A prophet … a prophet is someone who speaks the will of God. So let me ask you something, “Are there still prophets in this world today, or not? Does God still speak prophetically through some of His people today … or not?” Well, there’s only one way to find out – what does His Word have to say on the subject?

It’s just fantastic to be with you at the beginning of another week and yes, we’re continuing again this week in our look at how it is that God speaks to us today, right here and now in the 21st Century. It’s interesting, way back in the Old Testament God spoke to His people through prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and all those Old Testament prophets – men who God called to speak His message to His people.

Then in the New Testament He speaks to us, first and foremost through His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, and through the Apostles and the other writers of the New Testament books. And He’s still using those to speak to us today by His Spirit. He speaks to us today through the Word of God. But it’s interesting, the New Testament in particular tells how His Spirit speaks to us today.

Sometimes it’s easy to ignore that. It’s easy to get all dull and boring about the way God communicates with us. But God is a stunningly creative communicator. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing dull and boring about how God communicates with you and me. And one of the ways He does that is through the power of the prophetic. So today, that’s what we’re going to take a look at on the program.

Now in embarking on this today I acknowledge that there are some amongst God’s people who simply believe that there are no more prophets today; that this is something that belongs to the past and not the present.

What’s a prophet? Well, quite simply a prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God; someone who speaks the will of God into the lives of God’s people. Some people believe there are no prophets today, and yet other traditions and denominations really emphasise the prophetic dimension of God’s communication and sadly some do so to the point of abusing the prophetic. What do I mean by that? Well, I don’t carry any particular denomination baggage or tradition around this whole thing, my heart is simply to open up God’s Word the Bible and figure out what is God saying and go with what God says.

So that’s precisely what we’re going to do today. Let’s take a look. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, after Jesus has died and risen again and ascended into heaven. This is the fledging New Testament church that the Apostle Paul is writing to. I’m going to read to you from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 beginning at verse 4. Have a listen:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

So here Paul’s talking about supernatural gifts that are given to people in the family of God, and not just the special super-Christian leader people. Have a listen again to verse 7.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

To each person, to each believer is given one or more of these supernatural gifts. Now I’ve heard people say, “Wow, wow, that was for back then not for now.”

This passage, 1 Corinthians 12, rolls straight on into 1 Corinthians 13, that famous passage about love that kind of says, you know you can have all the gifts under the sun, but unless you use them in love those gifts are useless.

Now these same people love to quote 1 Corinthians chapter 13 but somehow, perhaps because, particularly in the west with our western mindset, we’re uncomfortable with the idea that there might be supernatural gifts, things we can’t explain rationally, we sometimes want to deny that this bit of the New Testament actually applies to us but accept other bits that make rational sense to us. I don’t know what it is, but I find nothing – when we say nothing in the New Testament – that tells me that this theme of spiritual gifts, supernatural gifts was meant for then and not for now. Nothing.

And the gifts? Words of wisdom, words of knowledge, extraordinary faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of the Spirit, speaking in different kinds of tongues, interpreting different tongues. One of the arguments against words of wisdom and words of knowledge and prophecy is that these so called modern day prophets set themselves up above the Word of God. They can say things that don’t agree with the scripture, God’s Word.

So what do we do with that? Well, I have to tell you. Like anything else good that God gives us, you can take it and you can abuse it. Absolutely. I’ve seen it happen in this area, where people go for emotionalism and they go for manipulation where they claim to be speaking on behalf of God but in fact they aren’t. They are just operating out of their own flesh and their own desires.

Is that a reason to believe that God doesn’t use prophets? Just because something good from God can be abused doesn’t mean that it’s not a good thing from God. I mean, back in the Old Testament there were false prophets. Back in the New Testament we see that there were some false prophets. Just because men and women abuse a gift from doesn’t mean that gift doesn’t exist.

There are several times in my life when someone has given a specific prophecy just for me, and all of those barring one, and that exception simply didn’t ring true as being from God to me and to the other people that were there at the time, but the rest of those prophecies in fact, had a huge impact on my life. I look back on them now and they were major turning points. And you know, they weren’t proud people coming to me with a “thus-sayeth-the-Lord” proclamation.

