Kingdom Mothers Rise Up

Hearing God In Everyday Life

• Mukkove - The Mom Mentor

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The most impactful, practical way to live in peace in the midst of life's storms is learning to hear what God is communicating to me. I have always loved and read the Bible. The change in how I felt about myself didn’t happen. The truth didn’t stick.

When I was introduced to the idea that God wanted to talk to me now, not just from the Bible. I was intrigued and even desperate. I sat down my small children on my bed and told them we were going to ask God to show us something or tell us something. We did, and He did.

Being able to have conversations with God changes everything - not always as fast as I would like or in the way I would like, but it does.

This week, I’m sharing practical tips on how to have conversations with God. Jesus said in John 10:27 that His sheep listen to His voice. You can learn to do that. If you already have regular conversations with God, I would love to hear your story of how you learned to do that.

If you want to start practicing, you can purchase Transformational Quiet Times, a course that covers the teaching I gave today, plus 3 lessons of guided practice videos.

Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.

Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay

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SPEAKER_01:

You know Jesus came to give you an abundant life, but you don't always know how to live that out in your real life, and you're tired of blaming yourself for that. Today I want to talk about how we learn how God is communicating to us, how he's talking to us, and I've been intentionally practicing that for over 20 years. And I just always want to put the disclaimer that I do not have the training or experience to be able to diagnose or treat. I'm just sharing from my experience. I'm not trying to diagnose anyone. If you recognize yourself in patterns or things of what I'm sharing, then the tips that I share might also be helpful. So when I think of living the abundant life that Jesus promised, and my inability to do that on my own, or even like not knowing how to do it in him, just feeling like it just doesn't work. What I come back to when I finally started to feel like, oh, this is possible. I can grow in this, I can learn, was when I was introduced to the idea of having conversations with God. In John 10, 27, Jesus says, My sheep listen to my voice, I know them and they follow me. So in order to listen to his voice, that means that he is talking. And as I tend to look at things very simply. And as a parent, if I wrote letters to my kids, like here's my voice, if you want to say like scripture is how God speaks, which it is, he definitely communicates to us through his word. But as a parent, if I just wrote them letters and, like, here's everything I need you to know, everything I want you to know about me, about life and how to live. And then I cut off myself from them, even though I'm still alive. But the only way they can receive from me is now to read what I've written and to try and interpret and understand. It just doesn't make any sense that we would do that as a pyramid. And if God is a good father, then it doesn't make sense to me that he would do that either. He wanted to communicate with us enough that he allowed himself to be made in the form of a human, a helpless little human, and to grow and walk with people because he wanted relationship, not just worshipers, but relationship and worship is part of that relationship. So healing happens, ability to live in that abundant life that God gave us happens through accepting where we are, accepting that we're weak and we cannot do this, accepting help, not through pressure of I need to try harder, I need to be more intentional, and I still fall in that trap myself. But I have experienced the difference and the blessing of just accepting that I'm as broken as I am, and God accepts me there, and accepting that He can accept me there instead of I need to get something figured out before he could possibly accept me. And when we come from that place of acceptance that God is loving us and accepting us just as we are, not to leave us that way, not to excuse things, but to just like understanding, I see where you are. And when I see where you where, you know, when God sees us where we are accurately, obviously he always does that. But when we see that, then we're much better equipped to move towards where we want to go. And if we're admitting not, if we think we're in a different place or trying to say we're in a different place than we are, then we can't move to where we want to go because the steps are different based on where we're starting. And when we are operating in that place, things are much more peaceful, much more gentle and compassionate. And you know, the Lord says that it's his kindness that leads us to repentance, he had compassion on us. So when we can have that towards ourselves, things are just so much better. Discerning what's going on, discerning the Lord's voice from the enemy's voice from the bad programming makes such a difference because when we clearly see, like this is God's truth speaking to me, our spirit can tell, our body can tell it goes deep, it goes to right where it needs to go versus trying to think a thought enough to make it change our heart. I think it's possible, but I think it's really, really hard. It's much easier to have God speak directly to our heart and then change our mind. And learning how God communicates with you is the fastest and easiest way to get that transformation. You're not broken, you're not failing. And with God's help, you can learn to discern how He is communicating with you and be able to respond to yourself with compassion instead of condemnation. As I'm talking, like when I say how God communicates with you, how God talks to you, I kind of use those interchangeably because it's just how we talk to say, you know, like how God, how is God speaking to you? But he does more than just talk, and we can do more than just hear him. So like God can communicate, primarily, he communicates through spirit to spirit. Holy Spirit talks to our spirit, and it's the still small voice that you learn to hear that it comes with peace and it comes with confidence, it's encouraging.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's the primary way that he speaks.

