We're going to talk about hearing from the Holy Spirit.
John 10, 4 says,
And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for
they know his voice.
And that's Jesus speaking about being our shepherd.
And what's amazing about this verse is what the word voice means in the Greek.
And it's the word plino, and it means something that appears suddenly.
It's something we hear, or it's something we see, and it's outside of ourselves.
And we're just kind of waiting to hear his voice, just like a sheep would with a shepherd
in a field.
And how many times do I go out when I'm just hearing my own voice, or other people's, or
I'm not tuned in to my shepherd?
And we have to realize we're just sheep.
We are just sheep in the pasture, and we do have a great shepherd who will lay down his
life for us.
So the word plino means something that appears suddenly, and we have to be ready to respond
and be ready to see it, hear it.
So I had a situation where we were in Buena Vista, Colorado, and you'd think it would
be Buena Vista, but it's Buena Vista.
Yeah, it's spelled like Buena Vista in Spanish, but everybody there calls it Buena Vista.
And if you say Buena Vista, they know you're a visitor.
Yes.
So we were in Buena Vista, and we were at a coffee shop, and we were all studying.
We had our stuff out.
It was Josh, Mary, you, and me.
And this man was on a stage playing live music, and he was playing these songs that he wrote.
And he said, I wrote these, and he was very kind of a fun guy.
Kind of a cool dude.
He was kind of like a cool dude.
He was our age-ish.
And this one song had terrible words.
It was about like, it was like him being like a teenager, and he was thinking of something
immoral to do with a girl, and he was rejecting sort of his own father in this song.
So I started complaining about the song.
I said, did you guys hear that song?
It's so bad.
And no one heard it.
None of us were listening.
You were the only one listening to it.
I was listening.
So I was thinking, oh, that's such a bad song.
How is he writing about this?
And nobody else heard it, and I heard the Lord say, are you just going to sit there
and complain about the evil in the song?
Why don't you go talk to him about it?
And I was thinking, okay.
So I stand up.
When all you guys are sitting there, I said, I'm going to go talk to the man about the
song.
And everyone looked at me like, what?
Like, what are you talking about?
I said, the Lord told me I need to talk to him about a song, this one that I heard.
So I go there.
I go up to his stage.
He had about 30 people listening to him.
I go up, and I'm waiting by his stage.
And he sees me, and he says, do you want to talk to me?
And I said, yeah.
He goes, is it bad?
And I was thinking, oh, wow.
I said, I don't know, because actually I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say yet.
But I just went, well, I don't know what you're going to think about it, but we'll see.
And so he was taking a break from his music.
He walks down, and I said, well, thank you for all your talent.
You're very talented, but I'm concerned about your song.
I really don't think that you are representing youth very well by what you're singing.
And I gave him two examples in the song, and I said, I think that we have a responsibility
to bring about, I wasn't going to say like religious-y or church-y words.
I said sort of a healthy purpose for these young people, because they're very in need
of that.
And I said, I bet you could change your songs and really be a representative for something
that's really healthy for youth.
And he's listening to me, and he said, well, would you get up on the stage and share that
with the audience?
And I was thinking, no.
Oh, it was my first thought, no, I'm not going to do that.
But then I thought, well, this is a door that God's opening.
So I said, OK.
I take the mic, and I see my family out there
with saucers in their eyes, like, what is she doing?
She's on the stage now with a microphone.
And I started talking about that we're
all created in God's image.
I did sort of a different take, and I just
started talking about how we're created in God's image.
He has a great purpose for us.
And I said, this man here has some talent,
but he has a song I didn't like, because he
told me to talk about it.
So I did.
I said, you know, I think we all need
to be part of helping the youth and this current generation
of young people.
And I said, you know, I was a lost young person
back in my day, and I needed people
to speak healthy things over me.
And so I said, I think this guy can do that, don't you?
And everyone's like, and then, so this man said,
so you've talked about God.
He yells up from his seat, and he said, who's your God?
And I said, well, my God is Jesus Christ.
And I felt like there was a declaration even over this city
when I said it, like I was, that God was setting me up to say,
God, Jesus Christ, is Lord over this place.
