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Hearing God’s Voice is published by and is a discipleship curriculum of the International School of the Bible

Marietta, GA, USA

Email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.isob-bible.org

Version 1.1

Copyright © 2010 by Larry Chkoreff

Published by International School of the Bible,

Marietta, Georgia, U.S.A.

ISBN 978-1-4507-4798-1

 

This book is shown here in part to give you a flavor of what the book is about

 

 

All rights reserved. This book is the sole property of the author. It may not be reproduced, altered, or transmitted in whole or in part without the express written consent of the author. Any unauthorized reproduction, alteration, transmission, or printing of this book, or any material contained in this book, is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce, alter, transmit, print or reprint this book, or any materials contained in this book, may be requested at the above email address.  Any reference to the materials, ideas, or direct quotations taken from this book must be cited appropriately to this published edition.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the NKJV of the Bible.  Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, publishers.  Used by permission.

 

Table of Contents

Chapters

1 – God Desires Intimacy

2 – How God Speaks

3 – God’s Voice Produces Fruit

4 – God’s Voice Produces Freedom

5 – How to Hear God’s Voice

6 – The Word and the Blood Covenant

 

 

Chapter 1

God Desires Intimacy

I heard God’s voice on August 26, 1979 and His Holy Spirit shot through me with a “picture” of who Jesus is.  I was saved that day, and I have heard His voice and have been intimate with Him ever since.  That day I did not hear Him speak words in English that my mind could understand.  Rather, His power and Spirit overwhelmed me with the thoughts and pictures, that Jesus was raised from the dead, He is God, He is the Word, that the Word is God inspired, He is the soon coming King, and I could give my wrecked life to Him to take over because He is the ultimate winner.

I thought all Christians hear God’s voice.  However, I, even recently, have been amazed at how many wonderful Christian people live their lives without intimacy with God.   It is interesting that in the USA during the 1600s the Puritans used to torture and kill the Quakers because the Puritans could not tolerate Christians who believed in direct communication with God.  Many saints were tortured and martyred because of this.

So many people worship God’s principles rather than Him personally.  So many well-meaning Christians are subconsciously afraid to get too close to God.  That idea amazes me, but it is true.

What is the cause of that fear?

I believe that for some people it is the lack of knowledge, but for others it is a fear that they might have to give up something that they really like. As I discuss later in this book, for some people it is the fear of facing who they really are down in the secret closets of their souls.  They know that God is holy and awesome, and they feel unworthy to admit to Him who they really are.  Oddly enough, some are terrified at the idea of being close to God.

Perhaps people’s motives are wrong.

We need to ask ourselves the question: Why do we desire a relationship with God?  Is it so that we may enjoy and please Him, or is it so that we can manipulate Him by our good works so that He will bless us?  This is like the Older Brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke chapter 15.  He did not want a relationship with his father, but rather he was being obedient just so he could obtain his father’s riches. This is like the Pharisees and so many people in the church today.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I gave my life to Jesus because I felt He would do a better job than I had, and finances were a part of it.  He does supply my financial needs; I do look to Him for everything.  We do receive blessings when we obey.  However, this older brother had the attitude that he did not want the father, just his things.

Or maybe you are just completely the opposite.  Perhaps you have chosen a lifestyle of self-discovery, one that does not give God or anyone else any authority over your life.  Perhaps some Christians who are self-righteous for selfish reasons turn you off to religion.  This is like the younger rebellious brother in Luke chapter 15 who went off and wasted his inheritance and ended up in the pigsty.  At least, he finally saw his desperate need and ended up in a great relationship with his father after he returned.  I read this idea about this parable in the fabulous book “The Prodigal God” by Timothy Keller, published by Dutton, New York, NY (www.theprodigalgod.com).

Cheap grace is not an option when you have seen both the awesomeness of Jesus and the amazing sacrifice He made so that you could be a whole human being made into His likeness.  After you experienced those things you will have a passion to obey Him in order to please Him rather than just receive His benefits. You will receive His benefits but the key is your motivation.  What is motivating your obedience?

Hang on, there is good news!

Timothy Keller also states in the book that the real Gospel truth is unlike the Older Brother.  But when we see Jesus for who He really is, that He gave up His own life through severe sufferings because of His love for us, we wish to obey Him just because we love Him and have a passionate desire to please Him.  Rather than obedience out of obligation or fear, it is obedience out of a great love and appreciation for who He is and what He has done for us.

God’s original plan.

God’s plan was to fellowship with Adam, speak His Words to him, and have Adam carry out the plans and ideas.  Adam was to respond by working and obeying the Word, but also by speaking it as well.  Adam and Eve were designed to have a very close intimate friendship with God Himself.  For some time they did.  Most religious people cannot imagine this.  The fruit of this continual intimacy was to be Adam speaking God’s Words over the earth.  God designed the earth to be ruled by the words of man.  Everything in and on the earth responds to man’s words.

God created you for intimacy as opposed to being religious.

Intimacy means hearing each other’s voice and sharing each other’s deep feelings and needs.  It means relating emotionally and feeling emotions of one another.  God created your soul in His own image, with a will, mind and emotions.  He does not want you to shut down one-third of your soul and become religious.

