14 ianuarie 2018 – Vocea Lui 2: Sfaturi si principii practice

Program
Inchinare
Anunturi
Predica
Rugaciune

Introduction
Video clip: Floarea si Gheorghe
Show the video clip “prophecy - Floarea si Gheorghe Surdul nu aude, dar le potriveste.mp4”

Review
We’re taking a couple weeks to talk about the adventure of hearing and obeying God’s voice.
As we go on this adventure, let’s not forget to be humble. Let’s not forget that sometimes
hearing God’s voice is like that video clip: God speaks perfectly but we’re a bit deaf.

Did anyone do the challenge I gave last week, to ask God one day, “What do you want me to
do” and then do it?

For those who didn’t do it, why? (I got busy with life…)

Last week, I shared about the great adventure of hearing God’s voice. We looked at how those
who know God will be strong and do mighty things, and how learning to recognize His voice is
a key component in knowing God and having a relationship with Him.

Practical Points
Last week, I also began sharing a few practical points about how to hear God’s voice. Theory
is great, but what we all need are not mere ideas but practical tools to help us grow and actual
time practicing this skill.

Who remembers what practical point I gave last week? (God has good plans. If we are not
certain that God has good plans, then we will be afraid to talk with Him. We will consider it
better to not hear His voice than to hear Him and disobey.)

God will ask us to do difficult things, but we will never come to regret obeying His voice.

2. Hearing God is a skill you can grow in

Growing a natural talent
I won’t ask, but I could invite Victor and Laura to come on stage and to each take a guitar. I
could then ask them to play a song. Who would do a better job? Why?

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Victor would do better, of course! Why? Not because he’s been miraculously gifted with a
musical talent but because he has practiced this skill!

In learning a skill, it doesn’t matter how talented you naturally are, what gifts or abilities you
naturally possess. What matters is simply whether or not you practice.

Growing a spiritual gift

We have all been given spiritual gifts as well, and just as our natural abilities differ, so our
spiritual gifts and talents differ radically from person to person.

Romans 12:6
Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them
accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith.
Romani 12:6
Avem diferite daruri, după harul care ne-a fost dat: dacă darul cuiva este profeţia, să-l
folosească după măsura credinţei sale.

The same way that a person can grow in any talent—even in a talent they had since birth—so
can we all grow in our ability to hear God’s voice. And in the same way that growth in any
talent requires practice, so must we practice hearing God’s voice if we want to develop this
spiritual ability.

You may be born with a prophetic gift and find it easy to hear God’s voice, or you might be
born without the slightest prophetic inclination and find it extremely difficult to hear God. In
either case, if you practice hearing Him, you will grow in this skill!

My natural talents
I was born with no innate musical gifting, but I learned to play guitar and lead worship by
practicing every day for at least 15 minutes. I wasn’t born with a musical gift but I developed
the ability through practice. What if I would never have practiced? I never would have played
guitar, and I would go on thinking that only those with special musical gifts could play.

I was, however, born with a teaching gift. I have always found it easy to explain difficult
concepts in easy-to-understand ways. When I became a Christian, I received some prophetic
words that I had a teaching gift. When I started teaching, I remember thinking to myself, “If I
have a teaching gift, that means that I’ll never teach anything incorrectly and don’t need to
learn how to teach. I have the gift!” Is that true! No! Even if you have the natural talent, you
still need to practice in order to further develop the ability.

Hearing God is a skill that we all can develop through practice.

Grow in grace!
2 Peter 3:18
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the

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glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
2 Petru 3:18
Ci creşteţi în harul şi în cunoaşterea Domnului şi Mântuitorului nostru Isus Cristos! A Lui să
fie slava acum şi în ziua veşniciei! Amin.

Notice what this verse does not say. It does not say, “If you feel like it, try to grow in grace…”
It does not say, “My suggestion is that you grow in grace…” It does not say, “Have you ever
considered maybe some day trying to grow in grace…”

No, growing in grace is a command from God! If I’ve grown complacent, don’t want to grow
or practice the ability of hearing God, I have an issue with God because he commands us to
grow in grace!

Desire earnestly to hear God’s voice

1 Corinthians 14:1 and 39 both speak of desiring earnestly to prophecy, to hear and then speak
God’s voice. That phrase “desire earnestly” is the same word used to describe being jealous.

Do you want to grow in hearing God’s voice the same way you have seen jealousy work in your
heart to make you want things?

Pray for desire to grow in our hearts

As we spend time in this series about how to hear God’s voice, my prayer is that all of us would
rekindle that desire in our hearts to prophecy, that we would desire earnestly to hear his voice.

