God Told Me… Or did He? - The Rise of 'Words from God', Dreams, Prophecy | HEARING GOD'S VOICE

Is President Trump going to have a second term?

Oh, God, why don't you show up and talk to me that way?

I want to go like this, but he makes me go. I can't imagine why they're subject to the whim of what they feel is a word from God. Did God just do that? And the answer to the question is, don't know. These days, everyone believes that they are being led by the spirit. Yet why do they say that the Holy Spirit is telling them contradictory things? One of the most concerning realities of the modern church today is the prevalence of words from God that God never spoke. Countless relationships have been destroyed because God said when he did not. Countless false prophecies have been delivered because of what God said when he did not. And a toxic church culture has arisen that now needs a new word from God every day in order to stay relevant. But why does it seem so common that the Holy Spirit says different things to different people? What are the pitfalls of mistaking God's voice for our own? And if God speaks, how do we avoid becoming another casualty of false prophecy? And what about when, quote unquote, God told me wasn't God at all? And what is Satan's objective in all of this? Welcome to part two of understanding the voice of God. This series has grown to consist of three videos planned. In the first one, we asked the question, does God speak outside the Bible? And we already established how not all prophecy is for the formation of the biblical canon, and that differences in authority between scripture and prophetic words, dreams, visions, and so on today exist, and that God still speaks in such ways. If you want to hear how we came to those conclusions, please watch. Part one. Does God speak outside the Bible? In this teaching, we'll be discussing the rise of spiritual abuses done in the name of God by the apparent voice of God, and the dangers of attributing things to the voice of goddess which he has not spoken and why this happens in the first place. And we will discover more about discerning God's voice. But without further ado, let's get right into it. First, I would like to explore with you the method by which God teaches us his voice by looking at the prophet Samuel in one Samuel three, four, we then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, here I am. And he ran to Eli and said, here I am. You called me. But Eli said, I did not call. Lie down again. So he went and lay down, and the Lord called again Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli again and said, here I am. For you called me. But he said, I did not call my son. Lie down again. Now, Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Heli and said, here I am, for you called me. Then Heli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Heli said to Samuel, go lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, speak, lord, for your servant hearers. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood calling as at other times Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said, speak for your servant hearers. Then the Lord said to Samuel, behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. The reason that I am bringing this story to you is to illustrate how learning God's voice can be a process. This story of Samuel's first encounter with the voice of God illustrates that you can be immature in recognizing God's voice. For as it was written, the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. See, Eli had to guide Samuel in two things. First, in recognizing that it is actually God who is calling Samuel, recognizing God's voice. And number two, on what to do when God speaks to you. That's why Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hearers. God only continued to speak further with Samuel when Samuel had this posture of Lord, I am hearer, Lord, I am listening, Lord, speak for your servant ears. See, God speaks to those who have faith to hear from him. Even the prophet Samuel was not born knowing these things. He was not born with the instinct of what God's voice sounds like and what to do when God speaks. So to the untrained earth, it's not always obvious when God speaks nor what to do when it seems he is speaking. And I want to submit to you that it is this immaturity that we see rife today, from innocent mistakes to even using God's voice as a tool of manipulating people. But over time, Samuel applied himself to learn God's voice, and he grew, demonstrating that we can grow in learning God's voice in the specific way that God deserves to speak to us. Also notice in this story how Samuel was the only one who heard God's voice while Eli didn't. This demonstrates to us one of the ways God can speak to us internally. For Samuel heard the voice while Eli didn't. So this voice was not some external cry. It was something he was hearing loudly in his heart. We will talk more about how to hear and discern God's voice. But first we need to discuss sonship identity. Many seek after the voice of God as a confirmation of their sonship in him, as a confirmation of God's approval of them.

But I used to be one of those people who wanted what everyone else had. I know no one else struggles with that, but I would like hear about people having these visions of open eyed visions and I'm like, oh God, why don't you show up and talk to me that way?

I never heard the voice of God as much as I wanted to, and I was in angst over this. I started to question whether or not I was mature, whether or not I was understanding the Lord. And this created a big crisis point in my own life that the Lord ended up using to cause me to question that theology entirely. Now I wanted to hear the voice of God. I was trying to hear the voice of God. I was listening for the voice of God, but I never heard the voice of God.

