The Voices in Your Head - Part 2

This is not in my notes, but I will tell you that as we began

this, this deeper thing about the unseen things around us, I

watched a lot of people really get creamed by the enemy.

It's a lot of people really get attacked health wise, finance

wise, job wise, spiritually, relationally, seen a lot of

attacks. But I want you to understand

something. I'm also right now seeing a lot

of breakthroughs. I'm seeing a lot of people not

just like a reconciliation of these issues that were under

attack. What I mean is something greater

than that. Those are great.

We praise God for blessings and reconciliation and restoration.

But I want you to know that I'm seeing a lot of people

encountered the Holy Spirit in a way that they've never

encountered him before. And I say him because as we

talked about last week, he's our forgotten advantage.

Jesus said it is better for you and I to have the Holy Spirit

than to have Jesus himself walking side by side with us.

That's a pretty weighty statement.

I'm seeing breakthroughs. So let me just push and

challenge you a little bit today.

If you come from a background where you're just like man's

Holy Spirit stuff is weird. And people were a little shouty

today spiritually. I would just say, suck it up,

buttercup. All right, OK.

I don't want to have any limitations on what the Holy

Spirit wants to do today. And you might say, like, who are

you to put a limitation on the Holy Spirit?

I don't know. That word says I can grieve him

and he does not force himself in.

If he wanted to create robots, he would have done it.

If he just wanted a creation that did whatever he wanted, he

would have done it and took away our free will.

He didn't do that. We did it.

We call it AI. He created you and I with free

will so that we could choose to be a part of this.

There are moves of God happening all over the world.

He does not need you or I to accomplish His will.

His Kingdom will not fall because we fail.

But don't you want to be a part of the wind?

You can turn to 1st Kings Chapter 19.

We're going to be reading a few stories over the next several

weeks that you're probably familiar with, but I hope that

you'll hear through a different lens.

And while you're going to 1st Kings 19 once, you know, one

time when I was a, a youth worker, I was a young man.

I was not ordained. I wasn't the youth pastor yet.

I was the assistant. Some of you all would remember

the youth pastor before I was the youth pastor.

His name was JJ and he was about 8 1/2 feet tall.

Not really, but it felt like it. I just know that like sometimes

my neck hurt when I was talking to him.

And and we were we were doing a youth trip and oh man, we're

taking a group of teenagers to youth conference in Greensboro.

Welcome to Club liberty. So DJ still in there.

So we were going to youth conference in Greensboro.

This is important that you know that.

Where were we going? All right, good.

We're we're engaged here. That details important because I

was sitting in the front passenger seat and somewhere

along the way I fell asleep. I still have this thing.

If I am sitting still for too long, I'm just I'm done.

If I'm not doing something. It's part of why I multitask so

much. But I don't remember how long I

was asleep. I just remember waking up and

slowly realizing that we were in Wilmington.

So for those of you that are not great with geography and that

number increases every year because let's be honest, we have

maps in our phone now. I told somebody last week about

the vacation that my family are in are, are going on.

We're we're leaving today and we're going down to Myrtle Beach

just for a week and just go get a loan and pour into our kids

and just be present for them and make memories.

And I'll visit with Pastor Tom while he's down there.

While I'm down there, he's down there a whole lot more.

And I was telling somebody and they went, oh, so you're going

to take and they started talking about the interstates.

They said, I think it's faster. And they started talking about

these routes. And internally, I'm, I'm asking

myself, do I interrupt him and tell him that I'm not going to

retain any of his travel advice? I am going to put the address in

my phone. I just am.

That's where we are. Well, anyway, Wilmington is not

on the way to Greensboro by a couple of hours.

So at this point, we did the only reasonable thing you can do

when you've taken the youth group several hours in the wrong

direction. We stopped at Burger King.

We were like, hey, but we, we need a win here.

So we had one car and 1 van full of teenagers, 4 youth workers.

And I remember sitting there because the adults, all we could

do is laugh. We thought it was hilarious.

I mean, there's nothing else you can do.

You've got to recap, recount a couple of different hours.

But we were in Wilmington. You might as well have a

whopper. And the teenagers did not think

it was funny. Out of all the times I've looked

at the youth and been like, guys quiet down, nothing got them

more quiet than realizing that we were two hours away from our

starting point. Not our destination, our

starting point. Some of them were talking, but

they were whispering really angry whispers in their phone.

And I thought, oh good, we we created a bonding moment for

them and their parents. Like Silver Linings, right?

I'm pretty sure that they were just giving breaking news about

the complete incompetence of these youth workers that were

there. But listen, when I look back on

that story now, I, I think there were two different problems

happening in that van, in that extra car.

Somebody was listening to the wrong directions and somebody,

me wasn't listening to anything. I think it's a pretty good

picture of the problem that we're going to talk about this

morning because every one of us has voices giving us directions,

and some of them come from outside of us.

Your family has a voice, and sometimes it's louder than your

own voice. Your friends have a voice.

Our culture has a voice. Social media has multiple

personalities. Some of us spend an incredible

amount of time listening to people that we don't even like,

which is a really strange way to live our life.

I'll save that sermon for another day, but some of the

loudest voices don't come from outside of us at all.

They're already inside of our heads.

Your fear has a voice. The desires that you have, they

speak to you too. Insecurity actually has quite a

loud voice. Your past has a voice.

Your wounds have a voice. Your conscience has a voice.

Temptations have a voice. Demons have voices.

And sometimes they can all be talking at the same time.

But I want you to know that if you're a follower of Jesus,

there's another voice that belongs in that conversation.

You believe God speaks, right? That's where things can get

complicated. Because one of the questions

that Christians have asked me more than almost anything else

over the years that I've been a pastor is some version of how do

I know if this was God? How do I know if this was God or

if this was myself or if this was the enemy?

Well, how do we know if the Holy Spirit is leading us when it's

what we want to do? Some of us feel guilty doing

what we want to do because it feels like the Holy Spirit's

stamp of approval is on it. And then we're like, well, if it

was God, he wouldn't want me to be that happy.

He'd want me to be kind of happy.

But so sometimes we beat ourselves up over it.

How do we know if God is warning us or if we're really just

afraid of something? How do you know if it's a

conviction from God or condemnation from the enemy?

It preaches well to say that it's harder to put into

practice. How do we know if these thoughts

that we have come from him or from ourselves or just from the

enemy? I think sometimes we've made it

more mysterious than it has to be because you probably already

recognize more than you think you do.

And I'm going to lay that out this morning.

You didn't turn here and you don't have to.

