Bill Johnson - The Many Ways YOU Can Hear God's Voice
If God is silent, it’s never punishment; it’s either because He has already spoken and you need to review what you’ve heard, or He’s trying to connect you with the right people who will add into your life the missing piece. This emphasizes connection and highlights the fact that we don’t have it all. The Bible does not say, «I have the mind of Christ,» but rather, «We have the mind of Christ.» It’s amusing how people believe we are designed but don’t believe in a designer. Yet, we have been intricately designed for many things; one in particular is that we are designed to hear from God. It is in our nature as believers to have faith, but it is in our nature as human beings to hear from God. People will say, «Well, I just don’t hear God speak.» Well, then you couldn’t be born again because our conversion is a response to His invitation; it is never initiated by us.
It’s interesting that you can have a gathering like this and preach on evangelism, and people will come to Christ. I don’t know if any of those who came would say they clearly heard the voice of the Lord, yet they became aware of their unsaved condition and their need for God. What is that the result of? It results from hearing from God. Comprehension is not the evidence we’ve heard; we tend to put God on the same level as we are as humans talking to one another. Yet, God’s languages are so diverse, and oftentimes He speaks things that are so deep, profound, and beyond our pay grade, that He speaks to our spirit in a way where He makes a deposit that may take days, weeks, or even months to unfold.
Many times, people, perhaps in business, make a decision that turns out to be a goldmine. Others make a decision for a family member, maybe as a gift, that is unusually timely—one they hadn’t even planned or thought of. You could make that phone call, and it could be any number of things. However, we often make that brilliant decision without realizing that God ministered to us in the night weeks before the event because He knew it was coming, spoke to us, and prepared us for what we thought was our brilliance, which was actually the product of the voice of God.
He speaks. How many of you have been in moments or seasons where you would say, «I just don’t hear from the Lord very well in this season,» but you sense His presence? I’m going to say that’s His voice. He is the Word; when the Word shows up, His effect is voice. We don’t interpret it as voice, yet it is clearly the voice of God as anything we’ve ever heard. He speaks by presence. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus quotes the verse from the Old Testament: «Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.»
We are alive because He speaks. We live as evidence of His voice. You sitting there, doing nothing but listening to a guy talk, is evidence that He speaks. If it were possible for someone to lack the ability to hear from God, the moment He spoke, they would have the ability to hear from God because He creates when He speaks. He spoke the worlds into being. In Romans 10, it says, «Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.» Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Why don’t you quote that with me? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
I grew up hearing people teach on this, and the most common interpretation I encountered was that faith comes from hearing the word of God. That’s not what it says; it says faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God. We listen to God’s voice not to find something in addition to scripture but to clarify what’s been written.
He gave us an illustration many years ago when the Father spoke to Abraham to sacrifice his son. As the sword was coming down, the Lord spoke and said, «Never mind.» He emphasized how happy Isaac was that his dad kept listening to the Lord. Many Isaacs have been slain because people listened to what He had said, but not to what He is saying. The present-tense voice is actually the cause of faith. The very nature of faith implies, «I am hearing.» You just have a situation come up and believe God for this breakthrough. How did you get it? He spoke.
I hope that what happens as a result of today is that we broaden our perception of how God speaks to us. We’ve talked before about the multiple ways God speaks, and while those stories are fun, and we all have unique experiences with the voice of the Lord, I’m not wanting to dive into that today. I just want to say it is bigger than you can imagine. What I would like to emphasize today is that you have already been designed to perceive and to hear.
This is already in your design. The passage from Hebrews 5 says, «Having your senses trained to discern good and evil.» Our human physical senses can actually be trained by immersion in His presence to recognize good and evil. I know you already know this, but when they train people in banking to recognize counterfeit money, they only study real money. They never study counterfeit money; they become exposed to the real so much that the counterfeit stands out. They may not even know why, but they just know there is something wrong with this. That’s how you discern good and evil: you don’t discern evil by studying evil. You become immersed in the person, and anything that doesn’t fit in there is evil.