One of the most powerful was from a man called Denis Adams. He works for a large Christian radio network called HCJB. It was at a conference. I had just taken over the reigns at Christianityworks here in this ministry and my predecessor had taken all our radio programs off air. There was almost no financial support and the ministry was almost dead and I didn’t know what to do.

I met Denis for the first time at a Christian Media Conference. He looked at my name tag, we didn’t know each other, but he’d heard some of the short radio messages I’d put together in the past. And almost immediately tears welled up in his eyes, and with such passion and such conviction he said to me. “You have to start doing those radio programs again, you just have to.” Well I tell you, Dennis’ words pierced my heart that day and because of that we spent the last few thousand dollars the ministry had on producing the first series of these programs. At the time we had no idea how we were going to get onto any radio station anywhere.

That was only six years ago, and today these programs are heard by millions of people each around the world. I know with all that I am that those words that Dennis Adams spoke to me that day were from God. That they were a prophecy, that without them I wouldn’t be here today. Should we discern prophecies? Absolutely! Should we think them through and pray them through? Absolutely! Should we reject any that don’t ring true? Absolutely!

But, my friend, God’s Word says that He’s still speaking to us today through prophets. Why, oh why would we want to deny that? Why would we not want to hear when God has something specific to say to you and to me from His heart into our lives?

Have you ever heard a little voice out of the blue? Unexpectedly, this strong impression or this strong guidance just leaps out at you. Sometimes it’s just about something small.  Other times, it’s huge. Many, many people have experienced that.  Question is: Is it from God?  Is that God speaking to us … or not?

Have you kind of heard a voice out of the blue and wondered, “Where did that come from?” We’re chatting this week on the program about hearing from God. How does God speak these days and how do we hear Him? That’s what we’re exploring because God is still speaking and He means for us to hear Him.

Now one of the ways I notice that He talks to people throughout the Bible is a voice out of the blue. I had coffee with a dear friend of mine, James, just the other day. He was telling me how the day before he was racing out for a meeting and he had this distinct impression he should go back to his study and grab his diary. He ignored it. On the way something happened and he needed to contact the person he was supposed to be having the meeting with to adjust the arrangements. Problem was he didn’t have the man’s phone number on him. It was, you guessed it, in the diary sitting back on his desk in the study.

Now sometimes God has big things to say and sometimes He has little things to say and in my experience, if we love Him, if we’re in the business of drawing close to Him, sometimes in the thick of things while we’re on the run, He speaks to us out of the blue.

Some people are uncomfortable with that. There’s a school of thought that God only ever communicates to us through His Word the Bible. Well, I agree. The Bible is the primary way that God communicates with us and if anyone claims any other communication, a prophecy, a word of knowledge, something from God out of the blue, if anyone claims to have heard from God like that but they say they heard is not consistent with what the Bible says, well my friend it ain’t coming from God. God never contradicts Himself. Let me say that again, God never contradicts Himself. So I agree on that front.

But the number of times He speaks to people in the Bible and they answer Him, “Here I am Lord”, well there’s lots of those. Let’s have a look at just one of those today. Moses is a burnt out old wreck of a man. He’s 80 years old. He murdered an Egyptian as a young man. So even though he grew up in Pharaoh’s house, he fled out to the back of the desert to tend sheep for 40 or 50 years. But suddenly, when God’s ready to speak to Him, God speaks out of the blue or at least, out of a bush. Have a listen, Exodus Chapter 3:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.

When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.

Was it an audible voice, or was it a voice Moses heard in His heart. We’re not told. We don’t know. But God didn’t have a Bible to speak through back then. It wasn’t written yet. So He spoke to Moses out of the blue as it were, out of the bush. If you have access to an electronic version of the Bible I suggest you do a search on the words, “Hear I Am.” They come up over and over again. God speaks to His people out of the blue and they answer, “Here I am Lord.”

