-- © Transforming Life Prophetic Ministry -- 1999 --
-- Do Not Reprint without written permission from John Webster, <prophetjpw@aol.com> --

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Author: John Webster
Transcriber: Lucy Deliganis
Editors: Paul Cummins, Teresa Seputis

Prophetic Training 201 -- Week 4 Teaching

The Lifestyle of Listening - Part I

We are going to be talking about the lifestyle of listening. The reason we call it this is because as we learn to hear the voice of the Lord there is a lot of applications for this in the church. We always think of the pastor hearing God's voice before he preaches, asking the Lord what kind of truths he is supposed to minister. That is an obvious application. It might also be obvious to us that as we come to the service to ask the Lord if we have a part in that service. What may not be quite as obvious is that the practice of listening to God can be carried into your week. It is a practice that can be done all of the time. It is actually a lifestyle of learning. One of the greatest things that helped me learn to hear the voice of the Lord was not just to learn to hear God's voice when it came time to move in the gifts of the Spirit, but when I learned to listen to the voice of the Lord in every day life. God speak to me, not just about spiritual matters or official church matters, but speak to me about anything You care to speak to me about. Let's make this a lifestyle. Let's hear Your voice over and over throughout the day about everyday routine matters, or even special matters of the day. That gives us a tremendous amount of experience.

I want to show you the benefits of learning to hear God's voice. Now we can serve and love the Lord all of our lives and raise a godly family and still never really get to the place where we are hearing God's voice with clarity, consistency, and confidence. We go through life, hoping that we are making the right decisions and doing our best. We consult with the Lord, trying to discern what He is saying to us to the best of our ability, but never really making it to that place where we really feel like we are hearing the voice of the Lord. Many Christians are in that position, aren't they? There are many advantages to hearing the voice of the Lord clearly and precisely. The best way I can illustrate hearing God's voice with clarity, consistence, and confidence is to talk for a moment about submarine communication.

Different Methods of Communication

Now in the United States Navy, there are different methods of communication with the submarine. The first one is called digital burst. A digital burst is where if the land base wants to communicate with the submarine or vice-verse - they do that via satellite. The submarine has the capacity to lock-on to a satellite and send a transmission to the land base. This transmission can take place in just a fraction of a second. One of the advantages to a digital burst is that it has a very high rate of transmission. You can send a lot of information very, very quickly - bounce that information off of the satellite and back down to the submarine which receives that information. The disadvantage to a digital burst is the submarine has to be surfaced. It has to have its antennae up to a place where it can lock on to the satellite. This is a place of vulnerability to the submarine. One of the submarine's advantages is stealth. That is to say being undetected. It likes to get under the water so that it will not be detected either by radar or visually. It does not like to be surfaced. Depth is a place of safety for the submarine. The reason the submarine has to surface is because the digital burst cannot penetrate the water. So if the submarine is submerged just a little below the water line, the signal from the satellite cannot reach the submarine. Therefore, it is out of contact with its land base. If something were to happen and the land base needed to contact the submarine, it could not do that using the digital burst.

Therefore, what has been done is to develop another method of communication that we call the ELF, extremely low frequency communication waves. The way this works is that there is an antennae buried in the upper peninsula of Michigan that is miles and miles long. It is a very long antennae, and it broadcasts a signal. The submarine receives a signal now that is penetrating through the water That is an ELF signal. Again in the upper peninsula of Michigan, there is an antennae that is miles long buried into the ground, and when they want to communicate with a submarine that is submerged, they reach it by using this ELF signal. The advantage to ELF is that it can penetrate the water, rock, everything. It can reach this submarine no matter how deep this submarine might go. This ELF signal penetrates all over the oceans of the world. The disadvantage to ELF is that it has a very slow transmission rate. It communicates very slowly. We said that in a digital burst that you can communicate pages and pages in the fraction of a second. So a submarine can theoretically surface, send and receive a message, and submerge again in a very short period of time, minimizing its vulnerability. The advantage to the ELF is that it never has to come to the surface. It never has to put itself in the place of vulnerability because it never has to come up to the surface. The disadvantage is that it cannot transmit pages and pages of information in the fraction of a second. The transmission rate on ELF is about 30 seconds per letter. You can see that if they wanted to send out operational orders from the land base and they had even a paragraph or two of information to communicate, you are talking potentially hours and hours of data transmission. IT is very inefficient, but it can reach the submarine no matter where it goes.

