How to Hear the Voice of God

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

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

All right, all right.

Come on, let's give Jesus a great hand clap.

He's wonderful.

Thank you.

You may be seated.

We just welcome every one of you and all of our campuses and correctional institutes and everyone that's uh in the service with us today.

You know, uh it really is a joy to be with you.

I had Pastor Robert and Debbie in our church two weeks ago.

My son invited them in, and Pastor James and Bridget also came.

And Robert said, Larry, when you're there at Gateway, you gotta show them your family.

I said, Robert, I never do that, man.

I've you know I just preach.

And uh he said, No, you gotta show them their family.

So, in deference to your uh senior pastor, I'm gonna show you my family.

This is a picture of uh my family.

Yes, and all right now hold on because now you're gonna see my grandchildren, and this is uh 16 of them.

Uh two of them were taking a nap, and uh one is being born actually in September, so that'll be number 20.

We're not just pro-life, we're prolific, baby.

So Robert asked me to do it.

I did it.

I have to correct James.

I have been married now 47 years, actually, and uh that's right.

So I just really give God praise for the opportunity to be here this week.

We're very excited about Presbytery.

We got guys that have flown in from all over the country just to minister prophetically to you.

So we really encourage you to join us on Sunday night and Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning.

We just minister to people, and uh, we don't know everybody will get a word, obviously, but I love the thought of hearing the voice of God.

And actually, that's what I want to speak to you on this weekend is how to hear the voice of God.

You know, 54 years ago, the Lord called me to preach.

In fact, I just made 70 uh last week.

70 is the new 40, by the way.

Come on, can I have an amen?

And I would say that for me, this one subject is the most critical subject.

In fact, it's I do pastors university now 50 lessons from 50 years.

This is number uh six in those lessons because I feel like it's so critical for a pastor and every church member to hear the voice of God.

You know, I heard about a man who thought his wife was losing her hearing.

So he went to his doctor buddy and said, What do I do, man?

I don't know how to tell her or I don't know what to do.

He said, Well, look, just walk in when she doesn't see you standing there and just start talking about 15 feet away at a normal tone of voice and see if she responds and then keep moving closer and closer.

So he did that.

Came home from work, she was cooking at the stove.

He walked in and then he asked her from about 15 feet, what are we having for dinner, sweetheart?

No answer.

So he moved a little closer and asked her again and again and again every time he moved forward, what are we having for dinner, sweetheart?

No answer.

And he thought, boy, this is a lot worse than I thought.

Because he got about a foot and a half from her and he said, Sweetheart, what are we having for dinner?

And he heard her say, for the tenth time, I'm having chicken for supper tonight.

Some of y'all are gonna get that next week.

Let he that hath ears to hear hear.

So we're gonna talk to you about hearing the voice of God.

He's always speaking, guys.

Just like radio stations are always broadcasting.

You say, well, I don't hear any music in here from a radio station.

That doesn't mean they're not broadcasting.

It's the fact, thankfully, nobody has a receiver on.

And if you did, you would hear loud and clear what they're saying, what they're playing.

And that's the way it is with God.

He's always wanting to talk to us.

He loves us, he wants to converse with us.

Our problem is we don't know that our spirit is the receiver.

We live so much by the mind and the body.

And I want you to turn to Acts 13, verse 1 to 3.

Acts 13:1–3

I want to give you a couple of scriptures in the outset of this message about how the early church heard the voice of God.

Read the book of Acts one day just to highlight the places people heard the voice of God.

And in this particular one, it was the first call to missions.

In Acts 13 and 1, there were in the church at Antioch certain prophets and teachers.

Now I mentioned that we have a lot of guys that move in the prophetic that have come this week, and they're gonna be in the church for you.

Prophets and teachers.

And it says, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, separate or set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them.

I have to just inject what happened about four or five years ago on a hunting trip with about 50 pastors.

I happened to be in a cabin with Pastor Robert and Pastor James.

And they came in late at night.

I had just come in, and I didn't know James well.

And I looked across the room at his face, and immediately a picture came in my spirit of some stationery.

Back when I was the associate chaplain at ORU, it was a piece of stationery with a shepherd staff all the way down the left side of it.

Immediately, when I looked at James, this stationery just came before me and I saw a shepherd's staff.

I said, I don't know who you are, but God has placed a pastoral anointing on you, and you're going to pastor a church.

And Brother Robert began to speak to me just a little bit about it, but I really saw that James is carrying a pastor's mantle.

And now, of course, in December, Pastor Robert announced to us that Pastor James is going to be his successor.

And I could just tell you by the Spirit, God has great things in store for Gateway.

Can I have an amen to that?

Great, great things.

That's the power of the prophetic.

And it happens through pictures, it happens through inward voice, inward witness.

