16: How Do I Know It’s God’s Voice?

[00:01] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 16. Today we are continuing our talk of Listening to the Holy Spirit, and we’re specifically going to be looking at discernment.

Hello, Father.

[00:12] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. It’s time. Let’s dive into discernment.

[00:16] Stephanie: I know we’ve been flirting with it every episode because it’s so important. So we are here, we’ve arrived and we’ve been going through this funnel, is what it looks like in my head, of we looked at the theology of the Holy Spirit, and then we looked at walking in the Spirit, and now we’re kind of into some of the really practical, step by step sort of things. So, yeah, checklist of sorts.

So when we’re talking about listening prayer, I think the first thing that I want to address is very personal to me because I have always had a very strong, active imagination, and I’m a writer, so especially when we talk about journaling and listening prayer and writing as if you’re hearing from God, I have always had this check where I’m like, “How do I know that I’m not just being like, if I were writing a book and God was the character, this is how he would be talking.” I’ve always had to be like, “How do I discern that I am really in a conversational prayer with God right now and I’m not just writing a novel.”

[01:34] Marcus: That’s fair.

[01:35] Stephanie: So I wanted to just kind of start with that. How do I know when I’m interacting with the Holy Spirit and not my own imagination? Yeah, I’ll start there.

[01:50] Marcus: That’s a good question. So to begin with, there are a lot of different levels of Holy Spirit communication. The first level we’re looking at here is not, “ I want to sit down now. I’m going to journal and God’s going to tell me his plan for my life. And he’s going to tell me whether to take this job or not. And he’s going to tell me exactly what to do. And I’m going to know when I’m done with this time of prayer, will know exactly what God wants me to do, what decision I will make.”

[02:24] Stephanie: I’ll have a checklist of “thus saith the Lord.”

[02:27] Marcus: What we’re doing is more or less giving God an opportunity to communicate or guide our thinking, and often what will happen then is we’ll find ourselves thinking about things we weren’t planning to. So one of the things I’m looking for are surprising thoughts like, “I wasn’t really expecting to go that direction,  but as I live with that, that makes some sense.”

Part of the idea here is, we want to give God the opportunity to interact with us and pay attention to the things instead of just predetermining God will not speak to me, therefore I’m just going to go through my checklist and be done. The idea is I am going to pray and even ask God what I should be praying for.

I think that there are starting points to this. Then what happens is that the further you go with it, there are people who I think God gives greater grace to for different reasons. Think about the Apostle Paul talking about that like gifts firmly rooted in the idea of gifts are grace. They are gifts of grace that God has given to people.

And one of the things that I just noticed over time is that God seems to give greater grace, if you will, especially when it comes to hearing him and perceiving his presence, to people who have been through more difficulties in their life, have greater challenges. It just seems like the more wounded somebody is, the more grace God gives them. A lot of times I find those people find it a little bit easier to sense that connection more quickly.

We’re all across the board when we’re talking about this. I think what we need to avoid is the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all experience. And if I will just put my quarter in and do the 1, 2, 3 checklist, that I will always hear from God and I will always leave knowing exactly what God wants me to do.We’ll talk more about it, but I think we kind of need to start there.

[04:46] Stephanie: Okay. Could you linger just a moment more on what you mean by grace in this instance?

[04:53] Marcus: So grace to me is almost synonymous with gift. It’s the idea that God gives us something because he knows we need it. And so when he says to Paul, who’s saying, “Please take this thorn away from me, take this messenger from Satan away,” and God says, “My grace is sufficient for you,” he’s saying that what I give to you, what you receive from me, my provision is going to be adequate to meet your need.

Listening prayer isn’t always about knowing God’s thoughts. The ultimate goal here is to get to a point where I leave trusting him more than I did before. And there’s a difference between trusting God more and understanding God more. Like, I don’t necessarily come away feeling like, “I know what God’s up to now, and I understand the master plan. Oh, this is so amazing!” so much as I know that God wants me to trust him with this, I know that I need to take this next step of faith, or I know I’m just in a season of waiting and I have to trust that.