What has been done is that they have devised a system where each submarine has a code group of letters. The radio operator on the submarine is always monitoring this signal, always listening. While he is listening, if the land base sends a message to them that maybe is only three, four, or five characters, that code group means that they are supposed to come to the surface. The land base wants to talk to them, so they are supposed to come to the surface and get a digital burst message. So the submarine surfaces, gets its digital burst message, and then quickly submerges again. It minimizes it's time of exposure and at the same time it is always in communication with the land base. It really is a very interesting system of communication.

God Has Different Methods of Communicating

How does that relates to us listening to God's voice? Because God has a number of ways to communicate with us. God is a communicating God. He really wants to get His message across to you. God loves to talk. You may remember that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden that they were disfellowshipped with God. They no longer heard God as they once did. Sin dulled their hearing. They now had a sinful nature that they did not previously have. Rather than God saying that they could not communicate any more, God said He really wanted to communicate with them but in a different way than they did in the garden. God implemented a number of different communication methods in order to have communicate with mankind. He communicates through His word. He wrote the Bible to teach us what His communication is. He teaches us through preaching. He instituted the ministry of the prophet to give us prophetic words. We have godly counsel. The Lord has also sent angels to bear messages to men on occasion. The Lord has used dreams. He has used a number of ways to communicate because God really wants to get His messages across to us. He doesn't want to have that breach in communication.

Life's Experiences

Another way that God communicates is through life's experiences. Life's experiences are like the ELF signal. You know that is the signal that can reach you no matter where you are, but it's very slow. God using life's experiences to speak to us is like the submarine in ELF signal. You see God has a way of reaching you no matter where you are. When God wants to get your attention He has a way of doing that, doesn't He? When the finances begin to dry up, you cry out to God! When things don't go well and there are problems and complications with the children, we cry out to God, don't we? You may find in your own life as you look back that God has intervened in your life and orchestrated your situation and circumstances in order to get a message across to you. The good thing about this is that no matter where you are in life, the trials, tribulations, and experiences have a way of getting through. Even when we are preoccupied with life and focused on something else, God does things in order to get His message across. The problem with this is that it is really slow. It takes us a long time to catch on. God may take us through trial after trial and it may take years before it finally dawns on us - "Oh man, I know what this is about. God is trying to tell me this and that." You're finally going to get the message, but it is going to take years to get the point across. But if this is the only level of communication that is available to Him, that communication is just real slow. We may find our Christian maturity very slow in its progress. It may take years and years to catch on that God has really give us power over sign and we can rely on the power of the Cross and Christ in us to have victory over sin. We can begin to live a more holy and righteous lifestyle. Some people never get that figured out. They go to their grave saying they wish they had lived a higher life. Why is that? Because it just took a little long for this message to get through. They were a little hard headed and didn't catch on.

