Rabbi Schneider - Hear God's Voice

We're building a foundation now as to how we can enter in to a deeper sense of feeling God's supernatural presence and glory that surrounds the lives of His children. God is by definition supernatural, because He's spirit. Jesus said, "God is spirit and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth". So by nature children of God, we are supernatural, because we've been born of the supernatural. We've been born of God's spirit. It's important that we develop ears to hear and a heart to sense the supernatural invisible presence of God's Holy Spirit, that we call in Hebrew the Ruach Hakodesh. Every believer should desire intimate communion with God and this takes place beloved ones, supernaturally.

In fact the scriptures tell us that, "eye has not seen and ear has not heard, never has it even entered into the heart of man the things that God has for those that love Him". And then the scripture continues by saying this, "And these things He reveals to us", get it now, "by His spirit". We can only know God by spirit and spirit once again is supernatural. In today's message I want to talk to you about how to become more spirit conscious. I want you to first of all be challenged with God's word with this fact; In the very beginning, before the earth was ever created, we read in the book of Bereshit, which is Hebrew for Genesis, these words. I'm gonna read now Genesis 1:2.

Verse number one simply says, "In the beginning Elohim, God created the heavens and the earth". Then verse number two takes us back in history to show us the creation story. Here's what we read once again, Genesis one verse two, "The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of Elohim, or the spirit of God", get this now, "was moving over the surface of the waters". I want to focus you now on that word moving. In the very beginning as the Holy Spirit opens up a window for us through the scriptures, we see the spirit of God is moving over the surface of the waters. I want you to understand that God's spirit is alive and He's always in motion. He's always moving.

The reason that I want to impress you with this fact right now, beloved children of God, is I want you to understand that by nature God is always doing something. He's speaking. He's moving. So the question is not, is God doing something? The question is not, is God speaking? The question is, it's not, did God try to communicate with me just now? No, the question is are we hearing? This is why Jesus said, "He that has ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the church". This is why in Acts chapter two when the spirit of the Lord came upon those first hundred and twenty believers, He came what beloved child of God? As a tongue of fire. What's a tongue? A tongue is a speaking oracle. And so God is telling us that He's given us His spirit and by definition His spirit is communicating to us.

So we need to develop a greater sense of spirit consciousness, so that we can better discern this movement of God's spirit upon our lives. We need to develop beloved, ears to hear and a heart to perceive. Did you know that God's personal, sacred name that He revealed in scripture to us in Exodus three, Exodus chapter six, is the four Hebrew letters yod hei vav hei. And did you know that, that, that personal name of God that most theologians and scholars, those that have studied the ancient Semitic languages, feel it's pronounced something like a breathy Yahweh. Did you know that this sacred name of God is actually written in a verb form, a continuous action? Meaning that in God's name we see revealed the mystery that Yahweh is always moving, continuous unfinished action is the verb form to which he gives us His name in scripture. God is moving. God's alive. We're not surrounded just by empty space. We're surrounded by the spirit of the Lord.

Now it is true there are times that we aren't able to sense anything, no question about it. We even see for example in the book of Revelation there was a time when there was silence John saw. So I'm not totally ignoring the fact that there are seasons we walk through in life, we can't perceive what God wants. We can't perceive what He's saying. I'm not denying the fact that there are times in life where it feels as though God is silent. These things are all, are all relevant. But what I'm wanting to communicate to you is that God is alive and that He's speaking to you. I want to help you to become more conscious of the presence of God's spirit that's working in you and around you, so that you can hear Him more, become more aware of Him, more effectively follow Him and move beloved one, deeper into the anointing of God's supernatural spirit and presence in your life.

Sadly today most of God's creatures, most of those He created in His own image are completely unaware of Him. You see the Bible tells us that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that immediately when they disobeyed and ate from that tree, listen now, they went from being conscious of God's presence and they fell into being rather self conscious and flesh conscious. So they went from God consciousness to self consciousness and flesh consciousness. And that's the state that you and I were born into. We were born into a state where we were separated from God. And it's only through the new birth that we get reconnected to God, but now that we've been born again through receiving Jesus we need to retrain our mind, renew our senses, our spiritual senses so that we can once again become God conscious.

I want to illustrate this for you by going back once again to the book of Bereshit, the book of Genesis and reading there for you what happened in Genesis chapter three, verse six and seven, when Adam and Eve fell. And of course what happened to Adam and Eve is a, has been rolled upon the entire human race. In other words, we have become their descendants and so this is why the born again experience reconnects us to Jesus as our Father, as opposed to the way were born in which Adam was our father. And the scriptures talk all about this. I don't have time to go into it in great length. Hear the word of God.

Genesis 3:6-7, "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. And she gave also to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were open". Now get it. "And they knew they were naked and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings". Here's what I want you not to miss, they were already naked before they ate from the tree, but there was no consciousness of their nakedness. In other words, they were not focused on their nakedness. They were focused on God. They were focused on Elohim, who walked with them in the garden. But when they disobeyed Him and ate from the tree the connection they had with God their creator was broken, so that they no longer were connected to Him. They no longer were God conscious.

Now all they could be conscious of was themselves. And so all of a sudden they realized they were naked. They felt ashamed and they tried to cover their nakedness. They went from being God conscious to being self conscious and flesh conscious. I want to help you to become God conscious and aware of His supernatural presence in your life. When you were born again, the scripture says, you became a partaker of God's divine nature. We want to become once again more God conscious then self conscious. The Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs chapter twenty, verse twenty seven these words; "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord searching all the inmost parts of the being".

