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20. Does God Still Speak? Discern His Voice in a Busy World · Believe & Become | Ministry, Biblical Encouragement, God's Will, How to Change, Holy Spirit

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Today on the podcast we are talking about how to discern the voice of God in a busy world. There are so many voices yelling at us from every direction. How do you know which one is the right one to listen to? How do you know if God is speaking and more importantly, what is he saying? We're going to talk about all that today and more. Let's get started.
• 0:22
  Speaker B: If you're tired of leading others while secretly battling doubt, discouragement and mental warfare.
• 0:27
  Speaker A: And you want practical tools to renew your mind and walk boldly in your calling of leader, you're in the right place.
• 0:33
  Speaker B: Welcome to Believe and Become.
• 0:35
  Speaker A: We're Josh and Corina, your spirit-filled coaches here to help you overcome those limiting beliefs and lead others confidently.
• 0:42
  Speaker B: If you're ready to hear God's voice more clearly, to step into your purpose and find joy and strength in the everyday.
• 0:48
  Speaker A: Silence those Bible app reminders judging you from your lock screen and let's jump in. Hey friend, before we get started, we've got a quick invite for you. If you're a spirit filled Christian in leadership who's been caring a lot lately, maybe you're tired, overthinking or just wondering how to find your next breakthrough, we would love to help. Sign up for a free 25 minute transformation session where we'll help you get clarity and create a practical plan to move forward in peace. You'll also learn about our one on one coaching program designed to help you renew your mind and lead from presence instead of pressure. Just head to joshandcorina.com coaching that's J-O-S H-A-N-D-C O R-I-N A.com/coaching to book your session now let's dive in.
• 1:39
  Speaker B: Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today. We are so excited about this episode. This has been such a key thing that God has been teaching us. So today we're talking about does God still speak today? How to discern his voice in a busy world. But we are all so busy these days. Yeah. And boy, let me tell you, if you got kids, you're really busy.
• 2:01
  Speaker A: So busy.
• 2:02
  Speaker B: And how do we still ourselves enough to hear God's voice? Well I mean the answer to the first question, yes, he's speaking.
• 2:09
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 2:09
  Speaker B: He is absolutely speaking. He loves to speak to his children. Jesus says that we're his sheep and his sheep know his voice. You are designed to hear his voice. He is speaking to you all the time. The matter we have to get to is do we ever hear it? Do we ever get still long Enough to actually hear his voice. When you're praying, do you ever stop long enough to listen? That was my problem for a really long time. Prayer was all me talking all the time, me just jabbering and then, amen, done. Go about your day. I prayed. It's so easy to do. But God really wants to speak back to us. He wants to have a conversation. God is all about relationship. He loves speaking to us. And just think about your favorite relationships where it's a conversation. Yeah, it's back and forth, give and take. And that is what God wants to have with us. You know, this is something that we've overcome. This is a big lie that I couldn't hear God's voice. It always felt like, oh my gosh, God isn't speaking. I feel disconnected from him. That's a huge lie that I believed for a long time. And we've overcome this in the last few years. And. And really it was a matter of making space for him. I remember I used to get so frustrated. I just need you to speak. I need you to speak. I need to hear your voice. I need to hear what I'm supposed to do. And it wasn't until I would get into so much of a crisis that I was totally freaking out that finally I would take a whole afternoon, usually it was a Sunday afternoon after church, and I would just go lock myself in my office and pray. And God would speak so powerfully and so clearly to me. But it was took me getting to kind of the end of my rope before I would finally get focused enough and quiet enough that I could hear his voice and then he would speak powerfully. But it doesn't have to be like that, right? We have found that if we're just quiet, he's always speaking. If we're paying attention, if we're tuned into him, what he's doing, he is always speaking. So we have a few things to share with you that are gonna help you in hearing God's voice, discerning his voice, even when you're busy.
