Ep 21 | Unveiling God's Voice: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Discerning Revelations

Someone said please do a podcast on this . Okay , perfect , yeah , so we're really excited about . So keep it going . And so this question it's to provide clarity and hopefully even more kind of pointed questions of you know , because I mean , we're starting a dialogue is basically what we're doing here , so we really love you guys . Thank you so much for listening .

By the way , and just because I'm going to start saying it more , each of these podcasts comes out on Sunday at noon , right after service .

But you know , if people need an easier on ramp to a church , maybe this is a tool that you can use for a little while .

You know , you're going to school , you're going to practice and you're going home , and you go to Sunday school and you're going . You know my life doesn't mirror , you know , the life of Elijah . My life isn't like Moses or Esther , any of these people from the Bible .

But the Lord is speaking to his people and it's so encouraging to know that the God of the Bible we call him Yahweh in the Old Testament is not a God that is trying to help us think that all he wants to do is be mysterious to us .

He is a all powerful , all knowing God that wants to make us understand him in clarity and , while we'll spend our whole lives trying to comprehend his goodness , he is a God of truth . And it's a great question to ask and it's one that a lot of people will wrestle with in their life .

A lot of people , when they define hearing from God , they will use the word revelation . They will say I received a revelation from God . And if you go to the book of Revelation and look up what John meant when he wrote in verse 1 about revelation , it's the Greek word apocalypsis and that's where we get the word apocalypse .

But the word itself means an uncovering , a disclosing , and another word is a revealing of divine mysteries . So when I say someone has a revelation , that means that something has been revealed to them . And on this podcast today we're gonna talk about two types of revelation . So one is general revelation and two is special revelation .

Maverick , we talked a little bit earlier about general revelation . Would you like to speak a little bit on that ?

When I'm speaking to you right now , I'm using words for you to understand what I'm saying . God does the same exact thing , but just in the Bible , john calls like in the beginning was the word , and the word was with God and the word was God . I think back to Psalms 119 , 105 , your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path .

Well , what does that mean ? It means , when we are studying God's word , that God's word can be revealed to us and we can understand , because we believe that this is living , this is breathing . We can understand like new connections , or we can understand God more of how he's our Father .

And it might not show us the full picture of God or it might not show us exactly where we need to go , but it's a lamp to our feet , it's a light to our path . It's not a lighthouse like we can see for miles .

It's a lamp that we can see feet in front of us , and it can help us take the next step into understanding what God is calling us to do . I'll use a general revelation that happened in my life that I'm gonna talk about in a future podcast . It's God's revelation to me that I was called to vocational ministry .

God used John , chapter 21 , to call me to vocational ministry . It wasn't Maverick , you need to be a youth minister .

Well , we understand that in the Bible .

The Bible is the bestselling book in history for a reason , but it's never lost its value . It is just as pertinent to today as it ever has been , and I preached a few weeks ago that the word of God will be forever , and we have to realize that God predominantly speaks to people in the New Testament era through his word , the scriptures .

2 Timothy 3 says that all scripture is God breathed . Another term is all scripture is inspired by God . So every bit of scripture that you read and we believe this by faith it's been questioned , but , but anyone who's questioned it has ultimately failed in their questioning .

But from the beginning to the end , our words that have been given to us by God , I mean he literally wrote a book for us through the , through the hands of many people , and the Bible is an amazing book that you can study forever and it just it'll blow your mind over and over again . My calling to ministry is very similar .

I was a junior in high school and I was reading through the Psalms and it was like the Lord just used some specific verses to hit me in the face and the funniest thing was the verses had to do with worship leading about music and I remember stepping away from that going . I'm supposed to be a worship leader . Well , I am a worship leader .

I'm a pastor , yeah , I'm just not singing . And I think that's the point is . Is we , a lot of us , we walk past the word of God because we think we're supposed to have this big , audible voice when he wrote it for us .

And one of the reasons that we , as New Testament people are so lucky is these people in the Old Testament that did hear audibly from God . When they heard from this God , he was unknown to them .

We have a revelation that is available to us on a daily basis in the Word of God .

