HEARING GOD'S VOICE IN 2019

HEARING GOD’S VOICE IN 2019

                About five years ago Bonnie and I set out in earnest to hear God’s voice. I wrote about it back then and expressed our desire to actually hear His voice and to obey and to walk in the realm of divine appointment. We had no idea where He would lead us, or even how it works other than the fact that He will always lead us according to His Word.

                So it came as no small surprise to us when the Lord spoke to me in the garden and to Bonnie in a dream and told us that we were to go to Tennessee and be parents and grandparents to our children and grandchildren. That was all He told us… and I guess the Lord only gave us that information because it would make the most sense to us in the grand scheme of things.

                What we didn’t know at the time was that Tennessee would become our place of blessing and expanded ministry. I am a song writer and musician at heart, but that aspect of my life was not a part of what the Lord was teaching us in our years at the Messianic Congregation. He brought us there to learn about the feasts, the appointed times of the Lord, and on a more personal level, He brought us there to love and to serve. This is something we all need to learn, because going to church is much more than collecting doctrines. It is about learning how to become functioning organs in the Body of Christ.

                Going to church is about learning to love God’s people. It is not really about corporations and bylaws and manmade stuff, but it is about learning how to flow in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to become wells of living water to those around us. It is about faithfulness, about loving and serving, about learning how to hear God’s voice in such a way that in time you become the answer to people’s prayers and rewarders of people’s faith.

                This has become the most thrilling aspect of hearing God’s voice. Hearing God’s voice always requires giving in one form or another and in that giving you end up becoming God’s hand in answering prayers and rewarding the faith of the faithful. In hearing God’s voice you can become someone’s miracle, someone’s answer to prayer. It is a most thrilling life, this living by divine appointment.

                So we headed to Tennessee by faith. The move was no easy task and I have shared some of our challenges in the past, but in all of it we had one thing going for us… we were doing what the Lord told us to do and where He leads He also provides.

                So the Lord has led us into a place of ministry, of teaching, of learning, of music, of wonderful love and fellowship and the fulfillment of long lost dreams and desires of our hearts.

                In becoming a part of the worship team, the Lord led me into a friendship, with Abishai, a fellow song writer, who is also the keyboard player for our worship team. Abishai writes and records his songs to share on the internet. He writes songs in English, and also in several African languages as a witness to his people in his homeland of Zambia. As well as a song writer he is also a sound engineer and runs a small studio in his home. So we have become partners of sorts in witnessing through our music.

                Do we realize how important it is to God that we operate in His Spirit rather than in our flesh? Do we understand that this is the whole goal of our Christian walk? In our carnal ways of thinking, we tend to believe that God is leading us intellectually. So if we get our doctrines all sorted out and our mental ducks in a row, then we are pleasing God, but the truth is we can do all of that without His Holy Spirit.

                This is why Paul tells us that the Law is not of faith. (Gal. 3:11) We think that if we just keep the Commandments we will please God, but God in fact tells us that the Law was a tutor to lead us to Christ… to the foot of the cross where through the Law I die to the Law in order that I might live by His Holy Spirit. (Gal. 2:19)

                Now, this life in the Spirit doesn’t mean that we stop obeying the Law, for indeed we can’t even obey the Law in the way God intends it to be obeyed unless the very Spirit of Christ dwells in us and functions through us in love and rest. In this Spirit filled life, we rest from our own labors and trust in the work of Christ. We rest from the works of the flesh and begin to live life by the river of life that flows from our innermost being. This then is how the Law is really intended to be kept and fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

                Obedience is manifested in our lives in the form of the fruit of the Spirit.

                “For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”  Gal. 2:19-21

                It is so hard for us to get this. So instead of finding our security in Christ, we find it in our own intellectual comfort zone. Like Israel we offer our obedience to the Law as our righteousness even as we may reject the voice of God that is speaking into our spirit.

                This morning I awoke to a song that has yet to be written. The Lord was speaking into my dreams and it went like this:

                He has placed us in a world of darkness to bring light

                He has placed us in a world of sorrow to bring joy

                He has placed us in a world of anger to bring peace

                He has placed us in a world of hatred to bring love… such a simple truth!

                This kind of work in the world doesn’t come from simply having our intellectual ducks in a row. It comes from being filled with the Spirit of Christ so that the life of Christ is being manifested in and through these mortal bodies.