Has it ever happened to me? Well I’ve never been quite called to lead Israel out of Egypt to be quite honest with you. But at the same time God has spoken to me out of the blue about things that are big and about things that are small. I remember not long after I became a Christian I was alone in my house and it was a Saturday afternoon and I was ironing downstairs. And as I finished each shirt, I’d take it upstairs and hang it up in the wardrobe. As I was heading back downstairs I was just overwhelmed by the presence of God. So I sat down at the top of the stairs and what I experienced in the next fifteen or twenty minutes was God calling me to preach the Good News of Jesus.

I thought, hang on, I’d been a Christian like five minutes and your calling me to do this? Then He showed me how over the previous twenty years as I’d been invited all over the world to speak at conferences and events in the IT industry, which is what I did back then, I was an IT consultant. He showed me how he’d been getting me ready for this even before I’d given my life over to Him.

Now these weren’t my thoughts or ideas. This wasn’t a vivid imagine at works. It was ‘Someone outside of me speaking into me and showing me this stuff’ kind of experience. Did I hear an audible voice? No! Never have. But I knew it was God.

Jesus said in John 10:16:

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

John 10:27:

My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

See this is exactly how it was for me that day. I just knew it was God who spoke to me and God who called to do what I’m doing on that day in the stairwell in the middle of ironing shirts. I didn’t know it was going to happen. I had absolutely no idea at that point how it would unfold that I would be involved in the medium of radio. It didn’t come until years later, in fact another eight years after that time.

Sometimes I’ve thought I heard His voice and I don’t think I’ve got it quite right. So I always test things. I think, I pray, I see if they make sense and little by little, what I’ve discovered is that I’m getting better and better at discerning God’s voice; recognising that it’s Him that I’m hearing. In my day to day to life God sometimes nudges me this way and sometimes that way. In the middle of pressure and conflict sometimes the Holy Spirit speaks strongly and directly, often with a Scripture to me that leads me to behave in a Godly way rather than follow my natural human inclinations. And you know, that’s exactly what Jesus promised would happen.

John Chapter 14, Jesus promises to send us His Spirit to dwell in us and He goes on to say in John Chapter 15 verse 26:

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.

Then John 16:14:

He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Friend, God is in the business of communication with us. When He does, when we hear Him out of the blue, let’s test everything against His Word the Bible. If it’s not consistent with His Word then it’s absolutely certain that this thing we thought was from God definitely isn’t from Him. But He does communicate with us in all sorts of different ways and sometimes it comes completely out of the blue so let’s be ready for it.

So often we want to head off in one direction, but other people have different opinions. Different folks, different strokes, I guess. But when we feel God leading us in one direction, and then we receive the counsel of others that perhaps points us in another direction – which one is right?  Which one is God speaking?

Just the other night I was asked to spend some time facilitating of the elders of the church council of a particular church not far from me. It seems that what had been going on is that there was conflict amongst some of the members of the church council. Leaders of God’s people shouldn’t be in conflict, they should act in unity.

The Apostle Paul writing to his friends at the church in Philippi said this, Philippians chapter 2 verse 2:

… make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

We were chatting about the fact that night, that God’s made each one of us differently. Romans Chapter 12: Some of us are prophets, others servers, others teachers, others encouragers, others givers or leaders or carers. And I can tell you a leader is going to have a totally different view of the world compared to say, an encourager or a carer. That’s because leaders are wired one way and encouragers are wired a different way. And the carer is wired yet another way on the inside. That’s the way it is because we’re different, we see things differently and often that ends being the source of conflict.

Now, in this meeting one of the elders of the church, an older man with wisdom, asked the $64 question. He said, “Okay so we’re all different with different points of view, so how are meant to discern the will of God out of all those different views?” And that my friend is a very, very good question.

One of the things I’m prone to do is to race out and just do things without listening to the advice of other people. It’s because my personality type is that of Leader. I’m an action person. I work on the theory that if I make ten decisions today and get seven of the right then I’m much better off that if I’d made three decisions and managed to get them all right. My good friend, Keith Henry, with whom I co-authored the book, “My Personality GPS”, he makes this point about leaders: one of their natural weaknesses is that they often fail because they don’t listen to advice. So there is something I have to take on board.

