Part 2: Hearing from God (Part 2 of 3)

Real life presents the Jack Kibs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Hey listen we're talking about the voice of God and now we're talking about hearing from God. Do you have ears to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to you? We're gonna find out in just a moment. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibs.com slash 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 saying 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 Hibs. All right so here we are talking about in fact last time together we saw and I don't know if you viewed it or not it'd probably be better if you viewed the first installment of this where we talked about how do we hear the voice of God? How was that discerned? We talked about his voice. How does he speak to us? That was in our first episode. So now we're following up with hearing or ears. So we've got the voice of God and secondly in this installment we're talking about the ears. Not the ears of God. Your ears, my ears. It's amazing to me how often Jesus announced in scripture to the churches to the seven letters to the seven churches. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit is saying to the churches and that's not just limited by the way to the seven letters to the seven churches. It's often challenged when Jesus in the gospels would say things like this. If you can handle this this is what was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah saying or he would reference Jeremiah or Moses. What was Jesus doing? He was saying can you hear me? Are you listening? So here's the funny thing about spirituality. It's completely irrelevant, our fleshly ears obviously. I mean in the technical scheme of things your ears matter in the sense that they process the sound waves that are being spoken but here's the beautiful thing about what God does when he speaks and how we can hear is that we begin to nurture not our ears to hear from God. We nurture a heart to hear from God. So I want to paint this corny picture but it's going to help you remember. Imagine your heart right now from this time forward having ears on it. Your heart has ears and so how does your heart hear? So again Jesus warned us be careful two things he said by the way in the in the gospels. Be careful what you hear and he said be careful how you hear. This is great. So how do we nurture a hearing heart? And that is something that is going to be I think really difficult for us not because God made it difficult. It's because we've made it difficult and that is what we need to discipline ourselves to be able to receive. This is tough for us. We have got to get into the habit of watch. In fact I'll just do I'll just do it now unscripted like this. This is how we hear and by the way this is Bible roulette. I didn't know I don't know where I'm at right now even. This is Psalm 14. The full has said in his heart there is no God. They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good. So this is how I hear from God. Lord speak to me about what's being said in this portion of scripture. The full has said in his heart. Interesting. The full has said in his heart. That just backs up what I said a moment ago. The heart can hear. The conversation is internal. It's the spiritual part of who you are. You're processing this. The full has said in his heart. It means there's a lot of communication taking place in the realm of the heart. So there's voices in there. The full is speaking. But I just read that in the Bible me. Now we together. So the Bible's telling me the full has said in his heart. So the place of listening is the heart. So for my heart to listen it's got to be open. It's got to be tender. It's got to be tenderized. Meaning I need to discipline my heart to hear. I need to get away from the narrative from the noise of this world. And this is what almost seems impossible for us. Stop with the TV. Stop with the streaming. Stop with the radio. Stop with the other broadcast. Turn them off. Get alone. Do what you must. Listen, I guess today I mean I know I have a pair of these ear pods where you can squeeze them and they have noise cancelling characteristics to them. Everything goes quiet. Somebody invented that for a reason. Think about the guy that invented it or the Bose, you know, the headset to noise cancelling capabilities. Why was that important to somebody who invented that? Because they use the word noise and they use the word cancelling. Why? Gotta get quiet. And so for us, when we want to hear from God in our hearts, when God is speaking, we need to put our place on the frequency of what God or where God is communicating. The frequency is so important. You know what I mean by frequency? Like dialing into that channel? I know young people are wondering what are you talking about? You know you press the button or whatever it is. The the preset frequency broadcasting at you know at 107.9. Well that's how the radio systems work and other things work. Well what about your heart? You've got to dial in your heart to a place where it's quiet and you determine I'm going to hear from him. And I believe what I'm about to tell you. Now look this is one reporter's opinion. It works for me. But I have to put my place. Listen in the attitude of hearing. So I have to engage the spirit of who I am. My mind. I'll use that. My soul. Lord, I want to hear from you. Some people might say meditation. Some people might say contemplation. I don't care what they're talking about, whatever they do they do. I'm talking about you and I exercising the discipline to hear. And in that discipline is an automatic prayer life. But automatic. Lord speak to me. What is it that you want me to hear regarding this issue or moving forward or for today? God before the sun comes up, before the phone starts ringing, before things start happening, what is it that you want me to hear? Now if you were with me last week, you know that when God speaks, he uses the word of God. So when I open up the word of God to hear him speak, I am immediately making a grand assumption that when he's going to speak from the word, my heart's got to be listening. You say, Jack, give me an example of when I'm not listening. It's very simple. Have you ever read a portion of scripture? It could be a verse. Could be a paragraph. Could be a chapter. And if you stop, you can't even, you can't even, if I were to ask you, what did you just read? You'd go, uh, you read it, but you weren't listening where you. You heard your voice. Maybe you were reading out loud. You heard your voice, but you can't tell me what you just read. You want to know why