Derek Prince - How To Hear From God
This is an excerpt from: The Headship of Jesus - Part 2
I'd like to turn to Psalm 95 which I believe probably would appeal to our worship leaders here. To me this is a pattern psalm. How to hear from God, how to get into God's presence and hear from Him. I'd like to read the first seven verses. O come let us sing to the Lord: let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. How many of you take that seriously? Shouting? I mean, I have a good voice. If I shout, you can hear it. I mean, I've heard Christians shout Jesus. That's not how you shout. How do you shout? JESUS! That's a shout. Can we do that? Are you prepared to do that? Are you ready? JESUS! That's tremendous, that's right.
Okay. Let us shout joyfully to the Lord. We read that passage, most of us, scores of times and never thought about shouting. And some people would say if we shout, you know, they're crazy. Well, I'd rather be crazy that way than sane some people's way. O come, let us sing to the Lord, let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. As I understand it, that's access into God's presence. Because the Bible says we enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise.
I don't believe you can get into God's presence without thanksgiving and praise. You can stand pitifully a long way off and call for help like the ten lepers but you don't have access to God until you start thanking and praising Him. It's very interesting, the ten lepers in Luke's gospel. They call for help, Jesus responded, they went off and did what He told them, they were all healed. Only one came back to give God thanks. And he's the only one who was saved. It doesn't come out in the English translation. All ten were healed, only one was saved. Only one had direct access to Jesus. How? By giving thanks, that's right. So this is the way of approach to God.
I was teaching on this some years back and there was a very godly brother in the Lord, a senior man. I said I don't believe we have any right to get into God's presence without thanksgiving and praise. That's the appointed way. And this dear brother came up to me afterwards and he's at least my age. He's been a Christian at least 50 years. He said, 'You know, that's the first time I've ever realized that I had to give thanks and praise to come into God's presence.' He's a wonderful brother in the Lord.
Now, the next two verses, verses 3 and 4, explain why we give thanks and praise. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hands are the deep places of the earth: the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. I've commented sometimes this we thank God for His goodness, we praise God for His greatness but we worship Him for His holiness. Another psalm says great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. Praise is our response to God's greatness. So now by thanksgiving and praise, loud jubilant singing, we've come into the presence of God. Now the mood changes completely.
Look at the next verse. O come let us worship That's not thanksgiving. That's not praise. That's something different. Every word in the Bible that's translated worship describes an attitude of the body. Bending the head, bending the upper part of the body, bowing down as it says here, kneeling, prostrating yourself before God. Worship is primarily an attitude and not an utterance. Praise is an utterance, worship is an attitude. Praise leads us into the place of worship. Ruth was commenting to me some time ago so many song leaders today don't know the difference between praise and worship. We'll get to that beautiful place where we're just in the presence of God, we've made it through with worship and the song leader will start some lively little chorus and start us all dancing. That's not appropriate at that point. At that point we need to be intimate with God.
Now, reading verse 6 and 7: Come let us worship and bow down: let us kneed before the Lord our maker. For he is our God. How do we acknowledge Him as God? What is it that acknowledges Him as God? What is it that's uniquely due to God? One word. Worship, that's right. When we worship Him we are declaring He is our God. And let me warn you whatever you worship becomes your God. If you worship money, it becomes your god. If you worship your stomach, it becomes your god. Paul talks about people who've made their belly their god by worshiping it. Going on in verse 7: For he is our God;, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
Now it's a strange thing in the end of that verse you get the end of a sentence and the beginning of what you'd call a new paragraph. Have you noticed that? That's no accident. What does it say next? Today if you will hear his voice. When do you hear God's voice? When you have been worshiping Him.
I have learned when it comes to prophecy or tongues and interpretation, I never accept it automatically. I always put out my spiritual antennae, and say is this really from God, is this really anointed, is this a now word? But generally speaking, if it comes in a period of worship you can be pretty sure it is from God. That's our safeguard. I thank God I have a wife who's a worshiper. She can also sing a little. I can't sing to save my life so I have to rely on other people. I don't know whether you people who sing realize, you know, some of us have to rely on you to do it. So don't fail us. Ruth and I basically spend time in God's presence every morning and every evening. We're not legalistic about that.
Many, many times we hear from God, we get words of encouragement, words of direction, words of warning. But 90% of the time they come when we're in an attitude of worship. And generally we don't get them if we give God half an hour. It's the open ended time that God moves in. It doesn't mean it will take Him more than a half an hour, it means God doesn't let us set the time limit. He's sovereign. If you're prepared to spend all day in the presence of God, you may hear from Him very quickly. But if you say, 'God, I can give you 35 minutes, ' it's questionable whether God will speak on those terms.
Here is the pattern, you see, of Acts 13. They were worshiping the Lord, fasting, they'd turned their mind away from a lot of perfectly normal, necessary material things. They apparently hadn't set a time limit. They didn't have any program, they didn't know what would happen next and God moved in. And actually, Acts 13 is one of the most decisive chapters in the New Testament because it is, in a sense, the birth of missionary work. And it was birthed out of ministering to the Lord and fasting. But it's a pattern. But the essence of it is making Jesus head, letting Him take the initiative.