Hearing from God | Ep 2

  In this episode: How we first started to hear the voice of God more clearly How hearing God allows us to follow His will   Ministry Background We moved to East Dallas and became missionaries God was challenging us to live a life of radical hospitality and radical transformation There were people in our lives that were not going to come to church, so how do we create an environment of transformation for those folks? As missionaries we had to depend on hearing God’s voice to know what the next steps were. Megan realized she was being called to ministry as well.   Prayer Experiences Megan felt the Lord asking her to pick up a pen and start writing Megan started writing down full sentences in her prayer journal during group prayer. As soon as she wrote down her words, someone across the room would say what she had just written down. God was developing a gift of scribing in Megan. From then on, she has heard the voice of God through the writing of her pen.   Keith received a clear message from the Lord:  Keith wherever you go , has to be totally rooted in orthodox christianity, and totally open to the power of the Holy Spirit, so that you can operate the way I’ve made you. Keith’s internal antenna/knower began to hear the voice of God very clearly and God’s instructions were very specific and clear.   Confront the Lie - “I don’t hear from God very much” We want to encourage you, that you hear the voice of God, YOU DO. We have experienced a vibrant, growing, passionate relationship with Jesus through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as he speaks to us daily.  Listeners, our ears, hearts, eyes, entire bodies were designed by a God who wants to communicate with us.    The Witchdoctor Confronted We had a group over for diner and Megan disappears to go check on the kids and just doesn’t come back. Keith gets concerned and goes to check on Megan. An African woman dressed in tribal clothing and looked like a witch doctor with beads hanging off her clothing and strange relics all over her. This is a hostile situation and we need the Lord’s direction on how to get this witch doctor off of our property. Keith asked the Holy Spirit to lead him. The Spirit led Keith to "bless her in the name of Jesus” . When Keith prayed this she ran off the property.     This podcast has been all about the journey that we have been on as we learned to listen to God and be obedient to what He’s asking us to do. 

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to the Everfree Podcast.

I am Keith Peeler and I'm here with my amazing wife Megan Peeler.

And babe, we have a passion for prayer and prayer that sets people free, don't we? 

We sure do.

And the purpose of the Everfree Podcast is to share stories, biblical principles, concepts, and tools that are going to help you find freedom in a relationship with Christ that is naturally supernatural.

Welcome to episode number two.

And in this episode, you can expect to hear...

How we first started to hear the voice of God more clearly and how hearing God allows us to follow His will.

So when we first started praying and really working with students in Dallas, we were working on staff at a large church, and that was going great.

We loved it, but there was something that was stirring in us, and our calling together was changing, and my heart was changing.

And through some discernment and prayer and some leadership development stuff, went through a process of really discovering a calling statement.

And that calling statement helped me really pay attention to what am I supposed to be doing with my time, my life, and it led us to leave the church positively.

The church encouraged us, sent us forth really well, but in that journey, sending us forth, it was all about God asking us to live a life of more radical hospitality and radical transformation.

And so we were leaving the local church that we had loved, and we grew there and all...

It was awesome, but we realized that there were people in our lives that were not going to ever come to church.

And how do we create an environment of transformation for those folks? And so we moved, and as we were leaving and leaving the church, we started having these prayer experiences.

And I don't remember which one came first.

If it was you, we were kind of praying with that group in the back of the house, or if it was me in the process of putting my job.

Let's talk about that time.

We had that group of friends over, and we're praying, and God just did something in you.

What happened? 

Well, we were meeting with our friends to pray and discern what the next steps were going to be.

And I felt like the Lord was telling me to pick up a pen and paper, and as I did, I started writing.

And I would write full sentences, and then someone across the room would say exactly what I had written on the paper.

And it happened several times, and I freaked out a little bit, because I didn't know what was happening, and I threw my pen.

I remember, like, it was yesterday.

I know.

It was awkward.

I threw my pen.

I was like, I don't know what's going on.

I felt a little panicked.

