Stop Grinding, Start Surrendered: Hearing the Holy Spirit in the Noise

Are you running through life completely exhausted? Most of us spend our days grinding, pushing, and trying to muscle through our struggles, treating God as a backup plan instead of our source of power. But the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives inside of you. We just need to learn how to tap into it, listen to His voice, and surrender control. 

In this episode of Kingdom Chaos, Troy digs into what it actually looks like to be led by the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. We discuss why closed doors are often God’s mercy, how to hear God’s quiet whisper over the noise of modern life, and a direct challenge to men on stepping up as spiritual leaders through true surrender. 

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What’s in this episode

- Tapping into Holy Spirit Power: Why self-powered grinding leads to total exhaustion.

- Defining the Spirit: Understanding the Holy Spirit as a distinct person and fully God, not a lower-tier phenomenon.

- Open Doors & Redirections: How God uses both open and closed doors to protect His plan for your life.

- Lessons from Paul in Acts 16: Why dead ends and blocked paths are often God's mercy in disguise.

- Hearing God in the Whisper: Cutting through packed schedules and digital notifications to create margin for God’s voice.

- Intimacy Over Religion: Moving from performance and checklists to an authentic relationship with Jesus.

- Sanctification, Conviction & Grace: Understanding the difference between condemnation (shame) and conviction (grace).

- Spiritual Leadership for Men: Why real strength in marriage and family requires trading control for surrender.

- The Wilderness Season: How God uses desert experiences for spiritual preparation rather than punishment.

- Weekly Challenge & Prayer: Practical steps to quiet your schedule and lean into God’s presence this week.

Key Scriptures

“The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” Romans 8:11

“the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time….again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there.” Acts 16:6–10

“…this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

“…the Lord was not in the wind….the Lord was not in the earthquake….the Lord was not in the fire….after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. ” 1 Kings 19:11–13

“[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him…” Philippians 3:10

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you.” Matthew 7:21–23

Reflection questions

1. Where are you grinding? What area of your life are you currently trying to "muscle through" in your own strength instead of relying on God?

2. Revisiting Closed Doors: Looking back on a past "closed door" or unanswered prayer, can you see how God used it as protection or redirection?

3. Cutting the Noise: What is one specific distraction (notifications, commute audio, busy schedule) you can turn off this week to create room to hear God's whisper?

4. Conviction vs. Shame: When you mess up, do you run away from God in shame or run toward Him for refining grace?

5. For Men & Leaders: In what practical way can you take off the posture of total self-reliance and lead your family or community through surrendered prayer this week?

Key Takeaway
Stop operating as a self-powered grinder. Closed doors aren't always a setback—they are often God's mercy keeping you from rooms He never called you to rule over. True spiritual strength comes when you trade the need for control for total surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Quote from the episode
"The Holy Spirit's not going to compete with your noise. He’s not going to shout over your notifications, your news feed, or your busy schedule. If you want to hear a whisper, you have to lean in and get close."

• Apply / Inquiry: Email TroyP@KingdomChaos.com or reach out via social media! 

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Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Transcript

Resurrection Power And Exhaustion

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The creator of the universe lives within us that kind of power. So, why are so many of us running through life completely exhausted? Grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, we're gonna talk about the Holy Spirit. My name is Troy, and this is Kingdom Chaos.

Defining The Holy Spirit

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Now, before we talk about the Holy Spirit and how he leads us and how we hear his voice, how we follow him, we need to define him first. First, he is a he, a person, not an it. He is part of the Holy Trinity. That's not a math problem, that's not somebody in the matrix, but that's actually a dynamic relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons and one Godhead. And I think a lot of the time we take the Holy Spirit and put him in a lower category, a lesser than, some kind of phenomenon or some kind of warm emotional experience we have in a worship service, but the Holy Spirit is fully God. In Romans 8, 11, it says that we have the power that rose Christ from the dead living within us. Now think about that for a second. The person that created everything, the creator of the universe, lives within us, that kind of power. So why are so many of us running through life completely exhausted? It's because we don't tap into that power that we have. We try to do things in our own strength and muscle through it. I got this mentality. We grind, we push, and we treat God as some kind of a backup plan instead of the source. I did that for years. But if we want to stop doing this self-powered grinding movement, we need to learn to hear his voice and to follow him. So we're going to go through that today.