Like we think that , like , how easy would that be if God just spoke to us and boom , it was done , like he gave to us in the , in the cartoony voice , james Earl Jones just spoke to me , you know , and . But here's the great thing is , I think , about the prodigal son of going back to the father .

Like God constantly wants us to go back to him and we do that through his word . Like if we want to know if God's speaking to us , well then dive into his word , go go find him , go go seek him , go go get him , and I think back , like not even just call it a ministry .

Helps with my marriage , help , help , you know , help in just grieving , help in life , help in struggles . I read these Bible stories and they speak to me . I always say Jonah was the second book in the Bible I read because of its length .

It's not very lengthy and every time I read it , from the first time I've read it to the most recent time , god reveals something to me new in that story every , every single time . It was actually one of the first messages I preached here at Georgetown was from the book of Jonah .

But what we're really just trying to say is don't look past the word of God , because if you take the experiences that you're walking through and you begin to read God's word , it can clarify your experiences , yes , it can give you direction about big decisions to make , and we talk about this in our discipleship class pretty regularly , and so if you're wanting to

know more about how do I know the Lord can speak to me , get involved in strand discipleship . On week three we talk about prayer and it's very specific towards what we're saying .

So general revelation is when you read the word of God and you get a message from the word , and I always feel like I know we've over talked about this , but I always feel like it's like I'm reading a page and God gets his own highlighter and will highlight one verse that jumps off the page at me and it's like he's saying Jake , this is what I've got for

you , and it amazes me to know that before I was born he put that word there , but he knew at this specific time in my life , this is the verse I needed to hear . So read the word of God , seek it out . There's a second form of revelation that I think a lot of people are asking about . More is special revelation .

Yes , special revelation is where God may audibly speak to you . I mean where you literally hear his voice . You use Jeremy's Earl Jones I'd like to think it's more like Morgan Freeman oh no , that'd be great .

Probably neither , but anyway where maybe you'll audibly hear his voice , or you have a dream and the Lord speaks to you in a dream , or something happens very specific where you are just very clearly see that God is speaking to you . There are places in scripture where this happens pretty regularly .

One that comes to my mind is in the book of 1 Samuel , where Samuel is born to Hannah and Samuel is living in the house of Eli , who is a priest , and Samuel is going to be very important because he's going to be the priest around the time where David is going to become king and he's going to have just a huge place in Israel history and we read in 1

Samuel , chapter three , verse , verse two , excuse me , I'm sorry , verse four . It says Samuel's in bed and it says then the Lord called Samuel and he , being Samuel , answered . Here I am Just a paraphrase . Samuel thought that it was Eli , the priest calling out his name . So Samuel gets up and he runs to Eli and he says what do you want ?

And Eli says I didn't call you . It happens again . He goes back to bed and he says you know he hears a voice calling to him and Eli says listen , this is the Lord speaking to you . So it says he went back to bed a third time and it says once again for the third time the Lord called Samuel .

He got up , went to Eli and said here I am , you called me . Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the boy . He told Samuel go and lie down . If he calls you say speak , lord , for your servant is listening . So Samuel went and lay in his place . Then the Lord stood there and called , as before , samuel , samuel .

Samuel responded speak , for your servant is listening .

Now I could keep reading , but I would like to tell you the message that God has for Samuel is what I'm about to tell you . Anybody that hears it is going to shudder in fear . God had a specific word for Samuel of judgment that was coming towards Israel , so this special revelation had a purpose behind it .

God was wanting to tell Israel something very specific , so Samuel needed a specific message to hear that .

So this special revelation , you do see it throughout scripture and most oftentimes I always think , when I think of special revelation and maybe this isn't common I think of Jeremiah . I think about a prophet who was like one of the only people that loved God .

You know , like he needed this special message to preach to the Israelite people and it wasn't pretty , you know , and so like . That's what I think of , like this special thing where God needed to speak to him so he could speak to other people . Also , think of Jonah Again , what was Jonah supposed to do ?

He's supposed to preach to Nineveh , a place where God was going to destroy whether , if not , they were going to repent . So if you've never had a special relation , I don't want you to think like man , god must not love me as much as someone so like no , no , no , no , no , that's not it at all .

