If it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire or something.
Well welcome to another Raising Home Fire Secret Place Training Session.
I hope you really enjoy this session and I hope that this results in you knowing God
in a deeper and more personal and more connected way.
Welcome to another session today and today I want to share a principle with you that
has dramatically changed my life and has deepened my connection with God and prayer in a profound
way.
And so here it is.
You hear God, period.
You hear His voice.
That truth and the revelation of that truth and the experience of that truth has changed
me so much.
I've realized, and this is just really common knowledge, but that to grow a relationship
with anybody or anything, there needs to be some level of communication and the greater
that communication is, the greater the opportunity for a depth of relationship there is.
And so I want to read a scripture to you and then share a story and then we'll pray
at the end.
The scripture I want to read to you is from John verse 10 and we will begin in verse 2.
But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
To him the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his sheep, sorry,
and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for they
know his voice.
Later on in verse 20, sorry, verse 27, Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them
and they follow me.
The scripture clearly says, my sheep hear me.
Now, if you're listening to this and you're a follower of Jesus, you are considered one
of these sheep.
Jesus considers you one of these sheep and he is your great shepherd.
And if you are one of his sheep, if you are one of his followers, then absolutely with
no questions asked, you hear his voice and you know his voice.
Now what it does not say in the scripture is it does not say my sheep understand my
voice.
You are born with the ability to hear God's voice, but you are not born with the ability
to understand what he's saying.
Understanding what he's saying is something you grow in and something you mature in, whilst
hearing is something you were born with.
Let me explain it to you in this way.
I have three daughters, which I mentioned in a previous session.
And one of my daughters, her name is Sienna, she's my middle daughter.
She was just learning how to talk.
I think she was like in between, she was like one point something years old.
She was nearly two and she was just learning how to talk and she was learning how to walk
and she was walking around and she was just learning how to interact in a more comprehensive
way with her mom and dad and with her older sister.
And so I was sitting down on the couch one day and I was eating a sausage and a piece
of bread, but it was missing a vital ingredient, it was missing ketchup, tomato sauce.
I thought, well, it's a father's great delight to involve his children in his work and in
his life.
And so it was my great delight to call my daughter to me, I said, Sienna, come here.
And so she came running up to me and she said, yes, dad, yes, dad, what do you need?
And I said, Sienna, I need you to do a special job for me.
I need you to help me.
And she said, what dad, what do you want me to do?
And I said, I'm eating the sausage, but I don't have tomato sauce, I don't have ketchup.
Can you go to the fridge and get me the ketchup?
Now, she she started walking towards the fridge.
She was very excited and I was excited that she was working with me for this goal.
She was working with me for this end goal of getting the tomato sauce on the sausage
and I was just excited to be doing something with my daughter.
And she starts walking towards the fridge, but she takes a sharp right hand turn, she
walks towards her bedroom and I think, man, the tomato sauce is not in the bedroom.
And she walks into her bedroom and she's rummaging around in there and she comes back to the
living room, back to the lounge and she's carrying a diaper, a nappy in her hand.
And she walks up to me and she says, here dad, and she gives me the nappy.
And here is what I did not say in response.
You false prophet! You disobedient child!
Punishment! And now,
of course, that's ridiculous and of course there's no way I would say that, but
honestly, that's how so many of the church treats
people who are just learning how to understand what their father is saying.
And instead, this is what I said. I said,
Sienna, thank you so much! This
diaper, this nappy is going to come in handy at some point, we'll put that down there,
but let me take you to the fridge and let me show you where the tomato sauce is,
because you heard my voice and your heart was to work with me, your heart was to
walk with me, but you just are learning how to
understand what I'm saying and I don't expect you to have a 10-year-old level
of understanding when you're only two or when you're only one and a half.
You don't have to have a full level of understanding yet. We're growing in that
and that's fine and we grow in that in terms of the context of our relationship
with one another as father-daughter and so let me take you to the fridge and let
me take you to the kitchen, let me take you to the tomato sauce and I'll show
you what I was talking about. And there is a big difference between
understanding the voice of God and hearing the voice of God.
My children, I remember when my wife was pregnant all three times,
I would speak to my children when they were in the womb and
Renee's belly was all out and round and the baby was kicking
and the baby couldn't respond. I remember all three of my children, I would
reach down and most nights I would pray for them, I would talk to them, I would
sing to them, I would prophesy over them and every time
I spoke, they would, most times I spoke, they would
respond to my voice and I was absolutely aware that they could hear
my voice before they had even exited the womb.
But of course, I mean they had no idea what I was saying
and when they came out of the womb and they were like one day old,
again they would respond to my voice but they had no idea what I was saying and
that's fine because they're only one day old.
And then when they got to one year old, they would start to respond more so to
what I was saying and they would, they were beginning to understand what
I was saying but I had no expectation of them to
understand like a 20 year old or a 30 year old
because they're only one year old and when they're three years old,
man, I could start to have conversations with my children.
