Kenneth Copeland - Tune in to the Voice of God

What is the Spirit of God saying to you today? What is He telling you about your spiritual development... your family. and your finances? If youre facing trouble, what word of victory has He spoken to you?

As a born-again child of the living God, you ought to know the answers to those questions.

Ive learned by experience, however, the majority of believers dont. I can tell by just listening to them talk. Oh, my goodness, theyll say, Im in a crisis and I dont know what to do!

If thats your situation, Im going to be straight with you. Youd better go to God and find out what to do. Youd better be quiet long enough to hear what He has to say and pay attention to it. Youd better get rid of that fear and start believing God. Otherwise, the devil is going to end up getting the best of you.

If you read the Bible youll see God has been trying to get His people to understand that for thousands of years. In fact, He gave those exact instructions to an Old Testament king named Ahaz back in the days of the prophet Isaiah. Ahaz was in serious trouble at the time. He had two enemy armies coming against him and he had no idea what to do about it. So God sent His Word to Ahaz through the prophet Isaiah and gave him a whole new perspective.

Instead of agreeing with Ahaz about how powerful his enemies were, God let him know they didnt impress Him much. He referred to them as two smoking stumps (Isaiah 7:4, The Amplified Bible). Then He assured Ahaz their plans against him would not stand if he would simply obey the following instructions: Take heed... be quiet...fear not (verse 4)...and believe (verse 9).

Before you head down the road looking for a prophet like Isaiah to tell you what God is saying to you, let me save you a trip. You dont need a prophet to tell you what to do. You have a better covenant than Ahaz had. Youre not just a servant of God like people were in the Old Covenant. Through the blood of Jesus, youve become a full-fledged son and the Bible says, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God (Romans 8:14).

Jesus confirmed that fact in John 10 when He said that His sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice (verses 3-4, New King James Version).

As a child of Almighty God, you have the right and the spiritual ability to hear the voice of God for yourself!

But, Brother Copeland, you might say, God never speaks to me.

Sure He does. Youre just not listening.

Have you ever turned on your television and found something was wrong with the picture? Maybe it was fuzzy or the sound was crackling with static. Or maybe you couldnt get a picture at all. Did you grab the telephone, call NBC and tell them that something was wrong with their transmitter? Did you get some television executive on the line and say, Hey, you guys must not be broadcasting anymore. I turned on my set and you werent there!

Certainly not! That didnt even occur to you. You were smart enough to figure out the problem most likely wasnt with the transmitter. The problem was with the receiver. The problem was with your own television set.

So instead of blaming the broadcaster, you started trying to find the problem on your end. You might have checked the electrical connections. You might have looked to make sure the cable was hooked up. You might have checked the settings on the television to make sure they were all adjusted correctly.

Whats more, you stayed with it until you got it fixed. Why? Because you never doubted the fact that the networks were still broadcasting. You understood if you could just successfully tune in, they would be there for you.

Dont you think we ought to have at least as much faith in God as we have in the television networks? They can break down. They can fail us. But God never will. He has given us His Word. He has promised Hell lead us by His Spirit and enable us to know His voice. So if were having difficulty with those things, we need to stop blaming Him and determine where were missing it.

Actually, thats not hard to do. When we have trouble hearing Gods voice, its almost always for one of the following four reasons:

We dont believe He is speaking.

Were not paying attention.

Were allowing some kind ofinter-ference to drown out His voice.

We just plain dont know what frequency He is on.

Lets focus right now on that last point. Exactly how do you locate the frequency God uses to speak to you?

Ill tell you right off the bat, you dont do it by using those fleshly paddles on the sides of your head your natural ears. Some people try to hear God that way. They think if He would just speak audibly to them everything would be solved.

Theyre mistaken. Our natural ears werent designed to hear the voice of God.

We were created to hear Him in our inner man or what the New Testament calls the hidden man of the heart (1 Peter 3:4).

As Hebrews 3:7-8 says, Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts...).

God leads His children not by outward voices or signs and wonders but by the inward witness of the hidden man of the heart. So to find His frequency, the first thing youll have to do is tune in not with your head but with your heart!

How do you know the difference between your head and your heart?

Scripturally speaking, your head is your soul, which is comprised of your mind, will and emotions. Your heart is your spirit, which is the core of your being that has been born again and joined to the Spirit of God. Granted, discerning the difference between the voice of your soul and the voice of your spirit can be challenging, and it takes spiritual wisdom to do it. But the Bible tells us clearly how to develop that wisdom: We do it by spending time in the written Word of God.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that The Word is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It contains the voice of God in its most tangible form.

God always agrees with His written Word and His Word always agrees with Him. In fact, Psalm 138:2 says He has magnified His Word even above His Name. That means God has put His Name on His written Word the way we would put our name at the bottom of a contract. He has given us His Word as a covenant and signed it in the Name of Jesus by the blood of Jesus.

Since God cannot lie, there is no way He will ever do or say anything contrary to that Word. He has absolutely joined Himself to it forever. So the first place God takes us to train us to recognize His voice is to His written Word. He uses it to tune our spiritual ears to the real so that we can easily recognize a counterfeit.

Have you ever watched an impersonator mimic a celebrity? If he is good at what he does, youll think, I know who that guy is impersonating. Its so-and-so. He sounds just like him! But if you were to put the real personality right next to the impersonator, the differences would be glaring. If you could see them both at the same time, youd think, That guy doesnt sound much like him at all!

Thats the way it is with Gods written Word. The better you know it, the more youve heard Gods voice speaking to you through it, the easier it is for you to tell the difference between His voice and another voice. The easier it is for you to divide your soul from your spirit and discern the difference between the voice of your head and the voice of your heart.

When youre trained to hear Gods voice in His Word, the devil wont be able to sneak deceptions in on you, either. When he tries to razzle-dazzle you with some religious-sounding voice that says, I love you, my son. But it's just not my will to heal you at this time, you wont buy it. Youll rise up and say, Thats not the voice of God. Thats a lie from hell because it doesnt agree with The Word that says by His stripes ye were healed.