How Can I Hear God? | Joakim Lundqvis

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Oh, so great to be back in the house of God.

A very Merry Christmas to every single one throughout our campuses, prison campuses, all in this room, everybody watching or listening online.

So great to be back in the house of God.

And you actually made it appropriate for the Swede by putting a snowy forest and a skating rink in church.

I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart.

And I pray that this new year, 2025, will be your best and most blessed in the in your life in Jesus' name.

I can't wait for this new year to start.

You know, initially I committed to staying behind here and being with you all for this year and to the end of the year, which is pretty much now, but I was asked to extend.

So Maria and I are actually gonna be spending the whole spring with y'all until the end of June.

And and I and I just want to let you know, Gateway family, that when the elders asked, it was one of the easiest decisions I've ever made.

Because we love this house and we sense the presence of God upon this church, and I just have this word ringing in the inside of my heart from Isaiah 43.

Behold, says the Lord, I am doing a new thing, and I can't wait to run into that new thing with you all in 2025.

And how appropriate then that we're gonna start out this new year by a series based on the book of Acts and the main uh person, the the key role in the book of Acts, the person of the Holy Spirit.

So, what I want to do today, and also next weekend, is to do kind of a mini-series within the umbrella of the theme of the book of Acts and the Holy Spirit, and I want to speak centered around two questions.

Question number one: how can I hear God?

How can I hear the voice of the Holy Spirit?

And then next weekend, how can I know God's will?

How can I be led by the Holy Spirit?

Throughout my life, I think those two questions have been the most repeated ones coming to me as a pastor.

How can I hear the voice of God?

How can I know the will of God?

And I pray in Jesus' name that God will speak to you through his word and also give you a greater understanding of how we go about listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

So why don't we just start by praying and inviting the Spirit into our hearts and into this moment that we have together?

Holy Spirit, we thank you so much that you are indeed a spirit that makes all things new.

And Father, we pray right now that you will send your spirit to open our hearts, to open our eyes so we can see, open our ears so we can hear, and to make us all a little bit more like Jesus.

This we pray in Jesus' name.

And all people said, Amen.

If you brought your Bible, please go with me to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16, and we're gonna start out there in just a little while.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

Now, when we speak about hearing God and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit, the first thing we need to understand is that God speaks to us in multiple ways.

God hasn't just one way to communicate, and every one of us who are old enough to have seen like the classical movies from the late 50s and early 60s, like Ben Hur and Ten Commandments and stuff, half of this room cannot even relate, but still, we're used to having the Hollywood image where God speaks with a baritone voice with maximum reverb, and because we've never really heard that, we might doubt ourselves and thinking, oh, have I missed God throughout my life?

No, my sister, no, my brother, you haven't.

God speaks to us in multiple ways, and the number one way and the most important way that He speaks to us is through the word of God, and this is the only one that we can trust 100%, because if somebody prophesies over you, that prophecy will come out of a person that is able to make mistakes.

So you know it might be God and it might not be God, and that's why the scriptures tell us to try it and keep what is good, and even when you get a sensation or a thought that you interpret as coming from the Lord, you yourself is a person who can make mistakes, right?

But the beautiful thing is that we have a word of God that contains zero mistakes, so and God will never contradict Himself.

If you get a prophecy and that prophecy is not in line with the Word of God, the Word of God wins.

If you have an emotion or a thought and that thought is not um in line with the Word of God, the Word of God wins.

The word of God is always true.

Now, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 and 17 says, All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servants of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16

I love that it says the scripture is God breathed.

Let's take a quick look at the two other uh occasions in in the Bible where God breathes into something and let's see what happens as a result of God breathing.

The first time is in the story of creation, Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

God forms Adam, the first man, from the dust of the ground, and then it says in Genesis 2, 7, and the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

And man became a living being.

Now, the second time that we read in the Bible that God breathes, it's actually Jesus doing the breathing after his resurrection.

John chapter 20 and verse 22.

John 20 · chapter mention

The risen Christ gathers his disciples, and then it says, and with that he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

That means when God breathes, the Holy Spirit comes out.

He does not have a problem with bad breath.

When God breathes, the Holy Spirit comes out.

When God breathes, life comes, joy comes, the essence of the kingdom comes.