Yeah, it was pretty crazy.
So this is who I married, you know?
Well, this is not the only time that's happened.
So we kind of know sometimes when the Holy Spirit channel is
being caught on your frequency.
Yeah, and a lot of times, again, it's
the first step is a little risky and scary.
And then a lot of times, God opens up doors for us.
And we have to be willing to put ourselves aside
and the things we would normally do.
And I believe that God's saying it's time for God's people
to stand up and come against evil in a loving way.
So that's what I felt like his first assignment was,
is don't just sit there and complain.
Get up and say something that would be from me.
So it's very practical, right?
I mean, it's like we're just in a coffee shop,
and then God speaks.
And there was a number of years ago,
we were struggling financially.
We were very tight.
We had seven kids.
So we were always tight.
I mean, I was missionary.
Liz and I were missionaries.
Then we were in the pastorate and all.
And we lived out in the country, and we had a septic tank.
And that means that we were not on city water.
We're not on city systems.
We had our own because we were on 6 and 1⁄2 acres.
And our septic tank went out.
It was put in in 1962.
We were in this old, old house with nine people living there
every day, so lots of water being used.
And it broke.
And as you can imagine, your septic tank's
kind of important in your life.
So we were at that place where we
knew we didn't have the money.
We got an estimate.
And it was $5,100, $5,100 to fix it.
So we took our wallets and our credit cards.
I think we had one credit card.
I don't even know if we had debit cards back then.
But anyway, we put them all on a table.
And we asked the whole family to come around.
And we shared that we had a need.
And we laid hands on our finances, a checkbook.
I know a checkbook would have been in there.
And we prayed three things.
Yeah, what were they?
We prayed that God would bless our finances.
We prayed that the devil, we rebuked the devil
from being involved because we were tithers.
So we always tithed, but we were in a bind right then.
And so we rebuked the enemy in Jesus' name.
And we prayed, if there is something
we needed to change about our finances, let us know.
Because it can be all three of those things
that we need to pray.
That's right.
And I remember that day going out on our road
and walking and just crying out to God for the money we needed
for the septic tank without having to borrow it
and go into any kind of debt.
So the next day, there was a knock at our door
and a neighbor came by, a Christian neighbor up the road
who said God spoke to her.
She was on the Holy Spirit channel.
and God spoke to her to write us a check and so she handed me an envelope with a
check in it and I went oh my goodness because she didn't know nobody knew but
our family that we were praying about our septic situation and you know I
opened up and the check was for $5,100 and we were like whoa so she had the
opportunity to be a part of the blessing to us through hearing from the Holy
Spirit to bless us with what she heard from God so it was really exciting so
you guys when you're on the Holy Spirit channel you're gonna hear God's voice
and sometimes it's your prayer that enables someone else to hear God's voice
because you have a need that you can't fill but they have what you need to fill
that need and so they hear from God so we encourage you to be on the Holy
Spirit channel that you be every day letting God guide you and lead you and
speak to you we've talked about hearing God's voice we've talked about visions
we've talked about dreams we've talked about the leading of the Holy Spirit so
we hope that this theme of the Holy Spirit channel has been helpful to you
it's kind of fun isn't it it's really fun yeah it's very exciting it's very
exciting to know that your life isn't dependent totally on you but I like what
Liz said I think that's really good that you could be tithing you could be
giving 10% of the Lord you could be obedient in so many different areas but
if you're also misusing your money like you're overspending you're constantly
borrowing money or living kind of an exorbitant lifestyle don't expect God to
come in and bail you out every time you're in a situation because you didn't
use your own noggin and your own planning so this was a situation where
we were just tight we were always tight and there was nothing I don't think
there's anything more we could cut from what we cut and we were trying to save
but anyway God came through in a mighty way yeah I would say just to wind this
up if your story's not good yet go to the Holy Spirit channel because it's not
over yet because he makes it good that's right amen all right so I hope this
has been helpful to you God bless you guys we love you appreciate you be filled
the Holy Spirit listen to the Holy Spirit channel and may the great
adventure begin in your life in a fresh new way