How to Hear the Voice of God – Part 3

Secrets to Spiritual Small Talk

 

In part 3, Ashley and Carlie discuss the role that natural circumstances play in how we hear from God.

Everyone needs to hear what God is saying, and you don’t want to wait until you’re in a crisis to try and hear Him. As a believer and His child, you can hear God. You were created to hear Him. It’s part of your spiritual DNA!

Key Bible Verse: John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”

Transcription

Carlie: Did you know that God has many different ways to guide His children? That’s right, today we’re going to be looking at the role of circumstances in how we hear from God.

Announcer: Welcome to the Abundant Life program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.

Ashley: Hello and welcome to Abundant Life, we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. My name is Ashley Terradez, this is my wife Carlie, and today we’re talking about how you can hear the voice of God clearly. God is speaking to His children, and He wants us to hear His voice clearly. In John 10:27 it says, My sheep shall hear my voice and I know them and they’ll follow me. God’s plan for us is for us to hear His voice. In these teachings, we want to help you to be able to hear God’s voice more clearly and we’re going to give practical tips and ways you can do that.

So far during these series, we’ve been actually talking about different ways you can hear God’s voice. We’ve looked at the word of God, His word, it’s the living word. His word is the main way we’re going to hear God’s voice. It’s the safest way. It should actually be the benchmark against all other words.

Carlie: Yep, it’s how we judge over words.

Ashley: It’s how we would judge other words so however we hear God’s voice, we should always line it up with the word of God. God will never contradict Himself from His word. If you think you’ve heard God’s voice, in fact I had this fairly recently, I had someone come to me and said, God’s told me to do this, and they told me and I said, No, he didn’t. And they were offended, looked like I’d run over their dog. They said, Why? I said, I know God well enough, I know His word, and I can tell you right now, God did not tell you that. And they said, How do you know what I’ve heard from God? I heard Him speak to me, I heard Him speak to me.

I said, That’s not God, I said, That must be your flesh, or it must be the devil, but it’s not God because God would never tell you something that directly contradicts His word. The word of God is the main way we hear God’s voice and we have to spend time in the word to be able to hear God’s voice. Not only does God speak to us directly through His word, sometimes the scripture would jump out at you, sometimes you’ll get an answer to a question directly from His word. It’s happened to me many times and I’m sure you watching at home, you’ve had many times when scriptures have jumped out at you, but also God’s word is, like we said, it’s the test point against everything else.

We can test all the other words against God’s word. Then we looked at and the audible voice of God. It’s rare but it does happen. God can speak audibly and then there’s been times when people have heard God’s audible voice. Usually that happens when people are very new Christians or when they haven’t got the word of God and they need a way-

Carlie: Before they’re saved, even.

Ashley: Before they’re saved. God needs to speak to them directly. God spoke to me directly before I was saved, called my name. Sometimes that happens, God will do that because He loves us so much. He’s trying to speak to us. He’s trying to get through to us so much. He’s pursuing us.

Carlie: Amen.

Ashley: He’ll use any means He can. An audible voice is a legitimate way that God can speak to us. Then we looked at people, God can speak to us through people. God can use people in our lives to speak to us and sometimes they might be operating in a spiritual gift, a spiritual gift of word of knowledge, word of wisdom, or prophecy, even interpretation of tongues. We can actually look at spiritual gifts later on, but God will use people to speak to us. But on the other side of that, it’s a double-edged sword because people can also speak to us and-

Carlie: It can be a distraction.

Ashley: It can be a distraction. It can even be the enemy speaking to us.

Carlie: Right.

Ashley: We looked at the example when Jesus talked to the disciples and told them that he’s going to have to die and be reasoned again on the third day. And Peter actually took Jesus to the side and said, Jesus, this doesn’t have to happen. You know, there’s another way. And what Peter was doing, he was just mindful of the things of men.

Jesus said, Peter, you’re being mindful of the things of man, not mindful of the things of God. And what happened was that actually tempted Jesus to not go to the cross, that actually spoke to Jesus. [crosstalk] And it was the enemy because Jesus turned around and said, get behind me Satan. So Jesus, rather than letting that word get on the inside of him and start to tempt him, he rebuked it right there. And when a word comes against us, we need to rebuke it. And he rebuked it right then there, said, Satan, get behind me. Now. I’m not suggesting that you should turn around and tell people, Satan, get behind me. You know, one of your parents or your friends or something that said something to you.