See those detail people, you know the sort. They analyse everything. Those detail people naturally drive me nuts because they slow me down. I want to get on with things and they want to analyse things first. But you know what I’ve learnt? I’ve learnt that without those detail people I’m prone to fail at things because God is in the detail. The detail actually matters.

Part of my growing, my process of maturing as a Christian has been to value and to listen to the detail people. They are really, really, really important to me. And I’ve come to realize that often God will often speak to me through the gifts and the abilities and the perspectives of other people. Even let me say, people who in the natural would drive me nuts. I love that. God has such a great sense of humour in dealing with our immaturity.

Okay, what does God’s Word have to say on this issue . There are some fantastic bits of Wisdom on this very thing in the book of Proverbs. Let me give you just a few:

Proverbs 15:22

Without counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed.

Proverbs 18:2

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.

Proverbs 20:18

Plans are established by taking advice; wage war by following wise guidance.

Isn’t that great stuff? What God is saying to us here is that, if we just rush off in a fit of pride because we think we know what’s right, well there’s every chance that our plans will go off the rails. But if we humble ourselves instead of being more interested in our own opinions and listen to the good advice of others that’s how our plans are going to succeed. Have to tell you. This is something I have had to learn and I’ve learnt it the hard way. And the more I’ve leant it the better my life has become.

We were recently planning something really new in the ministry of Christianityworks; quite different and quite new. We the board and the management really felt God leading us in a certain direction to start this new thing. So after learning this lesson the hard way, I worked with our team to put the ideas and the plans together.

So many good ideas came out of different people because God made each one of the differently. And when our plans were together I then took it to some business people who were experienced both in ministry and business, people who’d been around, people who I knew were sharp. I said to them, “Look, what I really want is your frank, direct and honest feedback and advice. If you think we’re off with the pixies, please tell me now.” And these men gave me their frank advice. That helped to sharpen our thinking. It helped to find the holes in the plan and to start working out how to deal with those weaknesses.

And through this process of consultation with godly men and women, here’s what I believe. I believe we’ve discerned the will of God. God has spoken through His people. Each one different, each one created to see a certain thing and by submitting the plans to consultation we have a much better basis for moving forward. We have the bases covered in a way that we wouldn’t have if I’d done it on my own or just with one or two people. With all that I am, I believe we’ve heard God speak through this process. And with all that I am that’s exactly what I think God meant for us to do.

Without counsel plans go wrong but with many advisors plans succeed. It’s awesome stuff. It’s so easy to fall into conflict when teams of people are working together though or at least trying to, and yet they are all seeing things differently. And the key to seeking God’s will in a team environment is through mutual submission. That requires wisdom. Have a listen to what God says about wisdom, His wisdom, the sort of wisdom that comes from above. James 3 verse 17:

Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, good fruits without trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

The bit that really strikes a key with me there is that wisdom from God is willing to yield, willing to get off its high horse and to listen to the skills and gifts and abilities of others as godly men and women that God’s put around us. It’s when we all yield, when we are all in mutual submission to one another, that we hear God’s voice. There’s a reason for that. James Chapter 4 Verse 6:

God opposes the proud but He gives grace to the humble.

So often we want to hear God speak, we want to discern the will of God. “God what are you doing? God what’s next? God, this is a tight spot, how do I deal with this?” and yet we ignore the good advice of the godly people that God has given to us. Hello!! Why? Because we’re proud. Let me say this lovingly but directly, so immature, so foolish, because “like a fool we take no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing our own personal opinions”. That’s Proverbs Chapter 18 Verse 2. Wake up! God speaks through His people. We can discern the will of God as we submit ourselves lovingly to one another and go after God’s will rather than our own personal agendas.

Sometimes, as we saw yesterday on the program, God speaks supernaturally, other times He speaks through the ordinary and the every day. Both are equally valid. And one of the great delights of my heart, something that I’ve truly come to love, is to hear God speak through the lives and the mouths of other people, because by His grace He’s taught me to get off my high horse, shut up and listen.

