Hearing the Holy Spirit of God
John 8:47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
Do you hear from God? Jesus said those that belong to Him would Hear His voice. The context of John 8 was Jesus speaking to the children of the devil. They were spiritual people, the Jews of that day that had the forms of godliness (external appearances) yet their hearts were far from God. This is where the vast majority of the professing “church” is today my friends. They are deceived and their worship is in vain.
In this post I want to bring to the attention of my brothers and sisters a truth about how we hear from the Holy Spirit. I write this after many instances in my life whereby I felt separation from God. We are promised many things in the Scriptures and warned repeatedly the consequences of continued sin. Based on my experience, as confirmed with Scripture, I can say without any hesitation that if you are living with un-confessed and unrepentant sin, you will be separated from God and you will not be in communion with Him. Until we confess our sin and repent of it, we will not have the peace that flows only from God’s Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities (sins) have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.
While Jesus promised us He will never leave us, God tells us we can choose to forsake Him and separate ourselves from God. We do this when we willfully sin. James said that the prayer of a righteous man avail itself much. Well the opposite is true as well, which is the prayers of man practicing sin are not heard. The prophet Micah said as much as he heard from the Lord.
Micah 3:4 Then they will cry to the LORD, But He will not hear them;
He will even hide His face from them at that time, Because they have been evil in their deeds.
Let me get the good news on the table before I am accused of being a legalist. God does forgive us of our sins when we confess them to Him. It is when we do not acknowledge our sin before God and take continued pleasure in sin that we are separated from the peace that transcends all understanding. The longer we do not confess our sin, the more the devil through our flesh begins to rationalize the sin, the convictions from God’s Spirit begin to diminish as taking pleasure in our sin takes hold. When we live in unrepentant sin we invite and give rights for the enemy (the powers of darkness) to come attack us and ensnare us into bondage. God lowers the hedge of protection around us. If and when we do this, and most professing Christians are in this sorry state — Jesus does not have our whole heart and we are in violation of the foremost command to Love the Lord with ALL our heart. When we practice sin, we tell Jesus, we love our sin more than Him and that is idolatry plain and simple.
Keep on sinning and before we know it, the Spirit has been drowned out by our worldly pursuits and pleasures. This does not mean God is weak, it simply shows He is a respecter of free will and the choices we make to either follow Him or rebel against Him. God will chasten us and if we do not respond, we will be overtaken by the devil and his demons. This is why preaching against sin and towards the way of righteousness is so important to be taught. We can’t raise up sheep teaching half a gospel. Oh but thank God for His mercy.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. This is how we get back into right standing with God. But if we harbor that sin, it leads to rebellion and enmity with God.
Yet understand, we simply cannot hear from God if we are practicing sin. Even King David fell into a bout of serious sin with adultery and murder amongst the valid charges against him. David ultimately repented and was reconciled to God, but he wrote Psalm 51 to express his sorrow for his sin and pleaded with God to not take the Spirit from him. Here is an excerpt but please read the whole Psalm in context.
Psalm 51:10-12 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Before his meltdown into evil; David knew God and heard His voice and God’s voice had deserted David when he engaged in the wickedness that he later confessed and repented of.
Sadly the message of obedience and its direct biblical linkage to receiving and hearing from the Holy Spirit is lost amongst the modern church. Many professing Christians believe they have the Holy Spirit because false teachers have told them that from the pulpit. Yet these “Christians” do not hear from God and they wonder about verses like John 10:28 “my sheep hear my voice, the know me and follow me“. The don’t hear from God, they may have never heard from God and they wonder what is wrong with them.
Worse yet are the “many” that feel no conviction from their sin and are under the delusion they are saved and eternally secure because they acknowledged that Jesus was God. Rather than hearing the truth about sin and their need for repentance, they are taught that everyone has the Holy Spirit just by acknowledging Jesus is God’s son or saying a one time prayer. This is not the case my friends and I myself used to ask Christians how they hear from God, because I a professing Christian did not hear from God at that time. As I came to find out, I was not a real Christian and my unrepentant sin was a barrier to accessing and hearing from God.
There are several key lessons in the New Testament about receiving and hearing from the Holy Spirit. Peter, the head of the original and true church of Christ had a couple of pointed things to say about receiving the Holy Spirit.
Acts 5:32 And we are His witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.” Obedience to God and our practice of righteousness (as opposed to sin) is so fundamental to the true gospel it is a joke what is being preached in most churches these days. You don’t get the Spirit by saying a prayer, you get the Spirit by demonstrating a true faith and obeying the God you say is your Lord. If you are not obeying, then the Lord is not your Lord plain and simple. Heed the words of the Lord Himself on this topic.
Luke 6:46 Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?