3. God’s voice cannot be separated from relationship with Him

My experience
A number of months ago, I began to look more into dream interpretation. I studied it in the
Scriptures, read books about it, prayed about what I was learning, and practiced it while also
asking for feedback.

I’ll tell you some keys that I learned from my studying, but the biggest key was this: dream
interpretation is simply hearing from God what the dream means.

When I saw this, I went on a facebook group designed for practicing prophecy and growing in
the gift. I asked people to send me their dreams, and I would send them interpretations. I only
asked that they give me their feedback.

I set about doing this, but at one point, I remember hearing God gently rebuke me: “Ben, I
don’t want to tell you what dreams mean. I want to talk with you.”

Hearing God in relationship

While hearing God is a skill and an ability that we can all practice and grow in, it is different

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from other skills (like tennis or swimming). Hearing God’s voice is meant to be one part of
your day-to-day relationship with him, not a mere skill you use.

The best way to hear is to develop a close relationship with God

In our apartment building, there are a few other families with babies. Sometimes, one of them
will cry, and I’ll jump up and ask, “Is that David?” Laura, having spent more time with David,
immediately responds, “No, that’s the neighbors above us.”

A mom can be in a crowded park full of kids, and know perfectly when it’s HER kid yelling
“Mom” and when it’s a stranger’s child because she has spent time in relationship with her
child.

If we want to recognize the voice of God and discern it from all the other voices (in our minds,
in the world, among our friends, among demons, etc.) then we must concentrate on building a
strong relationship with God.

Shepherd and sheep

I haven’t tested this, but I heard a long time ago that a shepherd can let his sheep wander
around, mixing with other flocks during the day. And then, when it’s time to take them in for
the night, the shepherd can call, and his own sheep (who know his voice) will come to him
while the other sheep will not respond.

As sheep belonging to Jesus, we must live in relationship with him if we hope to hear his voice.

John 10:27
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.
Ioan 10:27
Oile Mele ascultă glasul Meu; Eu le cunosc, iar ele Mă urmează.

Pray for each of us to have a strong relationship with God

4. God usually speaks as a thought

Michael’s faulty expectation
How many of you have ever heard God speak in your thoughts?

My old pastor Michael was a new Christian, and he learned that God could speak. He was in
desperate need of guidance, and so he went to a quiet place outside to ask God to speak to him.
His only experience so far with hearing God was reading about how He sent angels and spoke
in thunder at various times in the Bible. So he sat there outside crying for God to speak to him
but never heard anything because no angel came, no thunder roared…

How many of you have had similar bad expectations? I know I was so disappointed when I

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heard God usually does not speak to us through thunder, angels, etc. but through a thought.

Elijah
We all know the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19, how he went to the mountains to hear God’s
voice. As God comes to visit him, there is first a great and mighty wind, but God is not in the
wind. Then there is an earthquake that shook the mountain, but God was not in the earthquake.
Then there is a blazing fire, but God was not in the fire.

Finally, there is a very quiet voice, a whisper. And when Elijah hears it, he knows God is there!

God speaks in our thoughts

Psalm 16:7
I will bless the LORD who has counseled me; indeed, my mind instructs me in the night.
Psalm 16:7
Eu binecuvântez pe Domnul, care mă sfătuieşte, căci până şi noaptea îmi dă îndemnuri inima.

The verse is poetry, and often in Hebrew poetry, you find that one sentence says one thing, and
the next says the exact same thing but in different words. This is what we find here! The first
line: The Lord brings me understanding. The second line repeats the idea of God speaking to
us, but says it in a different way: My mind corrects me.

The fact that God speaks to us primarily through our thoughts makes complete sense when you
think about it. We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). His Spirit (not a physical
being but a spiritual one) lives inside of us. We interact with the spiritual world primarily
through our mind (temptations, for example) not through our physical bodies.

Prayer over our minds

Let’s pray over our minds together because God wants us to hear him more clearly, and our
minds are so often given over to thinking about this world, our worries, our temptations, etc.

5. You won’t hear if you don’t set aside time

If you don’t make the time…
How many of you enjoy keeping up on the news?

I only are about the news because Laura cares about it, and I can’t just tell her to shut up when
she talks about what’s going on in the world. But if left to myself, I would have no idea of
what’s going on. And still I only know what Laura is upset about.

I never know the news going on in Romania or America. Why? Because I don’t take the time
to read or watch it. If I want to know the news, I need to take time to read it. If I want to grow
in hearing God’s voice, I need to take the time to practice.