Carlie: It’s probably a more tactful ways to do it.

Ashley: There’s probably better ways of doing it. But if you have to, just do what you got to do.

Carlie: Do what you got to do.

Ashley: I’ve had times when people have spoken to me and I felt that’s not just them speaking to me, that’s the enemy using this.

Carlie: There’s another motive.

Ashley: There’s another motive behind you, get the inside of you. And the reverse side is that that God can use people to speak to you. And there’s been many times when God’s use people to speak to me. We did say though, that it should only be confirmation of what God’s already speaking to you about. You know, just a word completely out of left field, that makes no sense, that needs to be confirmed. And sometimes people miss it and we’ve had people give us words. I had people give me words and they say, God’s telling me this, or God telling me that. And they missed it, it wasn’t the truth so we don’t want to put too much weight on what people say. We should always judge things through the word of God. So the word of God, audible voice through people. Today, we’re going to look at how God can speak to us through circumstances, through your circumstances. Again, this is another two edge sword, there’s two parts to this. This is not something you can trust or rely on, this is something you have to test. Amen, cause circumstances can both be good and bad.

Carlie: I’ve got an example here in scripture, this is in Mark 4, this is the calming of the storm. In verse 35, it says, That same day when evening came, He said, this is Jesus, He came to them and said, Let us go across to the other side. So Jesus is getting in the boat with the disciples and he’s told them, he’s given them a direction, he’s given them instructions, we’re going to go across the other side of the lake. When they had sent the crowd away, they took him in the boat just as he was. There were also other boats with him, a great windstorm arose and the waves splashed into the boats that it was now filling the boat. He was in the stern, asleep on the pillow. They woke him and said, Teacher, do you not care that we’re perishing? He had rose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace be still! And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

And he said to them, Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? And they marveled, Who is this?, that even the wind and the waves obey him. In some translations, it says, Jesus’ response is, Where is your faith? Where is your faith? Jesus is in the boat with them, he’d already given them the instruction to go to the other side. They had a word from God, if you like, to go do something. But when they go out on the lake, it wasn’t smooth sailing, even though they had a word from God to go to the other side, there was a storm that arose on that lake and it brought fear. It looked really bad, they thought they were going to die, because they had forgotten who was with them in the boat. Jesus wasn’t going to sink.

Ashley: The circumstances looked like it was going to stop them.

Carlie: Yeah, it looked overwhelming.

Ashley: So they’d listen to the circumstances and think, This isn’t going to work.

Carlie: And on the face of it, the circumstances looked pretty bad. And circumstances come against us sometimes to distract us from fulfilling what God has sent us to do. Another example of this is when the student of Israel was sent into the promised land, there were giants in the land. Now God knew that there were going to be giants in the land, but he said, I’ve given you the land anyway. He knew that the storm was going to arise on the lake, but he told them, Let’s go across to the other side.

Ashley: God didn’t send the storm?

Carlie: He didn’t, but he wasn’t surprised by it either.

Ashley: Right.

Carlie: So circumstances sometimes come against us. And this is contrary to how we’ve been taught that if God has told you to do something and you’ve got some resistance, then maybe you’ve heard wrong.

Ashley: Well, people go into two ditches in this I’ve realized. And I’ve done this myself, everything we teach and basically we’ve lived out. So it’s not like we [crosstalk] made all these mistakes. That’s why we teach basically, we just teach of our mistakes. We’ve been in both of these ditches, what can happen is, as Christians, you can make a decision for God. Whatever that is, we’re going to move to one of the big decisions we made. We’re going to move to Bible school and actually go to Bible school back in 2006. And we could say, Okay, we were thinking about moving to Bible school. If all the circumstances work out and everything works out and our house sold and we got a new house for rent and we got a job and everything worked hasn’t it?, must be the Lord, everything’s working out. But yet, if everything went wrong and it was difficult, we couldn’t find housing, we couldn’t sell our house, everything went wrong. And you say, Must be the Lord, the Devil’s trying to stop us.

Carlie: It’s down to interpretation.

