Tuned In - Recognising His Voice | Andy Elmes | Sunday 31st October
Today, Pastor Andy presents the last of his series on being ‘Tuned In’ to hear God’s voice. Previously, Andy spoke about how God is always speaking but we often are not listening or are not correctly tuned in to His voice by tuning out the noise of the world. Additionally, we probably need to be non-conformist by world standards in order to conform to His ways! (Romans 12:2).
If God is speaking, do we believe this? If not, we shall never hear Him. We may say “yes God, you are speaking”, we may say “yes, I’m going to remove other voices from my head”, but after we have done this can we recognize His voice amongst similar voices? The voice of religion can be confused with the voice of God. But religion brings us into captivity, God brings us freedom (Romans 8:1). We need to be able to recognize the tone of God’s voice. His voice has the tone of the best ever loving Father (Matthew 6:9), the voice of a shepherd (John 10:27), and that of a friend. In John 15:15, Jesus speaks of us as friends.
Sometimes we misunderstand God’s voice believing it to be ‘intuition’ or ‘common-sense’. We hear God more often that perhaps we think. A word of knowledge, a word of wisdom does not come from nowhere…… But God also speaks through His word and also from His Spirit too. His Spirit now lives in us, for every born-again believer. Sometimes we hear a voice deep inside ourselves - Romans 8:14 NKJV “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”. Sometimes we see a person and they just need help. We hear a prompting inside. Or we suddenly think about telephoning someone. That's often the Holy Spirit saying “I need someone on earth to take care of something for me… Can anyone hear me?” We need to be sensitive to His Spirit within us. God wants his voice to be the constant voice of the Shepherd in our daily lives. We also need to be able to test what we are hearing. This is not unbelief; it's a wise thing to do. The Bible says that all prophecy shouldn't be despised, but it should be tested.
The word of God is a good test of all situations and is the blueprint for life. Wise counsel, the seeking of wisdom and being humble enough to ask other spirit filled Christians is also a good test (Psalm 1:1). Asking more than one person is also biblical – Proverbs 11:14 NKJV “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counsellors there is safety”. God is not against us seeking confirmation and will do something through natural things or natural people to affirm if we pray and ask.
When God speaks and wants to do something in our lives it may cost time, energy or money because he does what he needs to do on earth through our lives. There is no better life than this! Equally there is no condemnation for us in testing what we perceive we hear as indeed this is biblical wisdom. Let us constantly be seeking His voice.