But I want you to know that in Romans Chapter 7, starting in

Romans 7 · chapter mention

verse 14, it says the trouble is not with the law, for it is

spiritual and good. The troubles with me.

This is the apostle Paul, he says, the troubles with me, for

I am all too human, a slave to sin.

You familiar with this? He says I don't really

understand myself. So if you're sitting there like,

hey, me too, you're just like Paul, great job.

He said. I don't really understand

myself. He said I want to do what is

right, but I don't do it. Instead I do what I hate.

Is there anybody here that can relate to that thought today he

said. But if I know that what I'm

doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good.

In other words, what the Lord had already laid out was good,

but it wasn't enough because we still desire to do the wrong

thing. We are in competition for God's

voice in our own minds. I love Paul's honesty because

he's essentially saying something that we would if we

were vulnerable enough. Sometimes I do things that I

know I shouldn't do Congratulations.

I want you to know that this is actually good news.

I want you to think about what this means, because if you're

doing something and while you're doing it, there's something

inside of you saying you know this isn't right.

Apparently you do possess some ability to recognize right from

wrong. You can hear him.

Some of the issues with your willpower, yourself, control,

the fruit of the spirit will get there.

But I really mean this. Congratulations, this.

I've got plenty of sarcasm coming, but that's not one of

them. Even if you're like, yeah, but I

did the wrong thing. Yeah, but while you were doing

the wrong thing, you heard God. And that is half the battle.

If you can hear him, you just have to get up that spiritual

gumption to be able to say yes, Sir, no matter what it is.

That's the second part of the problem.

But we can do this. Sometimes we know exactly what's

right. We just don't want to do it.

And that's part of why we struggle with this question of

hearing God. We say things like, I wish God

would speak to me. And I think sometimes God could

reasonably respond. I'd be happy to discuss the next

thing after we deal with the last thing I told you.

We say we want to hear more from God, but what we really mean

normally is we want information from God.

I want to know that this is going to work out.

I want to know what to do next. I want to know what job to take.

I want to know who to marry. And by the way, these things are

perfectly reasonable questions to ask him.

It just can't be the sum total of your relationship.

It's too transactional. Just tell me what you want me to

do, right? For those that are married,

anytime you look at your spouse and you're like, just tell me

what to do that'll make you happy and I'll do it.

How many times has that worked out for you?

Well, I don't want to have to tell you.

You're going to have to tell them something.

But you shouldn't have to tell them everything, right?

Same thing with the Lord. What if he says forgive them and

you say, no God, I wanted to know where I should live

geographically. You're changing the subject.

I said what job should I take? And you said forgive my wife.

We'll get to that later. You don't get to choose that.

What if he says stop doing things you know you shouldn't be

doing? No, God, I'm asking.

I'm asking about what gym I should join.

There's a question underneath all these questions, and I hope

that this hits you with the conviction that it hit me.

Do I really want to hear God if I don't get to choose what he

says? So let me ask you, do you really

want to hear God if you don't get to choose what he says?

If you want to hear His opinion on XY and Z, but you don't want

to hear it on AB and C, but he wants to talk about the whole

alphabet, are you still willing to hear Him?

I don't think most of us struggle to hear God because God

refuses to speak. I know that there are desert

seasons and winter seasons. I think sometimes we just don't

hear God because if we're being completely truthful, we don't

want to hear from Him enough. We want the information He has.

I want His voice no matter what it is.

I'm planning to share this, but I mean, I had a chance to talk

to my family about it, but this morning I wasn't even asleep.

And I had this like I had this vision and it was a bad one.

It was the face of somebody that I was very close to at one point

talking to me and telling me how all of the people that I'm close

to don't really love me, don't really respect me.

Like it's, it's literally like every insecurity, like, but just

like a stick like poked right into the wound, right?

And they said something at the end that that just completely

sealed the deal, Like, oh, this is completely from the devil.

I'm just, I'm like, I'm trying to focus.

I'm trying to like get quiet. And I, and I feel like I've got

this, this vision that was incredibly discouraging.

And so I cry out to the Lord. What do you do when you have an

attack? You cry out to the Lord, right?

So I cry out to the Lord and I need some sort of word.

I need a significant thing. I need him to like speak into my

life and, and I said, God, I don't want my relationships to

fall apart. God, I don't want this to be

something that I need to be thinking of over and over again.

And you know what he said to me? I heard him.

He said, I got it. And then I sat there because I

surely there's more. There was not more.

He said, I got it. Do you understand how valuable

that is? Have you ever had somebody that

in the middle of freaking out, they just put their hand on me

and they're like, hey, it's not that big of a deal.

It's not my style. My style is let's sit down,

let's talk about it. Let's let's do pro and con list,

let's pray, let's intercede together.

Let's ask God to give us the direct steps.

But how blessed are we to have the people that are like, chill,

it's not that big of a deal. And God said, I got it.

And I went, OK, so that you don't want me to do anything.

You know what he said nothing he'd already spoken like, but

I'm still trying to, I'm trying to squeeze one more word out of

him. I wanted information.

How do you got it? How are you going to make it OK?

How are you going to comfort me? Or do I just trust him?

There's a story in the Old Testament that gives us a really

good picture of how loud life gets.

And I want you to know what had just happened before we get to

it. The prophet Elijah, one of the

coolest, one of the coolest. He's like, he's just like one of

the Old Testament heroes I mean, to read about.

And he's just experienced one of the greatest spiritual victories

of his life in in the chapter previous, Israel had been pulled

towards worship of Baal under King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

And Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel

and they build altars. And it was one of like every

youth pastor loves preaching this to the teenagers.

And the reason is because they're like, let's have a

contest. The prophets of Baal get to cry

out to Baal and see if he can create fire.

And then he gets to cry out to the Lord and see if the Lord can

create fire. And when Baal is not answering

them, he's like, what's wrong? Does he have to go relieve

himself? And youth pastors love to unpack

what that means. Yes.

Elijah was mocking their false gods so hard.

He was like, maybe he's in the bathroom.

Maybe he's got an upset Tommy, right?

He got some of that lettuce a couple weeks ago from Taco Bell,

right? He's making fun of them and he's

like, all right, Lord, show them who you are.

They're in the they have soaked this altar in water and fire

from heaven comes burns everything up.

He slaughters the false prophets.

This is a huge victory. Yes, the people fall on their

faces that are there. They declare the Lord is God.

And if you stopped reading there, you'd expect Elijah to

feel unstoppable. But talk to any minister worth

their weight. And after a big victory, there's

normally a big dip. And Jezebel sends him this

message. She tells Elijah that by the

next day, she intends to have him killed.