It's just God wants a relationship with all of us and he wants to speak to all of us but , like we've said , probably too much . Most times it's going to be a general revelation where we need to almost like , go to him .

Like when you go to your dad for advice , you know what I mean like I'm struggling , like I suck at cars , I don't know anything about cars , and so , like I asked my dad , like I remember one time I wheel locked up , and I called him immediately . I'm like dad , what should I do ? And he goes oh , it's locked up immediately and he just knew .

It's like that when I'm struggling with whatever , or even if I'm not struggling , even if I'm happy and I study God's word , he just speaks to me . And that's usually in my life how God has spoke to me .

Peter had a vision . You read about a vision , but all of those visions had a specific message and it had to do with the betterment of God's people . In the Old Testament and in the New Testament it had to do with the betterment of God's church .

You know , when Saul was walking on the road to Damascus , jesus encountered him on the road and Saul went blind . Yeah , so when somebody says , oh , I just wish God would speak to me audibly , I don't know if we know what we're saying , yeah , you know . Or I wish I could see an angel .

I don't know if we know exactly what we're saying , but what it is revealing is that we have a desire to hear from the Lord . We have a desire to know what it is the Lord is saying . And I'm not going to say specifically what it is because it's really personal , but there has been one time in my life when I could clearly not audibly .

But the Lord gave me a very specific message and I'm happy to talk about it kind of under coffee I'm just not talking about it over a podcast . But here's a good criteria to know if the Lord , if you feel like the Lord is telling you something is , does it agree with the word of God ?

You know , if the Lord told me , you know , I have five children and a wife , and I said , you know , the Lord Maverick told me I need to quit taking care of my kids . The Bible has plenty of verses that say no fathers are to be responsible . So very clearly I know that that's not true . But let's say the Lord gives you a message .

You know , if I'm at a store and I see a person across from me and the Lord reveals to me that person needs to hear about Jesus , you can without a doubt know that you're you're walking in line with God , because God wants everybody to know about . Exactly but be careful though , especially if somebody comes to you and says the Lord told me , dot dot dot .

Yeah never just assume that what this person has to say is True , but also don't assume that it's not true .

Yeah , don't become a person that just can't hear anything , because the reality is , if a person says the Lord told me this about you , you can go home and get the Bible out and you can study it and see if it agrees with the word of God and and begin to assess whether or not this is truly a message of the Lord .

But I like what you said earlier People don't need to think well , because you know , god didn't speak to me when I was out on the lake by myself fishing and I asked him To speak to me audibly that that means you're not a spiritual person . Yeah , the word of God is such an incredible blessing and it's everything we need to hear from the Lord .

But I will say , when you are walking hand in hand with the Lord and you're studying his word , it'll amaze you what the Lord will reveal to you just by understanding and knowing his word . And and John , chapter 4 is an .

It's one of my favorite chapters in scripture , where Jesus is talking to the woman at the well , and you know this woman is a Samaritan , so she really doesn't know a lot about the Israelites and who they worship . She has a little bit of an idea , but she says , oh my goodness . And John , chapter 4 , you know , she realizes that Jesus is a prophet .

She says I see that you are a prophet . Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain , but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem . And he says believe me , woman , an hour is coming when we will worship the Lord , neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem . Use Samaritans , worship what you do not know .

We worship what we do know , because salvation is from the Jews . An hour is coming and is now here , when the true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth . It is so awesome to know that , yes , like we worship a guy we can't comprehend or put in a box , but he has revealed to us who he is . Yes , absolutely . I got on a tangent there .

It's one of those deals and especially we look back in scripture . But , yeah , no , I think this is a good , just a good stopping point

. If you have any more questions , do you want any more clarifications ? If you want you know that's what this is for to start a dialogue , please come find us and if this helped you , man , we're so glad . This is , this is what this is why we do what we do . This is an extra thing that we do , but we think it's beneficial .

So , thank you so much for asking that question and hopefully we helped as much as we could and as long as you have questions that we know how to answer .

So , thank you guys , love you guys , take care .