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God Wants to Communicate: Part 1 (LIVE)

Episode 185

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Hosted by
Carl Joseph

Carl is a biblical scholar, minister, husband, father and life coach. In his mid-twenties he had a powerful encounter with God and saw miraculous healings as a result. He passionately shares these stories and empowers others to fulfill their God-given potential.

If you mentioned to a friend in passing that you ‘talk to God’ they might think you are off your rocker, however, listening to the Holy Spirit should be a daily habit in every Christians life. As we cultivate the practice of daily Bible reading (logos), our capacity to hear God’s still small voice (rhema) will be increased. Jesus promised that His sheep, hear His voice (Jn 10:27), albeit many believers struggle to hear the voice of God for themselves. If God spoke to Old Testament saints, then why not us? Join Carl now as we embark upon a two-part series, live in session, on hearing the voice of God…

Here is a complete transcript of the podcast…(below)

Friend, this is Pastor Carl and I’m gonna play for you a broadcast in the 10-to-12-minute range that was our very first session in our new location, in Denver, and we enjoyed it immensely. Now, right before you hear me coming on live, I was talking about measuring what you hear in the spirit compared to God’s word, which is very important. I’m just gonna add that, unfortunately, my mic lapel was slightly at an angle, and that caused some rubbing of the microphone. Just to prove to you that it’s a live session, I’ve tried to exclude it from this recording, but I can’t. I’ve tried to take it out in post-editing, but I can’t. Next week, friend, I promise you it’ll be a clean recording, and this won’t happen again. But please listen to my words and not the distractions. Let’s listen now. Okay, God wants to communicate. There’s an exercising in the spirit realm that we need to do to tap into the spirit. If you’re not open to the gifts of the spirit, chances are you’re never gonna move in them. We have to be open to them. Communication is a dialogue. It goes both ways. There’s a speaking side and a listening side.

If we don’t take time to listen, we may not actually tap into what God wants. There is a way that he communicates. It’s through the word of God primarily, and he can speak through visions, dreams, and still small voices. But we have to test everything, of course. We don’t just accept any voice that comes to us. The apostle Paul said there are many voices in this world and some not without signification. In other words, there are deceiving voices out there. God will speak to us in our own language and in the way that he normally speaks to us. He speaks to Dave in Indiana. He speaks to Diana in her language as well. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, God speaks the way you understand and the way you can be motivated. Okay, so prove it. Prove to me that God wants to speak. Psalm 139, verse 17 through 18. How precious also are your thoughts unto me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, then what? Those thoughts, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee.

God wants to communicate with us his desires, his plans and purposes for the future. He is relational. God is love. Says God is holy many times more than God is love, by the way, but he’s certainly love. He’s the living word and when we seek his voice, he has plenty to say, plenty to say. Psalm 95:7-8, “For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart as in the provocation and in the day of temptation in the wilderness.” If our hearts become hardened through unforgiveness, through resentment, through bitterness, if the Broncos keep losing, you can become quite hard.

There can be a hardness in your heart that can develop. It talks about the conscience being seared in scripture. I had an uncle in Wales, he used to drink a boiling hot cup of tea. He could boil the tea and drink it straight down. He’d done it so many times that he literally had no feeling in his throat. We can get that way in the spirit. We can continue to ignore what God told us three years ago and he’s trying over and over again to get us to release unforgiveness. There comes a point where you’ll have a wake up call. We don’t want one of those wake up calls because sickness can develop in our physical body if we let unforgiveness go unchecked. Anyway, my sheep know my voice. Well, God doesn’t talk to me. I don’t even recognize his voice. My sheep hear my voice, right? And I know them and they follow me. Jeremiah 29:11, “for I know the plans I have for you saith the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster to give you a future and a hope.” Number one, God knows his audience, amen. He knows us intimately. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. He’s not afraid to be honest. He’s not afraid to express his love and he comes down to our level of communication. It takes courage to be intimate with God.

It takes courage because when we open up our heart, we open our hearts up to correction as well. Not only instruction, but correction. Also, encouragement, also comfort. So there’s many things that can transpire when we open up our heart. One of my favorite verses, John 16:13, “How be it when he the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak and he will show you things to come.” This is a future word. Several times I’ve had words about the future. It’s not common. Why? Why is it not common? Because we live by faith. We don’t live by words, right? We don’t live by prophetic words. If you start becoming addicted to prophetic words, you can be led around, you know, dance around the table with a little leash on your neck like, oh, I’m gonna give you a word. I’m gonna tell you what God’s telling me. Wait a minute, brother. I can hear from God for myself. I don’t need a word from you. Now, words are good. We’re not against prophecy. Prophecy is to encourage, to edify, to exhort, right? But we have to go directly to the Father for our own words. We’re not looking for a surrogate. We’re not looking for a surrogate fellowship with the Father, right? Oh, let me call up Dave.

Dave knows God. Hey, give me a minute. Hang on a second. I’m gonna call Dave. He knows God. Well, you can know God too, right? What’s the barrier between you and him? We have to take those barriers down. We’re the ones who put the barriers up ourselves. We’re the ones who chose to harden our hearts because of various issues. If we tear down those walls and barriers, we’ll hear the voice more clearly. Amen. Like I said previously, the Lord showed me, okay, you’re gonna start Bible college September 1st. He told me by the end of October, you’ll have a job. By the end of October, you’ll have a job. October 30th, rolled around. I didn’t have that job. The word of the Lord is true because it wasn’t the end of October. Absolutely correct. It’s common for God to communicate. Where? He spoke to Adam. He spoke to Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham. He spoke verbally that it may be written so that it may be spoken.