Speaking Directly

There is another method of communication that I equate with the digital burst. This method of communication is when God speaks to us directly. We learn to hear His voice. We understand that God speaks to us today, that we are made to hear His voice. We are sheep of the Good Shepherd and we have learned what it sounds like. Thereby, we are able to lock on to His voice and we pick up a tremendous amount of information in a very short period of time. When you learn what God's voice sounds like and you begin to listen to Him and make this a lifestyle, you are going to find God communicating to you volumes and volumes of information. The Lord will speak to you about your personal life, your children if you are a parent, your workplace, your spiritual gifting, ministry. God will talk to you about just about anything you are involved in. He talks so well and He can communicate so quickly. He can give you keys that will unlock problems that you have been struggling with for years and years. You have been doing it the slow way - through trails, life's experiences, and finally you have begun to get vulnerable to God. You have surfaced out of your own self-interests where you have buried yourself deep in your own life and problems, oblivious to what God has. When you come up out of that, you make yourself vulnerable. You break the surface and then you can receive communication from on high. God can communicate very quickly. God can unravel your problems and dilemmas in the fraction of a second. It is tremendous. The challenge to us that we have to be vulnerable to God. We have to open our heart to God and say, God, I know that when You talk to me You may tell me some things that I don't necessarily want to hear. You might tell me to lay my own selfishness down and focus more on my mate. You might tell me that the way I am going is the way I ought to go. We have to make ourselves vulnerable to the Lord instead of being deeply in our own life situation.

I do not consider this a disadvantage, but I do consider it a challenge. This is actually a wonderful thing to come up higher and be sensitive to the Lord, but it is a challenge, isn't it? The Lord wants to communicate with us using digital burst. To get His point across to us, He wants to communicate quickly and it is through this process that God can cause you to accelerate in your Christian maturity to a tremendous degree. You can find yourself doing mighty exploits for the Lord that previously would have been unimaginable for you. You can find yourself gaining years and years, maybe decades, in your Christian experience because God is communicating with you directly.

I want to talk to you about hearing God's voice in your personal life using the equivalent of digital burst. That is hearing God's voice as a lifestyle, listening to Him day by day. It expedites things to a tremendous degree. But before I tell you how to listen to God in your personal life on a regular basis, I want to tell you some of the things that God will not talk to you about. I want to speak to you about what God does and does not talk about.

God is Not a Gossip

The first thing we want to understand is that God is not a gossip. God hates gossip. I would like to define gossip for you. Gossip is not simply a bad report or a falsehood. Gossip is when you talk about anything when you are not part of the problem or the solution. It can be true, correct, right as far as the factual report, but if it doesn't concern you and you are talking about it anyway, it is gossip. God did not intend for us to talk about the issues of our neighbor's life, unless we are part of the problem or solution. Otherwise, we should stay out of it. You can be real glad that God is not a gossip. That gives you the safety of knowing that God is not going to talk to your friend or neighbor about your personal problems unless they are part of the problem or solution. God is not a tale-bearer. He just does not go around talking to others about the problems that you are having in your life.

Proverbs ll:l3 says, "A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trust worthy man keeps a secret."

Proverbs 20:19 says, " A gossip betrays a confidence, so avoid a man who talks too much."

What does that mean? God is going to talk to you in your own personal life about the things for which you have responsibility and authority. If you are a parent, God is going to talk to you about your life and the life of your children. They are under your authority and you are responsible for them. Therefore, God wants to talk to you about them. If you are a pastor, God is going to talk to you about your own life, children, spouse, and also about the lives of the people entrusted to your care. He is going to talk to you about your sheep. Why is that? Because you have responsibility for them and God wants to help you and feel you in as to how you are to pastor them, mentor them, and train them. If you are an employer and have employees, God will speak to you regarding your employees. But if you are a saint sitting in church, God is not going to talk to you about another saint sitting in church if you are not part of the problem or solution. Do you understand that? What this does is that when we realize what God does and does not talk to us about it helps focus our faith.

Now some people just have a bad attitude, critical spirit, and they just like to dig up junk about people. They like to talk about it. They say, "God showed me that so and so has got this sin in their life." The first question is not is this accurate. The question is, "Why are you talking about it?" They say "God told me." "Well wait a minute. I want to question that whole premise that God would tell you about the life of someone else. Don't you know that God is not a gossip?" We are asking God to speak to us about things about ourselves and things for which we have authority and responsibility. Things that we have no business meddling in we can rest assured that God does not walk to talk to us about those things.

