How to Hear from God | Crossroads Church

I know some of you, I don't know all of you, thank you for the two people who cheered for Fort Wayne, that was great. What I'm going to do is I'm going to do a quick bit of teaching about prophecy and I think it's important that we do that. Some of you will know tons about this topic and I won't be saying anything you don't know. Some of you may be new to it, depends on your kind of church background and kind of where you've come from, but it's something that God really wants for us and we've been thinking about the things of the Holy Spirit and we've been thinking about healing and it was amazing. Those healing prayer nights, I don't know who of you came to any of those, but we did see God do some amazing things and I think God wants to do more of that in Crossroads. You know, Crossroads has had a focus over 30 years on reaching out to the lost, least and the lost and really trying to help people come to know Jesus, but it's so much easier to help somebody come to Jesus if they've just been supernaturally healed, you know. It really helps, doesn't it, if there's a demonstration of the power of the Kingdom of God. But when you look at what the Bible says, it does really clearly, it makes it super clear that we're supposed to be healing people. It was just a fundamental part of Jesus' ministry and it was a fundamental part of what he taught the disciples to do and then in the Great Commission he told them to teach everybody who became a disciple everything he taught them. So clearly we're supposed to be healing people, but when you look at the kind of way that the spiritual gifts are taught, it feels like prophecy is, if you like, the key that unlocks everything else. You know, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14 says, eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, but then he says especially prophecy and that's been my experience over 30 years or so of being in ministry, is that if you learn how to hear God, how to hear the Holy Spirit, then that makes it much easier to do all the other supernatural things that God wants you to do because you hear him when he says, pray for that person for healing, or when he says go and do this, or when he says go and do that. And in Romans 10, 17 it says, faith comes from hearing and, you know, there's this word

in the Greek rhema, it's the message of Christ. It's the specific word that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. And so if we learn to hear the Holy Spirit and we learn to understand what he's communicating with us, it really, really helps when we want to learn to function by faith. So I want to do a quick little bit of teaching with you about that and I think one of the things that is hard with prophecy is that there are lots of denominations and churches and so on that have done prophecy. There are lots that have done it well but there are lots of groups that have done prophecy badly and so that can sometimes put us off. I've worked with a lot of churches and denominations that have kind of been burnt by the idea of prophecy and I'm kind of doing a kind of healing and repairing job with them to try to get them to understand how important it is. So it's really important that we have models of ministry and practice that are biblical, that are respectful, that are non-manipulative, that feel safe for people and if we can start doing that, what I've found in churches where you start to practice that way, suddenly it opens it up for everybody to be able to start practicing prophecy. So that's what we're trying to think about and do. So let's just dive into a few little bits of Bible teaching. So does the Bible teach that we can hear God? Let's just start there. Well Joel in the Old Testament, the prophet Joel prophesied that all would prophesy in Joel 2 and the problem with those sorts of Old Testament prophecies is what's it talking about when? Like is this talking about a particular era in history? How do we know whether that's talking about us or is it talking about the people of Israel at a particular epoch in history? What's he talking about? That particular prophecy where Joel says that God's going to pour out His Spirit on everybody and that the young are going to prophesy, the old are going to dream dreams from the Lord and men and women, we're all going to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The great thing is that that time period is completely nailed down by Peter in Acts 2. In Acts 2 from 14 onwards, Pentecost, Peter said that this is it, Acts 2, 14 to 18. Peter stood up with the eleven, he raised his voice and addressed the crowd, fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. This is when the Holy Spirit had moved with power, they had the tongues of fire on their head, they started speaking in tongues. He said, listen carefully to what I say, these people are not drunkards you suppose, it's only nine in the morning, now this is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. dreams, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days and they will prophesy. And so if 2,000 years ago when Pentecost happened, if that was the last days, you can't tell me that this is less the last days. So we're in this era that stretches from Pentecost to when Jesus returns, which is the last days. And this is an era where all of God's people get to prophesy. There's other things as well. Jesus himself said that the sheep hear the shepherd's voice. That's in John 10, 27. So we're supposed to hear and recognize the voice of Jesus as he speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. And in another place in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Jesus. So you know, you guys, I don't have to explain the Trinity to you. You know that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all one. So when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, we recognize his voice. And then that passage that I just mentioned to you, Paul tells us to eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. It actually says, follow the way of love and eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. And that passage is just after the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 that is often read at