[05:57] Stephanie: I’m glad you brought that up. Let’s go ahead and go through a little discernment checklist and then be able to talk from all the angles of that checklist.

[06:09] Marcus: Yes. The first and most obvious checklist in listening prayer is, is this biblical or is it unbiblical? Another thing that I don’t mention too often also is, am I using occult processes in my prayer life? That should be a red flag. Like if I’m saying I’m going to pray and then use a Ouija board to see if I can get God to speak to me. I am already sort of disqualified.

[06:40] Stephanie: You’re going to pray through tarot cards?

[06:41] Marcus: Yeah, “I’m going to pray through tarot cards,” like if I cannot involve occult processes in my ability in trying to hear from or discern God. One of the things that actually listening prayer advocates are often accused of is that we are teaching a Christianized occult. And I get that. Some people have done that and some people flirt with the line a lot, and it is something we have to be careful of. That’s why it’s helpful to understand what is occult, what is an occult, and to stay away from those sorts of things.

It’s also this idea that you can have counterfeit spiritual experience. If you go back to the start of two famous world religions, Islam and Mormonism both started when there was a supernatural revelation to somebody where a being from another realm appeared to them and gave them revelation. That’s why these things have to be tested and why you can’t just say, “Well, because I am praying and I had a supernatural experience, automatically it’s God.”

[07:52] Stephanie: And the devil knows the Bible too, so that’s why “Is it scriptural?” is a test. It needs to be in alignment with the Bible and the true interpretation of the Bible. But you have to be holistic as you’re looking at what does this. Go through the checklist. Does it contradict scripture?

[08:17] Marcus: Does it contradict scripture? Did I use occult means of getting to this conclusion? Does it produce the fruit of the Spirit when I follow it? And you can’t just say, does it bring me peace? Because most New Age things bring you peace. I saw a documentary not long ago with a famous athlete who gave up his Christianity in which he was raised, and he now takes people through these New Age weekends, and they all come out of there going, “I’ve never felt such peace!”

So you can’t just say, “Does it bring you peace? You know, that’s the sign of God.” Because of almost all these New Age practices, people will tell you, at least initially, that they feel a tremendous amount of peace going through it. When we talk about the fruit of the Spirit, that’s why I like to expand it to all. Well, yes, there can be peace, but also, if I follow this out, I’m going to be demonstrating greater self control, I’m going to be more patient, I’m going to be more loving. And so you’re looking for those kinds of things.  You’re examining the fruit of what comes from doing this.

I would also say that examining the fruit is part of the idea of, not only if I do this, but if I’m praying with somebody and they are encountering Jesus and they’re having a healing experience, I’m also looking for the fruit coming out of that. What is the fruit that comes from that over time? And it’s not that they’re totally better or everything is fixed, but there is some level of breakthrough that happens that’s able to be maintained.

As we’re looking at discernment: scriptural, it’s not occult, it produces the fruit of the Spirit – those are the main three that I look for – the fourth one is, I do like it to be surprising and not something I would have just sat down and thought of on my own. For example, a surprising thought. First time I tried to do a listening prayer exercise, I was at a John Eldridge retreat and he’s like, “Go ask God your name.”

And so I find this beautiful place in the Rocky Mountains. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, looking at beautiful scenery. I’m like, mountaintop experience just waiting to happen, right? And I’m sitting here and say, “Okay, God, would you just tell me my true name?” Like, ready, go! That kind of thing. And it’s just nothing. I’m not getting anything. And I was like, “I knew this wasn’t going to work. This is silly.”

And so I left and I went down and I found a basketball court and I picked up a basketball and I started shooting. And while I was playing basketball, I had a surprising thought. And the surprising thought actually started with my name. It was “Marcus,” which I don’t usually talk to myself that way, and the next thought was, “you live your whole life like this,” which was such a surprising thought that I didn’t know where it was going. It made me curious. I’m like, “What do you mean I live my whole life like this? What are we talking about?”

