Releasing God's Voice
Our last lesson on "Hearing God's Voice Now" is on releasing God's voice. We have entitled it that because now we are taking the voice of the Lord, and not just hearing it for ourselves but using it in order to minister to other people. In other words, we are releasing the voice of the Lord through us to others. We are specifically going to concentrate an entire lesson on hearing the voice of the Lord and the gifts of the Spirit. We are going to talk about ministering the gifts as it applies to hearing God's voice.
When I started moving in the gifts of the Spirit, I was severely bound in fear. Fear was one of the greatest battles that I had to face and get victory over in order to continue on in hearing God's voice. We have the fear of making a mistake, the fear of being wrong, particularly when it comes to prophetic ministry and prophesying over people. The prophetic word can have such impact and such power in people's lives. The last thing you want to do is make a mistake. First of all, because you do not want to shake someone's life and lead them down the road and secondly, because people like to stone false prophets. So you never want to make a mistake!
I want to encourage you with regard to hearing God's voice. So many times when God speaks through us, we have to come to the place that we have to trust God's voice even when there is not natural evidence of that voice being accurate. You have to get to the place where you can just say --God knows, and I trust God. Now, this is a more advanced position. This is not necessarily a beginning place where you say, "I'm going to prophesy and God knows, and here goes. Let it rip." This is a little more intermediate position where you say, "Now, I have learned to hear the voice of the Lord in my own life. I have proved it with the test of time. I feel there is clarity, consistency, and confidence now in hearing God's voice. I want to release that voice to others, whatever my gifting might be."
Now I am going to use word of knowledge and prophecy as an example because those are my lead gifts. But this really applies to any gifting that you might have. I will allow you to make this application to your life and your gifting. I have found that when the voice of the Lord is released through me to somebody else that there are times that people do not understand that and they do not relate to it. Here is one of the ways that He helped me to get over fear. My greatest fear was that I would lay hands on somebody and prophesy to them and everybody there would know I was wrong. I would be the only one laboring under the impression that I was right. That was a real struggle for me. There are times when you are prophesying to somebody, and they look at you with raised eyebrows and wrinkled forehead, tilting their head as if to say "what"? I think this has happened to me personally where you can even feel somebody as you lay your hands on their head to prophesy, shaking their head no underneath your hand. That is not a real faith building thing!!
So when God prophesies or speaks through you, and you release His voice to somebody else and touch on a blind spot, they may not get it. In those situations, you just have to trust the Lord with the word and that He is right. God knows even when we do not. This also happens when God speaks to somebody's future. You see when God addresses your future, you are not there yet. You do not know what is going to happen. So if the prophet begins to prophesy about your future, you will go "What"? This is because you do not get it. You are not there yet. If that happens, you will also get that confused and perplexed reaction. Again, you have to trust the Lord. You have to trust Him even when others do not recognize the word.
When God saying something to you, say it like God says it. Do not water it down. Do not take out the details. What happens when we do that, we may end up making the word unrecognizable to the recipient. You see if they have been praying about an issue and God speaks through you and addresses that matter. Then you edit out all the things that challenge your faith and hold on to those words in reserve, your word may be so general that the person does not make the connection between your word and the issue they are praying about. You were just too general and too vague. So when they get the word, it is like broth.
Now to a starving person, broth is wonderful. But to the healthy person that has been working hard, it is not enough. Isn't that right? To somebody that is just really starving and this may be somebody that has not been in a church that has not had a lot of releasing the voice of the Lord, if you give them broth, that may be the greatest thing they have ever seen. This is because they are starving. But when they get to a place of real spiritual health and vitality, they are going to want to graduate beyond that and have some real meat and potatoes. You may find yourself being less effective in ministry. I am talking about ministry where we are trying to help someone else be more like Jesus. We all do that, don't we? We all have our own form of ministry that God has given us.
This is a real delicate word. Some of these things as you get more in advanced teaching, they have to be real custom tailored to the person receiving the word. I am sensitive to that. What I am trying to convey is when you begin to minister the Lord's voice to other people, do not tell them what you do not know. Tell them what you do know. Do not say, "Now I really do not know if you are married or not, or if you have been hurt by your spouse, but here is what God wants to say to you." Do not say what you do not know. Tell them what you do know. For example, "The Lord wants to minister to you in the area of relationship, and the area of aloneness that you have been feeling. He wants to minister in that area." Tell them what you know. Not what you do not know. You say it with confidence. Not with pride, arrogance. That is not the attitude. We are not trying to say we are perfect and never make a mistake. We are simply trying to say that if you have enough confidence to release a word of the Lord, then give it with that kind of confidence. We are not trying to tell you to give it with such a dogmatic nature that you convey that this is the word of the Lord and it cannot be any different. We all have to be humble in our heart.