God does have privileged communication. There are times when God wants to speak to you because He might talk to you about the life of another, but you are not supposed to say anything. This is privileged communication. The reason He might do this is that He may want to teach us by example. This is an exception to the rule, but it can happen. He might tell us something that is going on in someone else's life in order for us to learn from that.

For example, you might really admire and respect somebody in the church and wonder why they seem to always have it together, and the Lord might speak to you and say, "This is because they are really spending a lot of quality time with me." This is privileged communication. This is information you are not supposed to approach that person with or anybody else. It is just between you and Him so that He can instruct you and teach you. This can be either positive or negative.

Another example is that we see somebody in the news and they have an unethical dealing in their finances or a moral failing, and the Lord might speak to us and show us some of the reasons why that developed so that we can learn and avoid the same pitfall. Please keep in mind that this is the exception, not the rule. So that when you start asking God to talk to you, you don't automatically start looking for this kind of information. Furthermore, it is not for the purpose of judging people. We really have to get over this in the Body of Christ. Some people just have a judgmental, critical, blaming spirit and they just want to rake through the dump, seeing what kind of garbage they can find on people. That is their nature. That is not the purpose of the voice of the Lord. You can be real thankful that God is not going to talk to them about your life!

Our Personal Life

If God will not talk to us about certain things, what will He talk to us about? We want to start off talking about our personal life. This is the lifestyle of listening. God talking to us in our personal life. God wants to speak to us about our intimate relationship with Him. He wants to speak to us in order to bring us into an intimate relationship with Him.

Mark 14:36 says, "And He said, Abba Father, all things are possible unto You. Take away this cup from me, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will."

So Jesus is speaking to the Father, and He calls Him, Abba. Abba is Aramaic for the Father. In our vernacular, it might be "daddy" or "papa." It is an intimate term.

Again, we find this in Romans 8:15. "You have not received a spirit of bondage to begin to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba Father." Isn't it interesting that Jesus called the Father, Abba? Now He is saying that you have received the spirit of adoption, and you should cry Abba Father. In Galatians 4:6, again we find the word Abba appearing there. In Vines Expository Dictionary it says that Abba is the word framed by the lips of infants and betokens unreasoning trust. Isn't that precious? The Lord wants to bring us into a place of intimacy. It may seem foreign, but we have to trust Him and follow where He leads.

Let me give you an example of how this might work. I was praying on an occasion, and I was saying "Lord, I want to know you more. Please reveal your personality to me." And the Lord rebuked me saying, "I am not a prostitute." And I said, "What?" He said, "Don't come in here and ask me to expose myself so that you can have a big thrill." I realized the Lord was telling me that I was not spending quality time with Him. I was breezing into the prayer room, spending 5 minutes asking God to give me a revelation of Him. Then I was saying I have to go. The Lord says no, it does not work that way. If you want me to reveal Myself to you, I like to be chased. I only do that in a place of intimacy. The Lord spoke to me. That was a digital burst. He spoke very directly and quickly to me and I realized that I was not handling my relationship with the Lord properly with regard to revelation. The Lord was asking for more intimacy. When I get into a more intimate place with the Lord, He is more than glad to show me who He is.

Parenting

He also wants to speak to us about parenting. This has been one of the most beneficial areas in my own life. I think the reason for that is that when I was six years old my father was killed in Vietnam. So I had no role model. I had no father to follow by example. So my concept of fatherhood was a blank slate. When I began to have children of my own, I did not really know how to father them. So my philosophy is when you want to know how to do something, you go to the very best and learn from them. Who is the very best father? God, isn't it? I began to ask the Lord, "God, how do I be a father? Teach me how to father." The Lord has been so good and He has taught me all manner of things with regard to parenting. He has taught me through digital bursts. Now it may have taken years and years to learn if I just went by experience and I might have ended up with grown children, looking back with regret thinking if I had only known then what I know now. When you go with the voice of the Lord, where God can speak to you right now, God can really talk.