SPEAKER_01:

And anything that he speaks and communicates in any of these other ways that I'm going to talk about needs to line up with scripture. We're not asking God to talk to us, to give us permission that scripture doesn't give us permission to do. It's not what I'm talking about. Bible is the standard to evaluate if God is telling me to do this, does it violate scripture or does scripture agree with it? And obviously, some of that's going to be in principle because not everything in our world today is directly principles are all in scripture, but no, a washing machine is popping into my head. Like you can't, if you ask the Lord about a washing machine, he's not going to be able to give you a scripture that says washing machine. But the principles of wise stewardship or generosity or whatever might apply is in scripture for you to go to verify things with. So when I'm saying how God speaks to you, it includes all of these things and more because he's infinitely creative, he can speak to you however he wants to.

SPEAKER_00:

By giving him that permission to speak to you and paying attention to that.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and I'm gonna give you like some practical like sit down and practice this and let him speak to you. Before you actually start practicing, first of all, it's good to believe that he actually wants to talk to you and is trying to communicate with you, and hopefully laid a foundation for that. The second thing that's really helpful is to create space, and you can create that space physically, externally. You also want to create space internally. So physically, when you're beginning this practice, a quiet space is very helpful. You might want to be comfortable, you might want to grab a favorite drink, you might want to, you know, the kids are down for a nap, or they're playing, or whatever. You're getting up early, you're doing it after bedtime. Give yourself that space to listen. And having a same space can be helpful. There's a comfortable chair, a spot by the window, having a space where, like, I'm in this space to have conversation with God. And some people don't like to set an empty chair, and you're imagining God is in that other chair and you're sitting having your conversation. Making space internally, I find it very helpful to have pen and paper and to kind of do a brain dump of everything that's running through my head of whether it's things I need to do or things I'm worried about or trying to figure out, putting it on paper so that if it needs my attention later, it's there. And I've made that space in my current awareness to be able to hear instead of the Lord having to like fight through all that stuff. I just put everything down and setting it aside for now because I'm green to listen. And it is helpful to have some pen and paper, to have your Bible. I definitely recommend your Bible and a pen and paper because not only is it good to empty out your mind, pour all that stuff out onto the paper, but then when you ask God to speak to you, record what you're sensing or seeing or hearing, even if you don't really believe it's from the Lord. Just start writing it down and capturing it or sketching a picture of it or whatever, but capture it in some way that you've asked God to speak. And since he wants to talk to you, no, Jesus said, My sheep hear my voice, that means his voice is out there to be heard, believing that and starting to record things. And then, like, once it's recorded, then you can evaluate and discern like, does this match with scripture, or is there something else, or like, well, that was probably my thought, or whatever. And I think a lot of people are afraid if they ask God to speak, they're afraid of being deceived and afraid of like hearing the enemy instead, which is valid because the enemy is always talking, trying to get your attention, and he's rude, so he will talk louder than Holy Spirit. But what the enemy says comes with condemnation and shame and confusion, doubt, all those kinds of things. It's not going to agree with scripture. What the Lord speaks comes with peace and confidence and conviction, comfort. So that's part of evaluating what the things that you're like, okay, I sense this or I hear this, being able to sit with how did that make me feel? Because God is love, perfect love, and it drives out fear. So if the thoughts have fear attached to them, then you just sit with the Lord and sort out whether that's from Him at all, or whether you know, if the enemy likes to take something that's mostly true and just twist it just a little bit. And so, like that discerning takes practice. Like I said, I've been practicing for a long time. So for practicing, I recommend starting with open-ended questions. And an open-ended question is just a question that has lots of possible answers. So asking, what do you like about me? Asking what's on your heart today, asking, you know, open-ended questions like that, where there's all kinds of possibilities. And again, if that you're gonna discern whether what you hear, what you start to write down, whether that is coming with feelings of peace and love and comfort, or if it's coming with condemnation and confusion. So just asking those open-ended questions. And another good way to practice is asking either or questions, or this or that questions, where either option is fine. So just like having two different shirts, or do I wear the blue one or the red one? And it doesn't matter which one you wear, it's you're just giving an um an opportunity to tell you one or the other. And it's not as much about which shirt you wear, but noticing in your body and in your spirit how that feels. And you're just observing that, kind of collecting that data. Sometimes things will happen that will give you confirmation of like, oh, I see how God showed up here. There was a sale, I ran into a person that I needed to talk to, or that blessed me, or something will happen. And then you can reflect back to like, oh, when he told me this, this is, or you know, when I heard this, this is how I felt. And so the practice starts to build that recognition of like when I feel this way, this is God's leading. And so asking those either or this or that questions. Do I have a ham sandwich or a chicken sandwich or whatever, whatever kind of questions. We're not asking, like, I have no brain for myself and I need you to tell me. Or asking for that practice of beginning to recognize his voice in these situations where it's a very low stakes consequence if we get it, get it wrong, if we miss it. But it's also a safe place to be like, oh, that's what that feels like when you know he said to wear the blue shirt, and then I got three compliments today. And would have you gotten the compliments if you wore the red shirt? Maybe. But it's just, you know, practicing and experimenting and not feeling like I have to get it just right and figured out, just so. Like when we learn to walk, we stumble and fall, and we're unsteady and all for quite a while before we're ready to just take off and run. And practicing spiritual skills, like learning how God communicates with you, is the same. And then one more way to practice is by using your imagination. But the what I mean by using your imagination is like when the Lord took Abraham out in the desert and told him to look at the stars, and he said, Your descendants are gonna be more than all those stars and all the sand on the seashore. That takes some imagination to imagine and you know, put your faith and believe, like, okay, what's that gonna look like for me to have more descendants than the stars in the sky when I don't have a single child and I'm too old to have a child? What is that? You know, that takes some imagination. So asking the Lord to speak to you and then using your imagination. You can imagine yourself in a Bible story, you can imagine yourself sitting on the hillside listening to Jesus teach. Like you can imagine like those historical places and like imagine yourself there and see what is God, what is Jesus doing? How does he interact with you? But also do, I guess it would be like a guided listening of like imagine yourself on a walk in the woods. And if you're a place where you can close your eyes, you can close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sunshine on your face, and see how the light is coming through the leaves, and listen to the bird songs that are in the air, and smell the freshness of being out in the wood, and see yourself walking along a path, and as you're taking in all of this, you're feeling the warmth of the sun, you're hearing the birds, you're seeing the beauty around you, you're smelling the freshness, and you see a bench up ahead on the path, and you see that there's a box on that bench, and that's kind of curious. So you keep walking, and when you get to the bench, you see that there's a great big tag on the box with your name on it.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you smile and you sit down and you open the box. And what's in the box?