• 4:17
  Speaker A: I think one of the biggest things for me was recognizing that I'm always connected. I'm always connected to the Lord. I'm always connected to Holy Spirit. I can always hear him because I'm always connected. It's not like you have to dial him up and wait for the ringtone and hope he picks up. You know, he's there. He's always there. And the Bible tells us very clearly that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. If you have invited Jesus to be Lord and Savior of your life, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, but whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Your spirit and the Holy Spirit are connected. You are one. That means there is nothing that's going to come and separate you. Romans 8 tells us, there's nothing that can separate us from Him. And so we have an instant connection. There is no waiting. You don't have to go looking for Him. He is right there on the inside, connected to you. 1 Corinthians 3:16. Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? He lives inside of you. You house him. That is just so crazy to me that he has chosen to take up residence inside of our hearts and our spirits. You have this automatic connection with the Holy Spirit. It's not something that you have to drum up. It's not something that you have to go find. But like Josh said, it's often just about being still in his presence and listening to what he has to say. Instead of spending all of our prayer time talking, we can spend time listening and really engaging with him in conversation. We all have those friends or those people that we've met with where you thought you were getting together to, like, have a conversation, but instead they just talked the whole time. And you find yourself going, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, or tuning them out completely. It's like a classic sitcom shtick where the person is on the phone and they just put the phone down while the other person talks. Every once in a while they pick it up and go, oh yeah, uhhuh. No way. Put the phone back down, Go about their business, because the other person just won't stop talking. And I think often that's what our prayer life is like. Not that the Lord would ever be like, oh yeah, uhhuh. But that we never give him a moment. We don't let him get a word in edgewise. And so it's so important that we not only recognize that we're connected, but we also stop and listen.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's just waiting. God is such a gentleman and he respects us so much, probably more than we realize. He's so patient to listen to all of our prayers, all of our complaints, and he's just waiting, will you let me speak into this? And so inviting him. I love to let the Holy Spirit lead my prayer time and say, holy Spirit, what do you want to talk about today? What's on your heart? What's on your Mind. It's a relationship. He wants to know our heart. He wants us to know his heart for us and connect with us.
• 7:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:03
  Speaker B: I think one of the biggest lies that we believe is that we can get disconnected from Him. It's a complete lie from the enemy. A lot of times we're. We're relying on our feelings.
• 7:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:13
  Speaker B: It's like, oh, I don't feel close to God.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: Right.
• 7:17
  Speaker B: And our feelings are not. Our emotions are not reliable.
• 7:21
  Speaker A: Right.
• 7:21
  Speaker B: They do not tell us the truth. They usually tell us what we believe is the truth, but they don't tell us the actual truth. Yeah. And the truth is based on God's word to us. And there are so many verses in the Bible about how we're connected to Him. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us. We can't get disconnected to Him. We are perfectly connected to Him. And I think part of the problem is that Holy Spirit is a spirit. We have a spirit inside of us. That's the true part of us. And we connect to him spirit to spirit. And so often we've been taught or we've just practiced. I'm connecting brain to spirit. Like our brains, we. We can hear from God in our mind, of course. But the way that we. We most genuinely connect to him is spirit to spirit. And so exercising that and understanding that even if my emotions are telling me one thing, the truth is I'm connected to him and I'm receiving what I need to get from him, spirit to spirit. That understanding has changed my mind and my connection with the Lord. We know that God is always speaking to us. And remember that his voice always gives us hope.
• 8:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:24
  Speaker B: If it, if the voice you're hearing is condemning you or making you feel like everything's hopeless, that's not God. That's not the Lord. He is always going to fill us with hope. His voice in my mind sounds like a kinder, gentler, wiser version of my own voice that kind of knows things that there's no way I could have known them. Oh, wow. Okay. That's the Lord. Sometimes we go, oh, well, maybe I just had a really good thought. Thought or something. That's God speaking to us. Yeah. And remember that whatever God says to us, it will always align with his written word to us. It's going to fall in line with what he's already told us. It's not going to. It's not going to tell us something crazy new thing that's not in the Bible. So just always test what you're hearing against the scripture. The written Scripture. And then you'll know if it's filling you with hope. It aligns with God's Word. You know that that's him speaking to you.
