Last Night! How to Hear! -- plus, Recap

So far Pastor David Chotka has covered

the first two steps to “Hearing God’s Voice.”

People, even from other churches,

are coming to him to pray!

Recap …

Day 1: The first step to knowing and hearing God is the Word of Christ. And Pastor David called all of us to repent of our lack of passion for God’s Word. It is a clear speaking and teaching, available every day.

Last Night, Day 2:

When most of us say “we want to hear God,” we mean that we want audible, discernible words to be spoken to us. So Pastor David’s first key point was to remind us that words are a secondary form of communication in every mind. Words are merely expressions of a deeper language – pictures, feelings, and impressions.

To prove this he said, “Try not to think of an elephant.”

Did anyone immediately call to mind the letters E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T? No. We all saw a picture of a big gray animal in our mind. That’s our primary communication language!

Then he said something like, “Try not to think of an elephant in love with cactus.” Immediately we saw pictures in our head AND we could FEEL as little bit of the poor elephant’s unrequited and rather prickly love. Every culture may use different words, but we ALL have a common picture in our head for elephants and common feelings in our heart for love. That’s our primary language.

So if our primary language is pictures, feelings, and impressions, then how does God – our creator – generally speak?! (Ahhh! We’ve been listening for the wrong thing!)

With that, Pastor David began focusing then on how God speaks through the Witness of Spirit.

His key verse was Colossians 3:15 -- let the peace of Christ be the “referee” within your hearts. When we are faced with a decision, we should “weigh our options,” by taking it to the Lord in prayer. As we contemplate these options, one should begin to bring us peace, while with the other options we should feel the peace begin to diminish. That’s the Holy Spirit! The peace is refereeing! It is showing us God’s will.

It’s as simple as that!

But here’s the complication … We’re sinful. We want what we want. We often “hear” what we want to hear. We can easily lie to ourselves.

That’s where Day 1 and tonight’s Day 3 come in.

• The first check, discussed on the first night, is whether our peace is in line with the Word of God? (Indeed, the more we saturate our lives with the Word of Life, we’re less likely to find peace in ungodly options anyway! 

• Tonight we will cover some of the finally checks, including accountability through faithful friends who are Christians. Pastor David says, “Who should you check your feelings with? Faithful followers with a sweet, sweet spirit!” 

These are practical suggestions – saturated in scripture and told through lots of real life examples.