Jim has an experience that I'm sure that many of us have experienced before. As a college student, he was confused that God wasn't speaking to him in the way that he was seemingly speaking to people around him. I want you to look at another example. This is from an Internet post of someone who had a bad experience at a youth camp and we read the following halfway through this week long I confess that I never really felt God and that I didn't really think that he existed. And all this really did was make me lose credibility as a good Christian from people who claim to be my friends. Seriously, they all looked at me like I was crazy. After that, the final night eventually came and needless to say, people were really feeling good. They were crying on their hands and knees, begging for mercy. They were walking back and forth with their hands in the air whispering to God. I have never felt God. Not a hand upon my shoulder, not a hug, not even a fist bump. God wasn't talking to me. Someone who was seriously losing faith and clearly needed him more than the people who were already religious and needed less help. Lets be honest, should it really catch us off guard that people are having such experiences? Considering the lack of teaching regarding the voice of God in the church and also unbiblical expectations that have been taught regarding what it's like to experience God, this can cause confusion, a feeling of being separated from God, comparison with other people, even resentment and divisions between people. And so I cannot fault people for thinking the way Jim and this child at this youth camp felt. But let's recognize the unbiblical expectations that we have created. We have to recognize that God speaks to different people differently. He spoke to Joseph through dreams. He spoke to Israel by splitting a sea for them. He spoke to Moses through a burning bush, and he spoke to Balaam through his own donkey. He spoke to Mary through an angel, and he spoke to Peter through a vision. Because we're going to be going in detail about the voice of Goddesse, you must understand that the ways that God speaks to you and how frequently God speaks to you in those ways is not a measure of spiritual maturity, but how effective you are at discerning God's voice when he does speak is dependent upon spiritual maturity. Let me say that again. How frequently and in which way God chooses to speak to you is not a measure of how spiritually mature you are. Rather, it has to do with your calling and gifting. One corinthians 1229 says, are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Paul makes it clear to us that not everyone will be in the same office and not everyone will have the same gifts. And we do know that certain offices and certain spiritual gifts are going to have a more primary role in relaying God's message and voice to people, to churches. They will hear God's voice more frequently in ways particular to their calling in order to fulfill their calling most effectively. For example, someone who has the gift of prophecy as a primary gift is going to find themselves operating in prophecy more often than someone who has the gift of healing as a primary gift. That doesn't mean that one is better than the other. It just means that they are different and all important. I'm not limiting God's voice to any specific role here. I'm just saying all of this to demonstrate biblical variety in how God uses us and speaks to us in various ways. Therefore, I don't depend my sonship or my acceptance before God upon whether God spoke to me in some way that he spoke to someone else. See, if you don't understand this, you'll have an unhealthy relationship with God's voice because you'll get your identity and spiritual high from how often and in which way he speaks to you. And when God then decides to stop speaking, what will that do to you? The root cause of much of this is because we don't simply believe the gospel. You say PD, what do you mean? You know, I may have struggled with this but I fully believe Jesus died for me. And I mean christians all over, they believe Jesus died for them. The gospel is nothing. God so loved the world that he gave you a dream, vision or voice from heaven. No, God so loved the world that he gave his son. One corinthians four, eight. Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich without us. You have become kings. And with that you did reign so that we might share in the rule with you. Paul tells us that the reality of Jesus, that he has come to die for our sins, not because of what we have done, not because of our works, but despite our works, because we are his sons and his daughters. He died and he saved us, and that should be all sufficient for us. Paul says that we must be content with what Christ did for us. And I want to submit to you that even if God never spoke to you, having relationship with the father through the Son must be sufficient for us all. And if we begin there, how much more will we be ready for the day that God speaks to us in unexpected ways. In fact, we experience God best when we believe it and what he has done for us in Jesus as the most sufficient experience. Otherwise, we grasp onto any kind of a supernatural experience or encounter that God may provide us as our hope, as what declares us accepted and okay with God, instead of the only thing that actually should be holding our faith together, Yeshua himself. So whenever we might feel like some of the sad stories we read earlier, that we're not hearing God's voice, and therefore, is there something wrong in our relationship with God? Beware, because it means that you're losing sight of who you are in Christ and what he has done for you. So therefore God has split seas, burned bushes and spoken through donkeys. Is it something, though, that authenticates our faith? No. Believing in the resurrection of Christ does. Are these things that God must do every day in our lives as part of our relationship with him? No. He speaks on his terms, not ours, but throughout history and in many ways, he has spoken to his people. And is it something that God needs to do to prove himself to us? No. The resurrection does. Next up, we will be looking at the dangers of seeking signs from God out of our own desperation.