The Bible – Old Testament and New – talks about God speaking to His people through dreams and visions. Well, for some of us – particularly those with a rational western mindset – that’s a bit freaky. Does God really speak to people that way? Well – what does His Word really say on the subject and what does it mean for you and me, here and now?

We’ve been chatting these last couple of weeks about the different ways in which God speaks with each one of us. The principal way, the absolutely authority on God’s truth is the Word of God, His Bible, His chosen way of communicating the truth, most important of which is the truth of His Son, Jesus Christ also called, “The Word of God”.

The Bible is God speaking. Jesus is God speaking. But as we’ve seen God uses many other ways to communicate with us as well. Yes, we have to discern those it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that any person or any experience that purports to be God speaking is in fact God speaking. And the most reliable test of that is whether what the person is saying or what we think the experience is telling us, is in fact consistent with God’s truth, His Word, the Bible.

Now if you’ve been with me these last couple of weeks you will have heard me say the same thing over and over again. And you might be thinking, “Why is Berni labouring this point?” Well, today there’s a specific reason, because today we’re going to be talking about dreams and visions. Are they real? Does God still speak through them or use them today? Or are they phoney? I think these are reasonable questions to ask when we’re enquiring as to how it is that God speaks with each one of us.

Now perhaps your thinking, “Dreams and visions? For goodness sake, where is this joker going with this? Is he for real?” My response to you is simply this: my heart, my passion is to dive into God’s Word the Bible, to read it, to understand it, and to live it. I’m a simple kind of guy and that’s how I approach life. And one of the things that happen is that God often does things in ways that I, with my rational western mindset, perhaps wouldn’t have chosen to do if I had been God.

Fortunately for you I’m not God. That’s the up side. But perhaps the downside is that we have to go with some of the things that God is doing God’s way even if we don’t quite like them, even if they don’t quite make sense to us. So what does God’s Word say about dreams and visions?

Let me share with you a passage from chapter 2 of the Book of Acts. God’s Spirit has just been poured out on the Christians and they’re all talking in different languages and they’re behaving like they are drunk, literally. You can read it for yourself, the fifth book in the New Testament, the Book of Acts Chapter 2. Not surprising, the other Jews in Jerusalem at the time are pretty critical at this odd sort of behaviour. They are accusing these Christians of being drunk, so Peter the Apostle gets up to explain.

Acts Chapter 2 beginning at verse 12:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

See, what’s going on here is the unexpected is happening. They’re falling over as though they’re drunk, they’re speaking in different tongues. And to silent the sceptics Peter the Apostle gets up and says, “You think this is amazing? This is nothing. Wait till you see what’s coming next.” And then He goes on to quote the Old Testament prophet Joel.

Remember this is Jerusalem in the first century. Everyone listening knows the Scripture he’s quoting. And in it God promises that the Holy Spirit will cause people to have dreams and visions and prophecies. All ways that God is going to speak with us. It’s in the Bible. Peter’s saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” And if I could personally echo that same sentiment here and now, if you feel uncomfortable with talking about prophecies and dreams and visions, my friend, it’s in the Bible. Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Do you know that many, many Muslims who ultimately put their faith in Jesus Christ report that they saw Jesus coming to them in a dream? In fact this is a really, really common occurrence. Has God ever spoken to me that way? No, He hasn’t. I hear God in different ways and that’s fine. We’re all different. God knows that and He speaks to us in different ways. But have I been impact by this? Absolutely.

When my wife visited our church, before she was my wife, before I even knew her. She came on the Sunday morning, the service where I was preaching. And she came back again on the Sunday evening. Now our pastor, Phil, was preaching that night. You may have heard me speak about Phil before. He’s a great guy, practical, very down to earth kind of guy. He gets up and is about to preach and he looks at Jacqui. Didn’t know her name, none of us knew who she was. And he said, “God’s given me a vision for your life.” And he went ahead and described this picture, this vision, in a huge amount of detail. Pretty gutsy thing to do, I thought.