And this man, this prophet who just watched fire fall from

heaven, runs for his life. She's not even chasing him.

She passed him a note. And he ends up exhausted, afraid

and one of the worst ways a Christian can be, which is

isolated. And he's discouraged enough that

he tells God, I want to die. But I want you to notice this

because Elijah has heard a lot of voices by this point.

He's heard the voices of a nation that has wandered away

from God. Maybe you're too spiritual.

Maybe you're too all into this. Maybe you take it too seriously.

He's also heard the prophets of Baal.

He's heard Jezebel threaten his life.

He's heard his own fear. He's heard his own exhaustion.

And he's heard his own discouragement.

And some of the things that Elijah is now telling himself

aren't even true. He believes that he's

essentially the only faithful person left, and many Christians

have felt that way before, too. And God is eventually going to

tell him that there are thousands who have not yet bowed

to bail. But I want you to know that

Elijah is not just sitting peacefully on a mountain waiting

for God to whisper something inspirational to him.

His head is loud. So if you struggle with this, if

you struggle with quieting yourself, you are not alone.

God brings him to Mount Sinai, the same mountain associated

with Moses and one of the most dramatic encounters with God in

Israel's history. And Elijah spends a night in a

cave there, and God tells him to come out because the Lord is

about to pass by. Listen to this starting in verse

9. There he came to a cave where he

spent the night, but the Lord said to him, what are you doing

here, Elijah? And Elijah replied, I've

zealously served the Lord God Almighty, but the people of

Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down

your altars, and killed every one of your prophets.

I'm the only one left and now they're trying to kill me too.

When? OK, I can say this in hindsight

because I I know how the story goes, but I understand how he

feels that way. The Lord says, go stand before

me on the mountain. And as Elijah stood there, the

Lord passed by. Told you.

These are familiar stories to a lot of Christians who've gone to

church all their lives. It says as the Lord passed by,

there's a mighty windstorm that hit the mountain.

It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose,

but the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not

in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there

was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And I think that's really significant because he had just

seen fire from heaven fall. So you would have assumed at

that point, surely this is the Lord.

But it says. And after the fire, there was

the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped

his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of

The Cave. And once again, a voice said,

What are you doing here, Elijah? That's actually where I'm going

to stop with that story for this morning.

I don't want you to misunderstand what just

happened. The lesson here, I've heard it

taught this way before, is that God always speaks in a whisper.

That is not correct. He can.

This is the same God who had just answered Elijah with fire

from heaven. God can be loud.

God can be dramatic when he wants to.

The point is that Elijah had all kinds of voices competing for

his attention, and he needed to recognize which one was God.

And so do we. The truth is, there are

different voices that can speak into our lives.

And the first one's probably the most obvious.

We're going to talk about three of them.

We talk to ourselves. You have an internal voice and

you think things through. You have opinions.

You have desires and fears. And is there anybody else here

who like, replays conversations? You don't just have it and then,

like, throw that away. You like, replay the

conversation in your head. Anybody else?

Don't make me crazy, All right? And suddenly you come up with

the perfect response and you're like, oh shoot, that was 3 weeks

ago. It's probably too late to go and

say that now. You imagine what might happen

tomorrow and you interpret what somebody meant rather than what

they actually said. Because we don't want to go to

them. Be like, what did you mean by

that? Because am I going to start a

fight? Your mind is talking all the

time. Your voice that you have is

unique. It's not like anybody else's

internal voice because it's formed by everything you've

experienced. What you want, what you fear,

what hurt you when you were growing up, what you've been

taught, if you have been trained and discipled well in spiritual

things, or if you were manipulated at a church, These

things all speak to you. Then, of course, there's the

voice of the Lord. And the Lord does speak to us.

We established this last week that Jesus said the Holy Spirit

would teach us, remind us, guide us, and speak to us.

It's hard to do all these things if He's not going to speak to

us. God's always communicated with

His people. That is consistent all

throughout the Scriptures. When we talk about hearing God,

that doesn't mean you should always expect an audible voice

to come booming out of the ceiling.

I have heard an audible voice before from the Lord and it was

only the word no. I was about to step out the door

and go do something, not the worst thing, but something I

knew I shouldn't do. And I was engaged to Cassie and

I and I stepped out of my apartment and I heard no and I

turned around and my dog Cringer was sitting there and he did the

whole I was like, man, I really wish I could tell if you just

heard that too. The second time I heard an

audible voice, it wasn't even about me, it was about somebody

else, but it calmed my spirit. It's not the way it normally

happens. I can't promise you this.

I can't promise I'll ever hear it again.

But I want you to know this. God can speak however He chooses

to, through fire, through sound, through a whisper, through your

spirit. He can do whatever He chooses.

He's sovereign. But most of the time when

Christians talk about hearing God, what we're talking about is

we recognize when the Holy Spirit is leading us, convicting

us, reminding us, directing us, speaking into our lives from our

Spirit. And there's one more possibility

that we have to acknowledge as far as these big voices go,

because the Bible acknowledges it too.

The devil talks too. Demons talk.

So evil spirits do communicate. And I'm not saying that to scare

anybody, but if that's true and I don't tell you, then shame on

me. We spent several weeks talking

about spiritual warfare, so this shouldn't surprise us.

But from the beginning of the Bible, Satan has used words

like, did God really say So? He lies and accuses and he

attempts and he twists the truth.

Demonic spirits always attempt to influence people.

And so biblically, we just have to acknowledge these three

possibilities before we move any further.

Sometimes you hear yourself, sometimes you hear God, and

sometimes you hear the enemy. None of those voices necessarily

show up with a name tag though. So how do you know?

How do you know whether this thought is coming from your own

desires, from the Holy Spirit, or if you're being lied to by

the enemy? We have to start by learning to

test the voice. Whenever you hear something,

whether it's a thought, something in your spirit, if

there are different voices that can speak into your lives, then

you have to learn how to test what we're hearing, because

there are two dangerous extremes here.

The first one is being completely unsure about

everything. If every thought becomes a

mystery where you're constantly asking, was that God?

Was that me? Was that the devil?

You can be so afraid of getting everything wrong that you never

move at all. And that is a lot of times one

of the key things that the devil hopes to accomplish.

Some Christians are terrified to take a step because you're

waiting for certainty, and certainty almost never comes.

It's called faith. But the other extreme is just as

dangerous, and that is you assuming that you always know

exactly what voice you're hearing.