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Make yourself available
Habakkuk 2:1
I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart; and I will keep watch to see
what He will speak to me, and how I may reply when I am reproved.
Habacuc 2:1
Voi sta la locul meu de strajă şi mă voi aşeza în turnul cetăţuii. Voi veghea ca să văd ce-mi va
spune DOMNUL şi ce-mi va răspunde cu privire la plângerea mea.

Habakkuk makes himself available to hear God. He goes onto his guard post, away from his
work and normal obligations.

In the same way, when Moses received the Ten Commandments, the directions for constructing
the temple, and all the law, God called him onto Mount Sinai for 40 days… away from all the
busy demands of life.

And Scripture tells us Moses went into the tent of meeting to meet with God regularly while he
was in the camp.

The idea is that we need to make ourselves available to hear God’s voice, to set aside time when
we can simply listen to him.

My challenge
Most of us did not do the challenge I gave last week, to ask God for instructions one day and to
do whatever He says. Why? Because we didn’t take the time. We were too busy with work,
with groceries, with simply living in a busy society.

If we want to grow in hearing God, we may not be able to devote 24 hours of every day and 7
days of every week. We may not be able to drive 5 hours like Ravi just to go wander around a
city all day to find a man dressed in orange.

But what if you take a few minutes every day? What if you take one day a week? Or what if
you take a day of vacation from work and use it just to listen to God?

We can and must find ways in our busy society to make time to hear God… or we never will.

Pray for us to set daily time to hear God

I hope that during this series, you will be challenged to set aside daily time to hear God’s voice,
to simply listen rather than talk.

6. Write down your conversation

Journaling
Habakkuk 2:2

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Then the LORD answered me and said, "Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the
one who reads it may run.
Habacuc 2:2
Domnul mi-a răspuns, zicându-mi: Scrie viziunea, graveaz-o clar pe tăbliţe, pentru ca un
herald să poată alerga cu ea!

What’s interesting with these verses? God clearly tells Habakkuk to write down the visions he
receives.

One of the things that I have found most helpful in hearing the voice of God has been to write
down what I feel he’s saying and then write down my response as well. It ends up being a
written conversation with God.

Why is this useful?

I have a written record of what God said, so I can be encouraged later, obey it more precisely,
and test it more accurately.

It frees my mind to simply listen rather than to judge constantly. I can judge later whether or
not I heard from God because I have a written record of what I think he said.

If I want to remember
If I want to remember what Laura said, or remember to do something she asked me to do, I
always ask her to send me a text message.

If we just talk, too often I hear what she says but forget it immediately. But if I have a text
message, then I remember it better and if I forget, I have a clear record.

So write down your conversations with God!

7. Take a risk!
A time when I was too scared
When I was teaching in the U.S., I had the habit in the morning of praying and asking God to
give me instructions concerning my day. One day, He told me, “Sara is in your class today.
She has black hair. Tell her that I love her.” My first response was, “That must not be from
God. I know Sara is in the class today, but she has brown hair, not black. And besides, I’m in
the public school, so I can’t talk about God.”

I had decided it wasn’t God’s voice. But when I arrived at school, Sara was one of the first
students to come, and she had died her hair!

I was completely shocked that I had heard God correctly. But I had already resolved in my
heart not to obey, and so I didn’t take the risk.

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Perhaps the biggest practical point I can give when it comes to hearing God is to simply take a
risk and try!

Jonathan and his armor-bearer

I love the story of Jonathan and his armor-bearer in the book of 1 Samuel, there’s a war going
on between Israel and the Philistines. King Saul is too scared to attack, and the Philistines are
too scared to attack. So no one’s doing anything.

Suddenly, Jonathan (Saul’s son) gets a crazy idea to attack a tower full of enemy soldiers,
taking along only one other man, his armor-bearer.

He has no idea if it’s an idea from God or not, but turns to his armor-bearer and says…
1 Samuel 14:6
Perhaps the LORD will work for us…
1 Samuel 14:6
Poate că Domnul va lucra pentru noi…

You may make mistakes

I have heard God incorrectly many times. Other times I heard correctly but interpreted the
message incorrectly. Other times, the person I gave the message to interpreted it incorrectly.
Other times, everything was great except the person wasn’t at all receptive…

There are lots of mistakes that can happen, but… Perhaps the Lord will work for you!

Make some mess!

Where is a ship the safest? At port. But ships weren’t made to stay in the port but to sail in the
open sea, in the danger and the adventure.

When is a stable the cleanest? When there are no oxen there! But if there are no oxen, then
you can’t get anything done on the farm.

Proverbs 14:4
Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much revenue comes by the strength of the ox.
Proverbe 14:4
Unde nu sunt boi, ieslea este goală, dar puterea boilor aduce belşug de roade.