The primary emphasis I want to make today is that the very fact that presence is voice means I’m not always ready to understand or to move in what He’s saying to me. That’s why it’s vital to have a time like we had this morning where the worship team is leading, and you’re just unusually aware of God’s presence. Don’t be quick to try to figure out what He’s doing; just be the pliable child. Be like the sailboat with a sail moved by the wind. We just catch the fact that He’s here.
I don’t discover Him through analysis; I discover Him through surrender. It’s not that understanding is wrong; He commands us to pursue wisdom and understanding, which is vital. The problem occurs when we only obey what we understand because then we have a God who looks a lot like us; He mirrors our size. What He’s looking for is people who are yielded to Him, who say yes before He speaks. We’ll look at it in a moment, if I remember. The yes before He speaks actually attracts His voice.
Here’s a verse that would probably do us well to prayerfully meditate on for about 20 years: «He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?» Look at it again: «He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?» Stunning verse.
Biblical meditation seems to be almost a lost art, at least in many circles. Eastern meditation is about emptying the mind, while biblical meditation is about filling the mind. It is completely different. Eastern meditation opens you up to a spirit world where you can easily come under the influence of an evil spirit. Biblical meditation is joining your mind with the mind of Christ. Perhaps the best illustration of biblical meditation is a cow chewing its cud. It brings it up to chew over and over again. That’s what meditation is: you take a thought or a verse and review it, you pray over it, you think about it, maybe quote it, write it down, put it on the dashboard of your car. It’s something you review over and over again because you can tell there’s something here for you, and you don’t want to glance over it quickly.
You want to ensure that the full impact of this verse hits you. This is one of those verses. How can this father, who freely gave us His Son to suffer in unimaginable ways, do something so extreme and not also include everything else that is short of that extreme? If He did this, do you think your car payment doesn’t matter to Him? Is it possible for a father that good, who went to this extreme, to not care about what you care about? We make Him a religious figure who cares only about spiritual things and nothing else. It is just not consistent with the testimony of scripture; it’s not consistent with the lifestyle that Jesus Himself modeled for us.
Here’s a statement that could stand by itself for eternity: «How shall He who gave us His Son, to not only die a most gruesome death, but to carry upon His flesh the weight of every sin of every human being throughout time—the most gruesome death ever experienced—how could there be anything that comes up in our lives that wouldn’t matter to Him?» This chapter is meant to endear us to the Spirit of God, who models and illustrates this kind of father, one who shows this kind of compassion and deep concern.
Jump down to verse 34: «Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.» The interesting thing is that verses 26 and 27 say the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, verse 28 says all things work together for good, and verse 34 says Jesus makes intercession for us. I wonder why everything works out for good. What does intercession mean? It means to stand in the shoes of another. Sometimes when we pray for people, forgive me, but I’ve seen this for years: people will pray for the effectiveness of the back twins.
A woman visiting me at the back door said she wanted to agree to curse the city of San Francisco. I said no; I’m not going to do that. So, she tried to cast a demon out of me, which was interesting. She said, «Come out of him, you foul spirit.» Yes, let’s go. Sometimes, we pray at a situation. Intercession stands in the shoes of another and prays on their behalf, as though it were our own issue. You pray for your neighbor—not just praying at them—but we pray as though their struggles are ours.
This is incredible: Jesus and the Holy Spirit both put on our shoes and pray for us as if our issues were theirs, approaching the Father not because He has chosen evil and they’re trying to talk Him out of it. There’s been that concept for years, which couldn’t be more wrong. It is the Holy Spirit and Jesus who approach the Father because prayer is His assignment; it is His will. This is how the economy of Heaven functions: there is a partnership, and there are requests. In this request, the partnership of God and man, or the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, is illustrated through perfect unity and camaraderie. Here, they pray for you and for me, and it’s sandwiched between the testimony of God praying for us, with the covenant promise that it will all work, and all will work for good.