Have you ever heard somebody who says, God told me so much that

you're like, God, I'm telling you nothing, I've heard this

before. And it's not based on the

frequency. It's based on when they say God

told me this is going to happen and then it doesn't happen.

God said that this is going to come to pass and then this

doesn't come to pass. At some point you're like, I

wonder what God you talk to. It can be very dangerous to

assume that you always know what God's will is.

OK, and I want you to know this. Believing God speaks does not

mean believing every thought that enters your head came from

him. And the more convinced I become

that I could never misunderstand God, the less likely I am to

test what I'm hearing. I have to test it.

We're going to be in Matthew 4 in just a moment.

This can be really dangerous because sometimes what I want

sounds like God to me. Have you ever noticed that?

Maybe it happens to you too. The more that you really want

something, God sounds a whole lot like your voice.

And so the more that you want something, you're like, you're

praying over this and you really, really want it, but

you're looking for the information over the Spirit,

right? And all of a sudden his voice

sounds like yours. Man, you deserve this.

You work hard. Like, is it him?

It's just something we've got to be aware of.

But if I'm going to attach God's name to something and I'm going

to tell other people, I should be more careful than I am when I

tell somebody my own opinion. Some Christians are faster to

say God told me to tell you this than we are to tell somebody who

we voted for. You'll protect yourself, but you

won't protect the integrity of if that was really the Lord

speaking to you or not. We need to make sure that we're

very careful when we say the Lord said this.

By the way, if you feel like the Lord saying something and you

don't have complete discernment, there's a really easy way to

handle that. I don't know if this is from the

Lord or not, but this is something I was feeling in my

spirit. You test it.

Take it to your prayer closet. It's really easy, right?

You're not asked to be the next Moses.

OK? It's going to be OK.

Matthew 4 has a really clear image of this because this

happens at the very beginning of Jesus's public ministry.

He, he goes into the wilderness and while he's there, the devil

speaks to him. Check this out in verse one.

Jesus was led by the Spirit. Well, that's problematic.

I mean, we want to be led by the Spirit, right?

But Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be

tempted there by the devil. You like that song Spirit lead

me. You didn't think about where

he's going to lead you, did you? But it's OK if he leads you.

There's a purpose to it. So Jesus was led by the spirit

of the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

And for 40 days and 40 nights he fasted and became very hungry,

as you do. During that time the devil came

to to him and he said to him, if you are the Son of God, tell

these stones to become loves of bread.

Jesus said no. The scriptures say people don't

live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God. And the devil took him to the

holy city Jerusalem, the highest point of the temple.

And he said, if you're the Son of God, jump off.

For the scriptures say he'll order his angels to protect you

and they'll hold you up with their hands so you won't even

hurt your foot on a stone. Jesus responded, the scriptures

also say you must not test the Lord your God.

Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and

showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.

And he said, I'll give it all to you if you will kneel down and

worship me. Get out of your Satan.

Jesus said, for the scripture say you must worship the Lord

your God and serve only him. And the devil went away and the

angels came and took care of Jesus.

Look at that, the devil was right.

He'll send his angels to minister to you.

He just used it out of context, as he often does.

So you notice here that the enemy takes things that sound

reasonable and twists them. Jesus is hungry.

Why not turn the stones into bread?

Let's be honest, we would do that.

Most of us. We do it.

If we do a 24 hour fast, we're cranky the next day.

Jesus answers from Deuteronomy 83, which says people do not

live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God. And then Satan takes Jesus the

highest point of the temple, tells him to jump, and Satan

even quotes Psalm 91 there. That interesting.

The enemy can quote Scripture to you.

Stick that in your spiritual duffel bag for later.

He says the angels will protect you.

But Jesus recognizes that Scripture is being twisted.

So he answers with Deuteronomy 616.

He says you must not test the Lord your God.

And then the devil offers them all the kingdoms of the world.

And I've heard people say before that wasn't even his to offer.

No, it kind of is. He's kind of like running the

show on this earth, unless you belong to the Lord.

And he was going to give him power.

He was offering him power. Jesus had a lot of power, but he

was offering him a different kind of power.

As a matter of fact, he was offering him the kind of power

that the Jewish people wanted Jesus to have.

They wanted Jesus to be a revolutionary and a king and to

rule over things. That's not what he came for.

So he responds from Deuteronomy 613 where he says you must

worship the Lord your God and serve only him. 3 temptations, 3

different lies, and three times Jesus tests what he's hearing

against what God has already spoken.

And that is the part of the story that you cannot afford to

miss this morning. Jesus does not defeat the devil

by trusting his feelings about what sounds right.

He knows the Word of God well enough to recognize what doesn't

belong. And even when Satan starts

quoting scripture himself, Jesus knows it better than him, so he

can tell that it's being twisted.

The test isn't simply Can I find a Bible verse that seems to

support this. The question is whether hearing

actually agrees with what God has said and what he meant.

I've had somebody before tell me, can you find me scriptures

that I can share with my wife? This is not anybody goes to this

church, so you ain't got to worry about that.

They said, can you find scriptures for me that I can

show to my wife that says that she needs to let me, you know,

have my way and that and that it should be me that makes all the

calls. And I went, Nope, no, there are

plenty that you can get and you can take out of context and you

can use to manipulate people. That's what we do, right?

We manipulate the people we love, right?

Nothing's better than giving somebody Christian spiritual

guilt to make them do what you want.

And I said, no, you can do it. You can walk out of here and you

can take any scripture you want and twist it.

And if somebody is not familiar with what God has already said,

they'll fall for it. That's why you have to give

context. There are times when this can

actually make discernment pretty simple.

Think about this. If what you're hearing clearly

contradicts what God has already said in the Bible, I don't need

to keep asking God for an answer.

Sometimes we're saying, God, would you bless this

relationship? But the answer is in black and

white, or even better, maybe it's in red letters.

Sometimes it's written here. It'd be like my kids coming to

Cassie and I and be like, hey, do we need to do our chores

today? What has already been written?

All right, obviously not every decision can work this way.

I'm just telling you that you don't get to ignore what he's

already said because you like what another voice tells you

better. So the Bible doesn't always tell

you exactly what you want. And I want to be clear on this

because again, sometimes we're searching for information.

The Bible is not always going to tell you what job to take or

whether you should move to another city.

There is not a verse in this book that is going to give you

the name of the person you're supposed to marry or what

college to attend. There are going to be times that

you're trying to discern God's direction, and both options in

front of you could fit within what Scripture teaches.

