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Posts Tagged ‘Voice of God’

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Scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 13

Can you imagine the following scenario? Somebody went to the store and lifted the store. You know, what we call shoplifting. When he went home, though, his heart smote him and he repented of what he did. He decided to go back into the store and drop back the thing he had stolen. He didn’t tell anybody. But he came to church, and because the gift of God is without repentance, when he came to the congregation, and especially having just repented, the Spirit of God moved upon him and he gave a word. But while he was pilfering, you were around the aisle in the store, and you saw him. “I won’t hear anything from that man,” you said. And you came in the church and told your best friend. But it so happened that your best friend had a best friend, and your best friend told her best friend and her best friend had another best friend and the best friend… until the whole congregation had been told. So when the man got up and the Spirit of God spoke through him, everybody dropped the curtain, refused to hear him. Who lost? You lost, because you listened to the voice of slander.

That is why Paul called the voice of slander diabolos, devils. It is just like the demons that go from one place to another carrying evil. You are ordained of God to carry good tidings. You are not ordained to carry negatives. If the brother stole something and you saw him, go to God and pray to God and say, “Lord, help that brother.” And you take him to one side and say, “You know, I saw you when you stole that thing and pushed it in your pocket.” Then the brother would be able to say, “I am sorry, but I repented and took it back.” But if you never said anything to him and went and scattered it, then you destroyed the work of God by the power of hate! If that brother had been your natural brother, you would not have told anyone.

Hate is a blocker to love. If you find out that you cannot love God’s people as you ought to, it is because you have allowed their wrong deeds to affect you and you hold it in your heart. Can you understand that? Love thinketh no evil. How could love think no evil when there is evil? You say, “But I saw the evil.” Love thinketh no evil. Love rejoiceth not in iniquity (I Corinthians 13:5-6). That is, the person gets hit because he was wrong and you said, “He had it coming to him.” That is not love. He had it coming to him, but you are sorry for him. If it were your child, you would think of him differently. Why do you think that your children do so many wrong things? God is trying to teach you how to deal with children who are rude and do wrong things. God is trying to teach you how to deal with the people of God. You love them just the same. They do a lot of wrong things but you love them just the same and you conquer them by love.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-2) Don’t you see how God separates the gifts from love? “I have great gifts. I can preach. I can teach. I can do this.” You are nothing. God help you. God help us.

I just want to tell you that love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

There was a man, Brother Smith, who wrote the last verse of the song, “The Love of God.”

Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth
(all the grass you see around) a quill and every man a scribe by trade.
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.”

That is not an idle dream. Those are the last words he wrote and died. They found them in his prison cell. Do you know what happened to him? He was a rich man; he had a lot of money and he began to talk about the love of God. His children committed him to the asylum because they wanted his riches, but he loved them just the same. He loved them just the same. Praise be to God. Let us be the children of love.

There is love that we are supposed to have for one another. The scripture translates it as bowels of compassion, that you have a feeling for the person. You feel it way down in your heart. God is talking about love. You can’t be mad with the people you love. If you have love, you don’t get mad with the people. You will get sad when you see them doing wrong things, but you won’t get mad with them. May God help us to be the children of love.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 47-49)

Thought for today: The love lifts us up out of the darkness into the light. Just begin to love and God will lift you up.

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Scripture reading: 1 Samuel 3:1-10

We have been talking about the voice of God speaking within the believer, but we have to know that we also have the voice without. GOD HAS A VOICE. I do not know if many people know that. I heard a preacher say that God cannot speak, that He has spoken already and He is finished speaking. He said that these last 2,000 years God has not spoken anything. I feel sorry for that preacher. I do not know where he would get a message to tell me if there is no one giving him a message. That means that he is making up the message himself. I say, brethren, that God has a voice. I have heard the voice of God many times. It is not His usual way but sometimes He speaks. Remember the boy Samuel? He never knew God. He did not know God’s voice. He was in bed and he heard, “Samuel, Samuel,” and he ran to Eli. Eli sent him back to bed. After this happened a few times, Eli said, “If he call thee (again), that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” He knew that it was God speaking to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:9).