In verse 37, «Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors.» Say this within yourself: «I’m more than a conqueror.» I don’t just win; I really, really win. More than what is conquering? I don’t know; it’s like victory on steroids. It’s out there. I am more than a conqueror through Him who loved us. Verse 38 says, «I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.»
I remember early in my walk with the Lord, finding this verse in the Gospel of John. I memorized it for my sake: where Jesus said, «No one can remove you from my Father’s hand.» There’s this picture of the Father holding us in His hands; no one can remove you from His hands. It describes all of creation—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and says there’s not one part of it that can create a wedge and separate you from the love of God. That means you and I live in continuous connection to the expression of God’s love.
It is good news. For those of you who study, and I hope everyone does, there’s a strange connection between Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 2. Read them; they complement each other beautifully. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. There is this seamless connection between you and the heart of God; nothing can separate that. My problem is that I can live aware of inferior things and lose the God-given sensitivities to His heart for me. It doesn’t mean His love has changed; it just means I don’t live consciously aware of it.
You remember at the beginning I talked about heightened awareness; this is it. In First Corinthians 2, he discusses how you can’t hear the promises, the richness of God’s word, through carnal means. You can only hear through the Spirit. Right now, in this room, there are FM signals, AM signals, TV signals, shortwave signals—there are all these different things. If you have a receiver, you can pick them up. It is the spirit of a man that becomes aware of God and His voice. Suddenly, I start hearing things I didn’t hear before only because I had my dial turned to receive what God is saying and doing. But it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there before.
Interestingly, in this passage, he says at the end of verse 38, «Neither things present nor things to come.» In First Corinthians 3, there is a description of our inheritance, mentioning things present and things to come. What’s missing? Things past. Why? Because He bought it. He bought it; it’s not yours. Your past is not yours; the moment is yours, the future is yours, but the past is not.
The issue of life is that if we revisit our past apart from our awareness of the blood of Jesus, we actually visit something that no longer exists. We visit a lie. When you empower a lie, you empower the liar. So, Paul mentions things present and things to come twice, but not the past. Why? Because it has been purchased. I have no legal access to it apart from the redemptive touch of Jesus. If there’s an issue I haven’t dealt with, He brings it up—always with redemptive purpose—never to lead me into shame.
The past under the blood of Jesus is no reason for shame; it is a reason for triumph and victory. If I could pray for one thing from this conversation today, it would be the heightened awareness of the presence of the Spirit of God and the redemptive work of Jesus, which continues to set us free. Those two things stir up such courage and vision for the impossible that there is no more mediocrity. There is no more embracing of the inferior. Suddenly, people become enraged—in the right sense—for the things that God has purposed to do on earth.
There’s this transformation that takes place in the heart of a believer that says, «Wait a minute; I was born for more than this.» As I have often said over the years, Jesus didn’t go through what He went through so we could just do church. I love the corporate gathering; I don’t think it is emphasized enough. I believe He has greater intent than we realize, so I believe in it a lot. But it’s to set us up to bring transformation—to bring the life of Christ, the presence of God into the environment around us.
This chapter starts with the pronouncement that there is no condemnation and ends with the past not being yours. You own the moment; you own the future. Let’s go for it. This partnership with the Spirit of God, where the Holy Spirit and Jesus are praying for us, may allow me to pray inaccurately, but He adjusts my prayer so that it’s perfect. I may have a wrong idea of what happened, but He corrects it.
In the relational journey, my values, thoughts, and memory of my own history become recalibrated to what He says is true. In Second Chronicles 20, we find a military conflict where the Lord gives strategy, direction, and a plan to the people of God. In verse 20, this is easy to remember: 2020—Clear Vision. Verse 20: «So they arose early in the morning and went out to the Wilderness of Toccoa. As they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, 'Hear me, O Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper.'»
Now listen carefully. I want you to hear this over and over again in your heart: «Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper.» There’s this crazy idea that has entered much of the church: that because I am a child of God, all I need is Him. I love people; I care for people; I spend my life with people. But essentially, my life depends directly on God speaking to me and caring for me.