Actually, the name Holy Spirit in Greek, that is the language of the of the New Testament, the name is actually Pneuma, which means breath.

The Spirit is the breath of God.

So when it says that this the scripture is God breathed, what does that mean?

Sorry, joy.

It's amazing.

You should try it.

When it says that God breathed, and what it says that the scripture is God breathed, what does that mean?

It means that the Holy Spirit did not just author this book, He's inside this book.

His presence saturates every single word.

So when you read the Word of God, not only do you get information about God, you have fellowship with God because every single word is God breathed.

And that's why you can never exchange reading your Bible with watching sermons on YouTube or listening to Christian podcasts.

They might be great, but nothing can replace reading the word of God because it's God breathed, and when you read, you have fellowship with God.

And the more fellowship you have with him, the more you will hear his voice and recognize his voice.

Can we say amen in the house of the Lord?

Secondly, God also speaks to us and leads us using what I call godly traditions.

Godly traditions.

And I'm using the words traditions purposely and a bit provocatively, actually, because a lot of us spirit-filled Christians, we have a problem with that word.

Because we assume that traditions is something negative that we've been set free from in Jesus' name.

You might say, I'm not, I don't like them traditions.

I'm free in Jesus Christ.

They are not.

My friend, traditions are neutral.

Tradition simply means you do the same thing over and over and over again.

I do hope that everyone in this church or any one of our campuses is in favor of the tradition of brushing your teeth every morning.

I pray for the sake of your neighbor that you're in favor of the tradition of using deodorant.

Tradition simply means doing the same thing over and over again.

And when you establish godly traditions in your life, God will use them to lead you and to speak to you.

For example, the tradition of spending time in God's presence every single morning, the tradition of reading the Word of God daily, and the tradition of going to church every single weekend.

In our family, that's been a non-negotiable truth throughout our existence.

We don't wake up in the morning and ask, should we go to church or not?

No, we go to church, not because we woke up feeling like it, but because we're Christians.

And I can call myself a pastor, but I'll tell you what, I need the fellowship of the saints.

I need the presence of God with my brothers and sisters.

I need to sit under the sound teaching of the word of God.

I need the breaking of bread.

I need to pray in the house of the Lord.

I need that for my life and I need that for my family.

And when you establish these godly traditions for you as an individual and for your family, God will use them to lead you and to speak to you.

We see this in the life of Jesus.

When Joseph and Mary takes Jesus at the age of 12 to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, they said they did that as was their custom.

And then repeatedly throughout the Gospels, you see the same phrase used about Jesus.

When the Shabbat came, Jesus went to the synagogue as was his custom.

At the feast of the Passover, Jesus walked to Jerusalem as was his custom.

Now, when you establish godly traditions in your life, God will use them to make sure you end up in the right place at the right time and hear the voice of God.

Actually, we see this in the book of Acts that we're about to study in the month of January.

You know, in the book of Acts, the first chapter is Jesus being taken up to heaven.

The second chapter is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

And chapter three and four is actually all centered around the first miracle in the history of the church.

The healing of the paralyzed man at the beautiful gate.

Let's look at how that defining miracle came about.

Acts chapter 3 and verse 1.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

It starts out starts out by saying one day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at 3 in the afternoon.

That's how the chapter starts.

And then when you read on, you're gonna see how these two men, Peter and John, encounter this paralyzed man, how they speak the word of God over him, and how he becomes radically, dramatically healed.

And that will be the launch pad of the miraculous ministry of the early church.

But see, this miracle came about because two young men had godly traditions in their lives.

They had a tradition that if we're in Jerusalem and it's 3 p.m., we'll head up to the temple and we will pray.

The outpouring of the Spirit did not replace godly traditions that happened in the previous chapter, but still they held held on to their godly routines.

And because they did, God had them come by this paralyzed man, and this defining miracle could take place.

So God will lead you and speak to you through your godly traditions and through the traditions of your family.

Now you can live and you can go far by just reading the word of God and hearing the voice of God through it, and just establishing sound godly traditions for yourself and your family.

And that will that will give you a great life.

But still, there is one more element of God speaking to us that I want to touch on and speak about, and that is God speaking to you personally.

God speaking to you personally.

Now that doesn't happen every day, because it doesn't need to happen every day.