And that's where testing the voice becomes more than just

simply asking if the voice is technically biblical.

I heard this really great definition for discernment

recently. I've heard it a couple times

before. I just always forget it.

It's it's traditionally said that Charles Spurgeon said it,

but we don't really know. But it said discernment is not

knowing right from wrong. It's knowing right from what's

almost right. Yeah, let that sit for a minute.

We want to choose what's right, but sometimes what's almost

right is sitting right there at the doorway and we have to have

this discernment. Another scripture I'm going to

share with you real quick in Acts chapter 10, starting in

Acts 10 · chapter mention

verse 9, we've got Peter in Acts 10 is so interesting to me

because Peter really does hear from God and his immediate

reaction is, oh, that's not God. Here's what it is.

Peter says this the next day is Cornelius's messengers were

nearing the town. Peter went up on the flat roof

to pray. It was about noon and he was

hungry. Man, we got a lot of hungry

disciples here, right? But while Emil was being

prepared, he fell into a trance. Kind of messes up some people's

theology too. He saw the sky open, and he saw

something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners,

and in the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles and birds.

And then a voice said to him, Get up, Peter, kill and eat

them. You all understand that like

Jewish law, you did not kill and eat just anything.

You had very strict rules about this, not just about what you

eat, but who you interact with. The Gentiles were people that

were considered unclean. They're far from the Lord.

So in verse 14, he hears the voice of the Lord.

What are the 1st 2 words that he says in your translation?

Yeah, No, Lord. That's a good answer.

When God talks to you, right? Get up and forgive them.

No Lord, He says no Lord, and here's why.

I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared

impure or unclean. Could you imagine?

Like what was he expecting God? Oh, that's right, I forgot those

dietary laws that I gave you. The voice spoke again.

Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.

Some of us need to remember this about people who have wounded us

and have moved on to to become better and have grown in the

Lord. If the Lord cleans something,

it's clean, let it be. The same vision was repeated 3

times, and then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.

Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean?

Just then the men sent by Cornelius found Simon's house,

and standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon

Peter was staying there. And as Peter was puzzling over

the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, Three men have come

looking for you. Get up, go downstairs and go

with them without hesitation. Don't worry, I've sent them.

Peter spent his entire life understanding certain animals

are unclean. And these were not just

preferences, right? These are things that they were

told set them apart as God's people.

And he gets this whole vision, and Peter tells God no.

There's something almost funny about that when you know how the

story ends. Peter believes he's defending

his obedience to God, to God. God repeats the vision three

times because we are all thick headed when it comes to these

sort of things. Peter's still trying to figure

out what this means. And then all of a sudden this

group of Gentiles shows up at his house and Peter has heard

this. He's seen a vision and he starts

to connect the dots here so that God himself made sure Peter

understood what he was called to do.

If you're not sure what you're supposed to do, don't do it, but

ask the Lord and then start taking steps.

I think that's the other side of testing to remember.

Sometimes we can mistake our own desires for God's voice, and so

we can mistake our own assumptions for God's voice too.

Somebody may come to you and say, well, the Lord told me

this. We might be like, well, the

Lord's never told me that. Do you want to be the litmus

test for how somebody else hears from the Lord?

Because I don't now, if it contradicts Scripture, game

over. But I do want you to know this.

Sometimes God is going to say something that you don't

particularly want to hear. He may tell you to forgive

somebody that you'd rather stay angry with, or apologize.

These things I've already talked about.

But He might tell you to give when you'd rather keep, or to

stay when you'd rather leave, or to leave when you'd rather stay.

God has never promised to limit himself to saying things that

you agree with. So testing the voice is going to

require humility in both directions.

You need enough humility to admit that just because you

thought something doesn't mean God said it.

You have to be willing to let Him correct you.

But you also need to have enough humility to admit that just

because something isn't what you expected God to say doesn't mean

He isn't saying it. You don't already know His will,

and you don't know what He's going to say.

If he knew his will, you wouldn't have to ask Him.

So the goal isn't to become suspicious of every thought, but

to test it. Well, Hannah, the time has come.

Hannah's going to help me out here.

And you know, a couple weeks ago, I used, I used this a

blindfold. And I'm I've I found that I've

become a very big fan of using a blindfold in illustrations

because it makes makes people very uncomfortable and not me,

but them. So here's what's going to

happen. And you just got back from

beautiful Guatemala. She was on her team.

She she was singing for the Lord, learned a song in Spanish,

ministered down there. Was that not amazing?

I mean, can we honor what she did?

It was cool about Hannah like that made her more uncomfortable

than helping me with the illustration.

Will. It's not why I did it, but it

was like was like a bonus. So I need you to put this on.

OK, I can't move on until you do this.

Come on. But, you know, special reward.

I have this bag of Guatemalan coffee, right?

And this is the kind that we bring back and we serve in our

cafe next door because it supports living water adopted

child. Anyway, so this is the can you

see anything? Nope.

OK, She's she's not lying. All right, here's what I need

now. I need three people.

But before you, you, you put your hand up, I need three

people that are willing to come up here and help me that do not

know her. This needs to be there.

Yeah, that's good. All right, so I've got 3.

All right, Just surround her. Here's what we're going to do.

Only one of you is going to be telling her the proper direction

on where the coffee is, right? Only one of you.

Now that being said, I want you to all give her directions

starting now. Louder she in listening.

Hannah, you're not making a lot of progress.

No. OK.

OK. OK.

OK. All right.

All right, Hannah, take the blindfold off for a second.

OK? Just we're going to do this

again in a second. Here's what I want you to know.

OK? Before we do this again, Andy

represents your inner thoughts. This is your voice.

You didn't know it looked like that, did you?

All right, Michael's the devil, right?

Yay. Y'all are surprised.

Come on. All right.

This is voice of God right here. That's not a gentle whisper,

right? So do you know her name?

Why ask her? Katie.

Katie. Hannah.

Nice to meet you. Yeah, that's cool.

So how long you been going to this church?

2 years. Don't tell me.

Tell her over 2 years. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's cool.

All right, So put that back on. I'm going to get this coffee.

I'm going to put it somewhere else.

Now that you know what voice is what, I want you to listen to

these voices again, and I want you to find your way to the

coffee. Wow, look at that.

Look at that. Thank you.

Thank you. No, no, that's for you.

Give it to somebody if you don't want it.

Thank you. Here's what I want you to

understand, OK? Being a Christian, you will

never, ever, ever. And in case you didn't hear me,

ever. Get to the point that you only

hear the voice of God. You're always going to hear all

the voices, but you have to learn what his voice sounds

like. When she didn't know what voice

was what, she wasn't sure who to listen to.

