Part 1: The Voice of God (Part 1 of 3)

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Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. Everybody, we're gonna be looking at the voice of God, how to hear it, how he speaks, how we hear it, and then ask we hear him speak and we're listening to him. What do we do with it once it gets into our hearts and our minds? Listening to the voice of God, hearing God speak in to discern that and then telling the world what it is that God is telling you. What's coming up next? You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com/podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. Hey, everybody. Listen, if you were to get into looking around and seeing what is some of the most asked questions in Christianity. It certainly, right near the top is how do you hear the voice of God? Here's what we're gonna do for the next three podcasts. We're gonna unpack that. We're gonna be looking at. We're gonna be considering the voice of God, having the ears to hear the voice of God. And then after God speaks, what do we do with that with our mouth? In other words, why would god speak to us if we don't intend to say anything in in that what he's given us? He he's going to speak So we need to listen with the intent to announce what it is that God is saying. So listen, as always, we love this challenge. That it's time for you to live out what you believe in. It's time for real life. So let's dive into this right now. The voice of God, how do I hear the voice of God? How do you hear the voice of God? Now first of all, let's just take a a flyby of how God spoke in the Old Testament.

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The bible tells us that when God spoke in the Old Testament, he just flat out spoke. He just audibly spoke. And you say, well, why would God do that then and not do it now? Well, we'll answer that soon, but it'll just give you a little hint. It's called the bible. For example, the book of Hebrews tells us that In the early days, when God spoke to the fathers, he did so by the prophets. But when we back up, we kind of go to the original a prophet in the sense of Abraham could be argued as a prophet. God spoke to Abraham God spoke to Abraham audibly. So mark that down.

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We know that God spoke to Adam and Eve audibly. And that's an amazing situation to where God even walked with them in the cool of the garden and the perfection of the garden God walked with them and spoke with them. I personally believe that it was none other than a Theophanes or a Christophanes. In the garden, I believe Jesus Christ walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. But when when you look at the old testament, you're talking about God speaking And as we graduate, for example, to the life of Moses, god's said regarding Moses, I'm gonna speak to Moses face to face like a a man speaks to his friend.

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So God reveal himself to Moses in amazing ways. He spoke. God shook the mountain of Mount Sinai. The children of Israel tremble at the shaking of the mountain and at the voice of God. Then we move forward and we hear that that God spoke to Elijah in a very very still small voice.

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The point is this, god speaks. How do we hear? Fast forward to our age, twenty first century. How do we hear God's speed? Now, this is gonna require you and I discipline. It's it's not because God's not speaking. You and I live at a time where we are so bombarded with external noises. It's hard for us to hear. So listen to this.

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God gave us the bible. There's a reason why this book is still preserved to this hour. In fact, technically, We have this book. The world has this book, either in hand or on a device And even for people in remote parts of the world, they have been given crank up bibles. You can crank it and it's and it energizes the little device and the bible is read to them. And their language, it's a remarkable. Why is that so important? Because in our day and age, how do you hear the voice of God? It's by reading the word of God. He said, well, Jack, what if this a place in the world where there is no bible. That's pretty cool. Great question. Great concern. We need to get them in the bible, but don't worry. God's got that covered.

0:05:18
In Romans chapter one, God says he's speaking to all those in the world. He's revealing himself hit even his eternal godhead and power to them so that they are without an excuse. So we don't need to worry about the people running around the Amazon jungle that we haven't reached yet. Thank God. There's groups of people trying to reach them, but God has always already spoken enough to them so that they know. So how do we hear this voice? Jesus said my sheep, my people hear my voice, and they follow me. So when we go to the bible and we read it, we we need to expect God to be speaking to us. See, well, Jack, how does God speak to you? Always in my life. God will use the word of God to speak. So can you tell us how that happens? It goes this way.

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And this is where I mentioned a moment ago, it takes discipline. We need to take in the bible. Now look, I'm I'm an old guy. But back in the day when computers were being indented, there was this this little jingle. I think it was called GEICO. Garbage n g I. Garbage n g o. Garbage n garbage out. In other words, you put into the computer garbage and the computer's gonna spit out garbage. Well, we know this in our dietary life. You eat junk and you're gonna have a junk of a life. Your liver's gonna fail. You're gonna get sick. Why garbage in? Garbage out. Here's the cool thing. When you start ingesting the bible, bible in, bible out.