And I began to be in great angst over this. Should I come back or should I not come back? I was waiting for signs, maybe a flyer or something that I would see spelled out in the leaves on the grass, or the shape of a cloud or something that might give me, like maybe the number two in the shape of a cloud or something like that, that would give me some clear indication that this is what I was to do. So I began to put out fleeces. Lord, if you want me to come back for second year, make this happen. If you want me to leave after my first year and go pursue the other career course, then make this happen. And none of those fleeces would cash out. Nothing would happen as it was.

I'm only playing you this clip because Jim demonstrates so wonderfully what many of us have done before God. Show me a sign. Looking to God for a sign to help us make a decision. Now, as we've already established, God does speak. God can give us a sign, absolutely. But I would like to submit a few things to you first. If God wants to urgently get our attention, he's more than capable of that. Sometimes we will find ourselves looking for direction from him, and that is good and what we should be doing. But it may seem like he's not intervening, he's not showing us what to do, what decision to make. But it may also be that he is looking for us to trust him in the midst of uncertainty, to have faith in him even when we're not sure where we are going, trusting that he is leading us even when it doesn't feel like it. God also, at other times intervened in drastic ways in the lives of people. For example, Paul was thrown to the ground when he was on the road to Damascus. But why did God so drastically appear in such a vision to Paul? It was because Paul wasn't yet filled with the Holy Spirit. He was not following the Messiah. So God shouldn't need to throw us to the ground every time that we need guidance from him being thrown to the ground. It'll hurt sometimes, and we may even go blind in the midst of it for a while, like Paul did. So let's be careful what we wish for. We have to understand that we go ahead and pray for guidance. We ask God to speak to us. We walk in faith knowing that he is influencing our decision making. If God needs us to shift direction because of a danger, God will intervene. But be careful of how your desperation in those trials may affect the way that you approach all of this. Because desperation driven by fear of your situation. Desperation is unbelief in God that he is good, that he's trustworthy and able to have his perfect will executed in your life. It can cause us to stretch and mistake any circumstance and any little sign as a sign from God only because we're so desperate to make anything work, and because it confirms our own desires for what we want God to say, not what God has actually said. Rather, we should have peace in the storm. True faith is praying to be directed and resting in his perfect will. Faith that God will have his way no matter what. And if he feels the need to speak supernaturally to me, he'll speak. So when you submit it at his feet in prayer, he will simply influence your decision making and bless your path. Mark 439 and he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? Fear God. Don't fear your situation. Next, let's discuss discerning God's voice. Why does it seem so common that the Holy Spirit is saying different things to different people? There's a few reasons for this. One of the first is simply that people confuse their own inner voice in their own minds for being God's voice. People, as the saying goes, they are their own worst critic. Many of us have this our own voice and our own heads who's criticizing ourselves. We can confuse our words for God's words depending on what we believe he would or wouldn't say. The better you know God's character, the better you will recognize his voice and discern his voice from any other voice. The Bible says, my sheep know my voice, and the stranger they do not follow. Another example by which this manifests is when people don't hear when God is actually speaking and convicting them by his spirit to repent, because they don't believe what they're actually doing needs to be repented from. So they silence the voice of God, and they don't recognize that God is the one who's actually speaking repentance into their hearts because they don't understand the character and truth of God's word. See, whatever the confusion, all of this is due to a lack of comprehensive understanding of God's character revealed in the scriptures. It could also be that while we may know what the scriptures say, we only heard of and apply the parts of scripture that we desire to hear and apply, picking and choosing his words without even fully realizing it. This is the very reason why it seems the Holy Spirit is speaking different things to different denominations and why different denominations have at times such radically different beliefs. It's not because God is