In Chris Tiegreen’s book “Feeling like God,”[1] he speaks of the principle of “entertainment,” or as I understand it, the law of synchronization.  He gives examples of pendulum clocks getting into exactly the same swing even when intentionally set to different swings.  Fireflies light up at exactly the same time when they travel in groups.  He gives many other examples as well.  And then he says,

I remember reading somewhere that two hearts placed in jars next to each other will eventually develop the same pulse. I'm not sure how that works – how hearts in a jar continue to beat, and why two such jars would ever have occasion to sit next to each other – but the picture fits this principle of entertainment and illustrates a great spiritual truth: Hearts that are close in proximity feed off of each other’s rhythm. They learn to beat the same way at the same time.

We see that dynamic in our personal relationships with other people. When you spend a lot of time with someone, you begin to resonate with that person. Your concerns and interests draw closer together, and, in the case of siblings or marriage partners, you often think in the same patterns. Where a real connection has been maintained, what's important to one becomes important to the other. You frequently know how the other feels about a given issue without even asking, because you already know that they feel the same way you feel. Even when your feelings are not identical, there’s a strong empathy for the other's sentiments.  Your hearts have developed the same rhythm.

It seems to me that ought to apply to our relationship with God too. If the Creator has emotions and made human beings in his image with similar emotions, and if he calls us into relationship with him on nearly every page of Scripture – culminating with a very intimate ceremony at the end of history – our time spent with him ought to transform the way our hearts beat. His loves, delights, and joys ought to rub off on us, along with his anger, displeasure, and grief. At some point in the relationship, we ought to be able to know how he feels without even asking because that’s how we feel too.

In fact, it makes sense that this melding of hearts is a better definition of discipleship than learning and doing, because neither of those aspects prompts a change in the rest of the soul. Emotional bonds, however, prompt a change in our whole beings. It’s the one attribute of our personalities that can synchronize to others.

I don’t know how you feel about that, but it encourages me and opens up a whole world of possibilities. My desire to learn about God and to follow his will suddenly thrives in a warm, personal climate. Instead of being pushed upstream in the hard work relationships with God of spiritual discipline, my appetite is whetted. Wild horses couldn't keep me from pressing ahead.  Instead of the obligation of service to the Lord who bought me, I have the pleasure of a relationship with the Father who chose me.  Deep intimacy with my Creator becomes a tangible encounter rather than a distant hope.  Best of all – and legalists and systematic theologians may not approve of this – I feel free and have fun right in front of God and everybody.  And this, I can finally say, looks a lot like abundant life.

God takes pleasure in being intimate with us.  He wants us also to experience that pleasure.

Psalm 5:3 says,

3 “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up.”

Revelation 3:20 says,

20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

The original meaning for the word voice is defined in the Strong’s Dictionary as: fone phone {fo-nay'} the idea of disclosure; to be seen, to appear to shine, to be real and manifested.  It means a tone, a song, the sound of uttered words, a language, a tongue.

When you hear His voice in this way, it results in intimacy.  Worship is spontaneous.  The Father responds with affirmations of love, and you respond with more worship, surrender, and love.  Through this process, your character begins to change into His image.  His Word is embedded into your heart, and it brings forth fruit, which glorifies Him.

There is a difference in simply taking certain Bible verses and applying them to your life.  That is fine, but that is not intimacy.  Intimacy results when the Holy Spirit inside of you makes the Bible verses alive to you, as a personal word.  That personal word is called rhema, a word directly from the lips of Jesus.  When intimacy is developed over a long period of time, one can “feel” it in his/her emotions. We are not, of course, to depend upon emotions, but the by-product of sweet emotions through intimacy with Jesus sure is sweet and satisfying.

Quoted in part from a devotion by David Wilkerson.

Jesus’ love and intimacy is expressed in the Song of Solomon. In that book Solomon is portrayed as a type of Christ and in one passage the Lord speaks of his bride this way:

“Thou hast ravished my heart…my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one [look] of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love…my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine!” (Song of Solomon 4:9-10).

The bride of Christ consists of a holy people who long to be so pleasing to their Lord, and who live so obediently and so separated from all other things, that Christ’s heart will be ravished. The word ravish in this passage means to “unheart” or to “steal my heart.” The King James Version of the above passage says that Christ’s heart is ravished with just “one eye.” I believe that “one eye” is the singleness of a mind focused on Christ alone.

Not only does our intimacy with God give pleasure, it also produces what He needs and what we need.

The entire Kingdom of God operates on God speaking to us personally.  The parable of the sower in Mark chapter 4 is all about God planting His word into your heart as a seed which will bear fruit.  That is how the Kingdom of God operates.  It is really very simple and too many people have made a religion out of it.

Mark 4:11 says,

11 “And He said to them, ‘To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables.’”

My friend Scott Rickles sent these thoughts to me.

If you are one of God’s sheep then you have the ability to hear His voice!

Psalm 23:1 says,

1 “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

John 10:3-5 says,

3 “To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.””

I know without a doubt, that I have heard God’s voice in ways that many people would have criticized me about, thinking, “That could not be God’s will for anybody.”  The important thing is this: Keep Jesus as your focus, not His principles.  Principles are important, but don’t limit yourself to principles.  If you do, you will be missing out on the “abundant life.”  Notice in John chapter 10 just before Jesus talks about abundant life, He speaks about hearing His voice.

John 10:10 says,

10 “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”