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When you have bible, when you pick up and read the why should I read the Bible? You want God to speak? I sure do. Well, guess what? You need to eat Bible. You need to eat it by reading it.

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As you read the bible, God's word gets inside of you. It's a supernatural Hey, can I put it to you this way? Just saw commercial this morning. I got a breakdown and buy this stuff. I'm I'm convinced. It's this nature's nature's friend or nature's fruit or nature's vegetable nature something. I don't know what it is. It's but everybody's taken And if you listen to everybody talking about it, I'm ninety years old and I took natures whatever it's called and now I feel like I'm thirteen. Wow, I don't know about that, but everybody's talking about how great it is. And so what's happening? Supposedly if you take this this stuff. It's all natural. It's in a pill and you get, like, you know, seventeen carats and and so and celery and and tomatoes and You get all these things. And then this bottle's got all the fruits. If that's true or not, I don't know, I need to buy it and check it out.

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Take that principle regarding the scripture. The bible is that way. When you open up the Word of God, And if you've never done this before, you should start in John's gospel because you will be given the revelation of the deity of Jesus Christ. As you read that, you become familiar with who Jesus Christ is, how he spoke to those to which he came in contact with. How did he deal with certain situations? It's contained in the scriptures here for us to read. If we ingest the bible, it gets into us like that pill. You take the pill, the bible, and it becomes part of you. So that when? I know this is gonna sound corny, but it's true.

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God speaks to me most. When I'm in my yard, or I'm unplugged from demands. Even ministry can kill you. I've got to unplug from ministry life If God's gonna speak to me speak to me about my own life. Secondly, I cannot receive a sermon from God in bible study. Without getting alone.

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I've often said that being a pastor teacher is a very lonely life to live. You say, Jack, are you crazy? You're on all kinds of media all the time all the time. Listen, the only way that that's possible is that I shut down and get away from humanity on Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays and You hear what I'm saying, you gotta get alone to get fed for something to come out. You've gotta get alone with the word to have that experience of hearing what God is saying. So friends, listen. God is speaking. His voice is crystal clear. It's the bible that he uses. He's gonna use scripture.

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And believe it or not, what's fun about that is, I could be at the beach, I could be gardening, I could be taking a walk. I could be doing something that is allowing my mind to relax. I'm not on the phone. I'm not texting. I'm not distracted. And when that moment begins to happen, the realization of his voice is so present where what he is saying lines up one hundred percent with the revealed will of god, which is the bible. The bible is god's will. When he voices his will, you know it. Somebody might ask, what do you hear? Do you hear a bible verse? I could. Sometimes yes. But most often, I hear this is this is fun.

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I hear in my mind, I hear god's word and it's paraphrased in a manner that it gets my attention. It's it's unique enough, not that God's word isn't unique. Of course, it's unique. But it might come to me like this. God might speak to me and say, Don't don't trust in yourself, Jack. Don't listen to your own counsel. Listen to my counsel. If I am speaking to you, you don't have to make a mistake. Just wait on my word. Listen to what it says. But don't lean on your own imagination here or your own ideas, Jack. That thought will enter my mind while I'm mowing the lawn. I know it's from God because number one, I wouldn't have said that to me. And it's unique enough to where it's got the identification of God's authenticity on it. It's truth. It's divine or from this prospect of another world. How about that? It's not the wisdom of this age. It's from above. And so when he speaks, it's in absolute correlation perfectly with scripture.

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Now, this is an important thing to point out because people today will say, and I'm really tired of it, aren't you? It's quite dangerous. You know what? Pesther Jack or your friend will tell you, God spoke to me. You you do understand, right, when you say that God spoke to me. You better be careful what you're saying. Because you know what you ever actually saying in the twenty first century, thus saith the Lord. Know, you can get yourself killed in the old testament for saying that. If you said, Thus, saith the Lord, God told me to do this or to do that or to whatever. Boy, you better be right. Or or if you're not right, you're dead. Because you're invoking the name of God and you are actually incriminating God by saying, he told me to do this, so watch this.