Hearing God, listening to His voice, following Him is like inviting a bunch of oxen to come and
stay in your manger. Your nice clean stable is full of poop, mess, smell, noise… but you get a
lot of work done!

Pray for each of us to take a risk

If you’ve ever struggled with this idea of taking a risk, I want to pray for you to receive a new
boldness to hear God and step out in faith.

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Conclusion
Video clip: Little girl saying “Ice cream”
Show the video clip “prophecy - tries to say 'icecream'.mp4”

As we’re talking about hearing the voice of God, let’s remember that we are all like this little
girl. God speaks perfectly, and we can hear perfectly, but sometimes something gets in the way
and it just doesn’t come out right. But that’s okay; we’re still growing and learning!

Conclusion
In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more practical principles and advice that I and others have
learned in this journey of discovering how to hear God’s voice.

Next week, Laura will be sharing with us about some of the things that can block or hinder us
from hearing what God is saying.

After that, we’ll look at some of the cautions and how to test a word. Then we’ll look into how
you can use this amazing gift at your work, in your family, in normal life. And finally I want us
to look at one of the ways God speaks quite often in the Bible: dreams.

Practice
Take some time to wait on God and listen to him for ourselves. Then share what we heard.

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1 Ioan 2:27 – Cât despre voi, ungerea pe care aţi primit-o de la El rămâne în voi şi nu aveţi
nevoie ca cineva să vă înveţe, ci, aşa cum ungerea Lui vă învaţă cu privire la toate lucrurile, iar
ea este adevărată şi nu este o minciună, rămâneţi în El, aşa cum v-a învăţat ea.

Ioan 10:27 – Oile Mele ascultă glasul Meu; Eu le cunosc iar ele Mă urmează.

Fapte 15:28 – Căci ni s-a părut potrivit, Duhului Sfânt şi nouă să…

1 Corinteni 14:1-5 – (1) 1 Urmăriţi dragostea şi fiţi plini de râvnă după darurile duhovniceşti, în
special după darul profeţiei. (2) Căci cel ce vorbeşte într-o limbă nu vorbeşte oamenilor, ci lui
Dumnezeu, întrucât nimeni nu-l înţelege, iar îna Duhul spune taine. (3) Dar cel ce profeţeşte le
vorbeşte oamenilor, pentru zidire, încurajare şi mângâiere. (4) Cel ce vorbeşte într-o limbă se
zideşte pe sine, dar cel ce profeţeşte zideşte biserica. (5) Eu vreau ca toţi să vorbiţi în limbi, şi
încă şi mai mult – să profeţiţi. Cel ce profeţeşte este mai mare decât cel ce vorbeşte în limbi,
afară numai dacă nu este cineva să traducă, pentru ca biserica să poată fi zidită.

Blockages – Laura

Testing the voice

Cautionary statements… George… Ilie was at a staruinta when he started speaking in tongues
and it was like a big rock that hit him, and he started feeling depressed etc… He thinks there
was a spirit of religion there… Check with people… Check with Bible… Confirmation in
heart… encouraging individuals… building up the church not making you special… you can
hear wrong

Recognizing a thought from God

**How do you recognize a thought from God?
**All of us have thoughts from God, but few of us recognize them as coming from God. So
how do we recognize a thought from God?
**A thought from God comes spontaneously, not as a logical “next step” in your thought
process. I remember for example praying for a guy while doing evangelism, and I suddenly
had the thought come to me that something bad had happened to his mom, and this had caused
him to give up on a dream. It was completely spontaneous and unrelated to what I was
thinking, and when I asked him, it turned out to be true. His mom had developed a disease
while he was working on an athletic career. Because of her sickness, he gave up his training
and his dream.
**It is not pushy and aggressive, but it does not go away. For example, one time I was walking
through Parcul Crangasi when I walked by a guy and had a thought, “He’s struggling with
depression.” It was a really quiet thought, and I didn’t want to stop and embarrass myself, but
the thought wouldn’t go away. So I returned, asked the guy, and found out he was struggling
with depression. So we prayed together.
**It’s a thought that doesn’t push you to hurry but that is peaceful and gentle.

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Hearing God at work

Hearing God in your family

Dream interpretation
Dream interpretation… get the key word or point from the Holy Spirit… Details are less
iportant and come AFTER the main point… There is no list of what symbols stand for bc
dreams are a personal language, and each person’s language is different depending on the day
and the experiences they’ve had in life (i.e. for me, purple could mean terror bc of my past
experiences but for another it means royalty)… cannot be separated from relationship to God
(my experience with interpreting

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