You can hear the voice of God through pastors.

Or you can hear the voice of God through parents, believe it or not.

You can hear the voice of God through prophecy.

You can hear the voice of God through Scripture.

That's why I encourage you to have a daily Bible reading, seven ways to hear the voice of God.

But I'm going to talk about three of those in this message that we see right here in Acts 13, 3.

Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

Now, obviously, this had to be some kind of a prophecy because it says the Holy Spirit said, Well, how does he say?

I mean, you may hear his voice out loud, but I never have.

He said it probably through a prophet.

That's why they said there were prophets and teachers there.

Now I know a lot of churches are nonprofit organizations, not really, I'm joking.

But here's what I pick up in this too.

It says, while they were fasting and ministering to the Lord, then they fasted again.

I just gotta tell you guys, I don't like to fast.

I don't even like talking about fasting.

It makes me want to go get some good barbecue from Dallas.

Come on down.

In fact, it shouldn't be called fasting, it should be called slowing, because every moment it seems like you're just starving yourself to death.

And so I've never felt led to fast either at all.

But I remember my first three-day fast, and I'm encouraging you in this because in fasting, you hear the voice of God a whole lot better.

It's almost as though your body starts shutting down, your mind starts shutting down after a couple of days, and your spirit comes to the forefront and says, Hey guys, did y'all remember me?

I mean, I'm the one that's supposed to hear the voice of God.

And I remember my first three-day fast.

In the third day, I literally thought I was gonna die.

I look like a refugee from a concentration camp to me, man.

I just, so I'm in Walmart with Melanie, and I'm so full of self-pity.

I haven't eaten in three days.

And by the way, you can live for three days without food.

I mean, we could live off the land for quite some time with what we have.

So as I'm pitying myself, I heard a voice over the microphone say, Shoppers, we have hot biscuits in the garden department.

That just wasn't fair.

Because I love a hot biscuit with honey and butter on it.

And I still three people just left the room when I said that.

Popeye's biscuit.

I love them, I love them.

And I thought, I've got to break this fast.

I told Melanie, that's it.

I I can't go any further.

And I headed to the garden department.

I walked into the garden department, I saw a lady at a desk with a microphone there, and I thought, well, that's the lady that said it.

And I walked over and I said, ma'am, where are the hot biscuits?

She said, What?

I said, You just announced that you had hot biscuits back here.

She said, No, I didn't.

She said, I said, we have hibiscus in the garden department.

She said, You can chew on some of that if you need to.

Let he that hath ears to hear what he wants to hear.

But I'm saying, if you need to hear the voice of God, and I encourage you this week, as we're here ministering prophetically, if you want a word from the Lord, just miss a meal or something.

Say, Lord, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Now let me give you these three ways quickly.

You can write them down on your phone.

Please don't surf the internet while I'm talking to you on your phone.

Here's number one, the inward witness.

Now I'm gonna put that up on the screen.

The inward witness.

Romans says that the spirit bears witness, witness with our spirit.

And as many as are led by the spirit, they're the sons of God.

There is a divine witness.

And on the witness stand, it's usually just yes or no.

The judge says, just answer the question, yes or no.

And what I learned about the Holy Spirit's witness, whenever you ask him to, he'll give you a yes or no.

Now, for me, Pastor James, I figured out that 90% of my guidance is just yes or no.

Lord, should I marry this person?

Yes or no?

Lord, should I take this job?

Yes or no?

I just need a yes or no.

And in that yay or nay, that yes or no is where guidance comes.

Well, the Holy Spirit has a way down in your spirit of communicating yes and no.

When it's a yes, you receive peace down in here.

When it's a no, there's a pause.

There's a there's a a check, we call it.

Kind of a scratchy feeling instead of a velvet feeling.

It's something down in here.

If you ask the Lord, Lord, is this the right time for me to do this?

Is this the place I should move my family?

These are big decisions.

And a yes or a no is usually enough.

When I graduated from college at ORU, 1931.

No, not really.

1976.

I remember my plan was to go to Africa as a missionary, and I left the graduation that day.

So glad I had my diploma.

You know, some people graduated, Summa Kum Laud.

I graduated, Lori, Lordie, come get me.

That's what I and I left and I was so excited, and I went by the chaplain's office, and I stuck my head in just to tell them all bye.

And a guy was on the phone, Gary McIntosh, and he put his hand over the receiver as I walked in.

He said, Larry, would you like to lead a singing group this summer from ORU and be their minister, their preacher?

Now I had plans to leave for Africa a month later.

But the moment the man said that to me, a peace came in my spirit.

Not up here.

My mind said, You're crazy.

But in my spirit, there was a peace, and I heard myself say, Yes, I'll do that.

Well, that changed my whole life.