Ashley: It’s down to interpretation. [crosstalk] Yeah, can’t be right, all these circumstances are against us, we must have missed God, this can’t be God. Or all of the circumstances are good, so it must be good. Either way, do you see how we can use circumstances to argue a case both ways. That’s why we can’t put weight on circumstances.

Carlie: We can’t put faith in the circumstances.

Ashley: I mean, we really can’t. Paul puts it this way, the apostle Paul puts it this way, I love how he puts it. This is in Acts 20, Verse 24. And in Acts 20, Verse 24, Paul is talking about circumstances and Paul had some terrible circumstances. I mean, he was imprisoned and chained and beaten and left for dead and beaten with rods. And all these… Spent the day and the night in the open sea and was hungry and naked.

And all these evil things Paul goes into, and he calls those light afflictions, by the way. So they were light afflictions so-

Carlie: I hate to see what a bad day was.

Ashley: I was going to say, sometimes we have to put our afflictions into perspective. I’ve got a pastor friend and he says that sometimes people come to him for pastoral counseling and they tell him their problems and they cry and their belly aching. And they say, all these things are wrong, and when he hears what they’re upset about, it’s like, he’s has to stop himself laughing because he feels like saying to them, Well, if they were my problems, I’d be rejoicing.

Carlie: It’s all about perspective.

Ashley: It is perspective. So, Paul, what I’m saying is, Paul went through a lot of bad circumstances, he had a lot of bad things come against him. And this is what he puts in Acts 20:24. I love this verse, Acts 20:24. He says, But none of these things, none of these circumstances move me. He said one of them moved me, so he wasn’t letting any of those circumstances speak to him, none of those things move me nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy. Paul was about following Jesus, he was about being a minister of the gospel. And when circumstances come against him, he didn’t let them move him.

Carlie: He wasn’t going to be taken off course.

Ashley: He wasn’t going to be taken off course, so don’t let circumstances take you off course. And sometimes things happen, yes, circumstances… We can let circumstances speak to us, but they’re not a reliable voice because they could be the enemy trying to stop us, they could be the devil trying to stop us and get us off track and distract us. Or it could be the Lord encouraging us. God only uses good circumstances. He never gives us bad circumstances.

Carlie: So how can we tell?

Ashley: What’s what?

Carlie: How can we tell in the middle of these circumstances, which ones are from God and which ones are from the enemy?

Ashley: Well, one of the easy ways to tell is God never puts bad things, he never does bad things. He’s a good God, He’s good by nature, God’s very nature, He’s good so he doesn’t do bad things. So if it’s a bad circumstances from the enemy, that doesn’t mean that you should let that distract you. Like Paul said, I don’t let these things move me. So if God tells you, go to the other side, as a word from God, and you go to the other side and halfway there, there’s a storm and you feel like you’re going to die and you’re not going to make it, you don’t let that storm move you. Say, No, I’m going to the other side.

See what the enemy will do, He will bring us challenges to try and stop us. What the enemy does, He comes along and says, You can’t do what God’s told you to do. And it could be a simple promise from God. God’s told you, you’re healed. You know, God’s promises. A yes and amen. And Jesus paid for your healing so it could be healing. You are healed in Jesus’ name. And if you have symptoms in your body, you feel pain and the doctor says that you’ve got this disease. That’s the devil coming against you saying, You’re not the hero of the Lord. You’re going to die, this is going to work out. In John 10:10, it says, The enemy comes only to kill, steal and destroy. Whereas God, he comes to give us life and life more abundantly. So Jesus came to give us abundant life and the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So if the circumstances-

Carlie: That’s a good way to measure something, isn’t it?

Ashley: Exactly, if the circumstance comes to kill, steal and destroy, you know it’s from the enemy. And what the enemy will do is, if you can’t do this, this isn’t going to work out, and that’s when you have to use your authority. That’s when you have to stick with the word of God and say, No, God told me I can do it, God told me I am going to the other side. I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but God’s told me I can. And you don’t let these circumstances move you. You have to push through them circumstances.

And most of the time when you’re doing anything for God, there’s going to be challenges. Things are going to come against.

Carlie: There’s going to be some opposition there.

Ashley: If you haven’t had an opposition for a while, it’s because you’re not believing God hard enough. I mean, it’s like what they say, If you’re not bumped into the Devil now and again, it’s probably because you’re both headed in the same direction. You know, if you’re swimming upstream, you’re going to find some opposition on the way. There’s okay to have opposition, it usually shows you’re on the right track, but don’t let that opposition move you.