We had some very discerning friends in the room, and they were just explaining that this is a gift, and that I had the gift of scribing.

And so from then on, I've always felt like the Lord speaks through my pen.

Yeah.

And part of that was we were talking about, like, our history and our background within traditional churches was wonderful.

It was filled with the Spirit, but we didn't understand the power of the Holy Spirit.

I had had some kind of odd encounters, and a few of them will highlight the future podcasts, but Megan had had some encounters.

But really, we're in this place of marriage, we're in this place of...

I've been a minister for 15-plus years in a local environment, but the idea of moving in power was new, and certainly not something we focused on.

So really, this whole scribing thing was kind of a form of words of knowledge, right? 

As we've learned about it, it's like God was putting something in your heart, and to show you that He was kind of bringing unity to the conversation and unity to the prayer, like what He was putting in you is now being revealed in somebody else.

Yeah, it was confirmation.

Total confirmation.

Because how could you write something on a piece of paper and have someone across the room? 

That was like, either there's some weird magic in the room, right? 

Or this was God.

And that's part of the process of us trying to go, okay, that was...

It felt awkward at first, and then I quit my job.

Like, not too long after that.

And I just walked into my boss's office, and he was trying to help make my job work, but once I had this calling statement, I knew what we were supposed to do, it wasn't gonna happen.

And so I did, and that was a bit of a challenge for us.

It required us to depend on hearing God's voice for the next steps.

Yeah, because we didn't have an idea.

We didn't know.

We didn't know what we were gonna do.

But we knew we were going out.

Yeah.

There's no doubt.

And so, Megan has this thing happening, and then as we're praying together and praying with college students, then I start feeling like I'm hearing more and more.

And so then I have this very clear message I get from the Lord one day.

I'd quit the job and I'm trying to figure out, like, you know, my boss is like, what are you gonna do next? 

I'm like, I don't know, but I know, I just know this is what God's calling us to do, and we're just gonna pray and wait.

And so in that time of prayer, I heard God say very clearly, Keith, wherever you go, has to be totally rooted in Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox traditional ways of thinking, good solid teaching, and totally open to the power of the Holy Spirit so that you can operate the way I've made you.

And my instant response was, good luck, Lord.

Because I literally have this conversation with God going, yeah, right.

Because my experience was coming from the background that I had, which is my journey, where I was from, is either that was super charismatic, weirdo, stuff, and things I didn't understand and didn't want to be a part of, or my experience was, yes, we acknowledge the Holy Spirit, but we really trust the Scriptures.

So our Trinity wasn't the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Our Trinity was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Scripture.

And so that was my tradition, and it was a great tradition.

So I honor it and I bless it because it was word-focused.

But now that these experiences, like, I'm hearing the audible voice of God, or I'm sensing it actually more in my heart, in my head, not really words out loud, when I say I heard him say, it was more like kind of in my head.

Your knower.

Yeah, in my knower, kind of thing.

Yeah, it's my internal antenna, if you will.

I heard it, and it was very specific and clear.

So that really goes like, yeah, right, good luck.

But then God had us on a journey and we met up with our missions agency and had a powerful encounter at Urbana, which is this large missions conference.

And so I get connected to a guy there.

I was a college pastor at this church, so I have like 25 students I've brought to St.

Louis for this big conference, and I'm meeting different missions agencies.

And I connect with a guy named Travis at CRM, this missions agency, and it just felt like family.

So then he goes, all right, look at the website.

When you get home, check it out.

Read about us, and then call me a couple weeks.

Bring your questions, whatever you can learn about us, and let's learn about you, and let's just see if God's doing something.

So I did, and I grabbed the link on the website from Urbana's site, because I couldn't remember the theo, and it links over.

And as it links over to the website, there's this dialogue bubble that pops up that says, CRM is open to the gifts of the spirit and rooted in solid theology or something like that.

I go, awesome.

Well, that's a green light, because I felt like that's just what the Lord said.