She was doing like the world's worst square dance up here,

right? But as soon as she knew that one

is what God sounds like, OK, I'll follow it.

So here's why this matters so much.

And I was talking about this to the men of the church yesterday

at breakfast. Church 101.

Are you ready for this, Azib? Read your Bible.

Listen, there are so many times I've told somebody you should be

in the Word and they're like, well, obviously.

And then you follow it up with how often are you in the Word?

You're asking for God's will. You want to know what God is

saying to you. You don't even know what He

said, but you want to know what He's saying.

To know His Word is to know His ways.

You cannot get away from this. Now some people, they take the

Bible and they build it into an idol, and they will misuse or

properly use without kindness, the scriptures.

And there are plenty of Christians that were saved and

had vibrant relationships with the Lord before the Bible was

even run through a printing press.

If you were locked up for the rest of your life and you only

have the Holy Spirit, you have enough and He'll take care of

you. But why would you ignore this

when it is so available to you? There are hundreds of

translations or versions of the Bible you can access on your

phone if you don't have a physical one.

And some of them are garbage, but most of them there is some

value to it. Whenever somebody argues and

they're like, well, why are there so many translations?

What's the one right translation?

No, no, no, we do not speak the ancient Greek or Hebrew or

Aramaic. So there is value in so many of

these translations because they're getting across these

concepts and these ideas to you and you've got the Spirit of God

living inside of you. So you can read the NLT or the

NIV or whatever, and you can get some really good things from it.

Here's a really practical question for you.

How much of God's voice are you actually putting into your life?

For me, in a season where I'm not hearing a lot in my spirit

or in my mind from Him, I fill it up with this because I know

it's Him. And then when something happens,

I run it through the filter of who He has revealed Himself to

be in these words. That's why we provide a daily

Bible reading plan here at Liberty.

And every month we print a different copy of the

devotional. If you were reading it

yesterday, there was a misprint and it did like a second

printing of a different day happens.

But we provide this for you to try to help unpack it.

You don't have to read our Bible reading plan.

We're just saying here's an extra resource if it's helpful.

We're not doing it because the church needs more content.

There's already a lot of Christian content out there.

There's more than any of us could ever consume in a

lifetime. We do it because we want you to

read the Bible for yourself. I want Scripture to become

familiar enough that when it enters your mind, you think

about where it is. When when a voice hits your ear,

you instantly start connecting it to something that you read

and you're like, that doesn't sound like God.

He said this secondly. So if we can go to the next one

about testing it. Secondly, I want you to pray.

I mean, we're talking about reading the Bible.

I might as well say pray, right? But I want you to pray because I

don't want you to just pray in the place where like you give

God your list. I want you to talk to him about

what you're hearing. And when you're facing a

decision, I want you to pray something as simple as Holy

Spirit. I want what you want more than I

want what I want. And if you don't, then tell him

I want to want what you want. Look, I'm just, there are plenty

of prayers I've had where I'm like, God, I do not want what

you want in my life. Make me into somebody who does.

Tell God what you're hearing. Tell him your struggle.

He already knows it. He just loves the honesty and

the relationship here. This is the only faith system

where you've got a relationship with the God at hand.

Thirdly, you got to give it some time.

Some people, they'll run to that prayer closet.

They get on a real spiritual high, especially maybe like

after a ladies encounter. What is it the ladies do that

doesn't sound spiritual to me? But you have a ladies encounter,

you go off to a conference or you hear this podcast that

really just pierces your soul. And now you're on a spiritual

high and you know what? For six days, you run to that

prayer closet and you're like, God, I need you to move on this.

I need you to speak today. And then you hit Friday and

before you know it, it's a year and a half later and you're

like, man, I wish I felt the way that I felt after that

conference. You cannot be fuelled by your

emotions. Give it time.

Don't be impatient. Sometimes we've got things that

are blocking us from hearing him, which I'll talk about, and

sometimes, sometimes he's just trying to grow something in US.

And finally, I would tell you this, don't test every voice by

yourself. Another reason we talk so much

about small groups and Christian community is there should be

people in your life that love Jesus.

No scripture, no you and have permission to tell you.

I don't think that's God. You need people who aren't

impressed when you say God told me because they're like, yeah,

God tells me stuff too. Small groups are not just

another activity to fill up your calendar.

We need people that can help us see what we don't see in

ourselves. So this week, don't make it

complicated. Read something, pray something,

test something, and share something with somebody.

This is not a game, guys. We're talking about voices that

can influence and determine the future of your marriage, your

family, your decisions, your very internal peace, and your

relationship with God. So you need to test the voices

you're hearing and sometimes you need to tune the voice too.

Here's what I mean by this, because we're in a different

generation now, but it used to be you had to tune your radio

and you had little knobs, right? And it would get a little

staticky, right? And you could hear the song and

you're like, oh, I love this song, but it needs to come in a

little clearer. Or if you really want to go back

in time, there were these, we called them rabbit ear in

tennis. I say we, but I don't remember

it. So I'm like somewhere in between

and some, some somehow we thought that like putting foil

on them would make it better. Did anybody ever put foil on the

antennas try to get better reception right?

Did it always work? No, but we were trying to tune

it and move the antenna so that we get the right frequency.

Any of you ever have to go outside the house and hold an

antenna that Yeah, you have to tune the frequency.

Sometimes you're going to start to hear God and it's going to be

just a little muddy. So I think some of us have to

consider the possibility, and I really, really want you to hear

me on this. Lord, give them ears to hear.

I think it is possible that God has been speaking to many of us

more than we realize, but we've become really bad at listening.

Our lives are loud. We wake up and we almost

immediately look at a phone. And then we listen to something

while we're getting ready. We listen to something in the

car, we're playing something while we're working.

We get home and we turn on the TV.

And then half the time we're looking at our phones while the

TV's on because apparently one screen isn't enough to to curb

our appetite for it anymore. And then somewhere in the middle

of all of that, we say, I wish God would speak to me.

So in Luke chapter 10, Jesus and the disciples continued on their

Luke 10 · chapter mention

way to Jerusalem. They came to a certain village

where there was a woman named Martha welcomed Jesus into her

home, and her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet.

I told you we're going to go through some familiar verses.

Mary sat at his feet listening to what he taught.

In verse 40, Martha was distracted by the big dinner she

was preparing. She came to Jesus and said,

Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits

here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.

By the way, you know what she just said?