• 9:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And so some of the things that you can do to make this practice of listening part of your life is meditate on Scripture. Start with whatever pops out to you in your daily reading. Or maybe there's a scripture that you keep hearing. You heard it on the radio, you heard it at church, you read it in your devotional. That's generally the Lord trying to grab your attention. And so grab that scripture. Take it as a promise or as a prophecy into your life and begin to meditate on it. That looks like rehearsing it in your mind, rehearsing it over and over, repeating it, memorizing it, continuing to say it throughout your day, to speak it over yourself, turn it into a prayer. However, it works best with the way your brain works. It's really about chewing on the Scripture to get all of the nutrients and goodness out of it. So meditate on Scripture. Take the Word and make it your food. Make it the food for your soul and your spirit that you need. And the Lord will begin to show you new things in His Word as you meditate on that scripture. Sometimes it just requires the practice of silence, which feels really hard for a lot of us because we're so used to there being constant noise, constant input. We're so connected to input. We're constantly consuming, consuming, consuming information. So what happens when we silence ourselves? We put our mind on sleep mode or silent. Right. And then we just allow the Lord to speak, speak to our hearts. And this, this could be something that, if it. If it's really difficult for you, that's probably a good indication that you need to do it. But this could be something that you start with. 30 seconds. I'm going to set a timer for 30 seconds. I'm just going to be silent before the Lord. I'm going to still my mind. I'm going to listen and say, holy Spirit, speak to me in this moment. And then gradually increasing that over time. A minute, two minutes, three minutes, however long you feel like the Lord is leading you. And another way is soaking. And I feel like this is something that maybe not everybody is familiar with, but soaking is simply turning on worship music. There's lots of Christian musicians who create soaking playlists where it's just music that is inspired by the Holy Spirit and you just soak in his presence. It's. It's literally like, I'm just laying here In God's presence, allowing him to seep into my pores, into my heart, into all of me. And it's really just about. I'm getting filled up with Him. And so there's just three really simple things that you can do. Meditate on scripture, sit in silence, and soak in his presence. That will allow you to be a better listener, not just the. The constant communicator. So those are some ideas for you to give it a try.
• 11:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, I love that idea of soaking. I mean, if you look in the Bible, remember the woman that just touched the hem of Jesus garment and was healed. Jesus clothes carried his power to heal. So cool. And they would. They would take handkerchiefs that were just with Paul on his body while he was working. They would send those out and people would get healed from these handkerchiefs. It's the same idea. I'm just going to be in Jesus presence, receive from him, and that changes us. Yeah, that's wild, right? That's just a crazy idea. It's so cool that we don't actually have to do anything but be with Him.
• 12:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:33
  Speaker B: And we absorb his presence. We carry his fragrance. We get Jesus on us and that changes us. And it. It will impact people. We will carry healing with us wherever we go. I like to land, say, I'm just a handkerchief in your presence, God, I'm absorbing you. Yes. A lot of times I fall asleep. But I think sometimes that the peace of God, because He is peace. Yeah. That that overwhelms us. Or sometimes he's like, hey, I'm going to calm your mind down enough that you can receive, like always sleep. We can receive from Him. It' his presence is so, so good.