I love that scripture. The spirit of the Lord is the lamp of mankind. He's a light within us. This is why for example when you see pictures of the Jewish orthodox men in Jerusalem praying at the Western Wall, often times you'll see them going like this and the reason they're going like this is because they believe that the spirit of the Lord is in them and they're trying to get in touch with God by being in motion, because when they think of the spirit of the Lord being as a flame of fire within man the concept of a flame of fire is that the flame is always flickering. It's always moving. It's always in motion. A fire is in motion and so they're trying to get in touch with God's spirit that's in motion. Now of course those of us that are believers in Jesus, we believe that the only way to really receive God's spirit is to be born again. Jesus said, "Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God". But the concept is correct, God's spirit is in us. He's alive and He's in motion.

I want to help you now get in better touch with the fact that God's spirit is in you. And I want you to hear me when I say this, one of the things that has to happen for you to become more conscious of the fact that Jesus is really in you, is you need, listen now beloved ones, through the grace of the Holy Spirit to better trust yourself, to trust your intuition. Listen what the word of God tells us regarding this. I'm reading from the book of 1 John chapter number 2, verse twenty seven. And we read these words there, "The anointing you receive", the Lord said, "is from the holy one and He is not a lie. Just as you have received Him", the scripture says, "so abide in Him".

Let me read it for you with the exact word. "The anointing which you received from Him", John tells us, "abides in you and you have no need for anyone to teach you, but as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, as you have been taught you also are", the scripture says, "to abide in Him". You see too often times we're so being driven by anxiety and fear, by pressure, by the world around us, by the external, that we're not aware of the gentle witness of the Holy Spirit that's in us. And what Father God is telling us in the word here is that we've received His spirit. We've received an anointing. He's true and He's not a lie, that we need to trust the inner witness of the Holy Spirit upon our heart and abide in Him.

Now hear me, it's very important that if we're gonna become sensitive to this inner witness that Father speaks to us about here in His word, if we're gonna learn how to abide in Him, if we're gonna learn how to better discern the gentle checks and the movement of peace that's wanting to push us forward in taking action, if we're gonna become more sensitized to this inner witness of God's spirit, listen to me now, we're gonna have to disconnect from the things in the outer world that are keeping us from being more aware of what is going on inside us. And we talked about this in some of my earlier messages in this series. The problem is so many of us are so focused on what's going on on the outside of us, that we're living life from the outside in rather than from the inside out. And as a result we're unable to be in touch with the Holy Spirit in us that wants to lead us supernaturally.

Let me give you an example. When you look in the mirror what are you looking to see? Generally don't people look in the mirror, because they want to know what they look like to the outer world? And I'm not saying there's never a time to look in the mirror. I mean I think it's appropriate to look in the mirror when we get dressed in the morning and comb our hair. But for many they are constantly going back to look in the mirror and the reason is they are so focused on how their appearing to the outer world that they have no sense of what is actually going on in their heart, because they care more about what other people think than they do about being in touch with God. We need to learn to live life beloved one, listen, from the inside out. How many of us are gripped with fear and worry about what we think other people think about us?

Listen if we're preoccupied with thinking about what other people think about us, then let me as, this question, are we living life from the outside in or from the inside out? We have to become a tune to what's going on on the inside. Let me ask you this, are you spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about what you think somebody else is thinking about you? Let me tell you something. First of all you'll probably never know what they think about you, because what you think they think about you isn't probably even happening, because the reality is most people are not thinking about you and they're not thinking about me, they're thinking about themselves. Secondly, the devil wants to twist what we think they're thinking, because the devil wants to steal, kill and destroy and torment.

So most often what we think people are thinking is not what they're thinking at all. And thirdly, what's the point? It doesn't matter. What's important beloved, is that we learn to put Jesus first and learn how to focus on what is going on inside of us, so that we can live life from the inside out and because of this we'll be able to be led by the Holy Spirit; rather than being desensitized to Him, because we're not connected with Him that's in us, but we're connected to the world outside us. Are you hearing what I'm saying? And do you understand how important beloved one, this is?

Now as we learn how to be led by God's spirit, I want you to hear me now, as we begin to sense, "I feel like God wants me to do this. I feel like God wants me to say this". As we learn how to sense the leading of the Holy Spirit it's important to trust that and to step out in faith when we feel God is leading us to do something. Maybe He's leading you to say something to somebody. I wonder how many times the Holy Spirit was prodding us to do something that would communicate love to somebody, that He was prodding us to say something to somebody, to speak certain words to somebody, to call somebody on the phone.

I wonder how many times the Holy Spirit was prodding us to do something that would communicate the love of God to someone, but we didn't act because we were fearful or didn't fully trust what we were sensing. It's important when you sense the leading of the Holy Spirit to obey, because if you don't obey you'll never be trained. Listen to what the word of God tells us here in the book of Hebrews 5:14. "But solid food is for the mature, who because", listen now, "of practice had their senses trained to discern good and evil". How do we get our senses trained to discern good and evil? How could we train our senses to discern light versus darkness? We do what the scripture tells us beloved ones, through practice.

So it's important as you're feeling the nudge of the Holy Spirit to do something, or to not say something, to obey, because by acting in obedience you're gonna gain practice and the experience that you gain through practice is gonna train you to discern the difference between good and evil. I'm not nearly done yet. I want to encourage you join me next week as we continue this groundbreaking series. I want you and I to go together deeper into the supernatural consciousness of God's presence that surrounds our life and is in us. This is Rabbi Schneider telling you today on behalf of Jesus, I love you. God bless you and until next week shalom, shalom and shalom.