The Spirit Opens And Closes Doors

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So how does the Spirit lead us? Well, first, he leads us through open doors, he closes some doors and redirects us, he leads us through light seasons and through the heavy seasons as well. When we talk about the Holy Spirit, I think that we have this vision of when he leads us that these wide open doors or these pathways that are brightly lit for us to walk through. But when we look at Paul's life and his journey through Acts 16, we get a different picture that's painted. Paul wanted to preach in Asia and Bithynia good things, spiritual things, spreading the gospel, but the scriptures say that the Holy Spirit explicitly blocked him, redirected him, and sent him to Macedonia. The Spirit doesn't just open doors, but he closes them. And he doesn't just close them to protect you, he closes them to protect God's plan for your life. If Paul can be redirected, I know I can be redirected, and you can be redirected too.

Paul’s Redirected Plan In Acts 16

SPEAKER_00 3:01

So let's stop for a second. Let's dig in a little bit about Paul's mindset in this. Paul wasn't waiting for some lightning bolt kind of moment in his life. He wasn't sitting on the couch just waiting around. He was active, he was moving, he had a plan, and he was moving toward his goals. But the spirit said no. When he wanted to go to Asia, the Spirit closed that door. Then Paul tried to go to Bithynia. Again, a good place, good things that he was doing. Again, the Spirit closed the door. How many of us in that moment would have thrown up our hands and had a full-blown spiritual crisis? Little tantrum like a two-year-old, oh, these good things I wanted to do, they keep getting shut down. We assume God must be angry at us, or we misheard him, or the enemy is attacking us. But sometimes closed doors are just the Holy Spirit's mercy. He closes doors to keep us from walking into rooms that he never meant us to rule over. When Paul finally yielded to the Spirit and was redirected from those closed doors, God gave him a vision of a man in Macedonia crying out for help. And when Paul did that and moved where the Holy Spirit wanted him to, he actually brought the gospel to Europe and eventually to all the Western world. So your closed door today might be the precise setup that God is going to have some kind of a breakthrough through you. So stop fighting the dead ends and ask the Holy Spirit, where are you leading me to? You know, a lot of my prayers are like that nowadays. I pray that God, if I'm going the wrong direction, then please redirect me. And I want to be clear, I add a caveat. I tell God, gently redirect me, because I've been in that place too where God has had to push me because I fight Him. But I've had too many experiences with Jesus to know that I want to be within his will, that that is the but best place to be. And I'm in a season in my life right now that I have to listen very closely to God. I'm taking steps of faith and I want to know I'm going on that right path. And I just finished reading Acts again, where Paul is shipwrecked and he's beaten within an inch of his life, and he's bitten by a viper. And again, we would have thrown up our hands if we were Paul and said, this can't be God's will for my life. I must have misunderstood him. Somebody needs to hear this today. We need to stop praying to change God's mind. Sometimes God has already answered us, but we keep praying because we want to hear a different answer. We act like God is some kind of genie. And Paul, you know, if any of us had the right to do that, it was Paul, but he didn't do that. He just followed the Spirit wherever he led. Remember, the Israelites, they begged for an earthly king. They had a king who was God, but they wanted a king like everybody else. And God gave them that king. And man, they regretted that one. But I want you to know you should not be demanding your own terms to God. Allow yourself to trust him and follow his timeline. How many of us have run away the second things got uncomfortable? Just because they're hard and uncomfortable doesn't mean that's not God's plan for your life. It just means that they're hard things. Jesus didn't call us to be comfortable, he called us to take up our cross daily. So get comfortable being uncomfortable. Otherwise, you're gonna have a long, hard road trying to follow Jesus. Your job title, your skills, your talents, they're not your ultimate purpose. They're just vehicles. Your purpose is found in Micah 6. If you're a musician and you can't play an instrument anymore, you're an athlete and you get injured, your purpose isn't taken away. It's still in Micah 6.8. It defines your purpose to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. If something like that, what happened to Paul, happens in your life, you have rough patches, and you get drastically redirected, you didn't get that job, or that that girl or guy doesn't want to date you, or whatever happens in your life, that the spirit is closing doors. Those hard seasons in our life usually strip away those earthly desires and attachments that we have. So we that we can completely and purely come to him and be led by him. He did something in my life that's just that. I was gonna lose my entire family if I didn't choose him. I had a path to take. I was at a crossroads, choose him or not. If I didn't choose him, I was gonna lose my entire family. Yeah, my career would have probably taken off. But the most important thing in my life would have disappeared. By the grace of God, I chose my wife and my family through choosing Christ, and eventually it brought my entire family to him. And that's how open doors and closed doors work. We are led by the Spirit and we have to hear him, but how do we do that?

