SOR-004: Hearing God

In this edition of Sought Out Radio, Hosts, Herb Marks, Bethany Marks, Theresa Grote and Mark Grote discuss the basics on hearing God. How do we hear God? How can we grow in the gift of hearing God's voice? How do we know it's God or if it's just bad pizza? Originally broadcast on radio on 10/30/14. Show Notes: 1:45 What does it mean to hear God? 3:00 What is God saying to you right now? God has plenty to say and he speaks a lot more than we know, and he's speaking more than we're asking for. 4:30 Herb Marks: God comes down to our level to communicate with us. God meets us where we're at. He meets us there. Theresa Grote: Scripture of Fathers, "If your son asks for a piece of bread, how much more will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" So we should ask Him. 6:00 How do we hear God? Let's look as some examples: Herb Marks says we need to begin with a clear conscience. If your conscience is at risk, if we have sin in our lives, we can go back and make things right with God. Doing so, says, Bethany marks, causes our intimacy with God to increase. 7:40 Herb: We can make the noise loud in our life with sin and that sin just won't allow us to have peace. 8:25 Scripture puts a special emphasis on sexual sin.  Do what you need to do. How do you hear God? Clear conscience is the start. 9:10 Theresa Grote: Once we hit a level of growth, that doesn't mean we've arrived. With every new level, another level is required beyond it. Herb Marks: We can step into higher authorities as we develop our hearing of God's voice. 11:00 Mark Grote shares a story of an experience where he prophesied to a customer in Starbucks what he thought God wanted to say to that man. 12:40 - Herb summarizes and asks listeners to ponder what if this happened to you? What is God asks you to share something? What if someone comes to you as was the case with this man? What would we think? 15:00 Bethany Marks asks as a doubter might ask, stating "you're just going to make a mess of things." Some tell you not to do it. She asks, "What is the worst thing that can happen?"  Take the risk. Most people won't be upset with you even if we make mistakes. 16:00 Herb Marks, if we get an impression like that, remember that the one giving this impression to you, He's really big. And God allows us to be involved in an introduction to Himself. A lady asked Herb and Bethany to pray for her once. She asked God, if they hearing you, God, show them a crow. And as he shared a word, he shared a vision that he saw a crow. She was blown away and convinced that God was real and that Herb and Bethany we're hearing God. 17:45 Herb Marks continues with story about some construction workers where God impressed him to pray for safety over his crew. A story follows of miraculous rescue of a construction worker working high in basket at the end of boom who fell out but felt as if someone pulled him to safety. 20:00 Theresa Grote speaks about her private time with God and how she practices hearing his voice. She listens and sees visions or pictures in her mind and she journals what she hears and sees so she can test her own hearing when she reviews it later.  She starts there and then she practices on people as she grows in confidence of her own hearing. 21:30 - Bethany Marks will ask servers at restaurants if they can pray for them when they are eating out and about to bless their food. It's her little way to opening the door so they can speak openly about their faith in the marketplace. 22:30 - Mark Grote shares some guidance to follow to help point us in the right direction and to keep us from being paralyzed by fear.  Speaking of God thoughts....we can know if it's God when our thoughts are out of place with our life. If we don't normally speak openly about our faith, or if we never do something like that, or that's a huge fear for us, Mark says that's probably a good bet that it's God. He continues, when we are stepping out to do something we would never do that's usually good sign. Mark also encourages listeners not to take themselves too seriously with the prophetic - as if God would really let us ruin someones life with a wayward prophetic word.  He discourages listeners from thinking like that because God is always in control and much bigger than any prophetic words we could offer to someone. Herb closes with a thought.