She said the work I'm doing is the most important thing in this

house. That is what she said.

But the Lord said to her, my dear Martha, you're worried and

upset over all these details. There's only one thing worth

being concerned about. Mary's discovered it and it will

not be taken away from her. That wording that Jesus uses

with Martha is so intentional because he doesn't tell her that

what she's doing is evil. He tells her that she's worried

and upset over details. In other words, Martha's problem

isn't that she's distracted by something sinful.

She's distracted by things that do need to get done.

None of the things there are bad, but good things can still

become loud things. Have you noticed that you have

practices to get to and responsibilities and errands and

appointments and kids and a house and we're just busy?

Martha has Jesus physically sitting in her house and she's

worried about dinner now. We can look back on that now and

say what a what a swing and a miss.

But Jesus calls her dear Martha and walks her through this Mark

135. I'm going to share this with you

also. Before Daybreak the next

morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to

pray. Later Simon and the others went

out to find him, and when they found him they said, everybody's

looking for you. And then Jesus pulled up his

robes and said, oh, I didn't know that, let me get to work.

Jesus replied, we must go on to other towns as well, and I'll

preach to them too. That's why I came.

Do you know why he said that at the end?

Because they're assuming that why he came was to answer those

voices where everybody's looking for him.

He said, actually, that's not why I came.

So he travelled throughout the region of Galilee, preaching in

the synagogues and casting out demons.

Everybody's looking for Jesus. Of course they are.

There are people waiting on Jesus, and there's people back

at that house wondering where he went.

He got up early and he disappeared.

But you notice what happens after he prays.

The disciples come expecting Jesus to go back to everybody

who's waiting for him. And in other words, what we see

here is Jesus comes out of the time with the Father knowing

where he's going next. Do not miss this.

If he had not gotten alone with the Lord to tune that frequency,

it would have made sense to go back and tend to all the needs

of those people. But he got up and he went.

He was alone with Lord. Disciples weren't alone with the

Lord. They came and they said these

people still need help. And he said, actually, there's

other towns we got to go to, but what about those people?

He's like, This is why I came. Jesus was able to find out where

to go because he got a loan with the Lord.

And this is something that we need to do.

I'm not talking about becoming strange or stranger than some of

us already are and walking around all day trying to figure

out if our random thoughts are the Holy Spirit.

I'm telling you that this is something you can and need to

actually become good at. We've spent years training our

brains to expect constant noise and constant stimulation, and

then we get frustrated when we're sitting quietly with God

for 5 minutes. It feels difficult, doesn't it?

Mary had to choose to sit down. But can I just throw a couple

things out there? Like, I don't know, there's

times when the phone goes down, the TV goes off, the music stops

and you just be present with him.

I want to, I want to pass this on to you.

We won't be too late, but we're going a little long, just a

little long. I want you to hear this.

I said we'd get to this. There's a difference between

being unclean and being sinful. And here's why I want to share

this. Last week I came up and I told

you all that I had been just been a disobedient to the Lord

that morning. I mean, it was rough.

The Lord spoke to me during worship, as He often does, and

He talked to me about clean heart, which is something He's

spoken to me about living clean many times in the past, and it

hit me differently this time. We tend to use the word sinful

and unclean in the same way, almost like they mean the same

thing. Even the demons are called

unclean spirits, right? But I want you to know that in

the Old Testament, they did not mean the same thing.

You could be unclean without having sinned.

In the Old Testament, there were things that made a person

ceremonially unclean that weren't sinful at all.

Childbirth could make you unclean.

Touching a dead body would make you unclean.

Certain illnesses or bodily conditions could make you

unclean. And that didn't mean you had

done something wrong and you needed to repent of it.

You'll never see him say repent over that childbirth.

Some of you are like, well, it meant that for a period of time

you weren't able to enter the sacred space of God's presence

until you had been made clean again.

And that should take us back to that vision that Peter had,

right? We're obviously not living under

the Old Testament's purity laws, but God wanted his people to

understand that his presence was holy.

Sometimes we don't tune the frequency of his voice very well

because there's something going on where we're unclean.

We're too distracted, we're too disconnected.

We're not really wanting it. We know we're supposed to do it.

It becomes a checklist. You're not in sin, you're just

busy, but you're not clean. And the Lord spoke to me because

as I was repenting to him all morning last Sunday, he spoke to

me and said, when your heart gets made clean, you can enter

my presence. He's still there the whole time,

but I can't hear him because I'm not clean.

And so I would just challenge you on this.

Sometimes your heart gets cluttered when you when you know

that one day you're going to have to get rid of that anger,

but you're holding on to that resentment and you fill your

mind with garbage and you're consumed with anxiety.

And you can spend all day feeding those appetites and

scrolling and arguing and comparing yourself to other

people. You might not be in sin, but you

might not be clean. And I want to challenge you to

take these things and submit them to Him.

This takes us back to the uncomfortable thing at the

beginning of the message. Some of us just don't want God

the way that we're supposed to. We want the information, but I

want the clutter gone. I want to be able to go into His

presence and hear everything He's got for me.

How about you? OK, it's one of my favorite

stories to share, and I definitely didn't tell it

yesterday to the men. One day as a youth pastor, I had

a student who was desperately trying to hear from God, and she

wanted to learn how to hear God's voice for herself.

And I used a story from a book called The Circle Maker by Mark

Batterson to help her understand what I was going to be asking

her to do. That book tells this old Jewish

legend, it's not in the Bible, but of a man named Honi who

draws a circle because they're in a drought and he stands

inside the circle. And he said, God, I'm going to

pray for rain. And I'm not moving until you

answer. I'm not telling you to go home

and draw a circle and stand there.

OK? I'm not going to be responsible

for what happens then. But what I am saying is where is

our commitment and our willingness to sit and wait?

So I told her this. I said, I said the big lesson

there is the pursuit. And how desperately do you want

to hear from him? Because if you ask any believer,

do you want to hear from God, you're almost never going to

hear, not really. They're going to say, yeah, I

want to. Well, how much do you want to?

So here's what I told her. I said, attach it to meal times.

Doesn't have to be while you're eating.

Don't do it while you're eating, but like a breakfast, lunch and

dinner. I mean, like, we don't live off

of bread alone, right? Three times a day, I want you to

take about 10 or 15 minutes. And I want you to sit there and

I want you to say, God, I want you to speak to me, she said.