So I get on the phone with Travis, and we have our conversation and an hour into the deal.

We're like, okay, great, we're shutting down.

I go, by the way, Trav, I saw this thing on the website, and God's really been moving in our life and told me this statement that's right there.

He goes, wait, what did you say? 

I said, yeah, you know, you clicked the link from Urbana to get to your website, and this dialogue box pops up to just let people know about, you know, who you guys are.

He goes, Keith, I'm not saying that you didn't see that, but that's not specifically on our website anywhere.

I'm like, wait, wait, what? 

He goes, yeah, he goes, now that's true of who we are.

And in fact, there's some people that right now, an organization that are really helping us, and we're bringing in trainers and coaches that are helping us really understand these things.

I was like, so here's this supernatural occurrence now, so I'm hearing the voice of God, Megan's having these experiences, and now I'm like, okay, we need to pay attention, right? 

So as this is happening, and I had that, you know, I'm kind of off doing this because I'm the quote-unquote, I'm the minister, and you're my amazing wife who's partnering with me.

But in this, there was really an invitation for you too, wasn't there? 

Yeah, well, I think having that moment that you had on the website was confirmation for me to feel more confident about God's leading in all this.

It just felt like we needed these signs, we needed these confirmations.

But when we stepped into ministry together as missionaries, the organization, our organization interviewed us.

And I had never really thought that I needed to be interviewed, because that was your job.

I'm a speech therapist, and now they were just as interested in me, as they were in you.

And it brought some things out of me, some insecurity, some, I don't know, I just never imagined myself being in ministry with you.

I was just married to you.

You really didn't want to be married to a guy in ministry at that point.

Yeah, no, God had another plan.

So it's just been neat to see how we have grown as a couple in ministry, and are becoming more of a team than you just doing the ministry.

And it's interesting, because I saw that in you in different ways, more than you did, maybe there were some hesitancies, but that made a lot of sense to me.

And I was very honored to see how much they wanted to know about you, because we do do this together.

And so from that point, we launched into a neighborhood, we spent six months driving around.

And again, all these things, God just one step at a time is inviting us more and more into hearing his voice, just seeking him and making decisions based on what we can discern he's saying to us.

And I feel like I'm surprised every time I hear his voice.

Even still.

I'm just like, I wouldn't know to do this if it weren't for the Lord leading us.

So if you're listening, here's what we want to really encourage in you is that you hear the voice of God.

You do.

And the number one lie that we hear the enemy kind of just putting in people's heads all the time is, well, I don't really hear from God all that much.

Or I've only had a couple of powerful encounters with God.

It's like the powerful encounter of God is just this far away thing that only happens every so often, just to keep you interested enough in Jesus to keep you in the game.

And that is not what we have experienced over the last 10 years.

We have experienced a vibrant, growing, passionate relationship with Jesus through the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, as he speaks to us daily, moment by moment, minute by minute.

And anyone who's listening right now is capable of the same thing.

Our ears, our eyes, our hearts, our entire bodies were designed by a creator God that wants to communicate with us.

And so if you're listening to this, this is not a special story that is far away.

This is your story in a different format.

And so as we're sharing this story, our purpose in sharing it is to let you know that God invites you one step at a time, closer and closer, so that you can hear more and know more about who He is and how He's made you, so that you can operate this way.

And so as we are growing in that, now we're looking into a neighborhood and we're trying to find a neighborhood because the church owned the house we lived in.

So to take a new job meant that we had to find a new house.

And so here's another exercise in listening.

And we had no idea what the heck we were doing.

No, we drove all over Dallas.

Everywhere.

Okay, there's not a neighborhood.

North, south, doesn't matter.

And so what did the kids cut? 

We went a wandering and they were younger and we would stick them on a video in the car and drive around.

And you know you've had your kids in the car way too long when they're, do we have to watch another video? 

They were done.

And so here's what we were doing though.

We were literally fishing for a neighborhood.

Yeah.