This is the seed bug. God is speaking to every one of these characters. Can God speak to John? Can he speak to Diana? He sure can. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God has stopped speaking. That’s a fact. He spoke to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Job, Balaam, et cetera. Over and over again, we see various forms of communication. We don’t choose the form of communication like I said. Now, when I use the term vision, I’m not talking about an open vision as in the Old Testament where I’m looking at this door and I’m seeing hundreds of people flooding in. That would be a good vision. But the bottom line is the vision is in the mind’s eye. It’s in the imagination. It’s in the eyes of the heart. That’s where the imagination is and that’s the vision I’m talking about. Numerous times when I’ve prayed before, closed my eyes, I’ve seen an image of somebody. Maybe I’m supposed to pray for that person. I’ll ask the Lord, Lord, why are you showing me that person? He’s struggling right now. You need to intercede for that person. That’s one way God can communicate. He could show me something about a colleague at work or a member of the family, et cetera. Numerous ways he can communicate but be open to it. But again, check everything with this. We have to test the spirits.

It says it in John’s first epistle. We test the spirits to see if they are of God or not. He talked to Elijah. He talked to Peter. He talked to Joseph. He talked to Pilate’s wife. He talked to the apostles. He spoke to John in the book of Revelation as he was praying in the Holy Ghost. That’s how these revelations came. I pray in the Holy Ghost. We’ll talk about that more later, what that is. But the bottom line is he has not stopped communicating. If someone’s written 16 books from seminary and said that God stopped communicating, they’re wrong. I don’t care how many letters they’ve got after their name. Can I get an amen? Amen. “Henceforth, I call you not servants for the servant knows not what his Lord doeth, but I’ve called you friends.” Friends of God? Are you kidding me? A friend. A friend shares intimate things. Amen?

Like the room is upstairs, not downstairs in mass. Amen? Friends share that affection. It brings peace into our hearts. He gives wisdom to talk through transition. You know, transition’s tough. You’re making a move from one state to another. You become pregnant. You’re having a child. You’re starting to get sick. There’s transition. You’ve got to have the peace of God through that time, and transition periods can be very stressful. Amen? Amen. But God’s voice brings unity and purpose. You know, sometimes if a tough time is ahead and I’m standing on a word of God, I can see through to the end of that harbor. I can get out of the transition and make it into open sea if I’ve got something to stand upon. Amen? Amen. Hearing the voice of the Lord brings us many benefits. It brings revelation of his plan for us. It brings protection to our lives.

He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. Oh, that’s just the Old Testament, brother. That doesn’t apply to us today. Well, who said that? Every word is profitable for doctrine, reproof, instruction in righteousness so that the man of God may be complete, lacking nothing. Amen? And successful. Now again, it’s by God’s definition. It’s not by man’s definition. And so we have to talk about the boundaries, right? What is success to you? It’s $200 million, brother, and nothing less. That’s success to me. Okay, great. For me, it’s being the quarterback of the Broncos or being the best soccer player in England or whatever. Whatever your measure of success is in your mind, but success as far as God’s concerned is this. You must be conformed to his image. The closer you are conformed to the image of God is the definition of success. As Christianity goes, okay? Now, the thing about that is there’s a lot of fruit in us. Some of us have got grapes. Some of us have got pomegranates. Some of us have got apples drooping down. We’ve got a lot of fruit, but not everybody can see that. God sees the heart, right? We don’t all see the heart. Someone can look great, polished on the outside. When it comes to the time of testing, we’re gonna find out what’s in that person, right? That’s the fruit.

God wants the fruit. See, he really wants that fruit. We’re all about the gifts. Give me the power of the gifts, the pizzazz. I wanna see some people healed. Let’s raise the dead. He’s like, patience, love, kindness, right? So there’s a balance there. There’s a balance. I know I’m laboring the point. But Romans 8.29 “for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Friend, Jesus is our brother as well as our Lord. We’re his friend, the firstborn among many brethren. We are those brethren. What are the methods of communication? Well, we’ve talked about some of it before. He wants to give you the desires of your heart. And the longer you walk with the Lord, the more your desires become his. Initially, you start out with some desires of your own. And he can fulfill some of them as well. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to be overly religious here. God can bless you with what you want as well. But there comes a time when, no, this is what I want you to do. And you may not even realize it yet. It hasn’t even been presented to you. And so the Holy Spirit is communicating all the time. The problem is with the receiver and not the transmitter. We live in an age of distraction. We have so many things, Kindles, iPads, cell phones, you know, chores. We’ve got to vacuum. We’ve got to do the dishes.

Whew, there’s a lot to be done. But after we’ve done all those things, we need to, no, before we do those things, we need to take time to listen. How many people here, by a show of hands, have heard the voice of God in a still small voice? Everybody in the room, man, I’m talking to the choir. Let’s just wrap it up, man. I’m not going there. Mount Sinai, clouds, thunder, and lightning. How did God speak to, does he come in the thunder and lightning? Is he in the whirlwind now? Where is he exactly? No, he’s in the still small voice. Elijah was spoken to the same way. How easy is it to hear from God? Where does he live? Where does God live? Yep, exactly. He lives billions and billions of light years away, true, but he’s also inside of me. The Holy Spirit lives inside of me. God, Jesus, dwells inside of me. No wonder I’m putting on weight, man. There’s a lot of stuff in here. 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? The temple of the Holy Ghost is in you, which you have of God and you’re not your own. You’re not even your own.” There is a call on your life, friend. How many have discovered the call? How many are actively doing the call? Friend, we’ll pick it up tomorrow with part two of our live session.

https://carljosephministries.com/podcast/how-to-hear-gods-voice/

https://dudedisciple.com/hearing-gods-voice/

Title: God wants to communicate: Part 1 (LIVE)

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Romans 8:29
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Psalm 95:7-8
Jeremiah 29:11

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