So when I say that I’m looking for a surprising thought, that’s kind of what I mean. That clearly wasn’t me because I didn’t know where it was going. Another surprising thought I’ve mentioned before, is when I was upset with somebody and a Bible verse popped into my head, and I couldn’t have told you what the Bible verse was. It was just a reference. And I had to stop and think about it and kind of search it and go find that reference before it made sense to me. So, again, these are signs when I’m looking for something surprising. That’s kind of the idea.

[12:06] Stephanie: Yeah, those are good. I know in Breakthrough you talk about oftentimes thoughts that are in alignment with God will bring hope. Which, again, that’s not a stand alone one because you can find hope in things just because you’re misbelieving. But I do think that there’s something there, kind of with that same idea of, it brings me peace or it brings me hope. We’ve talked before about discerning the voice of God versus Satan. Like Satan is the accuser and God, if I’m getting corrected by God, it’s a very different experience than if I’m being corrected by Satan. They could even tell me the same thing, but one is holding it against me.

[12:56] Marcus: One is condemning.

[12:57] Stephanie: Yes.

[12:57] Marcus: And is an attack on you personally as a person, and the other is corrective and offers some hope that this could get better. So one is condemning and hopeless and the other is corrective and hopeful.

On the idea of hope, one of the characteristics of a stronghold, of a demonic stronghold, is hopelessness, because it makes it feel like something God has said you can do is hopeless. For example, God has said, “Put away anger, put away bitterness, put away these things,” and I’m into my stronghold. I’m like, “I can’t. This is hopeless. I’m never going to be able to put this away. How do I put away sexual immorality? I’ve been trying and trying and I can’t.”

A stronghold will always make something that God has said he would like for us to do, something that we know is God’s will, feel hopeless. And so one of the ways that we know that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us is he will inject hope that what God’s will is actually is possible.

[14:03] Stephanie: Carrying on from that, you also say that thoughts in alignment with God make the truth feel true. I think that is super powerful, especially if we want to touch briefly on real prayer or whatever. The idea that so many times people experience breakthrough in emotional healing prayer, when God tells them truth, that maybe the person they are praying with has literally been telling them that same truth for months, but they needed to hear it from God, and all of a sudden it felt true. Can you talk to that a little bit?

[14:42] Marcus: Yes, absolutely. It sounds strange at first to say, does something feel true. It’s like, does that smell purple to you? Because you don’t normally put feeling and truth together, but when you’re talking to somebody, they get it when you’re talking about, “So how true does it feel to you that you’re worthless?” And when they’re triggered and they’re in that state, “Oh, that feels completely true.”

And when I say, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how true does it feel that you’re worthless and nobody who really knew you could possibly love you?” The most common answer I got from people is, “That’s a 20.”  I asked for a scale of 1 to 10, right? But it feels absolutely true, or “It feels absolutely true God abandoned me. How could it not be true that God abandoned me? I mean, this happened. This horrible, horrible thing happened to me. Of course I was abandoned by God.”

And so what happens then is, when you remember the event and you explore the event, you ask Jesus to meet you in the event, and then you revisit that, you look and you listen for something to change. Oftentimes what will happen is Jesus will then do something to, we call it, heal the memory. And what he’s doing is he’s doing something to take what felt true before and uproot that and make something else feel true.

For example, I know a person who felt completely abandoned by God and completely worthless and it had to do with abandonment by his father. When God took him to a specific memory, Jesus sat with him underneath this tree where he had a very specific memory sitting under the tree by himself while his dad abandoned him. And Jesus sat down next to him, put his arm around him and basically just said, “It’s going to be okay.” And we’re like, I could have told him, hey, it’s going to be okay. Not a whole lot of impact.