Carlie: And I think in hindsight, it’s a wonderful thing, right? So if we interviewed the disciples now and like, Let’s talk about that experience of when you were crossing the lake there and what did it feel like when [crosstalk] you’re in the middle of the storm.

Ashley: Never doubted. Never doubted. No comment.

Carlie: Never doubted, I was about to get out and walk on the water. Because you can look back at things and in hindsight, through a different perspective, it’s fine when you look back, cause you’ve come to the end of the story. But when you’re in the middle of the storm, sometimes well, I think it’s just much easier to find yourself in that place of being double-minded. And I think it’s really important, oftentimes I’ll meet people that just feel stuck, they feel completely stuck where they are. Maybe they’re not getting any traction, maybe they feel like they’re doing what God’s told them to do, but nothing seems to be working out. They’re not getting anywhere, there’s no doors of opportunity opening to them, they just can’t seem to get a breakthrough, there’s a lack. You know, things just aren’t working out.

One thing I’ve realized just through our own mistakes and shipwrecks in life, is to go back to the last thing that God told you to do. What was the last thing? What was the last direction? You see, in that example, if the disciples had brought to mind, while the boat is filling with water, the last instruction that Jesus gave them, that was to go to the other side. That would have way relay their fear of the intensity of the storm because they would have known, Hang on, we’ve already got a word from God, and in every word from God, every bit of power that we’re ever going to need to fulfill it.

That’s how powerful a word of God. That is why we want to hear from God. We want to hear the word of God spoken to us clearly because that is the word of God, that’s like our anchor in the storm, right? That is the thing that we’re going to come back to. When there were giants in the land and the children of Israel went in and they saw the giants. You know, Joshua and Caleb, when they saw the same giants as the spies, they had a different perspective and they felt like they were well able to overcome those giants because they remembered this is our land. Hang on a second. This is the land that God gave us-

Ashley: They had a word from God.

Carlie: They had a word from God.

Ashley: Promise from God, this is your land, this is your promise land. So even though there was opposition, the circumstances were against them, there was giants. They were like, No, this is our land so these giants are going to have to run away or we’re going to defeat them or something’s going to happen, but this is our land.

Carlie: That gives you confidence and faith and boldness, right? And rather than being afraid of the storm, the disciples could have gotten up and done exactly what Jesus did. They could have stood up. That’s why he said, Where’s your faith, right? Why are you so fearful? I’ve already told you to go to the other side, do you really think you’re going to sink with me in the boat, with me on board? I mean, we’re going in and we’re seeing some giants, do you really think that these giants are any match for us? No, we are well able to overcome them. That word gives us boldness and confidence to speak to the storm, to run up the giants cut their heads off. That’s powerful.

Ashley: It’s good. So we can’t let circumstances move us one way or the other. And sometimes circumstances happen just because of our stupidity.

Carlie: Right?

Ashley: There’s another way of putting it, I mean, sometimes we look into things, like I said, we go off into a ditch because we’re looking at the circumstances and thinking God’s trying to speak to us through the circumstances. What does it mean? What does it mean? Sometimes it just… I remember one time, I was a youth pastor, didn’t earn much money and I just had to run into the bank real quick. So I pulled up onto the no parking zone, you know, in England, it’s double yellow lines, the no parking zone. It’s going to be like two minutes, it’ll be fine. I pulled out, I looked up and down the street, no traffic wardens, you know, no traffic cops anywhere. So I ran into the bank, run out again. I must’ve been one minute-

Carlie: Oh, so it would’ve been okay to park there had there not been any traffic cops.

Ashley: Well, Sydney is not imputed where the law is… Where the laws are not enforced.

Carlie: So you justified your wrong actions then, because there was no one watching.

Ashley: Okay, that’s actually pretty bad, isn’t it.

Carlie: Yeah.

Ashley: We’ll edit this out the show. Don’t do this at home. Anyway, I decided, you know what, I’m going to park it, I ran in quick, come out, parking ticket, like $50, which is a big deal, I was a youth pastor, that was a lot of money.

Carlie: That was like all money in the world.