SPEAKER_01:

So by engaging your imagination and all your senses and putting yourself in that scene, you've taken yourself out of like thinking analyzing mode. And you're inviting God to speak. So you're when you're opening the box, you're allowing him to show you whatever he wants to show you. In my Transformational Quiet Times course, I have practice videos for all these different ways. I think I have five of each, four or five of each, where you can practice hearing how God is communicating to you, beginning to learn this is what it feels like. This is how he typically talks to me. And if you already have the habit, he might be wanting to invite you to learn to listen in another way. And be inviting you to go deeper and to expand really your relationship by how he can interact with you, being able to interact with him in even ways. You can take what I gave you here and practice if you feel like you want it a little slower, a little more organized. Maybe I'll put the link for the Transformational Quiet Times course there. It's three lessons that cover the like, yes, God really is speaking. It has more scripture than I gave today, the different ways that He speaks, and the making space are the first three lessons. And then the last four lessons are there's one on the open-ended questions with practice videos that you can listen. So, but that's the format that they're in of the video. So there's one for open-ended questions, one for this or that questions, and one for the guided listening that you can just do at your own pace. You can use them over and over again because, like, especially with the open-ended questions and the imagination, you could do the same one every day, and he could show you something different every day. If you want to just join a community that is pursuing hearing from the Lord in this way, and seeing how does this carry over? Like, okay, I can hear God speaking, but how does that carry over into actually changing my life? We're having those conversations in the Healing Generation school group, which is at the top of the description. Hope to see you there and hope you'll subscribe.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll see you in the next video.