In Matthew 28:19-20 we read the words of Jesus as He was leaving. The last thing He said to the brethren was, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am WITH YOU alway, even unto the end of the world.” He said, “I am with you.” Christ is with us, not just in us. Christ is in the Body, speaking through prophecies, words of encouragement, and preaching. Jesus Christ is right in our midst, when we sit down together. Matthew 18:19-20 says, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, THERE AM I IN THE MIDST OF THEM.”

It is necessary for us to learn to feed on Christ in all three dimensions – Christ in the church, Christ within, and Christ in Jesus among us. Then we will begin to grow strong in the Lord. Feeding on Christ is the fourth seal. When the fourth seal begins to break forth, some other things are going to happen in the world. This seal is already broken and is available to us to walk in the truth.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 122-123)

Thought for today: Our strength lies in feeding upon Christ in all three dimensions.

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Scripture reading: 1 Kings 19:9-18

Every believer has a little voice inside him, the still small voice of God. The more you pay attention to it, the more you believe it, the more you move according to it, the bigger and the stronger it grows. When you disobey, when you do not pay attention to it, it grows weaker and weaker. I notice that where there is a pastor and counselors, the voice of God is stifled in the believer. I am here to encourage the voice of God in the believer. When you hear the voice of God within you and you are not sure what it is, you say, “Well, Lord God, because I hear this voice within me and I believe with all my heart it is You, therefore I will go forward.” John 7:17 says, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” This verse tells you that if you sincerely from your heart desire to know God’s will, He is not going to leave you in the dark. He will not allow the enemy to lie to you and for you to act, believing you are acting in God, when you are really acting in another spirit. It is the people who do not really believe God, who do not really want God, who deceive themselves that they want God who go forward and do wrong in the name of God. No one can do wrong in the name of God and God not correct you, if you are genuine in your heart and believe what you are doing.

Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” When you hunger and thirst for God and for righteousness, you throw the ball back into God’s court. The responsibility and the onus is upon God to give YOU TRUTH. Listening to the voice within is a very important part of every believer’s life. Unless it is encouraged, it will grow weaker and weaker until you do not hear Him at all. You just go running around asking everybody to tell you what God says. The more we keep our hearts and minds clean before God, the easier it will be for us to hear God.

Let us look at the case of Elijah is in 1 Kings 19:11-13. “And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?”

Elijah knew God. The earthquake was frightening. The wind was frightening. The fire was mysterious and filled with everything that was spiritual and wonderful, but he knew God. His heart was not satisfied until he heard the still small voice of God. There is a voice within. We must pay attention because the voice is speaking in the temple. If the temple is not clean and ready, it will not hear the voice of God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 1, pages 121-122)

Thought for today: Let us cleanse our temples so that we can hear the still small voice of God each and every day.

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Scripture reading: John 16:20-27

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive…

The first lesson I received in the power of the spoken word occurred one day when Jesus Christ came into my room during those memorable seven months in which He taught me the Bible personally. We had the usual appointment for four o’clock in the afternoon and I was in a little early, waiting upon Him. Suddenly He was there and His mood and attitude was upbeat. This means that I was lifted up in heavenly places the moment he appeared. He said, “Ask me for anything you desire and you shall have it.”

Immediately, my mind was thrown into a whirl and I could not think of anything to ask for. At first, I thought that, “Here is God; I need to ask Him for something I think He would want me to ask for.” At the same time I found myself thinking that maybe the Scripture had some translation error, which said you should ask for anything you desire. He said, “No, you ask for something that you desire, not what you think God wants you to desire.” I said, “Lord, give me a healing; let me see someone healed.”