Hearing God In The Whisper

SPEAKER_00 8:29

We have to listen to his quiet whisper and discern his voice, but that's just it. He's not gonna yell at us. There's gonna be a quiet whisper. The spirit does not yell through all your noise and schedule that you've put out. There's this quiet whisper, this still voice. We continually pack our schedules full of mess and distractions and noise. It's so packed with noise that God could be speaking to us through the Spirit, but we can't hear him. But he's not gonna yell. He whispers, he wants that proximity to us. Let's be honest, whenever we stop at a red light, what do we do? We pull out our phones. If we go into a quiet room, we turn on a podcast, we turn on the TV, we fill up our space with noise because honestly, we don't want to sit in silence because we don't want to sit in our anxiety or our convictions or our thoughts. But the Holy Spirit's not going to compete with your noise. He's not gonna shout over your notifications, he's not gonna shout through your news feed or your cable news or your busy schedule. Look at Elijah in 1 Kings 19. There was a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire, and God wasn't in any of that. God spoke in a gentle whisper. If you want to hear a whisper, you have to lean in and get close to that person that's speaking to you. You have to get close, you have to create margin, and you have to get close to that person, and we have to do that daily with God. Turn off your radio on your commute to work or your commute home, put your phone in another room for 30 minutes or an hour. Give the Holy Spirit room to speak to your heart.

Intimacy Over Religion In Prayer

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Another thing we need to do is we need to build intimacy, not a religion. It's about a relationship. So there's this story that I heard from a pastor long ago, and I may have already told you guys this on a previous podcast, but it's so true and it illustrates it well. If there's a stay-at-home mom and a dad that goes to work and a two-year-old child and a stranger, that dad goes to work for eight hours a day, and that two-year-old is just beginning to speak, so that dad is around a lot, just not all the time. So that dad's starting to understand what that child is saying as that child develops word and senses. But that mom is around that child all the time. And so that mom understands every word that that child says. But the stranger that comes around every once in a while, maybe once a month, doesn't understand anything. It's all about the proximity and how how much you spend time with God, just like that child. If you spend more time with God, you start to discern his voice from the noise that goes on in your head. And in Philippians 3.10, we see that Paul talks about his single-mindedness, that he wants to know Christ deeply and intimately. And in scripture, that word knowing, it's a covenant relationship. It's an intimate knowledge, it's a closeness that we don't really understand. It's not head knowledge. And if we look in Matthew 7, there is a chilling warning that Jesus gives us to people on judgment day when they come and list all of their earthly accomplishments, even if they say we did this in your name, it's about all about their accomplishments and what they did. I did this in your name, I did that. And what God wants, what Jesus wants, what the Holy Spirit wants, is not all your activities. He wants your intimacy. They came with everything that they did, but they hadn't surrendered their hearts to Him. So some of you don't know how to pray, or you say you don't know how to pray, that it's intimidating. And I get that, I was there before. But listen, you don't have to be some spiritual guru or some theologian or scholar. You don't have to speak in the King James Version with all the these and the thou's. Jesus is a person. Come to him like he's sitting in front of you and just talk to him like you an everyday person. You have relationships with so many people and you just talk to him. Talk to Jesus like he's a person. He wants that relationship with you. The same relationship you have with other people. He wants an intimate with you, like one that's close, that you spend every day with him, that you guys are together. And listen, don't think you have to come to him with all your life issues cleared out and everything put together and lined out. He meets you in the middle of your mess. He didn't wait for me to get everything together. When I first started walking with the Lord, I thought I had to have some kind of a spiritual moment, some kind of a light switch activity, some kind of a special prayer that was gonna all of a sudden erase all of these bad habits or uh all these bad decisions that I was making, that everything had to be perfect, I had to have my life all together, and once I did a prayer, it was gonna, it was gonna happen and everything was gonna vanish