And God just said, go get in the car.

And we drove around.

We drove north, south, east, west, and everywhere we went we said, Lord, is this it? 

And there were some things we were looking for, some ideas that we had, but really it was just like this.

Is this it? 

And so time is getting closer.

They've already hired my replacement.

The guys coming to move in.

They're like, okay, Peeler, you got such and such time to move out.

And like a week out, a week later, yeah, a week away from having to move out of the house.

I get a call from a buddy who's in a seminary class with me.

He says, Hey, Peeler, I'm moving.

I think you'd love living in this house.

I know you're trying to find a new place to live.

Come see it.

And I looked at on the map and honestly, I blew them off.

I was like, I don't know.

That area doesn't like, I don't think that's the right area.

Blew them off for like a week.

He calls me and goes, Hey bro, you ever, you ever gonna connect? 

And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I, I roll over.

We're laying in bed and I said, babe, let you know this guy's bugging me about this house.

Let's just go see it.

There'll be one more note that gets us closer to RDS.

And she's like, okay, fine.

So we get the kids and we drove over to this house on Tremont street over in East Dallas.

It's mustard yellow.

It was mustard yellow, but there's this green and there's this big green porch.

But as they pull up, my buddy's dad, his parents are there, the grandparents, they're sitting on the swing, having a beer and their kids are playing in the yard.

And we're like, whoa, kind of cool.

And then, and then we have another power encounter.

Literally come up the steps to this house and open the door and I like get smacked in the face with the Holy Spirit, like a physical encounter.

I felt tears.

And what happened to you? 

I felt tears just welling up in my eyes.

And I just, I knew that we had entered our home.

It was just something in my heart just said, this is it.

Yeah.

And it was a relief as well.

I felt relieved that this was our place.

And, and, and I literally heard just that same in my knower, welcome home.

And I was like, we don't even have to see the rest of the house.

It was beat up and old.

It's 110 year old house.

And it had, it needed lots of love.

Okay.

It was rough, but it was, it was beautiful and it was spacious and we just knew it.

So now we're having another power encounter where God is showing up.

And, and, and here's the thing about God, He is overcoming our flesh because our flesh is like, we don't really want to see this house, but we just kind of, you know, even when our flesh is not paying attention to paying attention, the Lord gets our attention.

And so, so we find this house and it was unbelievable.

So that's what's getting us like, now we're in this place of now we're seeing that God's inviting us into hearing from Him.

And we're exercising, we're taking these little exercising steps like, let's just try it.

Let's just, let's ask God to show us something to see what happens.

And so these little experiments keep happening and you know, all these different stories we share with you.

And then we get into the house and we have our first, what I would call our most pivotal conversation, pivotal moment, pivotal encounter.

And so as, as again, you guys are getting to know us a little bit as we're having this podcast, we are high hospitality people, right? 

And so my wife is an amazing hostess and, and we're maybe a week, week and a half into, in the new house.

We invited some people over to consider partnering in the ministry and just letting them share, you know, our vision for what we're going to do.

And we're having this great dinner and Megan goes, hey, I'm going to go check on the kids.

They're out in the front yard.

So she disappears.

I'm like, yeah, sure.

This makes sense.

Well, then she didn't come back for a while.

And so they want you to tell everybody kind of, you went to check on the kids and then what happened? Yeah, I went to check on the kids because they had been gone a little while and we're still in a new neighborhood.

And it's not the safest environment.

I mean, there's some crime that happens around our neighborhood.

So, but I walked out and this woman was standing like on the sidewalk and she was reaching out to the kids.

And she was this African American woman and she was dressed in something you would see like a witch doctor, like she had beads hanging from her arms and very strange things all over her body.

And she was talking about wanting to touch the kids.

And I was, I was alarmed because it was so peculiar.

She wouldn't talk to me.

She only wanted to touch the kids.

And just as I'm like starting to like not really know what to do, you walk out and you see that something just isn't quite right.

