We all want to  Hear the Voice of God  
  This blog entry will focus on 3 ways of hearing God’s voice

  (a)        Through His Word – Holy Spirit is like highlighter pen 


(b)        Through others (including the prophetic word) . 


(c)         Through thoughts and pictures

  And I want to encourage you…. It doesn’t always come right away.
 

  What I want to do now  is to briefly discuss  some of the common reasons why people do not hear the voice of God and to give you some encouragement.
  The first reason is in the area of BELIEF. People simply do not believe  that God will speak to them.
  I estimate that around a billion people around the world will attend a church service of some sort this week. My guess that is that the vast majority will NOT be expecting to hear the voice of God. .
  If you  have grown up in a church environment that teaches that God stopped speaking when the bible was completed, this is going to  challenge that thinking. We must believe that God DOES speak personally to His children – even before they have faith to listen. 
 
I need to remind myself of the benevolent Fatherhood of God – He is a Father who WILLINGLY speaks to His Children.  

When Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to His disciples (John 16), He said that He would teach us and counsel us  How good would a lecture be if the teacher didn’t speak to you, or a counsellor?  
I like the Message version here: But when the friend comes, the Spirit of all Truth, He will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is.  


John 10:16 (I am the Good shepherd passage) clearly indicates the His sheep will know His Voice.  
So  believe that God will speak to you. 


  The second reason why we might not hear the Voice of God is our will. An unsurrendered will, an unwillingness to give God everything in our lives (including at times hidden sin) is a major barrier to the blessing of God.

There is a lot of difference between a struggling child and a stubborn child.

We all have character flaws, we all at times are going to struggle. I do. But we can all have willing hearts.

We reap what we sow.

If we are  Christians attempting live a life not surrendered to the Will of God, we do not truly understand what we are missing  

The thirg area in one of mental clutter

What I mean by this is the myriad of thoughts that fill our mind, crowding the space that God intends for His thoughts.

Some people suffer from negative thought patterns and 'self talk'.

This may have been caught from people in our past such as parents and/or the result of negative spiritual influences.

  I don’t want to finish on a negative aspect. I mention these blessing blockers’ so that we might remove them and open the door to a lifetime of blessing hearing the voice of God

  When Jesus discussed this topic with the religious people he pointed out that the religios leaders, the Pharisees, were caught up with RELIGION rather than RELATIONSHIP  and they did not understand the concept of hearing God’s voice for them selves

  Once in a relationship with God –we must be willing to listen.

As I said, our submitted will is key to hearing from God

Hebrews 3 talks about the consequences of being unwilling to listen

 7So, as the Holy Spirit says:    "Today, if you hear his voice,     8do not harden your hearts    as you did in the rebellion,       during the time of testing in the desert,  9where your fathers tested and tried me       and for forty years saw what I did.  10That is why I was angry with that generation,       and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray,       and they have not known my ways.'  11So I declared on oath in my anger,       'They shall never enter my rest.' "  12See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness

  HARD HEARTS – that’s the result of refusing to listen……….These verses refer to to children of Israel who missed going into the Promised Land

OUR LIFE'S PURPOSE IS SURELY is all about entering in to the destiny for our our lives
 
That is why I am going to share with you the four keys to hearing the Voice of God   
  Hearing the voice of God is a simple as :

Being still before God

Look to Vision

Tune into spontaneity

Write down 


  We get this from Habakkuk 2: 1-2

   1 I will stand my watch.And set myself on the rampart, And watch to see what He will say to me, And what I will answer when I am corrected 2 Then the LORD answered me and said:  “ Write the vision. And make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it.        Key 1  Being still before God (Hab1 I will stand my watch)


You will not hear God if you spend your life rushing from appointment to appointment,

Remember Ps 46: 10 
Be still ,relax, let go, cease striving and know that I am God Find a quiet place (jesus did Mark 1: 35) and take a chill pill  

Key 2 Look to Vision (Hab And watch to see) Habakkuk said “I will look to see’ and God said ‘Write down the revelation’
He was going to open the eyes of his heart and see what God wanted to show him.
God gives us eyes in our heart Look for Jesus present with you. We live in a 3d world, maybe we have a one or two dimensional Jesus.
Helpful to picture Him.
Watch Him as He speaks to you, doing and saying the things that are on His  heart


  Key 3 Tune into spontaneity (Hab Then the LORD answered me and said)

God speaks in what Elijah described as a ‘still small voice’

It comes to us a spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings and imprseeions.

You’ve probably had them all your Christian life and thought they were your thought and feelings.


I want to encourage you to start to recognise when God speaks to you from the spontaneous flow from within           Last but not least
Key 4 – Write it down (Hab “ Write the vision. And make it plain on tablets)

Journal. 

It provides a great new freedom to hear God’s Voice

It’s was the Psalmists did, the prophets did, John did in revelation. Write it down, test it later.

It will be a blessing for you and for others.

One of our  churchmembers was journaling and felt he had a word for the CEO of a major Hong Kong company (a Christian) . He had the courage to send it, and discovered that that person had been going through a particularly tough time. The word was spot on and was a great encouragement to him

Happy hearing!!