I remember when I was counseling someone years ago This person called me on the telephone and he was in a very desperate situation. Essentially, he was just very confused. I remember this person asking the question, "Where is the God of the Old Testament? Where are the signs and wonders that we read about?" Then the Lord jumped in the middle of our conversation. Sometimes he speaks through other people. They say something and you know that God just spoke to you. God just used this person to speak to me. The person said, "I know where the miracles are. They are in the places that we avoid." I thought -- Man, God just spoke to me. Because you see we avoid stepping out in faith. That is where the miracles are. That is where the power is. This place of faith. We try to step out, but we want to avoid and get around anything that requires us to stand in faith. We will think that God wants to heal a person, sensing they have hurt their ankle. But then we start to question our hearing from God and doubt that this person has an ankle problem. Then we question that if we pray for them, they may not be healed. We have a difficult time stepping out in faith. You know what happens when we do not pray. You are not going to see the miracle. What you have to do is move with faith. You step out, even when it is uncomfortable.
I was in Los Angeles, California ministering and I prayed for a man that had cancer. Of course in the case of cancer, it is hard to tell if there has been an immediate miracle. Unless, of course, the individual is in the last stages of terminal cancer, and they are immediately raised up and helped. I suppose then it would be visible, but otherwise, because it is in internal thing it is kind of hard to know whether or not that healing took place immediately. I remember praying for the man that had cancer, and walking away I did not know whether he was healed or not. I chose to have faith and confidence in the work of God for their body. A year later I came back and a woman came up to me. She said my husband went to the doctor after you prayed for him to be healed from cancer. They could not find any traces of the cancer and said he was in total remission. It was a miracle! There was no cancer in his body. Wow!!! Now of course to you it is a story. To me it happened. I was rejoicing!!! To the guy that had cancer, it was life!!! He is really rejoicing! But for a year, I did not know anything about it. Sometimes you have to believe the work has been accomplished, even when there are not visible results. Look, you have a choice to make. You are either going to believe it or doubt it. Which choice is better? It is, of course, better to believe.
This can also happen when you minister to a lot of people. You will notice that there are some situations that reoccur. What happened in one place with one person will come up again in another situation. If you treat them all the same, that is presumptuous. Even if that is really what God wants to say, that is still presumptuous.
People respond to kindness and gentleness. If somebody comes up and says that they just do not relate to the word that you have given, the response that I have adopted is that I can explain to them there are difference reasons why they may not relate to the word given. We talked about one of them being a blind spot. Another is if God addresses a certain mindset, they may not want to receive it. If God addresses their future, it may be difficult for them. So if somebody comes up and asks you if it is possible that you made a mistake, I always say that it is possible. Only Jesus is perfect. But it is not really the first thing I would suspect. There are a few other things that I would check first. I do not think I am perfect, but I do not think I make a lot of mistakes either, so let's check in these other areas.
Now I do not know if I necessarily would say it that way because it does not always come across right when you try to defend yourself. In your heart, you kind of know that. Then, if you just cannot sort this one out, instead of judging it to be wrong, encourage the person to wait on it. Maybe they will find out it addresses a future issue and in two years, six months, or five years, it may end up being the right word in the right season. Therefore, you do not want to have pride and arrogance, but at the same time, I would not want to get in the place where I would adopt a position that if the person did not like it, then I must be wrong. That's a real fine line to walk, isn't it?
These types of people are usually fairly self-absorbed. They are in touch with their world and that is just the way it is. They can be very resistant for you to give them any kind of advice and counsel. We want to be very careful of this. As we minister the voice of the Lord and it goes through us to other people, we do not want to have an unteachable spirit. There are always places we can learn and grow. Now I am not saying that you ought to grovel and project a lack of strength. You can be strong and humble at the same time. We want to be teachable.
Let me give you a definition of humility. Humility is when you can receive correction from somebody that you think is less spiritual or mature than you are. A teachable spirit is when you can receive correction from somebody that you think is less spiritual or mature. May God will use them to speak to your heart. Now a wise person will not exalt that person to a position above them, but at the same time you can have ears to hear. We are always in a learning process. God may use people to teach you that you would not have suspected or chosen. Yet, you can still learn from them.
A gentle word turns away wrath, doesn't it? If the Spirit of the Lord moves through us and we make some of these mistakes in becoming presumptuous, arrogant, or unteachable, we can draw a more severe reaction for our mistakes than if we are humble, teachable, careful, and responsible. If we have that kind of demeanor, people realize that your motivation is to bless the Body of Christ. You are trying to edify them. You are giving of yourself for their benefit. If you make a small mistake in that process, they are much more gentle and forgiving if you have those right characteristics than if you are proud, arrogant, unteachable, and presumptuous. You will draw fire for those kind of qualities. People will want to make sure that you know you are really wrong if you act that way. When people see Christ-like qualities, they are much more likely to give you grace and more room to grow. Can you say amen to that?
Our teaching has been that you hear God's voice. You hear it because you were created to hear it and you hear it because you are a sheep of the Good Shepherd. Our challenge is to recognize it, to learn to tell the twins apart, to make it a lifestyle. Also our challenge is to practice hearing the voice of the Lord continually, making it a lifestyle.
Lord, this is what we ask You to help us do in Jesus' Name. Amen