saying different things. It's because we don't recognize his voice because we don't know his word. The primary way of growing in discernment of God's voice is the study of his Bible. But not only studying his Bible, but studying it while surrendering what we want God to be like. The more that you're immersed in his word, the more you will recognize his voice outside of it, through dreams, visions, prophecies, or the way that Samuel heard his voice. And the more we study and participate in his word with a sacrificial heart of God, your will, not my will be done. The more we will learn to recognize his voice, so much so that it will become like second nature to us, like a pianist who is familiar with their instrument. See, a pianist isn't a good pianist only because they have a feeling at what note's gonna sound good next. No, it's playing by feeling, absolutely, and playing by ear as they connect with other musicians. But it's also that their decision making is backed up by music theory that they have come to know. And so that music theory teaches them what notes work well together in a certain key. And so it is the same. The music theory is God's word. When we would like to recognize God's voice, it is not simply by ear and by feeling and by what we see. It is by what the word of God proclaims. And then we test everything to that word of God. So then we are like the pianist. We learn what his voice sounds like, as Samuel had to learn. But we also, because we are so familiar with the scriptures, recognize what his voice is apart from all the other voices, quickly. And so many people may say, I felt like God was showing me this, or I felt like God was convicting me of that. And it might well be that God is speaking to them, but it also is dependent on how we define feeling. See, I think sometimes when God is speaking to us, as believers, we have struggled to put the right words to what that is. You know, he's pricking my heart or he's pulling my heart here or there, regardless of what words we use, as long as we biblically understand what it should mean. See, that quote, unquote, feeling, biblically speaking, isn't just an emotion we feel at a certain moment or point in time about a certain matter. Rather, it is to be reliance on inspiration and empowerment by the Holy Spirit that aligns with the scriptures. This allows the Holy Spirit to guide us into unexpected accomplishments within the boundaries of God's word, revealing to us amazing things about people, like words of knowledge or prophecies or giving us a dream or a vision. In fact, most things that God is speaking to us can be quickly confirmed by the word of God because it serves to remind us of what is already written or to provide us a new perspective on what is already written. But not everything is simply to point us back to the word of God. There are also other revelations that God may show us on a personal level that cannot immediately be determined in that way. We will talk about some of that more later. It comes down to this. If you're not well educated on what God's word says, you will mistake other voices for God's voice. Let us now discuss the three voices we will need to discern between romans eight six says, for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. In this verse, Paul demonstrates to us two different voices that our mind will need to distinguish the flesh and the Holy Spirit. And Paul says that depending on what you set your mind to, different fruit will be produced by that. People will struggle to hear God when their mind is not set on the Holy Spirit. If your identity is in the flesh, if you are satisfied by the desires of this world, you will walk by the flesh and listen to the flesh. If your identity, however, is in Christ, you will be satisfied by pleasing God alone, and you will walk by the spirit and listen by the spirit. The third voice we see in the scriptures is Satan himself, as he quoted the scriptures to Yeshua. When Jesus found himself in the wilderness. As Satan comes to us, he uses the Bible, but he attempts to apply it in a wrongful context and out of God's character. And that's why Jesus always responded to Satan in the wilderness. With it is written, demonstrating again to us all how important it is for us to know what is written. One of the greatest errors of some in the modern charismatic movements is misplaced focus. Such great focus is often placed on supernatural experiences of prophetic words, dreams, visions, and other ways. God may be speaking outside the Bible, more so than the study and growing and understanding what's inside the Bible. But if we were truly passionate about prophecy, we would go to great lengths to deeply study God's word. Instead, our church cultures drive us to great lengths to try and find something, anything, that God may be speaking outside the Bible. After all, he seems to be doing that to everyone else. And this has caused this. God told me, culture, you probably could.