I ended up being hired by the school as their associate chaplain.

Then I had uh met my wife there, and she came, and then we ended up getting married.

You just have no idea, and I like that verse, the steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord.

But we could also say the steps and the stops of a good man are ordered of the Lord.

It's that inward witness.

And let me tell you guys, don't go beyond that witness.

It don't matter how good it looks, if you have that pause inwardly, don't move forward.

Or if it is a green light inwardly, a peace, you can proceed.

Here's the second way that you know that you're hearing the voice of God and that you're being led by the Spirit.

The inward voice.

Now we're gonna go a little bit deeper in being led by the Spirit.

Inward witness is the most general, basic thing about being led by the Spirit.

The inward witness.

Just follow your witness.

I'd say that to any of you here, just follow your witness.

But occasionally, and I'm using that word occasionally because only about 10 times or so in my whole life have I heard the inward voice of God.

I've never heard the audible voice of God.

Not that I don't want to or couldn't, but he speaks to me inwardly down here.

And the reason I know it's him speaking is it doesn't pass through the cognitive processes of my mind.

And suddenly there'll be a sentence.

Now, when God speaks a sentence to you, it's strong, it shakes the cedars of Lebanon.

The psalmist said, You know that you have been spoken to by God.

It first happened to me when I was 16 years old.

I had just given my life to the Lord fully.

I was the church janitor and I had a garbage can in my hand, emptying garbage cans, and I walked in the back of the church and just emptying garbage cans.

I mean, I still remember it like anything.

And the moment I stepped through that door, the spirit said in my spirit, you know I've called you to preach, don't you?

Now I wasn't expecting that.

That came out of nowhere.

Generally, the voice of God comes out of nowhere, it's not something that you've been thinking about.

And I said, Lord, I'll do that.

I was gonna be a lawyer, my sister was a lawyer, but I said, I will obey you, Lord.

I walked across the driveway and told my parents what had happened.

My dad said, Well, great, that's wonderful.

Can you preach this Sunday morning?

Now I'm 16 and I got a message together on the rich young ruler.

I preached 10 minutes, and I've just got to admit to you guys, I was making some stuff up by the end of the message.

But now, 54 years later, that was the word of the Lord to me.

And then within a month or two, I'm just giving you an illustration or two of how it's happened in my life.

I was walking down the high school corridor and I saw a girl about 10 feet in front of me, didn't think anything about it, and the same voice said to me, You're gonna marry that girl.

Now I'm a basketball player, that's all I'm thinking about.

I'm 16 years of age, I'm not thinking about marriage.

That didn't go through my brain.

And so I kind of sped up a little bit and kind of got closer to her just to kind of see what I was gonna be having to live with the rest of my life.

Beautiful girl.

But the interesting thing was that Sunday, her family showed up at our church, and her dad was a pastor who needed a job, and my father hired him as our first associate pastor.

She went on staff with our family, and I got to know her, Melanie.

Six years later, I married that girl, and I've been married 47 years to her now, from that one time that I heard God's voice.

In fact, let me just let you know that our whole church started when my dad rode up to an intersection and he was turning left to go to a business deal he was doing, and the Lord told him to turn right, and he went right and said, You're looking for land, and he found some property within a couple of minutes that turned into our church property, a hundred acres, a 6,000-seat building, and now 60 years our church has been there from turn right.

Now, I don't know what you've heard from the Lord, but I'm encouraging you.

There's an inward voice, but let me move to the third thing: the inward vision.

First is the inward witness.

That's a yes or a no.

A green light or a red light, that'll work for almost all of us in most applications, but occasionally the Lord will speak his voice down in here, and you'll know, in your knower, as somebody said, you'll know that God has spoken to you.

But the third way is an inward vision.

Now, here's the way God speaks to me a lot in prophecy this week.

That's the way he'll speak to me a lot, is with pictures.

A picture will just appear in my conscience, and I'm aware from my spirit that there's a picture of something the Holy Spirit is communicating to me.

You know, it says your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.

Now I'm still seeing visions, that's how I know I'm a young man.

Isn't that beautiful?

But let me just mention to you that inward vision may be something you can see with your natural eyes.

Peter did.

Peter saw a curtain or a sheet let down from heaven in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

He saw that sheet, and the Lord said, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

That was an open vision.

I've never had an open vision, but I've had a number of inward visions.

Let me explain the most notable one.

I was at this time in 1996 doing my first extended fast.

And by the way, when you fast a long period of time, your body loses its appetite on day five or six, and then you start getting energy.

Your brain gets really sharp, your body starts feeling great.

And so I was in a long fast, and on about the 15th day, I was driving to Texas with my wife, going around the curve in Baton Rouge, where the governor's mansion is.

We're the state capital of Louisiana.