weddings actually, where it just talks about love, you know, love is patient, love is kind, love always perseveres, love never gives up. And it's this amazing thing about how you recognize what love is. And then it says, follow the way of love and eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. And I think one of the problems in some churches is that prophecy has been practiced, but not necessarily following the way of love. If you're following the way of love, you're always thinking, how is this going to help the person that I'm prophesying to? It's not about making me look cool. It's not about making me look like some spiritual giant. It's about helping you. And so that's always the question we're asking when we're doing prophecy. So the Bible definitely teaches that we can hear God, definitely teaches that prophecy is for today, and it actually commands us, eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. It actually tells us that we're supposed to go after this. And remember, Jesus told us how to go after things. Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, persevere and don't give up. So we're going after these things. And that's been my experience since I first realized, I came from a very conservative background, I didn't know about these things. But once I discovered that it was true that God actually speaks to us today, I got really hungry for that. And I've stayed hungry for that all of my life, from my 20s, 30s, 40s, now in my 50s, I've pursued God. And I said, I want, Lord, to hear you more clearly. I want to know more. And you know, I just want to say this to you guys, it's worth pressing into that, because I would say over 30 years, I've learned to hear God and I've received prophecies, but

also it has become clearer. I hear God more clearly now than I did in my 40s, than I did in my 30s, than I did in my 20s. And when I first started hearing God, I started to get pictures, I started to have things that really were kind of like, if you like parables, they had to be interpreted. It's like, well, I've got this picture and I'm trying to work out what it is and let's get some friends to help me work that out. And sometimes that still happens. But now, in 2011, we had a visiting prophet come from another church, to my church in the UK, and she prophesied over me and she said, now you hear God through dreams and visions and parables and you have to interpret and work out what they say, but there'll come a time where he speaks to you like a friend, face to face, just through straightforward conversation like he did with Moses. And I thought, well, that would be cool, but I've never experienced that. And in the last four or five years, I've really started experiencing that. I'll be going on a prayer walk in a park and this thought will go into my head, come through my head, completely unexpectedly. Often he starts by saying, you know Paul? I'm like, whoa, that wasn't me. You know Paul? And then he'll just start talking to me about things. And it's like, whoa, okay, quick, you know, the Lord's online, let's start talking, you know? Now that doesn't mean that it's fully inspired like in Scripture, it still has to be weighed and all those things, but what I would say is, as I've continued to pursue the Lord, it's got clearer. And the same, I'm sure, will be true for you as you keep asking him. So let's just talk about two different modes of prophecy. This is really important to understand, especially for you guys as leaders, as you function with people, because one of the things that's made prophecy really dysfunctional in a lot

of churches is people in this New Testament era that we're in, trying to function like Old Testament prophets. And prophets have functioned differently in the Old Testament era to the New Testament era. In the Old Testament, God spoke through individuals. You know, people like Elijah, or Deborah, or Moses, or Samuel, you know, lots of these different prophets, but he spoke to them individually. They'd often go away, they'd climb up a mountain, they'd come back with this kind of prophetic pronouncement, and he would speak with full inspiration, like the inspiration of Scripture, and they're speaking the Word of the Lord, thus saith the Lord, and the only way that you were supposed to, as the people of God, that you were supposed to interact with that prophecy was to obey. This prophet speaks with the full authority of the Lord, like with the authority of Scripture, and you have to do what the prophet says. But if the prophet got it wrong, so if the prophet predicted something was going to happen, it turned out not to happen, or if the prophet did say things that were true, but then started trying to get you to do things that weren't of the Lord, then you just killed them, you owe them to death. So it's pretty high stakes to be a prophet, back in the Old Testament. But that was the thus saith the Lord era. In the New Testament, it's very different. Paul says a couple of things in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12, he says, for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, and remember, 2,000 years ago, mirrors weren't like today, they were just polished bronze, and you couldn't see very clearly in them. We just see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, then I'll know fully, even as I'm fully known. So that was in the chapter directly before he starts talking about prophecy, so it's all kind of connected. So we only have partial revelation as prophets, and then he goes on in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 29 onwards to say, two or three prophets should speak, the others should weigh carefully what