But something about Jesus saying you’re going to be okay took a whole bunch of weight off him, let him breathe. And when we were done, and we go back and revisit, and say, “How true does it feel that God abandoned you?” He’s like, “Doesn’t feel true at all. He was just sitting with me under the tree.”

That’s what we mean by true. Things begin to feel true. So when the Bible says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” I know that that’s true, but it doesn’t always feel true. What happens is you can tell. One of the fruits that show us that God really is at work in something, and the Holy Spirit really is at work, is that things the Bible teaches to be true actually start feeling true to people because of what the Holy Spirit has done.

[17:42] Stephanie: That’s really good. If listeners want to go deeper into that, REAL prayer is an acrostic, that emotional healing prayer. You can find a whole free course on Understanding the Wounded Heart on YouTube that you can go through. And you can also find a lot of that in the book Understanding the Wounded Heart.

So just leave that there. I want to circle back around briefly to the idea of imagination with all of this, and that when you are listening or writing or you’re talking to God, can you talk briefly about thought rhyming? You know, how do you know? Like, am I just thinking thoughts that the Holy Spirit might want me to think or is it really just my own thought, or am I actually hearing from God, and does it matter?

[18:40] Marcus: I would say in some cases it matters immensely whether or not you’re hearing from God, and in some cases it actually doesn’t. What I mean by “it doesn’t”, because that may be shocking, “What do you mean it doesn’t matter if you’re hearing from God?” The point is, my attempts at listening to God, bringing thoughts to mind that God would want me to be thinking, as long as these are thoughts that God would want me to be thinking, it’s good enough. I don’t have to have an experience. I just need to get my thoughts in sync with God’s thoughts.

At Life Model Works they call this thought rhyming, and it comes from the idea of Hebrew poetry. Hebrew poetry doesn’t rhyme by sound the way American poetry does. You know, roses are red, violets are blue, I love you, kind of thing. In Hebrew poetry they do what we might call thought rhyming. It’s technically called parallelism. This idea of thought rhyming is that the first thought is rhymed by the second thought. And it is sometimes not just a repeating of the first thought, but in it there’s a clarifying or an expansion in the second thought. So they build on each other.

And the idea of thought rhyming is that we want to get our thoughts in sync with God’s thoughts, and that at that level, it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s his thought or my thought. What’s important is that it’s a good thought and that it is something that God would want me to be thinking.

[20:24] Stephanie: All right, this is really robust and we’re running out of time.

Our next series, we’re going to be talking more about how to defeat demons and the final “D” in our BUILD model for breakthrough, so we will talk more about testing the spirits and all of that.

I want to give a brief shout out to the online marriage event that is happening March 15th. It’s a name your own price event, and my father here is going to be talking from The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages and also The Spirit-Filled Home. And so it’s going to be good. We encourage you to come and bring some friends.

He’s going to look both at how do we repair things and how do we build things that are going to make our marriages better, and how do we repair and correct things that have been tearing down our marriages. So it’s going to look at both sides.

All right, will you give some final thoughts for Listening to the Spirit?

[21:35] Marcus: Yes. This is not always an intentional process where you say, “Right now I’m going to hear from God. So I’m going to set aside 15 minutes and during this 15 minutes I will hear from God.” It doesn’t always work like that. Part of what we’re doing is we’re embracing a worldview that recognizes that God speaks. And in fact, it says in Hebrews, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.”

God often speaks to us in a variety of ways and gets our attention in a variety of ways. Part of what we’re doing is we’re just trying to cultivate that mindset of paying attention, and so I would just say that you don’t have to think about this as a spiritual discipline that has to be mastered, that can be done perfectly, so much as a lifestyle that is paying attention to the thoughts in our heads and learning to distinguish which thoughts are going to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Especially those surprising thoughts that seem to be leading us in a very kingdom oriented direction. Pay attention to those.

[22:43] Stephanie: Yes, very good. I look forward to continuing next week.

Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend and do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.