And the governor's home is right by the state capitol, and it's in that curve.

So I looked over at the mansion like I've done a hundred times or more.

And when I looked at it, not with my natural eyes, but my spirit, I saw the front door of the mansion blow open like a wind, like it was fall.

And the door blew open, and I saw some leaves kind of come after it.

That's all I saw.

And I'm driving along, I said, Melanie, I just had the strangest vision inside, inward vision.

I saw the front door of the mansion blow open.

She said, What does that mean?

I said, I believe the Lord is going to open the door for a Bible study.

Well, to my surprise, when I got back from my Texas trip, there was a note on my desk from the governor's secretary that said, The governor was on his treadmill last week exercising.

He saw a commercial with you on it, and something said to him to have you come teach him the whole Bible in four lessons.

And she said, Would you do it?

His whole staff will be there.

I said, Yes, ma'am, I will.

And so I brought my briefcase full of 15 Bibles, and I walked up to that same door I had just seen a week earlier, and that door opened, and I walked in, and the governor and his staff were sitting in the living room.

I passed them all out a Bible and I taught them the creation the first week, the chosen people the second week, the Christ the third week, and the church the fourth week.

Well, after that, he said, Can you continue?

Now he's 70 years old, worth 90 million dollars, didn't take a salary.

And he said, Can you can you continue?

I said, Yes.

So every Wednesday morning for two years, I was in his, now by that time we moved back to his uh dining room area.

And then he got reelected.

So I ended up going four more years.

I ended up six years teaching him the Bible.

In fact, I gave him an associate's Bible college degree when he finished his sixth year as the governor of Louisiana.

What a miracle! And that all happened from an inward vision.

And nobody can tell me that I wasn't from the Lord because it played out exactly as I saw in that vision.

Now, why I'm saying that to you is you may be seeing things from the Holy Spirit that you didn't even realize God was showing you a snapshot of your future.

Kind of like if I pulled a curtain back on the stage and showed you an automobile or something, and then I pulled the curtain again, but your mind took a snapshot of it.

That's what I mean by that inward vision.

You see your future in advance.

Now we're really talking about God directing your life, but He can use those other four methods as well.

I guess the main thing is that you be open this week to one of the seven things, and that's prophecy.

Prophecy.

We're not supernatural people, we're not we're not connected to God in some special way, but we have learned to hear from down here and not just up here, and that's what I want for you.

Now you're in this service, and you might say, Wow, I've never heard the voice of God.

In fact, you may not even be walking with God right now, and you're in control, total control of your own life.

You know, you just kind of make every decision.

Once you know the Lord, you're no longer a decision maker, you're a hearer.

He makes all the decisions.

Now, I don't know where you stand with God, and you might have come in here just sort of hungry for something.

This is what you're hungry for.

To walk with God like Adam in the cool of the day.

He said they walked and conversed.

And what I'd like to do right now is ask you to bow your heads with me.

If you're in this service, as we start this prophetic weekend, and you're here and you'd say to me, Pastor Larry, I don't I don't ever hear the voice of God because I'm in total control.

But I'm ready to turn the control of my life over to God Himself.

I believe He has such a beautiful plan for you that if you'll give Him the control, He'll do things that you can't even conceive of.

If you're in this service here or at any of our campuses or one of the correctional institutes, you've got your head bowed.

Search your heart.

And if you would say to me, Larry, I want you to pray with me and include me in a simple prayer, abdicating the control of my life, turning it over to God Himself to talk to me, speak to me, and show me things about my future.

I'm gonna look in every direction here at this campus.

Our other pastors are on the stage doing the same.

And as I do, if you're in the balcony or down here or wherever you may be, even online, and you would say, Pastor, pray for me.

Include me in that prayer.

I'm ready to surrender the control of my life to the Lord, to the Holy Spirit.

Here's what I want you to do right now.

Without hesitation, if that's you, I want you to slip up your hand right in your seat.

Just hold it up high.

Yes, all across this room, people are lifting their hands in the balcony.

Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

People have their hand raised.

Now let me ask you to do a second thing.

Take that hand, put it over your heart that you just raised, because that really is where your spirit is.

Heart and spirit are very synonymous terms in scripture.

And I want everybody to pray this out loud before our campus pastors take the service.

Pray this out loud.

Everyone in this building, say, Heavenly Father, today I open my heart and I surrender control.

I open my hands and I stop gripping my life and controlling every decision.

Lord, I want to become a hearer and not a decision maker.

Speak to me, Lord, and your servant is listening.

Speak to me this week.

Lord, I will seek you more than anything else.

I want a word from you.

I need a witness from you.

I need to hear your voice.

And I need to see your vision.

I thank you for it, Lord.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's give God praise for all the people that just gave their hearts to the Lord.

Amen.

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.