is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who's sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn, so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets, for God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, as in all the congregations of God's people. So in the New Testament era, the era that we are in, everybody gets to prophesy, but the revelation is kind of partial, and you get to that point of kind of confidence about, okay, we're pretty confident this is what the Lord's saying, by weighing together as a group of believers what it is that the revelation that one of you has received revelation, but then you weigh it together to come to a point of certainty about this is what God's saying. So how do we kind of practice that together? For me, you know, how do you do that if, say, you just get a word for a person? The way I do that is I always use might and maybe. I would never use, thus saith the Lord, because I'm not an Old Testament prophet. So I would say, for example, let me give you an example. Say you're sitting at church, and you're sitting behind somebody, and as you're sitting behind them and just looking at the back of their head, a scripture comes to mind, or a picture, or you feel like God's given you something for them. If you're in Old Testament prophet mode, you'd pull them aside at the end of the church service and you'd say, the Lord gave me a word for you, and this is the word. I feel I have a prophetic ministry, and thus saith the Lord, and you deliver to them the word that the Lord had given. And what you're doing then is you're putting a whole load of stuff on them. You've already kind of weighed the word yourself. You're delivering it as if it's fully inspired, and how are they going to respond to that? I mean, that's pretty tough, isn't it? If you're doing it in New Testament mode, you might say something like this. You maybe go up to them after the service, and you might say, hey, while I'm sitting behind you, as I just was kind of looking at you, this kept coming to mind, and I think it might be from the Lord.

I wonder whether it's from the Lord. What do you think? Or do you mind if I share it with you, and then you can decide whether you think it's from God or not? And I assure you, if it's from the Lord, you won't need to convince them. They'll know it's from the Lord. And so what you're doing there is you're implicitly giving them an invitation to weigh with you whether it's from the Lord or not, instead of taking that position as if you're Elijah or Moses, which none of us are. Does that make sense? And so what that does is, if you guys as leaders start taking that approach, where you don't use drama, and you don't pre-weigh a word, instead you just say exactly what you experienced. Hey, this came to mind. I've got this picture in my head. I think it might be from God. What do you think? You start using that approach. What it does is, it starts making prophecy accessible to everybody. It starts making it safe. It starts making it non-manipulative. And suddenly everybody can start accessing prophecy. And I would say to you, I've had times where I've been 100% certain that the Lord's shown me something. I know that the Lord's shown me this. I know the Lord's shown me this for this person. I'm pretty experienced. in this stuff now, and it came with a high degree of certainty, I still would never do a thus saith the Lord. I'd still say, hey this came to mind, I wonder whether it's from the Lord. It's not because I haven't got faith about it, it's because I've just absolutely decided

that I do not want to manipulate people or to put that pressure on people. Does that make sense? So Old Testament, New Testament prophecy. So how can you receive communication from God? Lots of ways. I mean the most basic way is conviction. You just get a sense that you shouldn't do something or that something's not right. I think it really helps if you read the Bible a lot. The Bible is God's all the time revelation for us of what is for all time His will about what is right and what is not right. So the more that you read the Bible, the more likely you're going to be able to accurately discern what God's saying to you. So I just read the Bible every day. I am very simple in my Bible reading. I start from the beginning, I read it until I get to the end, then I start again. I've been doing that since I was 17, I'm now 55. So I don't know how many, I read it maybe in about two-thirds of the year. So I don't know how many times I've read it, at least 40 plus times. Just keep reading the Bible, keep reading the Bible. So it begins to saturate you, it makes it much easier to practice prophecy if you know the Bible really well. So that really helps. But conviction, oh gosh I've got this thumping heart, I just have a feeling that I need to stop doing something. Prompting is like conviction but it's kind of the other way around, it's the positive thing, it's the shoulder tap of God. I feel I ought to do something, I feel I need to go and talk to that person, I feel like God's telling me to go and do something. Scriptures jump out at you when you're reading the Bible, a particular scripture hits you, or a scripture comes to mind when you're looking at someone or thinking about someone or praying

for someone. I think God's given me a scripture for you. Words and pictures in the mind, sometimes they could be a still picture, sometimes a moving picture, sometimes it could almost be like a waking dream, I've had that at times where I'm still aware that I'm around and I'm awake but the focus of the picture is so strong that I'm kind of not really paying attention to what's around me, there's something really going on in my head and I'm thinking gosh I think this might be the Lord because I can't really do that, that's not like a technique I can do myself. So for some people that kind of thing can happen. Dreams are very Biblical, tons of Biblical characters had dreams that were from the Lord. I think often if you have a prophetic dream you tend to remember it much more when you wake up. We had a pastor at our church in the UK who was very prophetic and we had a young adult conference the next day and she had a dream and in the dream, I'm not kidding this is something that really happened, in the dream she was at the conference and there was a person there and there was an angel standing next to her and the angel said, I'm going to give you something that you need to say to this person, this person looked like they came perhaps, they maybe looked like they were Hispanic or something like that, she didn't know this person, never seen this person before, the angel said I'm going to give you something to say to them, you're not going to understand it but you will remember it, write it down. So she looked at the angel, the angel spoke to her in, I don't know whether it was Portuguese or Spanish or tribal language, in a language she didn't know, then she woke up, she remembered what the angel said and just wrote it phonetically on a piece of paper by her bed. The next day she went to the conference and there was this dude from her dream, so she went up to him, she told him what happened, she read what was on the piece of paper and it was, I think it was a scripture in his own language, I mean that was, I mean that's pretty, I mean you don't have to guess whether that's from the Lord or not do you? That was amazing, but that was a dream. Other things, sometimes coincidences, I had a friend who was trying to work out, he had