Barely listen to ten minutes of a sermon out of Bethel and not hear the phrase God told me, you know, I heard God say, God said this and God said that. I mean, it's just constant. It's just, it flows out of them.

Social pressures within our church makes us feel the need to portray how God also speaks to us in order to fit into our church culture. See, when we make a statement like God told me, that is a very serious public statement, and we should put a lot of weight behind such a statement. It doesn't mean that God can't tell us something, but we should be careful when we decide to make such a statement. One corinthians four six says, I have applied all these things to myself and apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything differently in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if then you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Anything that God actually may have told us doesn't make us better or more spiritually mature than someone else. As we've already established, Samuel, as it was written, did not know God's voice yet, but yet God still desired to speak to him. And that means we cannot boast in our prophecies or what God has spoken to us or try and use that to elevate our church, our ministry, or our social status. This all leads us to a church culture of compromising God's word, where discerning these apparent God told me words comes secondary to pursuing even more new experiences with his voice so that we may climb some spiritual ladder in our church. Lack of accountability leads to inventions of what God is saying according to what we want him to say. Making God in our own image. And as we mold God into our own image, instead of him molding us into his, we create our own God with his own strange new doctrines because we inflated the authority of our experiences, whether a dream, whether a vision, whether a prophecy, or even what we saw in a deliverance and what a demon has spoken, as some now new teaching that can be equal to the scriptures or even inform our theology when the scriptures have not spoken such a thing. And by this we turn many away from the voice of God. This is nothing new we see in the book of Jeremiah 20 316. Thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak to you visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. Jeremiah explained so concisely for us what it was like for these false prophets. They thought it was the voice of God, but rather they prophesied from their own imaginations what they thought God was saying. He said, I will win and Trump will still sit in the White House for four more years.

They say, well, Kat, if you prophesied eight years, is it that it's four now and four later?

No. No, it is not. It's four continual years.

Tracy, is President Trump going to have a second term?

Same thing, similar to Kevin? Yes. That in two weeks we will know without a shot of a doubt the victory has been won. And this is a serious warning to us all. There are so many people who in past times have made wild, speculative prophecies about who the next president is going to be. And then yet we find later that they were only driven by their own political aspirations of who they wanted to be president or what they thought about the subject they were prophesying about. The God of the Bible isn't interested in what you think he should be like, in who you think should be the next president of the United States. He doesn't operate on your terms or on what you would like to prophesy. It's also important to understand and make clear that God does not have to speak to you in the ways that you desire for him to speak to you. You may desire a vision, you may desire to receive a prophecy, you may desire to have a dream. He may never give you what you desire. That is up to him and him alone. His will and his ways are always good. We already established that different people have different gifts and callings, and hearing his voice in a supernatural way will also affect them in different ways. Therefore, it's worth asking yourself, can God trust me with his voice? In a world where many people are saying, thus says the Lord, when the Lord has not spoken, what would you do if he did? He may ask of you to proclaim it. He may speak it to you for your own heart and your heart alone. But can you then keep a secret? Or will you use the hidden things he entrusts you with to exalt yourself? Daniel 222. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him. Another biblical example of how God reveals hidden things to people is in Jesus own relationship with his mother. In John two three, with the wedding of Canaan, miracle of turning the water into wine, we read the when the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. And Jesus said to her, women what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. Notice how the mother of Jesus comes to Jesus with this problem of we have no wine. Isn't that a strange request to bring to him? I mean, what is she even really asking of him? Obviously, the messiah knew what she was asking. That is why he responded with my time has not yet come. He understood that she was asking of him to do some sort of a miracle to solve this problem of the wine that has run out. This shows us that even before the time of the Messiah came, Jesus revealed to his mother hidden things that he can do that no one else, at least at that wedding, knew he can do. We have a relationship with God personally. That means that God can speak to us about situations, things that is for us and us alone, and we should cherish it that way if that is his intention, speaking that to us. But is prayer a two way street? Should we expect that whenever we pray to God that he would verbally speak back to us in that very moment?

But let me remind you that hearing.

God is the second half of prayer. Because if you can't hear God, why would you pray? And if you'll just take some time.

And start to listen, you'll be amazed that he'll speak.

Lord, teach us to pray. What did Jesus say? Okay, here's how you do it. You talk to God, and then you get real quiet and you listen for that still, small voice. Is that what he said? No, he didn't say that at all. He said, when you pray, say this, Lord, hallowed be thy name. Nothing about listening for some still, small voice. Nothing about listening for God to speak back to you. So this whole notion of prayer being a two way street, that is foreign to the word of God.

Indeed, when Jesus spoke to his disciples, he did not instruct them to expect God to speak to them in a verbal experience each time that they pray. See, prayer is us speaking to God, yet God decides how he will respond to our prayers. That is why we, in fact, pray. Let your will be done. It is wrong to teach the expectation that God will always verbally speak back to us when we pray, as Morris did. But it's equally as wrong to conclude that God will never speak to us when we pray to him. As Peter's concludes, God spoke on many occasions to his people in many ways outside the Bible, and we already looked at many such examples in part one of this series. So let us always incline our heart to his voice, but let us not have unrealistic expectations, for they only serve to disappoint and confuse us. Next, I would like to discuss the many relationships that have been destroyed and justified by an apparent quote unquote, word from God. See this example of how someone was told to leave their spouse to marry.