I could start to talk about the day and talk about the desires of the heart and
talk about some deeper things but not too deep because at three years
old, you still don't expect that they have the same level of
understanding as a 10 year old and so on and so forth and so this has
been a massive encouragement to me to know that I have grace to hear God's
voice and there's not this massive weight of
expectation from the Father on my shoulders to say
you must understand what I'm saying to you
but there's this grace and there's this
this joy in the Father's heart of journeying with us
in relationship and journeying with us in our capacity and in our maturing and
learning to understand what He's saying. And I've noticed that one of the things
that trips so many people up especially in the context of prayer
is I really want to hear your voice but I don't believe I do
and what people are really saying and a very important distinction to make is
this, you are hearing His voice and you
do know His voice. What you're experiencing
that you're diagnosing as I'm not hearing His voice
is you don't understand what He's saying yet and that's totally okay and that
just shows where you are in your level of maturity
and in your growth in terms of your capacity to understand what He's saying
but that does not mean you are not hearing His voice
and so for me it's been very encouraging and it's been
very empowering for me to realize that I can hear Him and at the same time
learn to understand Him. I hope that blesses you,
I hope you feel empowered by that, I hope you feel encouraged by that
and what I pray is I pray that that leads you to a place
of freedom where you are freer to take more risk
and to experiment more with hearing and understanding what the
Father's saying, that you would be like my daughter Sienna
and not have this crazy religious pressure to have to get the tomato sauce
but instead you could come back with a diaper, come back with a nappy and
they're like hey sometimes I come back with the nappy, sometimes with the diaper
and sometimes I get the tomato sauce but it doesn't matter either way because the
most important thing is this, is that I'm leaning into the Father and
I'm learning to understand but I'm hearing His voice and I'm walking with
Him and He's okay with me making mistakes
on the journey because He doesn't expect me to be
at a maturity level above my actual maturity
and I pray that this core truth
That this core principle becomes within you a living revelation.
This core principle of I hear God's voice becomes within you a living revelation that
transforms you from the inside out and causes you to step into a greater fruitfulness of
prayer and a greater intimacy with the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son.
And so God bless you, have an amazing day.
If it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire, or something.
Well guys, I hope you enjoyed that session.
Welcome to The Activation, where we take the information, we stew it up for long enough
until it becomes revelation on the inside of us, and we dwell on that revelation until
it becomes transformation, because we know that transformed people transform the world.
And you guys are called to transform the world, and that all begins, I believe, in your prayer
space, and that's why we're doing this thing to strengthen you in your prayer space.
I love that truth that you hear God's voice and you're learning to understand Him.
I'm going to ask you a few questions now, and I want you just to make sure you have
some space to be, some undistracted space to process these questions with the Lord.
I'm going to ask you a question, then I'm going to ask you to press pause.
That might help you to have something to take notes on, something to write something down on.
At least an undistracted space to process these questions with God, and so get ready
to press the pause button.
Here is the first question I want to ask you.
What are some ways that you currently recognize God's voice in your life?
How does God commonly speak to you?
How have you commonly recognized God's voice in your life?
I just want you to write down a list of the different ways that you know God speaks to you.
Awesome, thank you for writing that list down.
The next question I'm going to ask you is what are some ways that maybe you haven't
recognized God's voice, but you'd like to hear Him in these ways?
For example, have you heard the audible voice of God?
Are there ways that you've always longed to hear and recognize the voice of God that
you haven't yet?
Just write a list of those.
It's good to have a dream list.
Just write a list of those ways.
What are some ways that you've always longed to hear and recognize God's voice?
Wow, guys, that's awesome.
I have one last question for this activation, and it's around taking our hearing until
it becomes understanding.
We're born with hearing, and we're growing in our understanding.
It's important that we learn to steward our space of hearing God's voice so that
we grow in our understanding so that we can understand clearly what God is saying to us.
There are things that we can practically do and implement in our lives in order to
do that, in order to steward our space of hearing in the presence of God.
I just want you to ask the Lord right now.
Take some time to process this with God.
I want you to make a list of at least three things that you could implement easily in
your life to steward your hearing until you grow in your understanding.
Just make a list of at least three things that you could do, just practical things you
could implement to take hearing and to grow in understanding.
Well, thanks, guys, for being part of the activation.
I'm going to give you one little piece of homework now.
What I want you to do is take one thing from the list that you just wrote in that last
question, and I want you to take one thing that you put down, one way that you could
steward your hearing of God's voice, and you could steward until it becomes understanding
so you can grow in your understanding.
I want you to take one of those things from the list, and I want you to make a plan to
implement that every day for the next week.
That's going to be awesome, and you're going to see an increase in your capacity
to understand what God's saying to you.
God bless you.
Have an amazing weekend.
We'll see you next week.
Bye.