Ashley: Two days later, I kid you not, two days later, I had to run into the store, get something real quick, no parking zone. It’ll be all right, it’ll be real quick. And in my mind, I’m thinking I got a parking ticket like two days ago, there’s no way I’m going to get another one now. There must be a mercy law-[crosstalk 00:16:38]… there must be a mercy law.

In fact, my friend used to leave a parking ticket, in England, they stick the parking tickets on your windshield, don’t think they do that here in America. But he used to leave the parking ticket stuck in his windshield so that if he was parking illegally, the traffic cop, the traffic warden would think, oh-

Carlie: That he’s already got a ticket-

Ashley: to leave it.

Carlie: You’re a repeat offender aren’t you.

Ashley: This wasn’t me, this is genuinely my friend. He also had a lifeguard on duty sign he used to put up. So he used to put up a lifeguard on duty and parking-

Carlie: It’s like doctor on call.

Ashley: But he’d come on stop one day because he had a lifeguard on duty and a handicapped, you know, disabled.

Carlie: The handicapped lifeguard.

Ashley: So the traffic cop waited for him when he came back, he says, Which one are you? Are you a lifeguard or are you disabled?

Carlie: It depends on the day of the week I guess.

Ashley: Anyway, I say all this to say, I came back out the store, it was like 30 seconds. And I’m telling you, I looked up and down, there was no traffic cops, 30 seconds come back, there’s another ticket. I had two tickets, hundred dollars. It was a bad day for me.

Carlie: You were stupid twice.

Ashley: And I prayed. I got into my vehicle and I said, Lord, what does this mean? Does this mean I’m not meant to be a youth pastor? Does this mean you’re moving me on? Does this mean… What does this mean? I mean, I was really searching answers.

Carlie: You were really travailing…

Ashley: I was travailing because surely the Lord is speaking to me through these circumstances. Cause that’s how I used to think back then. I said, Lord, What does this mean? I’m telling you, the Lord spoke to me clearly, I mean a clear word from God. He said, The reason why you have two parking tickets in two days, I was like, Yes, I’m listening, what is it?, expecting some revelation. He says, Cause you were illegally parked twice in two days. I was like, I know, that was it. He said your own stupidity, you parked wrong twice, you get two tickets. Simple as that, there was no more to it. So a lot of the times I say-

Carlie: Don’t overlook it.

Ashley: Don’t overthink things, don’t try and make more out of something than it is. Circumstances can’t be relied on, they can’t be trusted. Most of the time, if bad circumstances are coming towards you, it’s because you’re doing the right thing, you’re actually pushing into the things of God. And the enemy is trying to stop you. And don’t be moved like Paul said, in Acts 20, Don’t let these circumstances move you, don’t let them speak to you, don’t give them voice. Use your authority, come against them and declare the word of God, declare the last thing that God told you to do like Carlie said, you’re going to the other side.

And I know there’s people watching today, you’re in a storm, you feel like the circumstance all around you. It could be relationships, it could be financial, it could be in your health, could be in your career. Whatever it is, you have a storm going on around you. And it’s like, you can’t hear God’s voice clearly. Just go back and remember what God spoke to you last. What did God promise you lost. Where to go tell you he was going last? Cling on, hang on to that word, like an anchor. And the storm will pass. You know, storms came to pass and it’s going to pass. This storm is going to pass and you’re going to come at the other side. You’re going to be victorious. As long as you don’t quit, you’re going to be victorious. So every storm you experience in today, hang on. And remember what God spoke to you last time and go and just hang on because you’re going into the other side, amen. You’re going to go to the other side.

Carlie: You know, sometimes when we look back to the last thing that God told us when we’re in the middle of that crisis moment. We realize, I haven’t actually done the last thing he told me to do.

Ashley: That’s a good point.

Carlie: And you know, you read this scripture, I think this time or maybe last episode. But John 10:27 said, My sheep hear my voice. I know them. And they follow me. You see, it’s not just about hearing God. There’s a place for obedience in there too. And so we need to ruin relationship with the Lord and he knows us. And there’s an intimacy there and we hear his voice, but we need to be to follow him. You know, it’s like a parent giving a child a direction, right? You know, we raising teenagers so pray for us, right? But-

Ashley: It’s easier to raise the dad than to raise teenagers.

