Sermon Tone Analysis

Listening to God

There was a Christian lady who lived next door to an atheist.

Everyday, when the lady prayed, the atheist guy could hear her.

He thought to himself, "She sure is crazy, praying all the time like that.

Doesn't she know there isn't a God?"

Many times while she was praying, he would go to her house and harass her, saying "Lady, why do you pray all the time?

Don't you know there is no God?"

But she kept on praying.

One day, she ran out of groceries.

As usual, she was praying to the Lord explaining her situation and thanking Him for what He was gonna do.

AS USUAL, the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself.

"Hmph . .

.I'll fix her."

He went to the grocery store, bought a whole bunch of groceries, took them to her house, dropped them off on the front porch, rang the door bell and then hid in the bushes to see what she would do.

When she opened the door and saw the groceries, she began to praise the Lord with all her heart, jumping, singing and shoutin' everywhere!

The atheist then jumped out of the bushes and told her, "You ol'crazy lady, God didn't buy you those groceries, I bought those groceries!"

Well, she broke out and started running down the street, shouting and praising the Lord.

When he finally caught her, he asked what her problem was . .

.

She said, "I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn't know he was gonna make the devil pay for them!"

We are talking about the power of prayer.

Last week we began by defining prayer at it’s most basic level, communicating with God.

So simple yet so amazing to think that we have access to boldly come before the creator of the Universe and call Him Father.

When we talk to God we don’t have to have it all planned out or say specific things to get His attention, He is already watching and listening because He cares for us.

We can just talk to Him.

Talk to Him WITH GUT-LEVEL HONESTY.

Talk to Him ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS TO YOU.

Talk to Him CONTINUALLY.

We PUSH.

(P.U.S.H.: Pray Until Something Happens.)

Pray until God changes your circumstances, or until God changes YOU.

The last thing we discussed was that when we talk to God we should LISTEN FOR HIS RESPONSE.

Today we are going to talk about listing to God.

Elijah was having a rough time and he talked to God about it.

God spoke to him while he was on a mountain and told him that He was about to pass by Elijah.

Then there was a mighty windstorm that tore rocks loose, but God wasn’t in the wind.

Then there was an earthquake.

That must be God!

Nope.

God wasn’t in the earthquake.

Then there was a blazing fire, but God wasn’t in the fire either.

After the fire there was a gentle whisper.

When God whispers to you today, do you hear Him?

If you are taking notes today, the key thought is this…

There is nothing more important in your life than hearing the voice of God and responding.

This was so important to the ancient Israelites that they would pray for this specific thing twice per day.

It was one of their most prominent prayers and it is known as the “Shema”, which is the Hebrew word for “Listen”.

It is the equivalent of The Lord’s Prayer in Christian tradition.

It is part of Moses’ speech to the Israelites as they were about to enter the promised land...

You may remember Jesus’ response when He was asked what the greatest commandment was...

We know that it is important to “Love God”, but why is “shema” a part of that?

When Moses said “Listen, O Israel”, he wasn’t just telling them to let the sound of his voice enter their ears.

“Listen” here means to allow the words to sink in, provide understanding, and generate a response.

In Hebrew “hearing” and “doing” are basically the same thing.

So God wants us to hear Him and He wants us to respond to His voice with action.

With love.

Love God and Love others.

There is nothing more important in your life than hearing the voice of God and responding.

And an important part of being able to hear God’s voice is through prayer...

God wants us to hear his voice through prayer.

I remember asking my cousin a long time ago, “How do you know when God is speaking to you?”

He said, “I don’t know man, you just know.”

And as true as that may be, when you aren’t super confident about what you “know” it can start to bother you.

That doubt can start to eat at you.

“I don’t ever hear God’s voice.

He must not be speaking to me.

I pray all the time and when I pause to listen all I hear are my thoughts rolling around inside my head.”

This may even bring up a whole new question and feeling of doubt in your mind.

You may be thinking, “When I listen to God, how do I know it’s God’s voice and not mine?

How do I know it’s not Satan’s voice?”

That’s a great question.

I’m sure at some point most if not all of us have asked a question similar to these.

If these are doubts you have, you should stop and ask yourself 2 questions.

First, you should ask yourself how much of your conversation with God is you listening to God and how much is you talking to God. Second you should do a self evaluation of your listening skills.

Not just how well you let sound waves enter your brain, but how well you “hear and do”.

Moses went on to tell the Israelites to commit to God’s commands, repeat them over and over to their kids, talk about them at home and at work, when they get up and when they go to bed, tie reminders to their hands and their heads, write them at all of the entrances to their houses.

That tells me that if we want to hear God’s voice we should be learning what is important to Him.

Learn the things He likes so we can be in step with His expectations and desires instead of our own.

Being familiar with the things that are important to God will help us understand and discern what voice we are listening to.

When we feel like God is leading us in one direction we can confidently confirm it when we know the things He loves and approves of.

This was part of what Paul prayed for the Philippians...

We come across decisions and opportunities every day and we need God’s guidance to make wise choices and be able to choose His best for us.

We want to hear God’s voice so that we avoid having natural reactions to situations that cause us to end up in worse situations.

For example, someone who knows how to drive a car and get’s familiar with defensive driving is more likely to know what to do when the roads get wet, or when you follow other cars to closely when traffic suddenly stops, or what happens when you suddenly jerk the steering wheel.

A person who is less familiar with their car and driving laws is more likely to end up on one of the dash-cam videos we’ve been watching lately.

If you were to look at this picture quickly and I asked which line was the longest, your gut reaction may be to say the wrong line.

It isn’t the one you initially think it should be.

In fact, it isn’t any of them.

They are all the same length.

You can never just “go with your gut”.

Making snap decisions without listening to God is likely to land us in more trouble.

Don’t go with your gut just because something sounds right.

Test it to see if it comes from God.

So, how do we know that something comes from God? How do we test these things?

For the rest of our time this morning I want to discuss how we RECOGNIZE God’s voice.

Confusion and doubt can often make it difficult to know if we “hear” God, but recognizing God’s voice is not as complicated as we often make it...

There is a story of a temporary Sunday School teacher at a large church who was struggling to open a combination lock on the supply cabinet.

She had been told the combination, but couldn't quite remember it.

Finally she went to the pastor's study and asked for help.

The pastor came into the room and began to turn the dial.

After the first two numbers he paused and stared blankly for a moment.