Well Jacqui’s pretty quiet and shy so she didn’t react at all. Months later we discovered that this was an incredibly difficult time in her life and she’d been wanting God to speak to her and that the vision that Pastor Phil described to her that night was a huge, huge turning point in her life’s journey. In fact, had Phil not communicated that to her she probably wouldn’t be my wife today.

In many parts of the world people have no problem at all with this idea that God speaks through dreams and visions and prophecies. But somehow we Westerners with our rational, materialistic mindset struggle with this idea.

Let me come back to where I started. We should test everything like this against God’s Word. Sometimes people will come to us with stuff that isn’t from God, but often it is from God. And if God tells us in His Word, the Bible, that all along it’s been His plan to speak to us in this way through dreams and visions, well, I don’t know about you, but I think we should listen. Just because I’m not comfortable with what God’s doing doesn’t mean that God’s not doing something that isn’t wonderful.

Yes, this is open to abuse. In Colossians chapter 12 verse 18 Paul talks about this. About people who dwell on visions being puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking. Of course it’s open to abuse. That’s why we test everything against God’s Word. And that’s why when people say they see things through dreams and visions, I come to God’s Word and what I discover here in the Book of Acts Chapter 2 is that it was always God’s plan that as He poured His Spirit out on all His people, He would speak to us through the dreams and visions He gave to some.

Friend, God does things in ways that you or I wouldn’t have done, and I hunger to hear Him speak. I delight in hearing Him speak when, how, that’s His choice. Our job is simply to listen.

As we’ve seen on “A Different Perspective” these last couple of weeks, God speaks to us in all sorts of different ways. But … well, how do we really know when He’s truly leading us in a particular direction. I mean sometimes, we have big decisions to make.  How do we know that we’re truly hearing God correctly?

Well, here we are, another Friday and another end of the week and another end of the series of messages. Time flies when you’re having fun. Over these last couple of weeks we’ve been chatting about how you and I can hear God speaking into our lives, and that’s so important. One of the most common questions that people ask me is, “How can I hear God speak to me?”. And so that’s exactly what I’ve called this series of 10 messages of which today is the last. How can I hear God speak to me. And over the course of this series we’ve looked at eight different ways that God speaks to us today.

Firstly the Bible, God’s Word, the authority for God to revealing Himself to us.

Secondly, prayer: He speaks to us during our times of prayer and devotion. We can hear that still small voice of His Spirit.

Thirdly, preaching: God speaks to us through anointed preaching when someone opens the Word of God for us.

Fourthly, signs and wonders: God still uses signs and wonders from time to time to get His message across.

Next, prophets: The New Testament makes it clear that God appoints certain people in the body of Christ to be His prophets, to speak His will into our lives.
Next, He speaks sometimes out of the blue: sometimes God just pipes up completely out of the blue right in the middle of the cut and thrust of life.

Next, through the counsel of others: God so often speaks to us through other godly men and women whom He puts around us.

And finally, as we saw yesterday, through dreams and visions: that makes some people a little bit uncomfortable. But again the New Testament is clear, Acts Chapter 2: God’s plan in these last days was to speak to His people through the dreams and the visions that He gives to some.

And you add all of that up and what you discover that God is speaking rather a lot. Principally, primarily through the authority of His Word, the Bible – the living Word of God. That’s why I put it right up there at Number One. If numbers two to eight purport to be God speaking, then they’d better be consistent with Number One – the Word of God. If they aren’t then they’re not from God.

If someone claims to have had a dream or a vision or a prophecy but it contradicts the Word of God, make no mistake, that dream or vision or prophecy simply cannot be from God. God is not in the business of contradicting Himself. God is not in the business of changing His mind. But He is interested in our lives: in the nitty gritty of our lives and He knows that sometimes we need His specific guidance because He loves us. It stands to reason therefore that He’s going to speak specifically into our lives as any other father would. My Dad didn’t speak vague generalities into my life. My Dad spoke specifically into my life because He loved me.

I heard a pastor, a man that I respect a great deal, stand up and preach a sermon not too long ago in which basically He said, that God only speaks these days through His Word the Bible and through no other means. Well, the first thing is that’s simply not what the Bible says. Each of the other ways that God speaks to us that we’ve looked at numbers two through eight have come straight out of God’s Word. I haven’t made them up. They’re in the Bible.