Sanctification Plus Conviction Not Shame

SPEAKER_00 13:55

instantly. But that's not how the Holy Spirit works. God breaks down those walls over time. Now, don't get me wrong, when you come to Christ, your salvation, that's immediate, that's instant. But sanctification, which is just this big theological word that means that God is making you like Him each and every day, it's a work in progress. So your sanctification is a process. The Holy Spirit starts to change your heart and it's a refining of your character and it's a daily walk. So stop beating yourself up over wrestling with something that you think that should have passed long ago. Listen, conviction, that's not condemnation. Condemnation drives you to shame, but conviction, true conviction, drives you toward his grace. In my early walk, I literally walked into church hung over. And I probably told you this story too, but I don't think I've told you this part of it. When I was in church service, sitting there hung over, because I was drunk the night before, God, through the Holy Spirit, did not condemn me. He came and sat next to me. He met me in my mess. He did not condemn me, he gave me grace. And in a nice, gentle whisper, as I sat there in service, he said, Troy, is this how you want to present yourself to Jesus? If Jesus came down here today, if this was judgment day, is this how you would want to see him and present yourself to him? And that convicted me to not ever get drunk again. And I haven't been drunk since. Now, I did have some drinks and eventually he convicted me not to drink again, just because I didn't want that anymore. I didn't want that in my life anymore. So he met me where I was at with love, and he loved me so much that he didn't want to leave me in my mess. He started to work in my heart and I surrendered to him.

Men And Surrendered Leadership

SPEAKER_00 15:56

This is a word to men, real quick. Now, ladies, don't change the channel, don't fast forward, don't stop listening. But I want to speak to men. I need men to step up and be spiritual leaders of your home, spiritual leaders of the people around you. You'll go to stadiums and you'll act like an absolute fool. You'll jump up and down, raise your hands, scream until you can't talk anymore. For somebody that's on a field or court that doesn't know you exist, but if you walk into a church, you can't raise your hands for a God who gave up his only son because he loved you that much. You'll go out with your buddies and you'll build relationships, but you can't come home, grab your wife's hand, and pray with her for our struggles, the things that's going on at work or her parenting or whatever's on our heart because you'll think you look foolish. I get it. I've been there, I understand, but what we need to do is get away from the lies that say that it's intimidating, it's too scary, or I'll look foolish. Those are all lies and they keep you in chains and they keep you from leading your family well. In this world, we're told as men that we need to be strong, we need to be in control, we have to have status and self-reliance and intelligence. But the Holy Spirit teaches us that true authority comes with surrender to the Spirit. In everyday lives, trust your bank account, your career, your muscles, your looks, what you're doing going through life. But when real trial hits, all that stuff is shaky ground and falls apart. We need to listen to the Holy Spirit and what that really means and trading our need for control and surrender to Him. Ultimate authority is in the Holy Spirit, not in ourselves. Real strength isn't muscling through through life because a lot of us guys think, I've got this, I can take care of this, I'm a guy. But the spiritual voice, listening to him, that's the backbone that we need as men, as spiritual leaders, to obey him and walk through life with him in the lead. And that way we can lead our wives, our families, our kids, our friends well, even when it's uncomfortable, even when our friends think we're weird, even when it costs us something. If you're ready to stop grinding yourself and ready to come together with a group of men that will be your spiritual rock, whenever you start to sway, they'll bring you back to the Holy Spirit. This is where you need to go. If that's you and you want a group of solid men to walk by, come to my men's intensive. I'm gonna have one in October. I have limited spots, only eight guys, because I want to keep this small and intimate and to be able to do real work with God, to learn what it means to have a spiritual walk with God, to listen to the Holy Spirit, to pray to him, to be able to have journal time and know what it means to journal and why we journal, to get in his word, and to be able to know what it means to be a real man in this society. If that's you, if that's what you want, email me at Troy P at KingdomChaos.com or leave a comment wherever you're consuming this. I have limited seating. I want you to be there. So before we wrap up, I want to talk about one more thing.