Carlie: But teaching a teenager to drive does wonders for your prayer life. It really does. It’s like rapture now, seriously.

Ashley: I had to sit in the back. We was coming back from a road trip somewhere and our middle son had his permit and he starting to drive and I just stopped the car to sit in the back and Carlie to sit up front with him because I couldn’t handle it. But yeah, I was praying in tongues. I’ll tell you, you can get serious about your prayer life if you have a 16 year old driving your car.

Carlie: But you know, it’s in those times of instructing, especially instructing somebody to drive. They’re in control of a potential weapon right there. And it’s really important that they listen carefully to that instruction and aren’t just hearing it, but are actually doing something with the information, actually responding to the information, the instruction that you’re giving them. Otherwise, that could potentially cause an accident and have horrible circumstances. We’re driving along with our kids in the car and we’re telling them, you need to stop at the stop sign. Now, if they carry on driving through that stop sign, somebody could be coming the other way. There could be a collision. Now, if there’s a collision, ultimately it’s going to be like, Well, why didn’t you stop? Did you hear me tell you to stop? Yeah, but you didn’t stop?

Ashley: Actually took me a while to realize that stop signs-

Carlie: Because Ashley thinks stop signs really are just roll throughs. [crosstalk] So as long as you slow down and go really slowly-

Ashley: I want to correct this before people write us and get mad at us, okay? We’re from England. We moved here 10 years ago.

Carlie: It’s not an excuse for bad driving.

Ashley: We don’t have stop signs in England, we have things called give ways. They’re like your yield signs, they’re give ways, no stop signs. Instead of four-way stops, we have roundabouts and people just merge in there. So when I came to a four-way stop, it was in a quiet neighborhood, I could see for miles around, there was no other cars. I was going downhill, big, heavy, suburban, I looked around, there was nothing coming, so I slow down very much so. And as I slowed down, I then looked, it was very safe and I rolled through because I honestly thought that a stop sign was like a roll through.

Carlie: And a man actually took a walking stick at Ashley and said, You hooligan.

Ashley: This old man took his time to lift up his walking stick and wave it at me and say-

Carlie: Praise the Lord, he’s healed.

Ashley: So I stopped and my window and said, Yes, sir, he said, It’s a stop sign, not a roll through you idiot. This is my second day in America, he said, You idiot, he said, You’ve got to stop. So I said to him and I was genuine, I said, You’ve actually got to stop at the stop sign. He said, Yeah, you’ve got to stop at a stop sign. So anyway, now I know, now I do stop at stop signs because that’s the law. But what you’re saying is if you don’t listen to instruction and you know, often God will tell us to do something and we don’t do it. And we’re waiting for steps two, three, and four, and we haven’t done step one.

Carlie: But we’re out there running ahead, wondering why God’s not following-

Ashley: Up ourselves. Doing an Isaac and doing an Abraham and creating an Ishmael instead of an Isaac. You know, God tells us to do things, we’re meant to follow his instructions. And then once we follow the step one, he’s going to give a step two. He’s not going to give a step two, three, and four until we’ve done step one, for various reasons. One of the reasons is if he told us the future too much ahead, we’d mess it up, we’d make it happen ourselves. But he gives us a step at a time. He’s a gracious God, he’ll tell us to do one step at a time. And as we do that and follow that, he’ll give us the next part of instructions, praise God. And he only leads us into victory. Only leaves into triumph. He only has good things for us.

You know, and Jeremiah talks about, I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and to give you an expected end. God has good things for us and he’s trying to lead us into his goodness. He’s trying to speak to us. In fact, like Carly said, he’s always speaking to us. The question is, can we hear him or not? And we’ve already looked at God speaking to us through his word. We’ve already looked at God speaking to us through an audible voice. We’ve looked at God speaking to us through people. We’re looking now at God’s speaking us through circumstances. We can’t trust circumstances. We shouldn’t let them move us like Paul said. And another example I’ve got here is an example of Gideon. I hear a lot of Christians say, well, I’m just going to lay a fleece out for the Lord.

And God is so gracious, sometimes he meets us there.

Carlie: I’ve done a Gideon.

Ashley: You’ve done fleeces in your life? And sometimes God meets us there because he’s so gracious. But I’m telling you, that’s not a reliable way of hearing from God because they won’t allow-

Carlie: Not as a New Testament believer.