Someone else on the tragic end of it. Take, for instance, a friend of mine whose wife left him because she was convinced that God told her to leave him and to marry another Mandev. That's the tragic aspect of this. She had been raised in this philosophy that if she had a peace about something, if she had prayed about something and she felt God speaking to her, that she could go and do whatever God was telling her to do without any consequences because she was being obedient to him.

Of course, we don't know the deeper details of this story, but if we assume that there was no biblical reason for the divorce, but that the individual simply went on some voice from God without having a biblical justification for that divorce, then this defiles the sanctity of marriage. See, you don't get to leave your spouse because you had a dream or a vision or a voice, no matter how deeply it impacted you, no matter how real it felt, no matter how much you were convinced that this was from an angel or from goddess. See, ultimately, if it contradicts God's desire for marriage revealed in the scriptures, it is not of God. It is either fleshly or even demonic. Now, if this person was in a relationship where sin took place, that actually permits the consideration of divorce, like with sexual immorality. In such a situation, we must pray to God for guidance on what to do. And God will guide us in the ways that we ought to go. And he may do so through multiple ways and avenues, through what the word tells us to do in such situations, and permits us to do in such situations through speaking with our elders and spiritual leadership and people we trust mature in the Lord and combine all of this with if God also came to speak to us in other ways that align perfectly with God's desires revealed in the scriptures. Let's look at another example. Taking words from God to unjustly judge the motives of others, we've all seen it all too often that people say things like, God told me that that person is evil, or the Holy Spirit told me that they were out to get me, or the Holy Spirit told me that that person is the Antichrist, or the Holy Spirit told me that they are a witch. Biblically speaking, any such accusation that takes place must be substantial by evidence. And not just any evidence. Two to three witnesses of evidence. See, our God is a God of truth, and if what he is speaking to you is indeed the truth that you allege it is, he will also provide you the necessary evidence, both for yourself and for everyone else to judge your word as to whether it's from God or not. See, without evidence, such a revelation means nothing, no matter how real it felt or how supernatural it seemed. I can't stress enough how people have broken relationships and the commandments of God because they refuse to follow the scriptures in this matter, following their own feelings, mistaking it for God's voice, judging others and their motives. See, there's a great danger I want you to see here. If we suffered rejection before in our own lives, it can leave us vulnerable to project that rejection upon new people throughout our life. And we didn't start grabbing onto apparent, quote unquote, words from goddess that are really our own feelings of rejection. The scripture gives us a sobering warning of bearing false witness in Deuteronomy 1915, a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrong doing, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother, so you shall purge the evil from your midst. It remains dangerous for us to become a prophet of our own imaginations when speaking for God becomes an outlet for our own vengeance and our own bitterness as a weapon to murder, while veiling ourselves as prophetic or spiritual. In the midst of doing so, we then find ourselves hiding behind a false witness of God himself when we say, God told me or God said, this person is this or that when God has not spoken. And keep in mind that the judgment upon a false witness is whatever the judgment would have been upon the person that they falsely accused. God is a judge that is just, and he will have no one with blood on their hands get away with blood on their hands. I want to give you one more example. Using words from God as an excuse to avoid going to someone who hurts you personally. People often say, I didn't feel peace, that God wanted me to go to this person to make things right. Well, what does the Bible say about when someone has hurt us? It tells us in Matthew 18 to go to that person between him and you alone. But because you mistake your feelings for what you think is the voice of God, you've abandoned this commandment of Jesus himself. For Jesus said in Matthew 523, if you bring an offering to the Lord, but you recognize that your brother has something against you, leave your offering at the altar, go and make things right with your brother, and then come and bring your offering. In Matthew 1821, Peter asked Jesus, how many times should I forgive? And Jesus replied to him saying, 70 times seven. And in Matthew 615, Jesus also said, if you do not forgive others of their trespasses against you, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. For when we feel like God has told us that we don't need to go to someone and we don't need to make things right, it may well not be in God's voice who said that to you? Since it contradicts what the messiah has already spoken. But just a disclaimer, if approaching a person places your life in danger, this, of course, complicates things, and I would recommend further counsel. What I stated in this section is to be applied to most normal disputes, not dangerous situations. Let us now start concluding with Satan's objective in all of this. These abuses of stating God said things that he never said is Satan's