinions in certain areas, So it is important to identify what those areas are, so we can avoid prophesying our opinions. We need to be very careful about speaking into areas where we hold strong opinions, because it is so easy to fall into error in those areas.

Even thought I hear God clearly and believe I can discern between my opinions and God's voice, I try not to prophesy into those areas where I hold strong personal opinions. I don't want to accidentally prophesy from my opinion, I want to prophesy precisely/only what God is saying. However, there are times when God will instruct me to speak into an area where I also have a personal opinion. In those cases, God usually speaks to me before I minister to someone, like during my quiet time earlier in the day. He will tell me in advance that He is going to speak to that area (where I have strong opinions) and He will make it very clear what He wants me to say. This gives me time to double-check what I heard with the Lord before I am in the ministry situation, and allow God to confirm what I heard. After God confirms it, then I feel free to speak what He gave me to speak. But even then, I must be careful not to expand on it or add my own opinions to it.

Let me share an example. One of my own "pet peeves" is in the area of end-time eschatology, or the timing of "last day" events. Many people seem to think that Jesus will come very soon, maybe in the next 5 to 10 years. Personally, I don't agree with that. I have heard too many prophesies where God told people in their early 20s what He will do through the lives of their great-grandchildren. So I think that Jesus probably is not coming back soon, probably not for at least the next 75 to 100 years. I don't know for sure, of course, because the Bible says that it is not given for us to know that. But in my humble opinion, I expect that the second coming probably will not be in this century. And it irritates me when I see words that say "the time is short" or "I am coming soon" so we have to mobilize quickly to do this or that that right away.

I try to avoid prophesying into that area at all because I have very strong opinions on it. If I am absolutely sure that God has given me a word to address that area, I would share it. But I would not speak into that area if I was not absolutely sure and then I would be very careful to only say what God gave me to say about it. I might be willing to share my opinion of Jesus not coming all that soon, but if I did, I would make it clear that I was sharing my opinion, and not giving a "thus sayeth the Lord."

Our opinions are not the only thing that gets us in trouble. Our feelings can do that as well. In particular, we can let our compassion get away from us and drive us to say things God is not really saying.

Someone comes to us who is feeling very discouraged and they say that they urgently need a word from the Lord. Our own hearts of compassion are stirred because of their need and we want to meet that need for them.

Sometimes when our heart goes out to the person like that, it is better to minister in some way other than prophesying to them. We can comfort them, encourage them, or maybe hold them and pray for them. But we should not give them a word unless God truly gives us one. When someone says they said they "really need a word," we may try to give it to them because it is what they think they really need. And this can be dangerous and we might fall into error. We must never allow another person's desperation to drive us in giving a word to them, our own heart of compassion may try to imitate God's voice on their behalf. We need to hear clearly from God and speak only what He is speaking. And it is easier to hear Him clearly when our emotions are not overly-engaged.

Some believers hear so clearly that they can usually distinguish between God's voice and their own heart of compassion. But many people are not at that place. It is so easy for a person to find his/herself prophesying comfort for the person's situation from their own compassion. If the person's desperation comes from a failed or broken relationship, it is very tempting to prophesy that God will restore the relationship. This happens because the minister's own heart wants to see it restored, they want to see the person's pain elevated. Likewise, if the person's problem is financial, our hearts may promise God's provision will come quickly. We have to be careful to speak what God is staying instead of what our heart is saying.

I recently prayed for a friend of mine at church who's business is failing. I hoped God would resurrect it, I wanted God to bring His glory into the situation and turn things around. I could not see any reason why God would not be willing to do that. I really wanted it to happened. But instead of trying to prophesy to this friend, I laid hands on him and prayed for him. I prayed the desires of my heart for his business as a petition prayer. I asked God to make his business successful once again. And at that point, God spoke to me. The business was a long drive from his home and he was spending to much time and gas money commuting. God wanted to shut down this business. I had the sense that God was going to use this same man to start another business in an area closer to his home. But I was not sure enough of my hearing to turn that into a word, so I did not mention it to him.

This is a case where my heart was engaged on behalf of a friend and that is why I choose to minister by praying for him instead of trying to prophesy to him. I thought I knew what God would do for him (resurrect his business), but I was wrong. If I had spoken my opinion as a "thus sayeth the Lord" it could have caused great harm. My friend may have struggled longer (in faith) to keep it open and gone even more deeply into debt. But his business would eventually fail because God wanted to move him to another place. And he would have been even more devastated when that happened if he had received a false promise from me. If I had prophesied my desire for his business instead of praying it, I would have been in error and I would have given a bad word.