I remember one situation where I was disciplining my son, Jonathan. He was probably four or five at the time. I was not getting results. It was one of those times when I was frustrated. I had been telling him what I wanted, and it wasn't catching on. Jonathan was just not paying attention. I was aggravated and I picked him up and looked him right in the face. I didn't shake him or anything, but I remember picking him up, looking at him face to face, eye to eye. I said, "I want you to understand what I am saying here." Of course, I was upset. I wasn't verbally abusing him, but obviously I was upset and had intense emotions going on. I said, "Now look, here is what I want." The Lord spoke to me right in the middle of that. He said, "Put him down. That is too intense for him. You are an adult and bigger than he is. Your presence is overwhelming, and when you bring him up to your face and speak to him eye to eye, you are overwhelming him emotionally. He is not capable of dealing with that kind of communication." The Lord rebuked me and I have never done that since. See I could have learned that through the school of hard knocks or I can learn it immediately. God can speak directly to me.

We teach a class on prophetic parenting. We are doing more and more of that as time goes on. We called it prophetic parenting or spirit-led parenting. What we are trying to communicate with that kind of terminology is simply to listen to the Lord as you parent your child. Let this be a lifestyle. We are talking about day in and day out when you do not feel at your best or particularly spiritual, listen to God's voice. Here is what the Lord began to speak to me. First of all, He began to show me the nature of my children. This one has this nature, and the second one has a different one all together, and the third one has a third nature that is not like either one of the other two. Now that we have a fourth, as she grows we will find that she will be different as well. The Lord began to speak to me and show me that each child receives in a different way. Each one learns in a different way. My second oldest child, Joy, receives best when she has a lot of affection and reassurance, cuddling, and holding. She needs a lot of reassurance in our relationship. If I provide her with that atmosphere, and then give her discipline and correct in that environment, she learns a lot better. Joy does real well with that. Melody, on the other hand, is so pleasant, laughing, and outgoing, but oblivious to us at time. A message will not get through. I can tell her that, and she says, "OK, Daddy." Then she runs and plays and goes on and does what she wants. She does not get what I'm trying to tell her. With Melody, it is more consequences in the discipline. You just have to parent each child differently. How do you know? God shows you. He speaks to you and says, "Do this with this child." There have been other times when I have been in the middle of spanking my child, and the Lord said, "You're wrong.. Your spanking them not because of what they have done wrong, but because you are in a bad mood.." I had to apologize to my children. Daddy is wrong. I should not have done this. You did not deserve this. Would you please forgive me? I tell you want - that will straighten you out in a hurry.

Marriage

Then, there is the voice of the Lord in marriage. God wants to speak to you about your marriage. Wow! I am telling you that when you learn digital burst communication and making communication with the Lord a lifestyle, God can really do good things for you. When I first got married, God told me to treat my wife like a queen. Now after nearly fifteen years of marriage, I would like to be able to give you a report and say that I have always done that, but the honest truth is that I have not. Sometimes I have failed miserably and other times I have done well. Here is what I found out. I asked my wife if I could tell this and she said yes. Mary was raised in a family where she developed a fear of criticism and a mistrust of men. I did not know this, and I don't think she knew it. It was there, but she was not aware of it. I was raised in a household of boys, where if you wanted to get your message across, you had to just about write it in the sky. Nobody was listening. So my style of communication was if you don't feel heard, say it louder. Now here is what happened. We got married. Mary had a fear of men and a fear of criticism, so she was just a little bit distant. When she was distant, I did not feel heard. When I don't feel heard, I get a little louder. When I get louder, she has a fear of men that really causes her to withdraw. When she withdraws, I really don't feel heard!!! We would just go into a downward spiral. What if I had just listened and obeyed the Lord. Treat your wife like a queen. The issue is not whether you feel heard. The issue is are you going to lay down your life for your wife. Will you sacrifice yourself? If I would have done that from the very beginning and consistently, I could have avoided a lot of pain and spared by wife a lot of pain in our marriage. And I would just venture to say that maybe the Lord spoke to her about she should handle the marriage. She could probably give the same testimony. So the point is that when we really learn to hear from the Lord, it can save us all kinds of headaches and heartaches.

