Hearing Gods Voice - Week 2

Message by:
Pastor Terry Carwford
Covenant Church
Shepherdstown, WV

God created us for relationship, invited us into relationship, fulfills his end of relationship, so we are able to know what he is asking us or communicating to us.

How does God Talk to Us?

God decides how and when he will communicate with us.

1. God speaks through the BIBLE.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (Message)
Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.

Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

Sola Scripturameans.
“The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.” — Westminster Confession of Faith
What Does Sola Scripture Mean C.L.A.S.S. 101 - We teach that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are verbally inspired of God and inerrant in the original writing, and that they are the supreme and final authority in faith and life.

We genuinely long for God to guide us. We genuinely long for a personal word from God, a supernatural experience with God. Yet we fail to grasp that as we read and study and hear the Word of God taught and preached, it is a personal word from God. Because the Scriptures are "living and active," God's speaking to us through them is a personal, supernatural experience.

Who you need be, how you need to live your life and react to life’s struggles, proactive ministry and maturity actions are all in there. I believe 99.9 % of all of your life questions are already in the Word and the other .1 percent will be filtered through it.

2. God speaks through gifted TEACHERS and LEADERS.

Ephesians 4:11-15
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ

3. God speaks through HOLY SPIRIT IMPRESSIONS.

John 14:26
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you

Job 33:14-15
or God does speak—now one way, now another— though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds,

Matthew 10:19-20
But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Acts 16:6-7
Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

Every impression is not from God.

And if we want to go back a little further, Jonathan Edwards warned: I . . . know by experience that impressions being made with great power, and upon the minds of true saints, yea, eminent saints; and presently after, yea, in the midst of, extraordinary exercises of grace and sweet communion with God, and attended with texts of Scripture strongly impressed on the mind, are no sure signs of their being revelations from heaven: for I have known such impressions [to] fail, and prove vain.

Godly impressions are given for the building of His Kingdom.

Question: Am I listening for God in ways he normally speaks?

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