Wilderness Seasons As Preparation

SPEAKER_00 19:20

That is the desert of life, the desert of scripture. Because if you've been following the Holy Spirit long enough, you've gone through a dry season of life, and it's hard, it's difficult. And we're going to look at Jesus walking through the desert in Matthew 4. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. That wasn't punishment, that was preparation ground. The scripture tells us that there's physical deserts, physical places that people in the Bible had to walk through and they had to rely on God for survival. Like Moses leads the Israelites through the wilderness, God gave them manna daily. They had to eat that manna for survival. And not only did the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness, he led him into temptation. And while he was fasting for 40 days, on that last day, Satan came and attacked him while Jesus was at his weakest, but he didn't give in because he had that intimate relationship with his heavenly father. He knew his father. He had a relationship with him. He didn't walk away because of the preparation that he had. In our lives, we have spiritual deserts all the time. And when we go through that, it strips away so much of our lives, our self-reliance. And what do we do when we have our self-reliance stripped away? We have to go to the only one we can rely on, and that's God through the Holy Spirit. And don't wait until those spiritual deserts, wilderness, dry times in your life come. Start preparing now with daily prayer, staying anchored in the word, building a community around you. That's what this intensive for men is going to be about. Building a community around us. We need that community to help us. When you build your spiritual foundation during a calm season, when those deserts of life come and everything seems to fall apart around you, have a strong foundation to hold on to.

Challenge, Next Steps, Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 21:27

So this week, what I want you to do, I want to challenge you this week. Don't wait for the dry season. Don't wait for the desert. Don't wait for the crisis. Seek God now. Build the shelter before the storm comes. Slow down. Slow life down. Turn down the volume of this world. Turn down the volume of your schedule. Stop relying on your own strength. I can do this on my own mentality. And start to listen to the whisper of the resurrection power that lives within you. God lives in within you through the Holy Spirit. Listen to Him, lean on Him. Be led by Him. And that way you can lead others well, like your family, like your friends, like your influence that you have. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for this message that you've given me. I thank you so much for the Holy Spirit that you put in my life. I thank you so much that you brought me to that place of surrender. I pray for those people that are listening that they come to that place of surrender as well. That they build a relationship with you from scratch, or they bolster that relationship by starting a new chapter, a new prayer plan, a new Bible reading, a new quieting of their life so they can hear you speak, a new quiet time, literally quieting their life down so they can hear your whisper. I pray for men to step up with that backbone of surrender to the Spirit and leading their family well and not being ashamed of holding their hands up in service or grabbing their wives' hands and praying for them, no matter what they think they look like. They look like a man of God. And I pray for women to encourage their men, to be there for them, to speak life into them, to give them respect as they lead their families well. I pray for couples that are out there to build strong families. I pray for those single people that they pray for a good, godly spouse to come and they live in a preparation place now, listening for you and be guided by you. I thank you so much, God, for what you're doing in my life and what you're going to do in others' lives. I pray in advance. I can't wait to see what you do with your kingdom and through it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.