When your emotions are really engaged on the person's behalf, it is usually better to love on them and pray for them than to try to prophesy to them.

We have to be very careful that we don't let the desires of our heart for a person effect what we prophesy. We must only speak what God is speaking. We need to guard our hearts and not allow them to imitate God's voice to us when we see someone who is in any type of crisis or urgent need.

Other Factors That Effect Our Ministry Hearing

There are three areas where our own hearts/desires/issues are likely to interfere the accuracy of our ministry hearing and imitate God's voice to us. These are areas where it is possible for us to think we are speaking for God and to be in error on that. They are:

• prophesying from our emotions/opinions
• prophesying advice
• prophesying from pride or defending our words

We already talked about the first one, prophesying form our own emotions or opinions in the previous lesson. Now let's look at the other two.

Prophesying Advice

Sometimes people come to us with a specific situation that they need to hear from the Lord in. And they will come to you and ask you to speak into this situation because they want to inquire of the Lord. They are looking to the Lord to give them practical advice for their situation. And This practice is scriptural.

We see an example of it in 1 Samuel 9, where Saul's father lost a herd of donkeys. He sent Saul and a servant to go find them. Saul looked for them for a couple of weeks with no success, and was about to give up. But his savant suggested that they go to the prophet in Zuph (Samuel) and inquire of the Lord where to look for the donkeys. And Samuel was able to find out for God what had become of the donkeys. There is a scripture precedence for having someone inquire of the Lord.

However, there are different levels of maturity in the prophetic, and not every one can move in this level of inquiry. Generally the ones who can honor this type of request are those who more at a higher level of gifting and who are fairly mature in their gifting. Personally, I seem to move in/out of the level to do this. I have had various people inquire things at various times such as where a missing object is located, which loan company to go with for a mortgage, whether or not to declare bankruptcy or continue a failing business in faith. A friend from Canada called me about his business one time and God gave me a clear word for him. He was discouraged and was ready to declare bankruptcy when a contract he depended on did fell through. In that case, God said very clearly that this business was ordained of God and God would not allow it to fail. Against all odds, he held on to the business when anyone else might have closed it down. Then God came through for him with some funding from a surprise source. After a while the business was secure again. However, a different friend also wanted direction on his business and on that one the Lord was silent. I had a friend who misplaced some documents and God told me where that friend put them. But another friend lost her wallet and wanted God to tell her where it was, and God did not tell me.

Some people always hear clearly from God on these types of inquiries, and others do not hear at all. Then there are those (like me) who hear some of the time but not all of the time. I believe that inquiring of the Lord is a valid practice.

However, we must be careful that we don't fall into the trap of trying to advise the person at the same time that we are trying to seek the Lord on their behalf. Sometimes God will want us to speak prophetically into their situation. Other times, God may want us to offer godly counsel of biblical advice instead of prophesying to them. In the first, God speaks to them directly through us. In the latter, we drawn on our own knowledge and insights (often with wisdom and guidance from the Holy Spirit). We need to understand which one we are doing and we must not confuse one with the other. Otherwise we can end up speaking for ourselves and claiming that we are speaking for God.

The other thing we need to consider is that at times a person will ask for a word from the Lord when what they really need is godly counsel or advice. For instance, one time one of my GodSpeak volunteers called me and said "Teresa I desperately need a word from the Lord right now." I asked her what was the matter. She began describe this terrible conflict in her life, involving the pastor and a few other people from her church. She was very upset and said she needed desperately to hear from God.

As I listened to her description of the situation, it became clear that she had some boundary issues as well as some wrong thinking and misunderstandings of Bible principles of authority. What she needed was not a prophetic word from the Lord. She needed some loving godly counsel that would help to clarify misunderstandings of Bible principles, help her with some personal and relational issues related to boundaries, etc. She was in pain and in distress, so she was looking to the Lord for help. And yes, God wanted to help her, but He did not want to use prophesy to do it.. The type of help she needed was loving godly counsel to help her grow and mature as a person and in her walk with God, as well someone to let her feel cared for and loved.

