Hearing God’s Voice – 1
The Internal Compass
Deuteronomy 8:3
“Man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”
I have been saying for a few weeks now that we were going to start a series on “Hearing God’s Voice.” I have been so excited to share this series because I believe it is essential in every child of God’s life to be able to hear from God and to know when God is speaking to us.
Before the compass was ever discovered, wanderers could only look around and set their course by the physical markings around them. They had no idea that there was an internal force, the earth’s magnetic field, which influenced a small piece of iron. Now, the compass is utilized every day by an internal force, a force that cannot be seen by the natural eye, yet deep in the earth, God has made it so that man can tell where he is going.
Inside every believer, there is a compass, an internal force, placed by God Himself, waiting to be discovered and used for His glory. My prayer over the next few weeks is that we are able to learn how to discover this compass. When we learn to utilize and trust this valuable resource, we will find that we can better navigate the stormy seas and cloudy skies of life.
➢ Whom shall I marry?
➢ What will I do with my life?
➢ Do I take this job?
➢ Should I invest my money in this opportunity?
Life is a never-ending cycle of decisions that can alter the entire direction of our destinies. How freeing it would be if we had access to an internal compass that would fix the direction of our lives to head in the right directions with right decisions. Without this compass, we are left to look around and set our course by the markings of our physical world. Without this compass, we make our decisions based on our emotions and hunches and the voices of others that are trying to influence our decisions.
What if we could learn to rely on the compass set in place by our Creator? What if we could discern the voice of God in our lives? God desires to speak into our life, if only we would learn to recognize His voice. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God has given you all you need to set a course for your life that will lead you to the right people, the right places, and the right plan in order to accomplish His perfect will in our lives.
I. THE VOICE OF GOD
In Genesis, God said, “Let there be,” and there was! The heavens, the earth, the land, and the seas were all spoken into existence by the voice of God. The we read in
Genesis 1:26, “God said, ‘Let us made man in our image according to our likeness.”
Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
Because man was made in the image of God, man was different from the rest of creation. Man became a self-determining being. In other words, man had a voice in how his life would turn out. He was made in the image of God. Man was not a God himself, but he could speak like God, and Godlike force was in his voice because God had, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” God breathed His voice into Adam.
Adam and Eve were not alone in the garden. Satan slithered in and immediately went to work driving a wedge to separate man and woman from the voice of God. Notice his approach:
Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Has God indeed said?’”
Satan knew that if he was going to defeat the human race, he had to separate man from the voice of God. Satan continues by saying:
Genesis 3:5, “In the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.”
Doesn’t that sound strange to you? We just read that man was created in the likeness of God. They were already like God!
I gave you this basic Bible story to give you a sneak peek into the strategy of the enemy in your life. Satan will do whatever he can to get you to listen to his voice instead of the voice of God and that is what this series is about. He would like nothing better than to suggest the direction of your life. He will tell you that you have to be someone else, someone other than who God wants you to be. Why else would he suggest to Eve that she could “be like God,” He was implying that Eve was not already made in the image and likeness of God. Maybe this is why so many people spend their whole lives trying to impress others by being something that they are not. Their lives are filled with frustration and regret. We need to start understanding that God made us in His image. You don’t have to be somebody you are not, you are already what God wants.
After the fall, God came walking through the garden in the cool of the day. What did Adam and Eve do? They hid from the voice of God. From that moment on, the Old Testament becomes a chronicle of mankind’s love/hate relationship with the voice of God.
In Exodus, God spoke with Moses through a burning bush and, later, dictated the Ten Commandments complete with flashes of lightning and smoke. Scripture says the people trembled and told Moses:
Exodus 20:19, “You speak with us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
We can see in this Scripture alone how well Satan’s plan was working. Man went from speaking with God in the garden to being afraid of His voice. Satan had so perverted man’s relationship with God that they thought the very sound of His voice would kill them. Today, Satan’s plan is no different. He will convince you that if you listen to God it will hurt your relationships, your career, and most commonly, it will kill your fun. The devil would like to convince you in the world that we are living in that the Word of God and voice of God is hate speech. That’s what society is trying to convince us of. But it is simply not true.
Eventually, things got so bad that God said, “Okay, you don’t want to hear My voice anymore? You don’t want Me to speak with you? Fine, I am done!” It doesn’t say that in the Bible, but that is exactly what happened. At the end of the Old Testament, His Word stopped. Scripture ceased and God’s voice went silent for four hundred years and that brought to an end the Old Testament.
Eventually, that silence was broken in Matthew 3:3 with “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” The book of John leaves no doubt that God was ready to speak again.
John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Drop down to verse 14, “And the Word because flesh and dwelt among us.”
After 400 years, God had broken the silence and was ready to speak to man once again, this time, He was going to try a different way than before. This time, His Word was wrapped in flesh and bones.
When Jesus started His ministry by being baptized in the Jordan River, it was God’s voice that confirmed Jesus as His Son:
Matthew 3:17, “And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
This is one of the most excited Scriptures of all time. The voice of God is back!
Can’t you just imagine the demons trembling? The same voice that was in the garden, the same voice that was heard while walking “in the cool of the day,” that voice was back on the planet speaking into the lives of His creation. Oh, how the demons must have trembled. That voice hadn’t been heard for over 400 years and now it was back. The Word of God was back to display its power.
➢ Jesus spoke to a storm and it stopped.
➢ Jesus spoke to a woman with a blood disease for years and the blood dried up.
➢ Jesus spoke to Lazarus and he walked out of a grave.
➢ Jesus spoke to a man that was filled with demons and the demons had to flee.
➢ Jesus spoke to water and it turned into wine.
➢ Jesus spoke to a fig tree and it withered.
It was official. Not only was God’s voice active again, but it was also free to work within and through the lives of those who called upon Him. God was not finished working through the lives of His people. In fact, He was just getting started.
We had to determine that God is still speaking today before we get into next week and learn how He speaks to us individually. He is still speaking, are we listening? We all have been given an internal compass, but are we all using it?
