Bill Johnson - How to Recognize God's Voice When He Speaks
In other words, you’re saying things we don’t understand, but we still feel life in our souls whenever you talk. That’s the point. I can be in a moment of conflict, confusion, or uncertainty about what is going on, but whenever He speaks, life stirs up inside of me, and I discover why I’m alive. There’s confirmation of it—I’m in the right place at the right time. I may not know what to do, but I don’t need to at this moment. All I need to know now is the source of that word, and He has provided us the protection not to fall into deception.
Verse 14: Later, He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table. He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. Let’s read it again: Verse 14: Later, He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table. He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. Now, here’s something I think we don’t agree on: none of us wants to be gullible. We don’t want to fall for falsehoods. We’ve all heard people boast about things that turned out to be untrue; they claimed to have visions or promises that just didn’t happen. None of us wants to be gullible. It would be cruel of the Lord to require me to believe any report I hear if there weren’t something in that report that helps me know its source. The source was God, or it was not.
Jesus’s second most famous sermon is His Sermon on the Mount; the second one was John 6—"Eat my flesh, drink my blood.» Nobody bought the podcast after that one. Nobody sent it to their mother-in-law, saying, «Listen to this.» At the end of that message, there were perhaps 15, maybe even as many as 20,000 people there because He had multiplied food, performed extraordinary miracles, and then He stood up to preach. He decided to take a different twist because His other sermons weren’t quite so offensive, but this one nailed them: «You have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.» They started complaining, so He turned it up a notch. Every time they complained, He made it more challenging. By the time we reach the end, everyone has left except for the disciples, and Jesus turns to the twelve and asks, «Are you guys leaving too?»
Peter got it right on several occasions, and we need to give him credit. He nailed it this time: «Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.» Listen to what he’s saying: «Where are we going to go? Every time you talk, we come alive inside.» To put it in my words, we don’t understand the sermon on eating flesh and drinking blood any more than the masses that left, but what we do know is that when you talk, we discover why we’re alive because there’s something in the words. Jesus later described it in chapter six when He said, «My words to you are spirit.»
So, number one, it’s presence; number two, it’s life—it gives life. There is life to the words that come from the Lord, and there’s presence when we become a people who recognize what God is saying and doing by acknowledging the life from the words and the presence that manifests. Then we can accept the new thing He decides to do.
Verse 12 says He appeared in another form to the two of them as they walked and went into the country. They went and told the rest, but they didn’t believe them either. He appeared in another form—He didn’t come as they expected. We all love the promise that God is about to do a new thing; we just hope He does it the way He did it last time. Everybody I know cries out for a great move of God; they just want it to happen with some familiarity. The Lord has a habit of not only repeating the testimony but adding to it through something that is offensive; when He added tongues, that offended a lot of people. He won’t violate His word, but He doesn’t mind violating my understanding of His word.
Personally, I think He delights in it; I can’t prove it—just my opinion. So, here we have a story where the disciples are disappointed and in great pain. Why? They’ve given three and a half years of their lives to someone who is now dead, and they have nothing to show for it. They left everything to follow this one, and it’s intense disappointment—a great mourning. Why? Because they loved Him; they were devoted to Him, and He is now gone. Someone comes along with news that’s too good to be true. Sometimes it is true because it is too good to be true. Someone brings the news that He is alive, but they are in so much pain and, not wanting to be gullible, they recall that they left everything to follow Him three and a half years ago and don’t want to do that again. Are you with me?
I don’t want to be gullible. So, what happens when you try to protect yourself from being gullible? You will overcompensate and keep yourself from faith. You can either have dignity or you can have faith. You can either work to preserve your dignity or you can give yourself to faith. Here’s why: Jesus could rebuke and correct them for not believing the report because when the report was spoken, presence and life were released. However, they were so anxious that they became unavailable to what God was actually doing. Anxiety causes me to lose track of the tools that God has put in my life. Anytime we’re in a challenging situation, the enemy works hard to make us mindful. If I can use Peter in the boat walking on water, the enemy makes us aware of the waves and threats to our safety so that we take our eyes off the one safe place and focus on all the other possibilities. In that anxiety, suddenly I can’t remember one thing God’s taught me in the last two years. Yet there’s not a person in this room facing something for which God has not already prepared you. To think you’re unprepared is to call Him a bad steward of your life. Just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean He didn’t place it there.
Fighting for that place of peace, fighting for that acknowledgment of presence is where you rediscover what God has placed in you. That is the very tool, the very instrument needed for this next assignment. Come on, amen. Our job is to recognize whether a word comes from the Lord or not. I remember there was a gal here—I want to be very careful; she had some mental issues, so I need to tread lightly. She would accuse me of weird things, and there were issues, but I would love her; I just didn’t want to be close. I loved her from a distance—a hug, but please don’t accuse me again. She accused me horribly—it was just crazy. I’ll never forget, one Sunday it was right back where that camera is. She came up to me with a word from the Lord again, but this time it was…
See, our responsibility is to recognize the word of the Lord. Our responsibility is not the approval of the messenger or the personality through which the message was given. Oftentimes, our hunger is tested by Him placing what we’re hungry for in the group of people or individuals we want nothing to do with. That’s the good news. So, follow me now. Presence is released in those divine moments where a word is shared. It is the responsibility of the hearer to say, «All right, He’s on this. I’ll need to figure out what He’s saying exactly to me, but I recognize this is a divine moment.» Thank you!