two school friends who'd re-contacted him and he was praying, I haven't got much time and energy Lord, I really, he's an evangelist this guy, I just, do I put time and energy into rekindling those friendships or not? One was called Steve I think and one was called Rich and as he was praying he was driving on the highway and two trucks pulled up next to him and one had Rich written on the back of the truck and the other one had Steve on the license plate and he's like, really Lord, is this for you? And then the one called Rich stayed with him and one called Steve pulled off and he's like, I think you're telling me I've got to stick with Rich and he did and Rich became a Christian, so sometimes weird things like that. Sometimes even God can use your five senses, Paul said that he had a vision where he didn't know whether he was in the body or out of the body, he was pulled into heaven and what that means is that he was experiencing the vision not just in his brain but with his eyes, his ears, his, you know, his sense of smell and everything, his touch. You can do that. I've had times where I could smell. season where every time the Lord wanted to get my attention, I started to smell the smell of roses really strongly. There definitely wasn't anyone around with rose perfume or whatever. It was a season of a few months, it was very, very strange. Sometimes five senses, and sometimes just gut feeling. My wife Ellie always felt like she wasn't prophetic because she didn't get the pictures and the words and all that kind of stuff. We had a worship leader, a national worship leader in the UK who stayed with us who was quite prophetic. At the end when he left, he said to Ellie, I felt maybe God was saying to me that you think you're not prophetic because you don't get pictures like Paul, but actually God speaks to you through your gut instinct. That really unlocked something for her. She has a real gift of discernment and it's been so useful to us over the years.

She just gets this gut, I think we have to do this or I think that's not right or I think we have to do that. She began to realize it wasn't just a gut instinct, it was prophetic and the Lord was speaking to her that way. Those are a few examples, I'm sure there are others as well. Just be thinking as we're just winding up this little talk, what are the main ways that you think God might be speaking to you? How does your brain work? How does your mind work? What are the main ways that God communicates with you? The last thing is it says that we must weigh prophetic words. How do we weigh prophetic words? There's a few things. Firstly, of course, if it's from God it's going to fit with the general teaching of the Bible. Even if you have a full-blown, out-of-body vision, I mean if the angel Gabriel himself appears to you in your bedroom and says, you know, I don't know, it's okay for you to leave your spouse because you're bored with them, then that's not from the Lord. It doesn't matter how impressive the vision was because it doesn't agree with God's general teaching for all time in the Bible. That's the number one thing for weighing is does it agree with what God's already taught us in his word which is fully trustworthy. And specifically, if you're narrowing that down, with the ministry and character of Jesus, I mean Jesus is the ultimate revelation of the Father, so Jesus is the one who teaches us more than anything else in the Bible who God is. The next thing is does it edify and strengthen and build up? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that that's what prophecy is for. So for example, let me give you a quick example of that. Sometimes the Lord has shown me that other people, other Christians are struggling in sin and I know prophets who've called out people's sin from the front.

Now to me that doesn't edify and build up, that just shames and pulls down. So they might have got the word correctly but it's not given in love, you know, and that's another one of those things, is it given in love? I have had a thing, I had a thing for a number of years when I was at pastor's conferences where the Lord would show me pastors who were stuck in patterns of pornography addiction and it turned out, the hit rate was 100%, each time he showed me the person it turned out to be true. And so I didn't go up to them and say, thus saith the Lord, you are in sin and looking at pornography and you must repent. I didn't do any of that. I just went up and started chatting to them, got to know them and then as we chatted I shared some of my history where I'd struggled with that stuff and shared how God had got me into accountability and got me free and then every single time in those conversations they would then say, well I've never said this to anybody but, and then confess to me and then I was able to help them, help minister to them. I never once mentioned the word prophecy, I didn't say that God had told me, God told me for me to help me to minister to them, it's for strengthening, edifying, building up. Does that make sense? So, is it given in love, does it edify, strengthen and build up? Does the prophet have a trustworthy track record, particularly if it's a strong word, you know, does this person have a track record or is it just some random person that you've never met before saying something weird? That does have a factor when you're trying to weigh a word, doesn't it? If it's someone who's had a track record of getting things right, then for me that holds more water. And then if those things are more important, this is a less important one, but if all those things are in place, then you could start saying, well does it resonate with me? Do I feel like the Holy Spirit is confirming that? I wouldn't put that at the top of the list but then that's kind of in there too.