We have the word of God for every day, we have godly traditions for every day, we have Christian common sense for every day, we have your free will, and that will take you far.

But sometimes when God wants you to do something specifically, or God wants you to do something that is unusual for you, He might need to speak to you personally and give you specific instructions.

We see this in the life of Jesus as well.

And I want us to read a passage where this becomes very clear.

If you will go with me to John chapter 4, and we're just gonna read a little passage, and this is one of the verses, one of the sentences or contexts that we might simply read through because 2,000 years later, and us being on the other side of the world, it doesn't really make natural sense to us to stop and think that this would be something spectacular or very unusual.

John 4 · chapter mention

But in John chapter 4, we come into a situation when Jesus is ending his first ministry in Judea.

John 4 · chapter mention

Now, Judea is the southern part of Israel.

He's been preaching side by side by with John the Baptist for approximately six to eight months.

And now he's coming to the end of that phase, and he's gonna move back to Galilee in the north where he was raised, and that's where his miraculous ministry are gonna take off in a very special way.

And we read in John chapter 4, verse 3 and 4, so he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

John 4:3

Now he had to go through Samaria.

He had to go through Samaria, and this is the line that might not make much sense to us because we're not familiar with the Jewish traditions at the time.

But let me just explain why this verse and this statement is so special and so essential.

Let's bring up a map of Israel right here to give you an understanding of what we're talking about.

So in the days of Jesus, we had Israel, we basically had three parts.

The southern part was called Judea, that's where Jerusalem was, the northern part was called Galilee, that's where Jesus was raised in the city of Nazareth, and then right in the middle was the area called Samaria.

Now, when we look at this from Texas in the year 2024, we just think, well, if you're gonna walk from Judea in the south up to Galilee in the north, of course you want to walk through Samaria.

That's the shortest route, that's the most natural pathway you could take.

That will save you some time, that will help you to be effective.

Now, what you need to understand is that in the days of Jesus, no Jew in their right mind would ever walk through Samaria, because the Samaritans worship the God of Israel, but also the gods of Assyria, and obviously the Jews they had their own creed, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

The very first out of the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other gods by my side.

So that's why the Jews would always avoid the Samaritans, they would avoid Samaria and rather go around Samaria instead of crossing it.

So the natural thing for Jesus to do when traveling from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north was to just circle Samaria like any other Jew.

But John specifically points out that when traveling from Judea to Galilee at this point, he had to go through Samaria.

Now he didn't have to for geographical reasons, he didn't have to for cultural reasons.

There's only one explanation.

He had to because the Holy Spirit asked him to.

She runs into the city of Samaria, she actually becomes the first evangelist in the New Testament, and the whole city comes to faith in Jesus Christ.

That's the result of us leaning into the specific instruction of the Holy Spirit at a certain time.

So, how can we grow in this?

How can we grow in hearing and understanding the specific voice of God spoken to us?

I'm so glad you asked.

I was just coming to that right now.

Let me give you three pieces of advice.

This is note-taking material here and now.

I do believe this might well help you.

My first advice as you grow in hearing and understanding the voice of God is simply this relax.

Relax.

So many times I hear so much fear among Christians when it comes to this area of hearing the voice of God.

What if I get it wrong?

What if what if I think something is God and then it turns out it's not?

Well, my friend, what if you get it right?

What if it is God?

And if it can help anyone in the room or at any one of our campuses, let me tell you this.

I've gotten it wrong so many times, and I'm still here.

So many times I thought, oh, I this is a word from God, and let it turn out to be more of my own desires or my own ambitions.

Even more times than that, I God was actually speaking to me, but I was not that eager to dare to believe it was his voice.

And you know what?

That is not just true about me, it's true about pretty much every single pastor and preacher that I know.

It's just that we tend to always share our success stories from the pulpit.

But just to encourage you, even if you get it wrong, Jesus will not fall off his throne, and the kingdom of God will not break down as a result.

You know, there is this saying, failure is not an option.

Have you heard that?

Failure is not an option.

Whoever came up with that was an idiot.

Failure is not an option.

Actually, failure is one of the best ways to learn how to get it right.

Right?

When you have a baby, a little son, and and you start to teach him how to walk and he falls over, you don't go, failure is not an option, Bucky.

I don't know why you call yourself Bucky.

That's that's that's not a wise decision at all, but obviously you did.