And just like you, though, my first impression was great.

Somebody who's different than us, we can invite them into the house or, you know, get to know them, invite them into relationship.

And I'm like, oh, I sit down the porch and I'm like, oh, and I started listening to what she's saying.

And I get the same impression.

I'm like, this is a witch doctor.

She doesn't just look like one.

She is one.

And now I'm like, something inside me is like, no, this is not a hospitality situation.

This is a hostile situation.

You need to get her off the property.

And I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm trying to learn how to listen to you.

What do I do? 

Because this is not something I was equipped for in my everyday life before.

And I just gently hear the Holy Spirit just nudging inside my heart, my knower just go, bless her in the name of Jesus.

So a little bit hesitantly I go, I just interrupt her.

I said, ma'am, I held my hand up.

I just, I said, I just bless you in the name of Jesus.

And she darn near jumps out of her.

Don't you bless me.

Like full on, like jumps back two feet.

And I realize something happened when I, so I, I'm gonna do it again.

So I go, I bless you in the name of Jesus.

And she jumps back even further.

Don't you bless me.

And I realized this is a, I'm having an encounter with something other in the midst of this woman doing what she's doing.

And I finally see it the third time in the name of Jesus, I bless you.

And she runs off the property, goes down to the corner, turns around, does this little witch doctor dance and like, looks like her arms are throwing something at me.

She's throwing.

Like a cursor.

I don't, and I'm like, uh, so okay, Jesus, you're gonna have to help us out on this one.

Cause I've never seen anything like that.

I don't know what to do with that.

So in Jesus' name, protect my property.

Is that the right way to pray? 

I don't know.

And so we went back inside and finished dinner with our friends.

And the next day, like as soon as I could, I called the president of our missions agency and, and he invited us into a training, experience with God named Dr.Charles Kraft, who became our mentor.

And it was all about how do we introduce spiritual warfare into this organization as a way of equipping and training our frontline people.

And here's what was happening.

We were realizing that there were spiritual forces at work in our neighborhood that we didn't know how to deal with.

And then as I've been thinking about that, it reminded me of Romans eight.

So I'm gonna read from verse, I'm gonna verse 31.

It says, what then shall we say in response to these things? 

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.

How will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? 

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? 

It is God who justifies.

Who then is the one who condemns? 

No one.

Christ Jesus who died more than that, who is raised to life is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it is written for your sake.

We face death all day long.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There is power in his name and no angel or demon can separate me or you from his love.

And it was a love encounter.

All of these things we're talking about today, these are love encounters with God.

Over this part of our story and journey, how did you feel? 

What was because you're a feeler emotionally and you're a processor.

Right.

This process of going from being in a safe church in a safe neighborhood to this calling and these stories that we've shared today, what was your emotional journey like in all of that? 

I think looking back now I can see that I was filled with a lot of fear and I was fearful of what I didn't know or understand in regards to, for example, the switch doctor.

I didn't know how to handle that, but I also felt a lot of trust in God leading us there.

It was such a huge cliff dive and I felt like we were diving off of a cliff and leaving all that was familiar.

And what I also realized is in the beginning, I really needed to have a plan B.

I remember that.

I needed you to tell me that if this didn't work out, we were going back to work for a church.

I was really needing that to be the case as my security blanket.

And we got, you know, a couple months into our ministry in East Dallas and I realized there's no plan B is there? 

No.

And there's really not.

Like when you're following Christ, you don't get a plan B.

Nope.

You just do what He tells you to do.

And that has been a comfort actually to realize that that's what we're doing now.

Yeah.

So we're going to wrap it up here for our second episode.

This has been the journey of us learning how to listen, learning how to be obedient as we're listening to God.

We pray that it blesses you and encourages you.

Any questions you may have, feel free to reach out.

We'd love to engage more conversation and we look forward to our next episode.

So have a great day and we'll look forward to visiting with you again very soon.

Talk to you later.

Bye.

Thanks for listening today.

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