So afterwards I went and asked this pastor a couple of questions. The first one was, “Why did you become an ordained minister in this church and this denomination?” His answer was, “Because I felt called.” And that is exactly the right answer. In fact, “it’s God calling” that’s the only right answer for a pastor of a church. So my second question was, “How did you discern that calling? How did you come to the conclusion that God was calling you specifically to this ministry?” And then he proceeded to tell me about this and that, all things that we’ve talked about in numbers 2-8: prophets, out of the blue, through the counsel of others, the different ways that God speaks.

It stands to reason that if we feel led by God to do this or to do that then we somehow must have heard Him speak that into our lives. And that’s what this series of messages have been all about. Going into God’s Word and learning from Him how it is that He chooses to communicate with us. But learning to discern His calling, learning to put the pieces together, sometimes it’s not easy.

Along the way I’ve made mistakes, or at least it appears that I’ve made mistakes. I thought God was calling me to this or to that so I headed down that path and it didn’t quite work out the way that I thought it should have worked out.

And when it comes to the big decisions of life, that’s a pretty scary prospect. What if we think we are hearing from God but we’re not, in choosing a wife or a husband, or in choosing a particular career or a ministry, or in heading overseas to some distant foreign land to become a missionary? You get the point.

I mean, I do believe that sometimes, oftentimes God’s leading leads us right into a wilderness experience when we’re expecting instant success. And that’s okay. I’m not bothered by that as surprised as we sometimes are, it doesn’t bother me. The issue simply uppermost for me is that if I’m going to head off in this direction or in that direction, then I want the direction that I head off in to be the one that God has chosen and ordained and prepared for me no matter what that direction holds. That’s all. Whatever way it is I just want to make sure I’m heading God’s way.

How do you discern God’s will amongst all the noise and distractions of life? A prophecy, a dream, a passage in the Bible that leaps out at you: are they from God? Before the days of global terrorism, as a frequent flyer I was often invited up into the cockpit of commercial jets to sit in the jump seat and watch a take off or a landing. They were the good old days.

One time, we were returning during the night to Sydney on a flight from New Zealand. I was in the cockpit of a Boeing 767 which actually gives you a great view out of the front windscreen, better than just about any other plane. And flying into Sydney, well it’s a pretty big city. There were so many lights. I was sitting in the jump seat wondering how are the pilots going to pick the runway?

All of a sudden we turned and the runway came into view, this bright straight row of lights. I mean you simply couldn’t miss it. All those lights in a row were clear and unmistakable and they showed the pilot in which direction to fly and how to land once they went off their instruments into visual mode.

And for me it’s the same in discerning God’s will. He speaks to us in different ways at different times: signs and wonders and this and that, and learning to understand Him is a process as it is in any relationship. But when I’m feeling Him leading me down a particular path, inevitably what happens he lines a few things up, just like those lights on the runway.

A Scripture verse that He sets on my heart and just won’t go away; a word, a prophecy from someone who has no idea what I’m thinking or dreaming; some other event – that door over there that closed unexpectedly but over here this other door opened to my surprise and all of a sudden, it’s like those lights lining up on the runway. They end up in a bit of a straight line, likes ducks in a row that point in a certain direction. And sometimes you can’t see them until you start heading down the path, in fact mostly in my experience that’s the case.

First we have to step out in faith, often letting go of the past first before God reveals what comes next. That’s why it’s called stepping out in faith. But time and time again I’ve seen God line up the little ducks in a row and when I see that I start heading down the path prayerfully, eyes open, asking God to open doors if it’s His will and closing doors if it’s not.

Sometimes there’s opposition and that’s where the faith comes in. But above all I always remember this, my God is faithful, he knows my heart; He will not lead me down a path that He doesn’t want me to follow. It’s just how He is. And whilst I’ve groaned at the occasional dead end along the way, as I look back over the last decade and half walking with Jesus I can see how He’s guided me to where He wants me to be.