In the previous post, hearing God was introduced as a pivotal path to freedom from fear. When we discuss hearing the voice of God, a common question arises: Who said that?

I myself have struggled with the discernment of whether or not I was hearing God speak to me. I hear, “Son I love you!” Was that God? Was it just me? Or, was the accuser, Satan? As we talked about previously, the voice of God is not typically audible – heard through our natural sense of hearing. He speaks to us in our spirit, which comes to us more in our own inner voice – or thoughts.

One day, Jesus explained to a gathering of people why he would do the things he did, such as healing a man on the Sabbath. This was considered by the religious leaders of the day a violation of the Law of God and could not to be done.  But, Jesus replied to them, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).

According to that scripture, what would Jesus do? Nothing! By himself, he could do nothing! Jesus only did as he heard. He listened and then judged those thoughts he heard.

Judge, judged, judgment — it can be a loaded word. Here it simply means “Properly, to distinguish.” Jesus properly distinguished where the source of the thought originated. It was not himself. The voice was either from his Father or his accuser. He always judged righteously because he only wanted to please the one who sent him, his Father.

Sure, Jesus could hear the accuser in his thoughts, but he knew the voice of his Father, and he would not agree with any thoughts from the enemy. He only agreed with his Father. Jesus never agreed with the accuser. He never allowed the accuser into his heart; therefore, the accuser never had any hold over Jesus (John 14:30). Think about when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4). In this wilderness, he heard the tempting thoughts of the accuser, but countered with with Truth from scripture.

This should be exciting news for every believer! Jesus is the firstborn of many, the new creation in a fallen world. We are born again into this new creation as Jesus was. We are to live as he did here on earth. I am born again into the new creation that Jesus provided for us. I am to live as he did here on earth.

So, I am to judge the thoughts that present themselves in my mind. I need to judge the source or originator of every thought that comes in. We are told in scripture to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

God only speaks truth, because He is truth. Deuteronomy 32:4 states, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.”

Satan the accuser only speaks lies. John 8:44b shows us, “[Satan] was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

I was created to judge (properly distinguish) the thoughts presented before me. The thoughts I agree with begin to fill the storehouse of my heart. If the agreements are good and truthful, then my heart is filled with goodness and truth. I will then speak and act similarly. If the agreements are evil and untruthful, then my heart is filled with lies and deception, and I will speak and act similarly.

The more I know my Father, the more I know Truth; I can begin to distinguish my Father’s thoughts which are truth. Let me give you an example. Take a few quiet moments to see if you can hear this thought in your mind: Child, I love you.

Now, who said that?

Satan, cannot speak this statement to me, because he is a liar and this statement is truth. I cannot speak or make up that statement because I only know I am loved by God because he revealed it. So it was God for he alone is truth and can speak that truth to me. Once I know I hear his voice – “I love you” – I can begin to tune into other things he is speaking to me, and tune out the things that don’t matter.

As I was learning to hear my Father’s voice, a minister once said to me, “The only thing that matters is what God, my Father, has to say about every second of my life”. It is vital that I know his voice, agree with him, and allow his truth rule and reign in my life.

Prayer: “Father, help me know you so I may know your truth. I choose to agree with your thoughts for me and about me. I want to have ears for you and you alone.”

There has been one thing that has consistently moved me down the path of freedom: hearing God. The more I tune into his tender voice, the more freedom I experience in every area of my life. First, I want to share with you some scriptures so you can know that God wants to speak to you. Then, I want to share some practical ways that can help you learn to hear God’s voice.

Psalms 85:8 gives us a very good reason for wanting to hear God’s voice: I listen carefully to what God the LORD is saying, for he speaks peace to his people, his faithful ones.

God is constantly speaking peace over you. For anyone struggling with fear, anxiety, panic attacks or depression, God is speaking peace over you right this very moment. Like an old radio, we must learn to tune into God’s peace-speaking voice.

Here’s another wonderful scripture that should encourage us to want to hear God’s voice: “If you need wisdom–if you want to know what God wants you to do–ask him, and he will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to answer, for a doubtful mind is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” (James 1:5, 6).