We all know that because he fell over, he will learn a little bit from it and he will be less likely to fall over next time.

This is how we learn.

Don't be afraid to get it wrong.

Failure is how we learn, and it's better to try to hear the voice of God, act on it and get it a little bit wrong than to just be struck by fear and never move at all in the presence of the Lord.

Amen.

So relax from fear also, don't overcomplicate.

I mean, the voice of God is way more natural as it speaks to us than we think a lot of times.

There's a beautiful story in 1 Samuel chapter 3 about when God starts to speak to young Samuel in the temple.

1 Samuel 3 · chapter mention

And it says in from the third chapter of 1 Samuel's, the first verse, the boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli, and in those days the word of the Lord was rare.

There was not many visions.

One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could hardly see, was lying down in his usual place.

The lamp of the Lord has not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel.

So God calls out Samuel's name in the middle of the night.

And the way we normally think this would have sounded would have been a bit like Samuel.

Thanks so much, guys.

Why?

Because three times Samuel mistakes this voice for the voice of Eli, and Eli would not have sounded like that.

So again, we we learn that the voice of God can be misunderstood for the voice of a human being, and it's the same way today.

It's fully possible to mix the voice of God with the voice of a human being, namely yourself.

Here's where faith comes into the picture.

Because the righteous shall live by faith.

And faith is where we lean in and we choose to and we dare to believe that whatever I heard on the inside was not just a product of my own imagination, but actually a word of the Lord.

So relax.

So many times where God speaks and God leads you, it's gonna be a way more natural process than we sometimes think.

The thing that we see in the life of Samuel that I think enabled him to hear the voice of God at the right time was basically two things.

Samuel was in the right place and he did the right thing.

Samuel was in the temple, the right place, and he did the right thing.

He was serving God to the best of his capacity.

Now, when you are in the temple, when you're planted in your local church, and in that temple, you're serving the Lord to the best of your capacity, you're gonna place yourself in the perfect position to hear the voice of God whenever God wants to speak to you.

Can we say amen in the house?

That's how I met this beauty right over there.

Uh I started a church when I was 17 years old, not recommended, but I did with my parents.

And when I was 19, I invited a preacher to come and spend a weekend with us to preach the word of God.

So this guy came and he brought a family with him, a family that was touring Sweden to lead worship in various churches.

And this family consisted of a father, a mother, and two daughters, especially one daughter.

And because I was at the right place at the right time, I had planted this church.

I was now sitting on the first row, I was doing the announcements and taking up the offering, and I had the perfect seat of the church.

As this girl stepped out on the platform and started to lead worship, and I was slightly distracted.

She was so beautiful.

I saw the hand of the Lord upon her.

Her love for Jesus radiated through her whole being, and I have to confess, Gateway, God did not get much quality worship of me that night.

I had a bit of a hard time, you know, focusing.

It's like there is none like you.

But now we've been happily married for 37 years, and I'm more in love than ever.

What I'm trying to say is basically if you relax, if you just try to be in the right place at the right time and do the right thing, God will lead you and God will speak to you.

Amen.

The second advice I want to give you, apart from relax, is respond.

Respond.

When God speaks to you, it's not gonna be primarily for information, but for action.

He will want you to do something, not just know something.

And throughout the book of Acts that we're gonna study throughout January, we see this Acts 8, 26.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, Go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

God spoke to Philip because he knew that there's gonna be an Ethiopian nobleman coming that way, and his heart will be open to hear the gospel.

Acts chapter 10, verse 1 to 6.

Acts 10:1–6

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian regiment.

He and all his family were devout and God-fearing.

He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.

He was doing the right thing.

One day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision.

He distinctly saw an angel of God who came to him and said, Cornelius.

Cornelius stared at him in fear.

What is it, Lord?

He asked.

The angel answered, Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.

Now, send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.

He's staying with Simon the Tanner, whose house is by the sea.

So God didn't just speak to him about information, but it was a call to action.

Get Peter over here.

And we all know, if you've studied the book of Acts, that this action eventually led to the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, for the very first time.

When God speaks, respond.

When you have a thought, maybe I should pray for that person, pray for that person.

When you have a thought saying, maybe I should give that person a call, we haven't talked in years, call that person.