This is just one example of many times when people come seeking a word from God, but God wants to do something other than giving them a word. We need to be sensitive to God's leading. We also need to be careful that we do not offer counsel or advice in the guise of a "thus sayeth the Lord." When God is saying, we want to speak His words with clarity and accuracy. But there will be times when God wants us to minister from our own counsel and wisdom and love. In those times, we need to be clear that what we are speaking is our own godly counsel and not a prophesy.

Prophesying From Pride Or Defending Our Words

The two biggest dangers for those who are new in the prophetic is 1) falling into pride or 2) trying to defend our words if someone doesn't receive them.

There are different reasons that someone might not receive a word we give. The most obvious is that the word might not be valid word. It is possible that we simply made a mistake on a word and delivered something God was not really saying. The word may have inaccurate facts (words of knowledge in it). For instance, you may tell the person that they have been struggling with fear and God is about to alleviate that fear and give them His peace. If the person has not been struggling with fear, they will not relate to the word and most of them will tend to reject the whole word when part of it is inaccurate.

People can also reject valid words. The word might touch on a blind spot, or it might address an area that that they are not willing to have God touch at that moment in time. Or it might be one of those "not yet" words that does not make sense given the person's current context, but will make sense sometime in the near future. For instance, a friend of mine was given a word that God would provide for her finances and she did not have to fret. That word did not make any sense to her. She was doing well financially and had been doing well for a long time. She was not rich, but she never went without anything she wanted/needed either. So that word did not mean much to her when set got it. But the next day, she was laid off work (along with several hundred fellow employees). She started to look for a new job but discovered that the job market was very tight, there just did not seem to be any jobs out there to interview for. So she started to worry. Then God reminded her of that word. Since her circumstances had turned, the word suddenly made a lot of sense to her and was very encouraging. But the word was given the day before she lost her job, so it did not make sense to her at the time she received it.

If the word is a God word, then it is God's responsibility to defend that word, not yours. Your job is only to deliver the word and to let the Holy Spirit deal with the heart of the hearer. If God is addressing a blind spot or an area of rebellion and the person rejects the word, God is very capable of bringing that word around again through a different source. Our job is to deliver the word God gave us. it is never to argue or debate with the person or to try and convince them to receive the word. The message comes from God, and God is able to be much more convincing than you are. So let Him be the one to defend His prophetic word.

If it turns out that the word was not a true God-word, the Holy Spirit is not going to bare witness to the person's spirit about it. And when people don't get that inner witness from the Holy Spirit, they will be less likely to receive the word. If it is a bad word, God may even put a check in the person's spirit. Of course, if we have missed it on a word, then we don't want the person to receive that word. If we give a word that is not really from God, we want God to cover our mistake by letting that word roll quickly off the person and not effect them much.

But if we have some pride issues, we may not be willing to admit to ourselves that we might have made a mistake on the word. We will unconsciously try to blame the person for not receiving it, assuming their heart is closed to God. Pride would prefer to blame the other person instead of attaching any blame or error to ourselves.

That type of pride is probably the greatest down fall for those who are newer in the prophetic. At times it will drive them to defend their words, or possibly to give follow-on words that are really the voice of their own pride speaking. They become emotionally engaged and hear their own voice (pride and upset) imitating God's voice and telling them the faults of the non-receptive person. Some of them turn this into words and end up issuing prophetic rebukes or judgment words to the person who did to receive the original word. This is a very dangerous practice. You should never try to prophesy to someone when you are felling upset with them. There will be a very good chance that your own heart will imitate God's voice and give you a false and negative word for that person.

Summary

God still speaks to us today. But there are "other voices" that can try to imitate God's voice to us. One is the devil and the other is our own spirit (e.g., our heart or issues or desires). This is true both in our personal hearing and in our ministry hearing.

So God has given us two truths that we can use to evaluate what we hear, to judge whether it was really God's voice or one of the imitations. The first (and primary) truth is God's written word, the Bible. The other one is direct revelation of God's character and nature.

Once we know Who God really and what He is really like, we can better determine what He is (or is not) likely to say to us. We get to know Him from the Bible and from our direct personal experiences with God, where He reveals His character and nature to us. We always put the greater weight on His written word because it is not subjective. But we should not discount our experiences with Him, because God likes to reveal Himself to us and teach us what He is really like.

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