In every area of our life, we need wisdom. Wisdom is what gives us a God-directed strategy that will never fail.  Never.  And, wisdom is essential if we want to find freedom from fear.  James encourages us to simply ask for it, and when we ask, God will “gladly” tell us.

Throughout the Bible, there are numerous scriptures and examples about hearing God. It’s God’s desire to speak to us and guide us. In Psalms 32:8, the LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.”

As a father myself, I know how important it is for me to consistently communicate to my son, for him to hear my voice. How could I expect to educate him, train him, discipline him, and guide him if he can’t hear me?

What’s like to hear God’s voice?

One of the most confusing things about hearing God’s voice is that we don’t “hear” anything. It’s not like an audible voice, as if talking to a friend on the phone. God is spirit (John 4:24), so he most often uses a spiritual voice to speak to us.

So, what does a spiritual voice sound like?  When I hear God, it comes in the form of my own thoughts, but different than my personal thoughts. I often exercise my spiritual ears in my morning journaling time.  Using my computer to journal, I type black letters when I’m praying, asking, or just talking to God.  And, when I want to hear God, I change the font color to red and just start writing what comes to my mind. What happens often is that I end up writing something that I know is not birthed out of my own thoughts.  God has spoken.

Let me give you an example from a journal entry a few days ago:

Father, when I start to feel this anxiousness arise in me, can you let me know how I should respond, or what I should do? I don’t want to just numb it, or cover it, or distract it. I want to know what you think I should do when it comes over me.

Seek first the Kingdom, and all the things you need will be given you. Son, don’t seek peace, seek Christ because he is Peace. Don’t seek freedom, seek the Lord because he is Truth and the Truth sets you free.

I try to journal like this daily, because I want to hear God, and I know he wants to speak to me.  And, by doing this on a regular basis, I can tune my spiritual ears more and more to hear God’s voice.

Here’s the most wonderful part—he desires to speak to all of you. I’m not special. I simply believe that Christ is now our High Priest (Hebrews 2-4) and that he’s has made a way for us to come boldly to God’s throne of grace in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16).  And, if you are in Christ, you can hear God too.

When you starting listening for God’s voice, you must remember that he will never speak anything contrary to what he has revealed in his Word. The Bible should be your filter when hearing God. In my journal example above, the first and last sentences God spoke to me were scripture. God always uses scripture as a foundation for his voice. Always. That’s why it’s important for you to have a regular Bible reading plan.  The more you know the Bible, the easier it is to know his voice.

Prayer: “Father, help me hear your voice more clearly. Teach me how to discern your voice in the midst of a busy world.  Help me be still so that I can know you are God.”

To overcome anything in our life–whether panic attacks, fear, anxiety, depression, lust, anger, drugs, alcohol–we must know the truth. It is absolutely essential to find freedom. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

As we talked about last week, the enemy can keep us from freedom through his lies. I believe that his only weapon against us is his ability to lie to us and get us to agree with him. For example, I believe sickness can only come upon us when we believe a lie. Our bodies are amazing. God created them very carefully and very specifically to respond to thoughts, ideas, beliefs. You thoughts can create a physical effect in your body. I’ll prove it.

Think about a lemon for a second. Imagine holding it, looking it, smelling it. Not that strong of a smell. Now imagine taking a knife and the cutting the lemon in two. The smell is a bit stronger. Now, take a big, juicy bite of the lemon.

Did your mouth water thinking about it? Probably. Where’s the lemon? There is none. Just me putting a thought into your mind was able to produce a biological, chemical reaction in your body. Your body’s chemical balance was physically affected by a thought I put into your mind. If that’s true, how much more can the enemy affect your body’s biological response?

Thoughts, ideas, beliefs, emotions, feelings, painful memories–all of these can produce a physical response in the body. Panic attacks and anxiety are a physical response. Your body is reaching this “fight or flight” mode, and it’s preparing to face a dangerous situation. Our mind has convinced us that something dangerous is just around the corner, so our body responds.  Our heart starts to palpitate, beating faster and faster. Our breath gets shorter, more shallow for a boost of energy. The muscles prepare to run or fight by pulling in the blood flow, so our hands and feet start to tingle and get cold. Our body releases more acid into the stomach. It’s trying to rush the digestive process so that you’ll have more energy to face the dangerous situation.