Dare to believe that this is not just a thought in your head, this is the Holy Spirit uh speaking to you, and as you respond, the more you respond, the more likely you will be to hear the voice of God even clearer the next time.

Amen.

Let me just finish with this.

After having given you the advice to relax and respond, number three, reach out.

When the Spirit speaks to you, nine times out of ten, you will not be the final destination of this message.

God will speak to you so that He can reach a heart of a lost sheep, a lost coin, or a lost son or daughter.

The end result, most times when God speaks, is not just to bless you, but to provide salvation and forgiveness for someone who needs it desperately.

And I just want to share one story before we pray and and uh allow the spirit to move in our hearts.

Because Kate, you know me by now.

I can't let you go without sharing at least one story about a Swedish teenager.

Let me introduce you to this girl.

Her name is Annika, and at this point, the point of this story, Annika was 14 years old.

Now, when you look at Annika's face, maybe you see there's something wrong with one of her eyes.

Annika is blind on that eye, and on the other eye, she can only see about 20% of normal like seeing capacity.

On top of that, Annika is completely deaf on one ear, and on the other ear, she can only hear about 20% of normal capacity.

So basically, Annika is visually impaired and also a member of the deaf community.

Speaking of the deaf community, we are so honored to have a group from that community here at Gateway every Saturday.

Let's honor them.

This is how you cheer in sign language.

It would have been so likely and so easy for Annika to count herself out of the process of being used by God and to rather focus entirely on her own critical situation and maybe her own healing.

But Annika came to one of our youth conferences and she heard me speak basically this message about you can hear the voice of God.

And Annika took that to heart and she made a decision that on Valentine's Day, this the on the upcoming year, this was in back in November, on Valentine's Day, she would share the love of Jesus with her entire school.

So when she got back from the conference in November, she cut out 200 plus paper hearts.

She asked for a list of all students' names in her school, and she wrote all students' names on one individual heart.

So every single student had one specific heart.

And then she started to pray.

She took up one heart, read the student's name, regardless of whether she knew that student or not, and she asked God, God, what do you want to say to this person?

What is on your heart for this person?

And then she sat in the presence of the Lord until she got a word from God.

A scripture verse, a word, a greeting.

She leaned in and she dared to believe this is the word of the Lord, and she wrote that greeting on the other side of the paper heart.

And then she took up the second heart, said, God, what do you want to say to this person?

And uh she waited in the presence of God until she got a word, a scripture, a message, and she wrote it down.

In three months, she prayed through every single student in her school until she had been given a fresh word from the Holy Spirit that she dared to believe was from God, and she wrote it down.

And on Valentine's Day, this 14-year-old girl walked around her school handing out personalized paper hearts to every single student.

And when she retold this story to me, she was so excited.

She said, Pastor Joachim, it's so great because in my school everybody speaks sign language, so I could walk around all day and looking at what everybody was talking about, and she said, All over the school there were groups standing and they were doing sign language saying, How could she know?

I'm so sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing.

How could she know what I was going through?

How in the world?

I don't even know this girl.

How can she come up with this exact word, this exact reading, this exact statement that is just what I wanted to hear at this very moment?

Let me tell you why.

Because God still speaks to his people.

And if we want to listen, if we will relax, and if we will respond, and if we will reach out, he is ready to speak to us like never before in 2025.

And if you want to open up your heart and say, Lord, I want that, would you just close your eyes right here right now?

And I just want to speak God's blessing upon you and pray a prayer over you that you will hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as you read the word of God, as you go about your godly traditions, but also the fresh words and the fresh voice from God throughout this upcoming new year.

Father, in Jesus' name, we thank you so much for your God-breathed word.

We thank you for the power of godly traditions that makes you able to direct our steps and lead us on your paths.

But we also want to open up our hearts in a brand new way so that you can speak to us, speak your specific instruction.

And we pray for your help to relax, to step out of fear and oh out of overcomplicating things into a place of peace where our heart is open and ready for you to speak.

We thank you, Father, for the courage to respond when you speak and take new steps of faith in this process.

And we thank you, Lord, more than anything, that as you speak to us, that we will reach out to our communities, that we will reach out to our families and neighbors and friends and colleagues and fellow students, and that more people than ever before will be able to see Jesus through us.

This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Can we make some noise for the glory of Jesus?

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.