your heart didn't have its ears on. So your heart's got to have the ears to hear, but the Spirit is saying, the Spirit of God, listen, Jesus promised us. It's so simple. The Spirit of God will speak the word. Jesus said, there's a lot more guys I want to tell you, but you're not able to bear it. I'm going to go away to heaven. And when I leave, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to you. He will bring all things to your remembrance. And he will speak to you things that right now you're not able to bear. He's going to talk to you. And so by the way, that is the New Testament. That's what he put into print. The thing is this to, to hear God's voice, is to nurture a heart of listening. So friends, from this time on, from this time forward, what you really, really, what you must do is discipline yourself starting today to have time with God. Listen to where you sit with everything off. Listen, get everything away. And just Lord, what is it that you'd like to say? And I'm going to tell you right now, that is one of the hardest things in the world to do, because you're going to drive yourself crazy at first. It's almost like detox. You're going to think, okay, Lord, just speak to me, and your mind is going to be swirling with your car needing servicing. What's for dinner? You know, did I mow the lawn? You don't even have a lawn? Your mind's going to go all over the place. Let it go. Just get that vomited out, purge it, detox the concerns, get them out there, clear the slate. By the way, this is a great time to do this is worship. Now, I don't have a voice. I wish I did. I don't. I, when God blessed, He left me out of that loop. But I don't care, because nobody's with me in this moment. I'm alone. So I will begin to sing Him praises. And I might even speak to Him and make a prayer or a request in a song to Him. And I'm not going to rehearse it. So don't even think I'm going to try. That's between Him and I. It's personal. That helps clear the webs out of the way. My heart then secondly begins to become more still, more calm. Few things pop up. Get those out of the way. Lord, I'm waiting on you. Think about it. If you say, Jack, I don't need to listen to this podcast. Well, let me ask you this question before you turn it off. When's the last time you waited on the Lord because we're commanded to wait on the Lord? See how bad you need this podcast? Exactly. We all need to wait on the Lord. And as we sit and be still, the Bible tells us, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. And that word be still and know in Hebrew is yada. Why a d a yada? Be still and here's the definition. Here's the meaning of the word. Be still and discover my will in that situation you're in. That's what yada means. Be still and discover me in the moments. Discover me in that situation. So we're called to be still so that we might hear and listen to what he's saying. That is a matter of the heart. Far too many of us as Christians have not taken the time to nurture our hearts to hear. And so we don't do that. So we think we're hearing because we're busy. Or there's a lot of people talking to us. So friends, listen, before I wrap this up, keep this in mind. It's highly suspect if you're hearing from God unless you have a disciplined alone time with God. So you're asking the question, is there a husband out there for you or a wife out there for you that God has? I don't know. Why don't you find out? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm going to the singles group. That's not what I said. Ask them. Talk to them about that. Well, I'm not I'm not fulfilled in my job. And I'm wondering if I should change jobs. Don't ask people that. Ask him that. Get alone. Get still. Listen to what he says. You're going to be shocked by the way. You're going to be blown away. I have discovered God's not all that concerned about the money part of things. He's well able to pay your bills. He's more concerned about you fulfilling the call that's upon your life. Feeding the kids in the home and the car and the those are those are things that he'll take care of. Matthew 6.33 says seek first the kingdom of God and he'll take care of all these other things that they'll he himself will add to you. So friends, listen, ending now with this. Pursue God for this request. God put ears on my heart. I want to discipline my life to be able to hear from you. And friends, listen. This is a little insight for us personal. People will come to me so often I get phone calls and people will come and visit or they'll put me on a speaker's lineup at a conference. Oh, Jack's going to speak to us about courage. He's going to talk to us about being courageous. Every time I hear that, I want you to know personally, I cringe. I just cringe because I don't have any of that stuff. But if I hear God's voice speaking to me about something, it becomes like an iron or steel rod in my spine. It's not, you know, courage is the management of fear. Did you know that? That's what courage is. It doesn't mean people who are courageous have no fear. It means that people who are courageous know how to manage fear. I don't know how to manage fear. I don't know how to do that. But my God knows how to speak. And if he says God, if he's a God who speaks, then it's up to me to figure out how to listen. And if I hear from him, when he says it, I'm going to know it. It's going to align 100% with the Bible. And it doesn't matter what anybody says to me, we hate you. It doesn't matter. We love you. It doesn't matter. You're going to get in trouble with the governor or with the pope or with, I don't care. God said it. Do you understand that? It's so wonderful to live like that. God said it. I don't need to worry about anything else. Is it God's word? Did he reveal that and make it clear from the word? That's what he spoke to me. That's what I spoke to you, Jack. Well, then let's move forward. I don't have to understand everything. He said it. Let's do it. And then the final thing is once he has spoken because he's a God with a voice and our ears are able to hear with the heart, then the next thing is, what do we voice? What do we say? And that's next time in our third installment. So listen, tell everybody about joining us. We encourage you, obviously you're here at Jackibs.com, but tell other people, invite them. So we end here. It's time for you to live out what you believe in. It's time for real life. And until next time, just be bold for Jesus. Stay in the word. This Jackibs podcast, as well as all the broadcasts out reach opportunities, are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackibs.com to learn more and stay connected.