I got His word and ran out of the room seeking for a sick person. I found a woman who was given up by the doctors to die shortly. I prayed a little prayer and spoke the word of healing to her, whereupon she got up and was totally healed. The one thing I will never forget is when she saw me inquiring from her husband if she was really sick. She laughed at me and said, “You don’t believe, do you?” It seemed to be too easy to be real.

What does it mean to ask in the name of Jesus? Unfortunately, the carnal person believes that it is by saying the words, “In the name of Jesus,” that it makes it so, but this is far from the truth. All through the Bible, we notice that the word name depicts nature. In Matthew 1:21 the angel said to Joseph:

“Thou shalt call his name Jesus (Iesous in the Greek, from Yeshua, in the Hebrew, meaning Savior); for he shall save his people from their sins.” 

A name always had a meaning. In Africa and India they would never think of naming a child by the name of a devil unless that child was specifically given to that devil. Names carry meanings and the nature of that meaning generally comes forth in the child. In the developed world, we find that some children are called names like Damian which, of course, means demon. If I were given such a name, then as soon as I become conscious of it, I would change it.

Jacob was a supplanter because that was the meaning of his name. He cheated his brother out of his birthright and robbed him of his blessing, but when he met God at Penuel, God wrestled with him all night and literally knocked the devil out of him. That night his name was changed to Israel, Prince of God, because his nature was changed.

When, therefore, we are told to ask in the name of Jesus, we are being told that we must ask as Christ Himself asks—we must ask in His nature. The angels of God that attend to us and do for us the works of God that we cannot do, can only obey the voice of God. When they hear us speak in the voice of Christ, they immediately obey, whether it be to the moving of mountains or of straws.

Whenever the believer is in the Spirit, he or she speaks with the voice of God. We know it is the voice of God (“It is God”) when:

(1) Our spirits bear witness with the spirit that speaks; and,

(2) It agrees with the written Word and the Spirit of God (which is in the Word).

In John 14:16, our Lord told us that He would ask the Father and that He would send us another Comforter.  In John 16:25-26 we are being told by our Lord that there is a day, a set time, when He will not pray to the Father for us: 25 These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. 26 At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you.

In the next verse, He gave the reason: 27 For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

This is indeed a profound statement. Jesus Christ is actually saying that we will have the power to ask and receive as He did; that we will have an open line with the Father.

The hope and life of the church is all centered upon this one point of time, this day of the Lord. In this day, the spoken word will come to its full power. God has created both life and death in the power of the tongue.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, December 1993, pg. 9-11)

Thought for today: God longs to answer the prayers of His people. Ask in the nature of His Son and the whole heaven will move to fulfill your request.

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By Mavis M. duCille

Scripture reading: 1 Timothy 1:19

“Quicken my conscience till it feels the loathsomeness of sin.”

It is said that Conscience is the Voice of God speaking in the soul of man. It recognizes the existence of a moral law which has supreme authority; therefore when this moral law is violated, the soul responds with feelings of guilt and the fear of punishment or judgment.

Man has freedom and responsibility – freedom to make ones choice, but responsible for the consequences. God has made available to every man all the necessary equipment to turn from evil and choose good (which is the hope of immortality). Every man therefore, is inexcusable before God, no matter what part of the universe he or she may dwell. Humanity cannot escape the fact of moral distinctions.

With God there is a definite line between right and wrong. His love chastens that it might produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. To be kind and giving are works, good works, but holiness is an attribute of the inner man.

There is a very delicate balance in man which if not under the control of the Spirit, it can tip to the right or to the left. Because of man’s free-will choice there is always the possibility of going in the wrong direction or making the wrong decision, BUT God by foreknowledge made a way through Jesus Christ His Son, that man, when he comes to grips with himself and recognizes his weaknesses and limitations, can commit his life to Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit and have a lively conscience. May the Lord help those who allow works and charity to cloud their conscience that they cannot deal with sin and weaknesses in their own being.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, June 1983)

Thought for today: To be kind and giving are works, good works, but holiness is an attribute of the inner man.

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