Your body is responding to what your mind is telling it, whether it’s true or not.

One of the key tactics that I often use when panic hits is to remind myself that no matter what my body is doing or how it’s responding, it’ll pass. It’s just a physical response. It may feel like I’m going crazy or losing it, or having a heart attack, but I realize that my body is reacting to a lie. My body is trying to get into this “fight or flight” mode. So, I slow down my breathing. I remind myself that it’s just a physical response.  And, I start praying and asking God to show me what lie is triggering this.

I heard a story from Bob Hamp, our church’s freedom pastor, that really illustrates how truth can really set us free, even within our physical bodies. He was once counseling a woman who was mad at men for the way they treated her, and she was angry with women for not protecting her. She was pretty messed up. Besides the addictions and outbursts of anger that plagued her life, she had become genderless. She hated men, and she thought women were weak, so she sided with neither. She wore genderless clothes, avoided contact with people and considered herself neither female nor male.

Over time, Bob helped her through the anger issues and the addiction issues and was making great progress. One day, he looked her and said, “God made you woman.” Her face contorted and the anger started to rise up. “Women are weak!” she spouted back. Bob pointed to a few women she knew who were strong, who were good leaders, and made good decisions. She started to soften a bit.  He went on to explain to her that physically, God created her as a woman.  Her body was that of a woman, whether she believed it or not. The truth started to sink in.

A few days after that session, Bob gets a call from the woman. “I need your help, Bob.” He was excited to help. “What do you need?” he asked. After a bit of awkward silence, the woman says, “Well, I just started my cycle.” Bob wasn’t sure what to do.  ”And, uhh, how can I help?” This woman was 36 years old. Surely, she knew what to do.  Her response shocked him. “I’ve never had a period before. This is my first. I don’t know what to do.” The truth was starting to affect her physically. Her body was starting to line up with how God created it.

What an amazing illustration of how a lie can make our bodies not function the way God created them to function. And, how the truth can set us free, how the truth can help our physical bodies line up with how God created us to live life.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about truth and lies, their source and how they can affect us. I want to encourage you this week to really dig deep, seeking God and asking him to show you any lies that are at work in us. And, I’m not exempt. I’ll be spending this week praying, fasting, digging into some lies that are affecting my thoughts, my emotions, and my physical body.

Prayer: “Father, you are the Source of all truth. Help me find the source of the lies that are at work in my thinking patterns, my memories, my thoughts, my decisions. Show me through scripture, through dreams, through counsel, through your still, small voice what lies are at work in me.  And then, through the power of Christ, help me tear down those lies and replace them with truth.”

P.S. If you’re on Facebook, why don’t you join us on the Season of Peace Facebook page. We want to hear your story.

The Lord used a wayward prophet’s donkey to speak and get his attention. Recently, the Lord used some fictitious underwater sea creatures to get mine.

In the previous message, we laid some spiritual ground work to help you understand that deep rooted lies are the seed of the pain and fears we face. To recap, Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). If knowing the truth sets you free, then believing a lie will keep you from being free.

When presented with such “simple” truths, we may ask ourself: When did I agree with a lie? I would not have done that. Why would I agree with a lie? It sure seemed like the truth.

Our primary battle occurs in our thought life. What I believe to be true about God, others, and myself, shape my interpretation of life’s events, and the meaning I assign to them. My thought life is the battleground. Do my thoughts obey and represent Christ in me?

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 states it like this: “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ”.

When I take a thought captive to obey, I must recognize the source from which it originated. Whom was it born from? Was it truth that originates with Jesus and what he is speaking to me through his Spirit, or is it a lie from the father of lies?

Thoughts are always drifting through our minds at any given moment. Thoughts that come from a bad experience are often used by the enemy to create lies in our minds.  Whether it’s a subtle word spoken in anger or maybe something more traumatic, truths and lies will swirl around in our thoughts seeking a place to land, giving me the opportunity to interpret God, others, myself and the meaning of that experience. It is at those times that I am most vulnerable to agree with the lies.