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Lot of people who don't know their bibles, but they're spiritual. We'll say things like this. Oh, God told me God told me that I should divorce my wife because he wants me happy. Guess what? God just told me that he didn't tell you that. Why? Because God's bible makes it very very clear that's not how he speaks. He's not gonna say that to you. Oh, God told me that he wants me rich. No. God didn't tell you that. I'm telling you right now, God didn't tell you that.

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But see, when people are in the vicinity or the neighborhood of what they want, they will be so bent on achieving their own desire that they'll cloak their decision making process with with bible with with Christian ease. They'll wrap it with a Christian bow. And they'll say, oh, God told me, don't ever say that. You're gonna get in huge trouble with God. You should be very careful. In fact, even in my own life, when I know God spoke to me, if I'm gonna say something publicly about that, I have got to say I believe God spoke to me about what I'm gonna share with you. You be the judge according to God's word if what I'm saying is true. Okay? It's very important. So be careful. Know God's voice and you can know his voice by judging what the thought process, what the thought conclusion is in your mind by judging it against the Word of God.

0:14:48
When Paul the Apostle spoke to the Bereans, right, they tested everything that was spoken against the bible. So imagine that Paul is preaching new testament truth. Right? To the Bereans. What did they do? They went through their old testament to see what Paul was saying was true. That's amazing. Imagine. Would you love to have heard his sermon, Paul would have preached a new testament sermon with old testament doctrine. Epic. And they could have they could have qualified everything Paul said against the bible. So what what are they discerning? Hey, God's speaking through this guy. That's exactly what Isaiah said. That's exactly what Micah was talking about. And Joel oh my goodness. What what Peter just said, that's right out of the book of Joel. Wow. That's discerning the voice of God.

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And let me wrap it up by saying this. Don't have your life be led by people who come up to you and say God told me to tell you. Oh, boy. Well, pastor, don't you believe in the gifts of the spirit? Every single one of them I do, as long as they're operated in accordance with the scripture. You say, well, what's the problem with what you just said a moment ago?

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A friend of mine had a word for me. Well, why didn't why couldn't God tell you the word himself? Well, because God was using the the voice of a prophet in my life. Watch out the new testament verbiage given to us in the gifts of the spirit regarding a prophet is one who heralds forth the Word of God. One who puts forth the word of God.

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If your friend tells you, hey, the Lord told me to tell you. That you need to give me your brand new car. Okay? Your friends are lunatic. He's he's manipulating you. And that's not god speaking. Okay? Now if god says to you, hey, I want you to give your new car to your friend. Let God confirm that to you in the word, in the bible.

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Apply that to dreams. Gosh, the things I've heard. Listen. People who say, I know this is gonna happen in my life. Why? What was said? I had a dream years ago. And then a friend of mine said, he had the same dream. This is gonna happen. Maybe, let's see. How are we gonna know? If God was speaking, judge it against the Bible. Against the word. See, listen today.

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Can you imagine if every Christian around the world took this book God's Word and let it be the authority of their lives, the church would get cleaned up overnight. And Christians would go to church on Sunday morning, And listen, I love this. I operate under this this authority that God has given his people. I better be teaching the bible on Sunday morning rightly because the church that I pastor these people eat up the bible. They read it every day. They're animals. You just can't parade somebody out in front of these people. They're gonna bust them. The church is gonna call them out. Wait a minute. Okay? That's great because number one, it means actually that I'm doing the job I'm supposed to do by feeding them the Word of God and stand out of the way. And the second thing is, they know enough to hold me accountable to what is being said is in alignment with scripture. That's how you wanna roll with your life.

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So the next thing is, hearing. How to hear. But that will have to say for part two. So listen, we believe this. We believe that it's time for you to live out what it is that you believe in. That's why we say it's time for real life. That's why we're doing what we're doing here and now. But listen, we would love for you.

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JackHibbs.com, hit the subscribe button it'd be great if you left us a review that helps too. Look, I'm gonna live without it. You don't have to do it. I'm just asking you to do it. It helps. And then as always, pray for us. We just wanna bring you truth that you can judge against the scriptures. And so listen, we're gonna be talking next time about hearing God's voice. What kind of ears do we want to have? Is it ears in our head? Or is it ears in our heart. What did Jesus mean when he said, listen, take heed to what the spirit of God is saying. Next time, right here. God bless you guys. This Jack Hibbs podcast as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.