Hearing God's Voice: Guidance Through Relationship and Prayer

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If you build the relationship with God, everything else will fall in place as you're building the relationship with God as you're seeking Him, then the other things begin to fall in place. Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established. So many times we don't have a hearing problem, we have a relationship problem. [00:03:41]

The closer you draw to God, the more crystal clear it becomes, and the more you watch YouTube, the less clear it becomes because there's there are genuine conspiracy theories out there. There's all this stuff going on, and what happened if we spend too much time on those things, we don't hear God's voices clearly. [00:04:03]

Patience, patience, let's all say it, patience, patience. How many of us run ahead of God? We react instead of respond, and there's no patience, and we do something in confusion and fear, and we go out and we're making decisions based on fear, not on fact often. [00:14:33]

Here's what patience does for me. I say, Lord, I need to know if this is you. I trust you 100. I don't trust Shane Idleman. I don't trust these little promptings and these little this and little thing because you're my, you know, your mind can think certain things, and your flesh starts to think certain things that are more comfortable for you. [00:15:18]

A key ingredient from hearing the right voice is to wait on God for confirmation and not react. Don't we, don't most of us do that, react? It's reacting. And then the second thing before we get into the scriptures is this, we have to ask this question. This has helped me over the years many times. [00:18:12]

Is this decision consistent with God's character? Is it going to help others, or am I running in fear? Does this align with the character of God? In other words, sift your motives, correct? We have worship auditions after the second service, and I'm not looking for talent as much as we're looking for humility. [00:18:29]

The Holy Spirit leads and guides through a relationship with God, and the decisions will line up with Scripture. And then John 16:13, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. Now this is interesting. Jesus is still on earth here at this point, and the Holy Spirit has not yet come yet. [00:29:18]

The Holy Spirit wants to work in your life in a powerful way. He wants to work in your life, but you can grieve the Spirit through many things, besetting sins. God's convicted me before of even overindulgence, gluttony. That's a sin. If we're consuming too much, it's all about the body and addictions or holding on to bitterness and anger. [00:33:20]

The Holy Spirit will lead us, but what about if we're quenching and grieving the Spirit? It's like the analogy I gave of my son holding that water hose that was on full blast, and it was just dripping out because of all the kinks in the hose. He had to go undo like four different kinks in the hose. [00:34:08]

The Christian life is if you believe on me, as the scriptures say, you will be boring and dry. If you believe on me, as the scriptures say, a little trinkle of water will come out now and then. If you believe on me, as the scriptures say, out of your belly will flow rivers of living water. [00:34:57]

Prayer is seeking God, and the more I seek you, the more I find you, and the more I find you, the more I seek you. It's travailing, it's communicating, it's petitioning, it's fighting, it's contending, it's warring, it's battling where you're pulling down heaven. This is how I fight my battles, not by preaching, but by praying down heaven. [00:50:40]

If you come together and you pray, I will hear, and I wonder how many prayers are not answered because we don't ask, and ask again, and ask again, and ask for the movement of God in our lives. Why, Shane, I prayed that a year ago, I prayed that six months ago, my kids aren't changing. No, that's when you need to press in more. [00:51:32]

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