And I put on worship music. I said you absolutely do not if

you want to hear his voice. I'm not saying you can't speak

through worship music. I'm not saying it's bad to do

that in a prayer time, but if you're trying to learn what it

is to hear his voice, and I said we would talk about this, you're

going to have to become comfortable with a lack of

everything else except for Him. So I said sit there for 10 to 15

minutes and I want you to say, God, please speak to me and then

sit there. When your mind wanders, centre

it again, centre it again. Sorry Lord, I'm here.

She said, well, what if I don't hear from him?

I said, then you meet him at lunch.

She's like, no, what if I don't hear from him all day?

I said, then you have to fight being disheartened and you just

say, all right Lord, it's OK, I'll see you tomorrow.

I'll see you tomorrow and then do it again.

You know what? It took her about 3 days.

Three days. Middle schooler boom heard the

voice of God. Why?

Because she was willing to put in a discipline that most of us

aren't willing to do. But she was able to hear the

Lord's voice and still does. So my challenge to you is to

pursue Him. I want you to think about how

long we are willing to sit and wait for a table at a

restaurant. We'll sit for 45 minutes until

our table is clear, won't we? We'll stand in line for

something we want. We'll refresh a website over and

over again, waiting for tickets to go on sale.

And we'll check our phone 15 times waiting for one person to

text us back. We all have that, friend.

It's me and and when we really want something, we're pretty

good at waiting for it, aren't we?

Can you do this for him? So here's my challenge to you.

I want you to pick three times. Maybe the breakfast, lunch,

dinner thing works for you. Pick three times a day.

I'm, I'm literally challenging you on this.

Pick three times a day. I like connecting them to meals

because they're already markers that are built into the day.

But when you do that, you don't have your phone.

You can put your phone on a timer and put it away from you.

Put it on do not disturb mode, no music, nothing else

happening, no kids running around.

You get alone three times a day. I'm going to challenge you on

this. Do this for the next week.

Give God your undivided attention and don't give up #2

get clean. What you can say when you ask

for His presence is God. If there's anything in me that

is creating distance between us, tell me now so I can repent.

You might be surprised, and then you stop.

Then you just stop doing anything else.

This is not a place for your prayer journaling.

This is not a place for you to sing.

You sit and you are in a posture of receiving from Him.

Once you have, then you can write it down.

You're like, well, you told me not to journal.

You're not journaling your thoughts.

It's not about you, it's about Him.

When he gives you a word, then go and write it down.

You know why? Because you'll forget it.

I do, and the last thing is just come back again.

I want to take you back to the question we started with this

morning. How do you know if it's God or

the enemy or just you after everything that we talked about

this morning? I hope that you can understand.

I can't give you a magic formula where you'll never have to

wrestle with that question again.

I cannot give you 3 easy rules that guarantee you'll correctly

identify every thought that enters your mind for the rest of

your life. I don't think that's what God

intended for us anyway. The answer, though, is a

relationship. You've got to put in the work,

and I can't do it for you, but I'm up here begging you to do

it. What you experienced, maybe what

you felt this morning, is something you can feel on your

own. Not that it's about what you

feel, but it's something that you can achieve.

You can partake and you can access anytime, but you've got

to become familiar with Him the same way that we saw Hannah up

here. As soon as she knew what God's

voice sounded like, she didn't really listen to the other ones.

And to be honest with you, the other voice is, especially the

devil was a lot closer to her ear than the voice of the Lord,

right? And it's going to feel that way

a lot of times. Devil's not coming for you if

you're not a threat. If you just want to be a

spiritually apathetic, lazy Christian, the devil's going to

let you coast. But if you do want to grow, if

you do want to get connected to him, he's going to get as close

to you as he can. Get used to rebuking him.

Get used to listening to the Lord.

Here's your final scripture of the day, John 10, verses 3

John 10:3–5

through 5. The gatekeeper opens the gate

for him, and the sheep listen to his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them,

and his sheep follow him because they know his voice, but they

will never follow a stranger. In fact, they will run away from

him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

Many of us have seen this video or heard the illustration before

that sheep can be trained to just one voice, the voice of

their shepherd, and they as a whole flock will will run when

they hear that voice. What I want you to focus in on

is it says, and he will lead them.

He will go ahead of them. So a lot of us are saying, God

tell me where to go. But if you're close enough to

him, you won't have to ask him because you'll be following

them. You'll be following your

shepherd. I want you to know your

shepherd. I want you to know him well

enough that when he starts talking, you can know what

sounds like him and what doesn't.

When condemnation tells you that you're worthless and that your

time has passed, I want you to know that that is not the voice

of Jesus. Not just because theologically

you heard me teach this, but because you know Jesus's voice

and that ain't him. When your own desires try to

convince you that something God has clearly called wrong is

somehow right for you, you know his word too well to fall for

it. But that kind of familiarity

with the Lord's voice will never happen accidentally, and I want

you to know that. So I want you to test it this

week. How many of you are willing to

do that? You're willing to put your hand

up right in front of people And then people are going to be

like, did you do it? I hold each other accountable.

See what you can do, see what you hear.

And by the way, if you hear from him, message me.

Won't bother me. I'd love to hear your story.

Even if it's just, even if it's just one word, even if it's

telling you no as you're walking outside.

I want to hear it. Encourage me, but I want you to

know this for next week. Last week we learned that the

Holy Spirit's our advantage. This week we talked about

hearing his voice. And that's important because

next Sunday we're taking another step.

And through the Holy Spirit, Jesus has equipped every single

one of you to build his church, not Liberty Church, His church.

OK, you are gifted. And so we're going to talk about

what Scripture sometimes calls apostles, prophets, evangelists,

pastors and teachers. And I want to show you that

these are not titles that create an elite class of Christians.

Every single one of us is called to these gifts in some form.

So I want you to do something before you come back next

Sunday. In a moment, we're going to sing

to close the service. And as you're leaving, the care

team has these spiritual gift gift assessments. 10 questions

for each of those things I just talked about.

Apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.

Take it home with you, learn how you test, bring it back if you

want. Because whatever you're gifted

in, we're going to talk about you next week.

You might as well know that we're talking about you when we

do it. But if you spent years

wondering, what am I supposed to do?

How do I have anything to contribute to the Kingdom?

Part of the answer has already been placed inside of you.

And before we get there, I want us to all learn to listen to

him. So grab that test as you're

leaving. I think it'll help you be ready

for next week. And just remember this, Jesus

said His sheep recognize His voice because they know Him.

He loves being your shepherd. You might feel like you're God's

special headache, right? And maybe you are, but I'm

telling you, Jesus is willing to lead you.

He loves that you're part of His flock.

So make time to hear from Him today.

Amen.