I am the head of my household, amen; my wife is the neck—she turns me any way she wants. As the head of my household, my responsibility is to recognize the word of the Lord when we hear it. Sometimes it comes to me; sometimes it comes from my children, and obviously, many times through my wife. But I remember a certain time in my life pastoring in Weaverville. I was pretty certain it was God’s will for me to have a new car. I was convinced I knew which car it was too, as I had been shopping in magazines. We didn’t have the internet back then. I found the one that looked nice and was a good car, so I scheduled a time for Benny, the kids, and me to come down to Redding and test drive this car.
But before I left Weaverville, the Lord spoke very clearly to me in no uncertain terms: «You are not to buy a car.» I thought, «But I should probably test drive one just so that if it ever becomes Your will, we know which one to get.» We all know God needs a lot of help with these things. So, I talked myself into it. I dulled down that conviction to stay away. We drove down to the car lot, I got in the driver’s seat, the salesman was there, my family was in the back, I started the car, and Brian began singing, «Be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little eyes what you see. There’s a Father up above looking down in tender love, so be careful little eyes what you see.»
I would have turned the car off right then, but I had to do something for the sake of the salesman. I drove around the block, that one tiny block, parked it, turned the key off, said thank you very much, and we left. Worst test drive ever! I couldn’t tell you one thing about that car because it was ruined. It might as well have had John the Baptist in the backseat prophesying to me, a child’s voice with all of Heaven behind it saying, «Be careful little eyes what you see.»
I remember when I talked to you a little bit about some of my personal story. I recall in February of 1995, I made my first trip of many to Toronto. Toronto was a place where there was a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit that still continues and has spread diversely all over the world. Critics of the revival would say, «Where are all the souls if it was a revival?» Well, just from three people I know who were dramatically touched in that revival, they each led over a million people to the Lord. That’s just three people I know; countless millions have come to Christ, and the story goes on and on.
But it was a very unusual visitation of God. At first, one of the things that made people so mad was that people were laughing who didn’t deserve it. Isn’t that kind of what grace is anyway? So, I went the first night. You have to get there early. Sometimes you stand out in the snow early in the morning—five o’clock, four o’clock—and wait for hours to get in. I mean, people would just wait forever to get into these meetings because they were hungry. I remember getting there the first night and sitting somewhere back over like in that section of the building, and it’s quite a while before the meeting starts, but there are already 5,000 people there.
There’s so much going on in the room; the meeting hasn’t even started. People are falling on the floor, laughing and crying—everything you can imagine going on in that room. It was sensory overload. I could look at any individual and say I had seen that before; I’d seen that before. But I’d never seen 5,000 of that before, and honestly, it was overwhelming to me. I wasn’t afraid; I wasn’t thinking of running out—I just didn’t know what to do with it. I was trying to sort through it and thinking, «God, I’ve been hearing this is You—what’s going on here?»
So, I stood; I stood in front of my chair and looked around at everything happening. I closed my eyes. As soon as I did, I recognized, «Okay, this is the same presence, the same glory that we’ve been experiencing at home.» What’s the point? He will appear differently, but you have to adjust to Him. He won’t adjust to you, but the safeguard is that He will let you know Him by presence and life. You can recognize the source of a word, a miracle, an action, activity—whatever it might be, a group of people—you recognize the source because you can identify, «All right, this is the one I’ve been meeting with for these years. This is the life I’ve been feeding every time I read this word. This is the life I feel coming off the pages of this book.»
He didn’t set us up to fail. He didn’t set us up to fall into some deception through gullibility. What He did was set us up for life, but He said you’ll have to learn to recognize it this way. It won’t be because I keep doing the same thing the same way; it will be that when I do something new, you’ll know it’s me because you’ll know me. I’m the one who came into the room; I’m the one who spoke that word that brought such life to your soul. In that sermon of Jesus, «Eat my flesh, drink my blood,» Peter, are you going to leave too? «Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.»
In other words, you’re saying things we don’t understand, but we still feel life in our souls whenever you talk. That’s the point. I can be in moments of conflict, confusion, and uncertainty about what is happening, but when He speaks, life stirs up inside of me, revealing why I’m alive. There’s confirmation—I’m at the right place at the right time. I may not know what to do, but at this moment, all I need to know is the source of that word. The source of that word comes from the throne room of God, and He has given us the protection not to fall into deception. It’s not because of our intelligence; it’s because of our recognition of a person. Learn to recognize the person.