The above response from ACTS was given by Peter after his impassioned testimony on the day of Pentecost. The people were moved by Peter’s testimony and asked him “what shall we do“. The answer on being saved is the same today as it was yesterday when Peter spoke the truth as given him by the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2:38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Repentance is the missing link in the gospel preached in the modern church. To the man trained pastors, repentance is a negative, it makes it too hard to believe in Christ, actually requires us to pay a price and make a sacrifice. People don’t want to hear that, they want to hear the Easy Believism that says just say a prayer one time and it is a done deal. What folly. We don’t make Jesus Lord in a prayer, He is the Lord whether we pray it or not. We need to honor His Lordship by obeying Him, otherwise He is not our Lord.
Romans 6:16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey–whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Who is your Lord really? How do you stack up on the Apostle Paul’s litmus test?
I am not here to judge anyone’s heart but I can say that many that claim to be Christians are not really Christians, because they obviously do not have the Holy Spirit nor do they exhibit any of the fruit of the Spirit. We will indeed know those who have the Holy Spirit by their fruit.
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
We can practice religion all day long but if we are not walking with the Holy Spirit, we are just natural men and are being fools to God. That is where most of the professing body of believers are today.
1 Cor 2:14-15 “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is ‘spiritual’ judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no man.”
How do we walk in the spirit. I wrote an entire post on that months ago but the Apostle John chunked it up nicely into a single sentence.
1 John 3:24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.
The bottom line is this. The Holy Spirit is God, it is the Spirit of Christ, Mighty Counselor, Helper, the very essence of God here on the earth until Christ returns. Jesus told us very clearly that He would reveal Himself to us via His Spirit but He also spelled out the conditions for that revelation. He did not say we need to say a prayer one time, He did not say we need to go to church, He did not say we need to be good deed doers; He said this:
John 14:15-22 If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
Obedience is essential to receive and hear from the Holy Spirit. If we live in sin and practice it, we will never hear from God. If you are not hearing from God, you need to seek the face of God, confess you sins and ask for forgiveness so you can be washed anew and reconciled to the most Holy God. Playing church and practicing man made religion does not cut it my friends. I speak from experience and ask those truly seeking God’s face to examine themselves and ask God to reveal to them what they must repent of, because something is clearly in the way of them hearing from our Lord. He promised us that if we seek Him He will answer, if we knock, the door will be opened; but He also told us the conditions related to His revealing to us.
If we obey Christ and seek to do His will, we will have peace. Paul encouraged the Philippians on this point.
Phil 4:8-9 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
I pray we will all seek God and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Amen and edifying message. The spirit opposes the flesh in every way.
Thank you brother Pete,
Heaing the the Holy Spirit and his WORDS of truth, to me , is all important.
My best friend , who is the best representation of God in man that I know, got seperated from me in a crowd of people.
He was at one end of a large group of noisey people, and I was on the opposite side.
I could see him, but, I could not understand what he was saying to me.
These people who were between us were very ungodly people. They were talking about clothes to wear, entertainment , foods they liked, nothing of spiritual importance , wordly things. Their voices drowned out what my friend was trying to tell me from the OTHER SIDE, and a few times I lost SIGHT of him in this crowd, but, I knew he was still there.
My friends, for most of christianity , their is still someone between his Holy spirit of truth and himself , the man of self.
It is the interior godless fleshman who is between you and God, he creates the seperation .
His loud selfish voice drowns out the voice of Gods ” still small voice “, that should be controling and guiding the potential believer of his WORD.
Some people at times have his Holy Spiri with or upon them, but not dwelling WITHIN THEIR SPIRIT OR LAND. The shadow of this representation in the old testament is Joshua and the childern of Israel hearing and obeying perfectly the voice of God in THE PROMISED LAND ( OUR KINGDOM WITHIN)
The fleshman between us has to be flooded out like in the days of Noe by perfect obedience to the purity of Gods WORD .
The WORD has to come into our interior land or kingdom like a flood , so that it can start consuming and destroying this godless fleshman that stands between God and us.
Friends, when Gods WORD or PRESENCE is on the inside and not on the outside , we can hear him because he is ONE with us.
No distance is between us , we understand more perfectly because their is no distance between us,
Let me close with this example of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost :
We need to operate Gods WORD by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit from the inside out, not from the outside in. This Illustration may give understanding: For those who have learned to drive a standard shift vehicle , it at first is difficult because you must use your SENSES to locate the stick shift that has a diagram of the gears, we also have to SEE the clutch and where it is located.
Then we have to transmit that information to the mind/soul that processes the information given by the senses.
After you keep repeating this process of operating in the sense realm, looking with the sense of sight and touch, going through the gears , pushing in on the clutch ,it starts to become a part of the real you , the SPIRIT OR KINGDOM WITHIN.
You get in the vehicle after a period of time and start going through the gears and pushing the in on the clutch like second nature.
You don’t have to read the diagram on the shifter, it starts coming from the inside out , instead of from the outside in.
Brothers and sisters we most do this with Gods WORD and operate it in the same mannor.
That my friends is the spiritual operation of Gods WORD for every circumstance.
GOd bless, JER 33:3