                Hearing the voice of God will never lead us contrary to the Law of God, but it will lead us to fulfill the Law according to the Spirit of the Law rather than the letter of the Law. And it is because we don’t understand the true function of the Law that we remain confused about how it is fulfilled.

                Paul said: “Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life; then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.” Gal. 3:21

                God did not give us the Law to impart life to us. He gave us the Law to condemn us to death… to reveal our sins to us, to declare us guilty, for all have sinned. And this matter of sin, like I have said, is not just a matter of breaking the Law. It is a matter of falling short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) In this we are not dealing with a finite problem but an infinite one. The Law tells us that we have sinned and so, being carnal in mind, we think, “Well then, if breaking the Law brought this curse of death on me, then all I need to do is to keep the Law and all will be reversed.”

                This may sound good, but Paul, a minister of the Gospel commissioned by Jesus Christ Himself, to give us understanding, told us that it is not like that. We can’t reverse the curse simply by keeping the Law. We can only reverse the curse by dying… and that not by any old death. Dying in a car accident will not save you. We must enter by faith into Christ’s death, and then be born again out of that death no longer living by our flesh which is now dead, but living by the Spirit of Christ which is now alive in us.

                This, my friends is the true rest to which the Sabbath points. It is the true righteousness to which the Law points even though it can never, by our keeping it, provide that righteousness that is necessary for salvation.

                “Before faith came we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:23-26

                This may seem like an issue unrelated to hearing God’s voice, but it is not. As long as we are holding up our own righteousness before God through keeping the Law, we cannot enter fully into the life of the Holy Spirit for in the Spirit, we die to everything both good and bad in our lives and we embrace the righteousness of Christ. We lay aside our own fleshly ability to keep the Law and we begin to live by faith in the righteousness of Christ. This righteousness then is produced in us by the Holy Spirit and manifested as the fruit of the Spirit, which in turn is love for God and love for our fellow man and on those two things the entire Law hangs. Mt. 22:36-40

                Jesus was preaching the same thing that Paul preached; only He preached it before the cross and before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that would make it all possible.

                “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14.

                Living in the Spirit will never cause us to disobey God and His Word or His Law, but it WILL cause us to fulfil the Law in the way it was intended to be fulfilled, by the indwelling Spirit and power of Jesus Christ. “For the letter kills, but the Spirit brings life.” 2 Cor. 3:6. And when we live by His power instead of our own, we will have entered into the rest that Jesus alone can provide. This is righteousness by faith.

                But when we enter into this life in the Spirit, we discover that our flesh is at war with our spirit. Our flesh desires the things of this world, but our born again spirit wants the things of God. So it becomes a matter of which voice is speaking the loudest in us. Are we listening to our flesh or are we listening to the Spirit? Are we feeding the flesh or are we feeding the Spirit? We feed our spirit with the Word of God and by praying in the Spirit. We feed our spirit by obeying the spirit rather than the flesh. We begin to hear the voice of God when we, begin to do what He prompts us to do.

                Abishai wrote a song that often goes through my mind for it repeats the phrase over and over again: “I’ve set my mind on the things of God…never again on the things of this world.” And these are not empty words, for Abishai lives every moment of every day in complete faith in God. In this he is a witness to me of a life that is totally abandoned to Jesus Christ.

                Abishai was born in a village in Zambia run by witch doctors and he himself had aspired to become a witch doctor. After all, they held more prestige and power for they were the leaders of the tribes and the go to persons for everything. His uncle was a witch doctor.

                It was a humble missionary woman that led Him to Christ. I have met her, because she now attends our church .Through her ministry of love, Abishai discovered a power infinitely greater than the dark spirits of Africa and he has never turned back. I told Abishai that sometimes it seems to be an advantage to have come out of such a dark place spiritual place. When we grow up in the church, we take a lot for granted, but for those who have been delivered by the Lord, there is a true and constant awareness of His light and power.

                We don’t realize that we too live in darkness and we too need to have that divine encounter that puts us to death in this world, and gives us rebirth into the kingdom of Christ. In that death and rebirth we cease to place our faith in our own works and we begin to trust in and live by the righteousness of Jesus.

                In spite of His almost flawless record as a Pharisee, Paul had this to say:                

                “But whatsoever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish (dung) in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith…” Phil. 3:7-9

                We have to ask ourselves the question: When I stand before God, do I want to look like a good Pharisee, or like Jesus? If Jesus, then we must live by His Spirit.