This is a really important one, if someone gives you a word that's just an affirming word, I just felt like the Lord was wanting to tell you how much he loves you, that doesn't take much weighing, it's in the Bible anyway, just receive it. Well thank you, thank you Lord, yeah? If someone says, I feel like the Lord's telling me that you're going to marry me, yeah, that is highly directive, that's a very directive word, yeah? If a word is directive, you don't necessarily dismiss it out of hand, although depending on the person you might dismiss that one, but you don't necessarily dismiss it out of hand, but what, if it's a very directive word, what you'd want is you would, it says in, I think, 2 Thessalonians, don't despise prophecy, so you don't necessarily dismiss it out of hand, but what you'd say is, if you're going to give me a really directive word, Lord, I'd need multiple confirmations from multiple different sources that are not connected to each other, and, you know, preferably I'd need you to speak it directly to me as well. Yeah? So just because someone says something from God doesn't necessarily mean it is. The more directive the word, the more confirmation you'd need from different places. Does that make sense? So people don't get the God said pass, God said card. Sometimes you need to do an uno reverse on them, yeah? And then if the word is predictive, this is going to happen, then I guess the question is, well, did it happen? Does it happen? And if it doesn't, then it probably wasn't from the Lord, so, you know. Okay, so that was a very quick, usually I do this over two hours, this thing, and we can go into a lot more stories and a lot more depth, but I just wanted to give you a quick background, a bit of teaching on prophecy, and I think prophecies that you can get can be really important, even if they seem very simple, and one of the things I'd say to you is step out even if they seem dumb. So even if the word seems dumb, it's worth giving.

I've got so many stories I could tell you, but there's not time this morning because I want to get you preparing for each other. I'll give you one story. I was at a conference with my mum, and my mum had a friend called Maureen, so she's what, you know, my mum's friend, so she's what, 30 years older than me, and this came to mind. I just glanced across at her, and I had quite a formal relationship with her, didn't know her that well, and in the UK, we have a candy called Smarties, not the same as Smarties here. In the UK, they're more like chocolate M&Ms, they're like shell-covered chocolate, okay, and they're really old candies, they've been around for like 60 years, and they're all the same, they're all just chocolate, except the orange ones have orange chocolate, okay, so they're all different colours in the kind of tube, the orange ones have orange chocolate. So I looked across at Maureen, and this thought went through my head. I want you to tell Maureen, literally this is the thought that went through my head, so I'm thinking, I think this is the thought, I want you to tell Maureen that when I open a tube of Smarties in heaven, I save the orange ones for her. And I thought, oh gosh Lord, that's just a bit nuts, I mean, really? So then I went through the conviction phase, I have a phase in prophecies, because I'm quite reserved and I'm an introvert, I have a phase that I call the conviction phase, which is where I basically say no to the Lord, and then he puts the pressure on, does that make sense? So my heart starts beating, I'm like no, and he's like yes, no, yes, and in the end I give in usually. So I went through the conviction phase, I gave in, and I went up and said that to her, and then she looked at me and she said, who told you about me and Smarties? I said nobody told me, I just wondered whether the Lord had given me this word for you. And she said to me that when she was a child, her parents used to go to the pub and get drunk every night and leave her on her own in the house, and neglect her basically. But her mum felt guilty, so she always used to give her a tube of Smarties.

And she developed this compulsive behaviour, which is that she emptied all the Smarties out, because she liked the orange ones, and she'd take the orange ones and put them at the bottom of the tube, and then put all the other Smarties back. So then she'd take the tube to school, and she'd offer them to her friends so people would like her, but she'd keep the orange ones so that she could have them for herself. And she was now in her late 60s, and to this day, she still had a tube of Smarties in her bag, and she still had the orange ones at the bottom. And nobody knew that, nobody in the world knew that, except God. And then God said, when I open a tube of Smarties in heaven, I save the orange ones for you. And she just burst into tears, and it was a really healing thing for her, and she said to me that from then on she didn't need to carry Smarties in her bag anymore. Isn't that amazing? So this is the power when we start, and what I've learnt is that God is looking for people amongst his children, that's you, who are open and available to be used by him to share words all the time. And if you're up for it, and you ask him, and you persevere in listening, he'll use you, and there's amazing opportunities to be used. And he wants to talk to people through you, and he wants you to learn to listen to him. So yeah, and I could give you dozens of stories like that, but let's make some of our own stories.