As I was learning to recognize the lies in my life, an example of the battle for my mind was discovered one day while watching cartoons with my children. Yes, a spiritual truth was shown to me by an “absorbent and yellow and porous” sea sponge named Spongebob Squarepants.

In this video clip, the “truths” that Spongebob and his friend Patrick are passing to each other through “bubbles” are meant for each other. Just as the Spirit speaks to me, telling me my Father’s purposes and plans for me as shown through Jesus, so these two friends were speaking to each other. But there is another voice. Squidward, intercepts the friendly messages and substitutes his “lies” to change Spongebob and Patrick’s perception of each other and even their friendship. I too have another voice and source of thoughts, which drift through my mind. He has lies to bind me into traps and painful ways of thinking about God, others, and myself. And, these lies always sound like my own voice.

I want to encourage you this week to start asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the sources of your thoughts. Jesus told us that the Spirit would guide us into all truth (John 16:13). Ask him to show you if there are any lies at work in your life that may be causing you fear or pain. Ask him to show you any ungodly agreements you may have made.

Prayer: “Holy Spirit, teach me to recognize the lies that present themselves as truth. Give me understanding of the source of the thoughts that drift through my mind. Give me strength in the battle for my mind to bring thoughts to obedience by agreeing with truth and not lies.”

If you’re experiencing something in your life that is causing pain or discomfort–fear, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, anger, emotional pain, or maybe some addiction–then somewhere in your life, there is a deep-rooted lie at work in your thoughts and choices.

That’s a pretty bold statement, but listen carefully to what Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). If knowing the truth sets you free, then believing a lie will keep you from being free.

Before going deeper, let me lay some scriptural groundwork:

• All truth comes from Christ. He is the Truth (John 14:6), and he speaks truth in our lives to set us free (John 8:32) so that we can live life more abundantly (John 10:10).
• All lies come from the devil. He is the father of lies (John 8:44), and he uses them to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

My theology is pretty simple. God is good, and the devil is bad. Anything in your life that is keeping you from living life more abundantly is based on a lie that you believed, and the enemy is the one who spoke it to you.

Getting to the root of a lie can be difficult, because we’ve probably spent years believing it to be true. We’ve convinced ourselves of something that is not true. Lies often work their way into our thoughts and decisions because of a wound or traumatic experience. First, something bad happens to us (typically through others who have been lied to as well), the enemy then whispers a subtle lie into our mind (disguising it as our own voice), and then we agree in our heart with the lie.  As soon as we agree, the deception takes root in our soul, and we start living our life like it’s true.

Last week, my son and I went to see Inception, the new blockbuster movie that’s out right now. (Spoiler ahead, so don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you want to see the movie.) The premise of the movie is about a small band of “dream thieves” that travel into a people’s dreams to steal ideas while the person is sleeping. The main character is challenged to go into this man’s dream not to steal information, but to plant an idea at deep, sub-conscious level, because if the man believes that thought to be true, he’ll change the way he lives and start making choices based on that idea.

This is exactly how the enemy works. If he can subtly get us to agree that something is true when it’s not, then we’ll make choices and form thought patterns based on that lie. The result is pain, both emotional and physical. But, thankfully, pain is God’s way of telling you that something’s amiss, something needs fixing. Pain is often God’s way of letting you know there’s a lie at work in your life.

Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” To start getting to the root of the lie, we must start “hearing” the truth. We must replace that lie with God’s truth, but we can only know that the lie is a lie when we understand more of God’s truth. Through prayer, Bible reading, Godly counsel, learning and just “listening” to God, you can start tearing down the lies. Sometimes, it can happen quickly. Other times, it takes time to retrain your mind.

This week, I encourage each of you to pray a very simple prayer and then “listen” carefully for the Holy Spirit to speak to you:

“Holy Spirit, please reveal to me any lie at work in my life that is keeping me from knowing the Truth that will set me free.”