There’s enough truth to that to keep people in deception. My need to hear from God does not nullify my need for the prophets; my need for the prophets does not cancel out my need to hear from God for myself. They work in tandem. The way most of us function is that if God only spoke to us directly, we would become independent; we would use what He said to prove we’re superior.
We would argue, proving we’re right and someone else is wrong. When the word comes through community, it affects community, blesses community, and emphasizes our need for one another. The Bible says we are members of one another and uses the physical body to illustrate what it looks like to be joined together. In Acts chapter 2, we won’t go there, but in Acts chapter 2, King David is called a prophet. A prophet hears directly from the Lord.
But when he wanted to build a temple for God, God wouldn’t talk to him. If God is silent, it’s never punishment; it’s either because He has already spoken and you need to review what you’ve heard, or He’s trying to connect you with the right people who will add into your life the missing piece. This emphasizes connection and highlights the fact that we don’t have it all.
The Bible does not say, «I have the mind of Christ;» it says, «We have the mind of Christ.» It says, «Our Father who art in heaven.» There is something gained in the corporate expression that you cannot gain any other way. This excites me. Now, about the Healing Revival—how many of you have read or heard anything about the Healing Revival from 1948 into the 50s? Some of the most extraordinary things that the world has ever seen happened in that era, but it was all through the generals of the army.
What God is doing in this hour is that the generals are equipping the saints. Picture it this way: here’s this high level of anointing that nobody can reach. So, this general of the army equips all the saints around him until they come into a place of anointing that was once only occupied by the generals of the army. This releases them to explore even greater dimensions and realms in the Spirit of God so that we can manifest Jesus much more clearly—in glory, in power, in presence, in purity.
I remember Chris asking the Lord for William Branham’s gift—do you mind if I share your story? I asked him publicly so that he wouldn’t be ashamed if he said no. I wouldn’t do that. I was really inspired by this event that happened, I don’t know, maybe 15 years ago. Chris asked the Lord for the gift of this great hero of ours in the realms of anointing, a man named William Branham. Tragic things happened at the end, but that doesn’t erase how God used him.
I value what God values; if you want to live smart, favor who He favors. Chris asked the Lord, «I want to operate in this anointing,» something to that effect, and the Lord spoke clearly: «You couldn’t handle it.» He came back and said, «Well then, don’t give it to me. Only give it to the entire church.» The moment he was in with the Lord, if I remember correctly, he felt the Lord was pleased with his response. It wasn’t about him having an anointing that draws everyone’s attention. It was about the church coming into a place in God that represents Jesus more clearly. I love that example so much I’ve used it many times.
Here is a powerful moment in Israel’s history; it says: «They believed God and they believed His prophets.» It’s interesting in Scripture that it says, «And Israel believed God, and they believed Moses.» They weren’t contradictory; it was necessary to see a co-laboring expression of what it looked like to trust God. It’s easy to say, «I trust God» and not trust people because it can’t be measured. John put it another way: it’s easy to say you love God whom you can’t see and hate your brother whom you can see.
It’s illegal to claim a spiritual reality that cannot be measured in the natural. So, I love God with all my heart; this has to be able to be examined and measured by how I treat people. It validates that unseen reality that I am supposed to walk in. It’s the same in faith—it requires faith in the gifts of God. Not in people, always 100%, but the Spirit of God is within us to help us weed through the times when error or opinion has been added to a word.
In the Truth of the Old Testament, the prophets were judged; in the New Testament, prophecy is judged. Get Chris’s teaching on this; it’s good. But this: if there were royalties from tonight’s message, I’d give them all to you, Chris. So, it says they believed God and they believed His prophets. It says they believed God, and they believed Moses. Gideon at one point gives a shout—it’s a shout of declaration, a shout of praise—to break these vases with candles.
It’s a strange story: break these candles and then shout, «For the Lord and for Gideon.» Sometimes, we can live impressed by our own faith. Such faith cannot be measured when, in fact, it is measured by our confidence in the sovereignty of God to use the people around us to fill in where we lack. It’s called trust.