Ashley: As a New Testament, we have the spirit of God indwelling us. We have the complete word of God from index to maps. From Genesis to Revelation, we had the complete word of God. We don’t need to lay fleeces out. Gideon, didn’t have those tools. Gideon didn’t have the holy spirit living on the inside of him. He didn’t have Christ in him, the hope and glory. He didn’t have the complete word of God. So he had to lay a fleece out and God worked with Gideon.

Carlie: And in the Old Testament, God related to people in very physical ways, the pillar of fire, the pillar of cloud and the burning bush. He spoke to people in different way because they didn’t have the holy spirit. He couldn’t speak to them in a still small voice or through the completed scriptures.

Ashley: So I wouldn’t recommend laying a fleece here. And what I mean by that, is things like Lord, if it be your will, send two black cats across my path. Or if it be my will, have so and so phone me.

Carlie: That’s putting in a whole lot of weight in circumstances.

Ashley: It really is, it’s letting circumstances speak to you. Now again, God is so gracious, I’m sure people could give his testimonies about how God’s spoken to him like that, but that’s not God’s best for you. And it’s not God’s design it’s because God’s so gracious, he works with us. We want to help you hear God’s voice clearly and reliably and not miss it so much. We’ve done all these mistakes, we were talking about. We’ve done them all multiple times, but we’re here to tell you, God’s speaking to us, we can hear him clearly. And he’s given us the tools to hear him through his word, praise God. And we’re going to to look at some other ways of how God speaks to us and about how we can hear Him more clearly. Amen. We’re out of time. This time.

Carlie: Good stuff.

Ashley: Do you want to pray for people before we go. Thank you, Jesus.

Carlie: Lord, I just thank you that it is your desire to be in a relationship with us, that is intimate, that is life-giving. Lord, I thank you that you are interested in our daily life, in the big things and in the little things. I just hear the Lord saying that some of you have kept the Lord at arms length, that you have taken areas of your life captive, and you say, It’s okay, God, I got this. Well, he wants to have that. He can do a far better job of it that you can do by yourself. He’s jealous for you. He’s jealous for your time. He’s jealous for your attention. His love for you is surpassing what you could even hope or even imagine. So great is His love for you. So Father, we just thank you for your love for us. We receive it today. And Lord, we thank you that you are speaking to us all the time and you were giving us ears to hear what you are saying to us. Amen.

Ashley: Amen, that’s some-

Carlie: Thank you, Jesus.

Ashley: Praise God. Well, thanks for being with us. We’ll be back real soon to give you some more tips on how to hear the voice of God. But until next time, remember, don’t just settle for living a normal life when you could be living the abundant life. We’ll see you real soon.

Annoucer: To order your copy of this teaching. Visit our website, TerradezMinistries.com. Or call us at (719) 600-3344.

Ashley: Hey, today, we’ve been talking about how we can hear the voice of God more clearly. You know, God is speaking to you and we need to learn how to hear his voice clearly. So we want to really help you with this. This is just one part a series we’ve got. And in these TV programs, we can’t go into that much depth. So we’d really encourage you. We have products available, they’re on your screen, the details of that. Go ahead and get some of these resources, they’re going to help you to have a deeper relationship with God. God’s speaking to you. And he wants you to hear his voice today.

Annoucer: To order your copy of this teaching, visit our website, TerradezMinistries.com. Or call us at (719) 600-3344.

Speaker 4: Their hearts is for people, to set people free with this abundant life.

Speaker 5: Had chronic pain in my shoulder, I can’t sleep at night. I’m healed. I can hear better. Praise God.

Ashley: Praise God.

Speaker 6: Oh, Ashley and Carlie, I think they’re amazing. I think that they have a great chemistry. I think they’re inspired. I think God’s really working in their life.

Annoucer: Through the many outreaches of Terradez Ministries, people are being saved, healed, baptized in the holy spirit and are receiving financial miracles.

Speaker 7: Oh, it’s wonderful, we’re supporters, we started supporting them last year. And since we’ve done that, we have been so blessed. Our houses paid off, our cars are paid off, we are debt-free.

Annoucer: Terradez Ministries is dedicated to empowering believers in the promises of God. Join Ashley and Carlie in spreading the good news of abundance and freedom. Become a partner today.