Encouragement and Strength

Another part of hearing God's voice in everyday life is for encouragement and for strength. God wants to encourage us and sustain us. When we go through difficult times, God wants to speak to our heart to encourage us. If we don't know how to communicate effectively and efficiently with the Lord, we may be denied the encouragement and the strength that we need from the Lord. When I graduated from Bible college after four years of studying the word of God and learning how to organize and deliver sermons, I felt so thoroughly prepared that I just could not wait to be used by the Lord. The Lord put me in a process where He was making the man before He released the ministry. That meant that I went through seven years that were my personal hell. At least that's what it felt like. I've already heard it said that "I'm not afraid of the seven years of tribulation, I've already been through mine." That kind of applies. It felt like God had just put me on the shelf, and I was waiting. I did not want to wait. I wanted to go, go, and go. I had spent four years in Bible college preparing and I was ready to run. But no, the Lord said to wait. He spoke to me, and He told me the process. He said, "I am making the man of God, before I release the ministry. I am doing things in your own heart. This is a personal time for you and I to get some things right." Because of that He encouraged and strengthened me. It gave me hope, patience, and endurance for that process. If I had not heard from the Lord, I would not have had that. I would have thought, "What had I done wrong? Why are ministry opportunities opening up?"

Direction

Another area in which God wants to speak is direction. God wants to speak to us and tell us what our destiny is. Have you ever asked yourself why you were put on this planet? Why do I exist? God, what is it all about? What is my destiny? Because really the maintenance mode that I am in right now is not enough for me. I just can't bear to go on just to go on. The reason I'm living is just to sustain more life, and this is not purposeful. God can give you direction in your life and identify for you what your purpose is and what part you are supposed to play. He can give you that kind of direction that brings meaning to your life. If you don't know how to communicate with the Lord efficiently, we go back to the ELF signal. That very slow one, and God tries to teach you through life's experiences showing you who you are and why you are here. It may be only at the end of your life that you find out what your life was all about. Isn't that painful?

Emotional Wounds

God's voice is for emotional wounds. We have wounds that we pick up in life, and God has a way of speaking to us and healing our hearts, ministering to our needs, and He can do that so effectively if we learn how to listen.. When we go through a painful experience or when we are offended, if we will sit down with the Lord, God can speak to us and minister to our hearts. He can bring a tremendous amount of healing in a very short period of time. The word of God does not promise that we are never going to be hurt, but Jesus does promise that He will heal our hurts. It is only as we learn to listen that we can receive the words that He has to speak to us that will bring healing into our lives. So that we will not carry the burdens all of our lives.

Let me just conclude this session, by bringing up Phillipians 3:15,

"Let us therefore, as many be perfect or mature, be thus minded, and if in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal even this to you."

Maybe you don't even know what those hurts and wounds are, but God will reveal it to you. He can speak it to you in a digital burst, show you where the hurts and wounds are, and then if you will stop and listen, He can quickly speak to you a healing word. I know in my own life that just as I spent time with the Lord that God will minister to my heart and love on me, and speak to me about how proud He is of me. This heals my hurts and loves them away. Amen.

God wants to speak to us very efficiently, and so there is a tremendous advantage to learning to listen to God's voice, getting those digital bursts, becoming vulnerable to the Lord, and making hearing God's voice a lifestyle.


-- © Transforming Life Prophetic Ministry -- 1999 --
-- Do Not Reprint without written permission from John Webster <prophetjpw@aol.com> --