objective. Many struggle to hear God's voice because they've been hurt by people who've said, thus is the Lord when the Lord has not spoken, or God didn't say when he did speak. And I am truly sorry if you've witnessed or experienced such spiritual abuse, they should not define your relationship with God's voice. What went wrong should never define what is right. And so it's time for us all to turn over a new page. So how do we test an experience of whatever sort of God's voice? Number one, by the scriptures. One, Thessalonians 521 says, but test everything and hold fast to what is good. Number two, in submission to the body of Christ for confirmation of what God may be speaking to us. Any words that God delivers to us is not for in a vacuum. One corinthians 1432 says, and the spirit of prophets are subject to prophets. If we are unwilling to submit our experience of God's voice to one another, or if we are unwilling to hear from someone else that God actually didn't speak to you, then we're not spiritually mature enough to be entrusted with God's words. Accountability and the body of Christ working together is a part of discerning God's voice that we can never remove from the equation. Number three, buy the fruit. God's voice, if it's indeed his voice, produces the fruit of Jesus inside of us. His words has power to change us. So if he has really spoken, it will change you, and if he has really spoken, it will glorify Jesus. Revelation 1910 says, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The point of God speaking to us is in order to glorify Jesus. It is in order to share the testimony of what he has done for us and the gospel. If we are sharing words just into the air that do not hold good fruit and do not point towards the messiah in some ways, then we have to question, is this from God? And so just two examples to drive this home for you. If God were to give you a word of knowledge to give to someone, you have to first ask yourself the question, do I share this word with them? And if I should, how do I share it with them? Because sometimes God gives a word for you to better pray and minister to people, not for you to just come and condemn them. Think about the samaritan woman in John chapter four, where the messiah came to her and pointed out her many husbands a sin that she had found herself in. But yet he didn't say much further than pointing it out. She already knew her sin, and he knew that she was already excommunicated by her community, and he knew that. And so even though the father gave him a word of knowledge about what she was in and what she had been facing, he had mercy and grace with that word as he delivered it to this woman, because he recognized there's more to the story, and there are reasons why she has found herself in the situation that she is in. In the same ways, let us deliver God's words with fruit of the spirit and compassion. Let's think about another example of something people just love to have, prophecies about marriage. If a dream says, marry this person, or someone comes to you and says, I think you should marry that person. When I was young, there was actually an occasion where someone came to me and said, God has shown in a dream that you should marry this person. And that was not a sign of anything. They were not the person I was to marry. That was not what God had spoken, and that was not a dream he has given. My wife was still awaiting me. I had not even met her yet. This is a dangerous territory, isn't it? And how do we test this? We test the fruit to the scriptures. If this is indeed something that God has spoken and said, that is not a sign that you should marry them. At most, it's simply a sign that you may want to consider things, that you may want to test the fruit of this other person to the scriptures that if there is actually indeed something that is developing between the two of you and God is drawing you guys together, that deep conversations must ensue between them and not only them, but involving their parents and elders and accountability. And after everything is confirmed, in other words, after we actually start growing closer together and after we have tested their fruit and after the Lord has has shown, given us more signs and confirmations and peace, and our parents are at peace, then that initial dream that came to us in whichever way now simply serve as a confirmation of something that God had done. We can look back and take joy in how God was involved. But see, dreams and visions become confirmation of what God has already revealed in his word, manifested in our life and proven by the fruit my mother would later receive, a dream of my wife. But yet that dream has specifications that exactly matched circumstances that we later found ourselves in. It was not the place that was where we started from. It was the place that only served as a confirmation later. So it's important for us to shelve things as they are revealed to us, and God will confirm them if they have real meaning lighter. So we've now discussed the falsehoods, but how do we fix this? That's what we'll be discussing in part three. We'll be getting practical with discerning God's voice in your daily life. We'll be looking at case studies of biblical examples of dreams and visions. What made them authentic? What can they teach us about how we judge our own dreams and visions as to be from God or not? And we'll be looking at examples of how God speaks to us today. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. And a special thank you to our partners who've made this series possible. If you want to become a partner of this ministry to help us continue proclaiming the voice of God to the nations, you can find out [email protected] many blessings to you and Shalom.