• 13:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. So beautiful. And the third thing. So the first thing is remembering that you're always connected. The second thing is making. Make a practice of listening. And the third thing is check if God is trying to speak to you in a new way. So we get really accustomed to the way that we hear from God. If you have been listening a long time or if you've been like, I have this way that I really like to pray. I do it the same all the time. And God always speaks. And then one day I feel like I'm not hearing him. Maybe it's not that you're not hearing him. Maybe it's that he's speaking in a different way that you're not accustomed to listening. God wants to speak to us in all the ways. I think he likes to use all of our senses and all of the different ways to Speak. And so it's important that we learn to listen differently and that we recognize that if I didn't hear him in the way that I've always heard him, it doesn't mean that he's not speaking. Speaking. It doesn't mean that I'm a sinner and he doesn't love me anymore. It doesn't mean that I'm doing it wrong sometimes. It just means he's taking you on a new journey, on an adventure. And so is there a way that you can look for his answers in a different way?
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. I always feel like it's an invitation. Yeah. When it's like, okay, what I've been doing for a long time stopped working, there's an invitation to lean in closer and go, God, how are you? What are you doing different? What's. What's the new thing that you're doing that's so good? It's just like any other relationship. If. If you always just did the exact same thing, then it becomes routine. And he doesn't want our relationship with him to become routine. He wants it to be new. He always has something new for us to discover.
• 14:41
  Speaker A: Well, and it's not just routine. I think that we make it into a formula. Right, Right. Which is. Which is just for whatever reason, it's what people like to do. Just people in general, we like to go do this, and then this will happen. Yeah, Right. We want that. Maybe it's the consistency, but we turn it into this formula of if. Okay, if I sing two songs, and then I spin in a circle to the left, and then I pray for two, two minutes, and then I spin to the right. You know, like, we have this whole formula of how we get to hear from God and how he speaks to us. And I think he likes to make things exciting. And I think it's just exactly like what you said. It's a relationship. If every single time we went on a date, we went to the exact same restaurant, did the exact same thing, and had the exact same conversation, and. And I addressed you in the same way. Like, it would be. It would be kind of weird.
• 15:27
  Speaker B: That would be weird.
• 15:27
  Speaker A: It would be weird, right? I mean, we do kind of go to the same restaurants and do the same things a lot, but our conversations are always different. There is something that we love about the routine, but the conversation is different. The feeling is different, you know? And it's not like, well, if we don't go to dinner there, then it's not a real date. Like, that's not how it works. And it's the same with God. He wants to have that relationship that's fun and exciting, and he wants to take you on adventures. And so just look for him in a new way.
• 15:55
  Speaker B: He's always growing us into maturity. Yeah. He doesn't leave us as little children. Right, right. And so he's like, there's a new aspect of me I want to. There's a new muscle I want you to work out and get stronger. So it's always an invitation. It's never a punishment. I used to feel like, oh, I did something wrong. God's not talking to me. That's just a lie.
• 16:18
  Speaker A: Yep. The truth is, laugh at that.
• 16:23
  Speaker B: There's always an invitation to lean in closer to it. So we thought up a few different examples of where God might be speaking to us from an unexpected place. It might be in a Bible verse. Okay, maybe that's not unexpected. God's always going to speak to us. But it might. As you're reading, something jumps off the page, turn to it and go, God, let's. Let's explore that together. What are you saying through this? Highlight it. Write it down on a note card. Meditate on it throughout the day. Really dig into it, Research it. Figure out what is God speaking to me through this verse. Don't just go, oh, that was cool, and move on. Write it down. Say, God spoke to me through this verse data in your Bible and make a big deal out of it, because it is when God speaks to us, it's a big deal. And you want to rehearse that. Maybe it's in through a song that you hear on the radio, on Spotify.
• 17:14
  Speaker A: In the grocery store.
• 17:14
  Speaker B: In the grocery store. If your grocery store is playing Christian music.
• 17:20
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, it might not even be. It might be a love song. It might be. He can speak through anything. So just recognizing, okay, I asked him a question or I. I invited him to share something with me, he's going to answer. So it might not look like what I think it's going to look like. Right. It doesn't have to be a song at church. It could be a song like I said, at the grocery store, in an elevator. Like, there could be any number of ways that God can speak. Speak through a song or a verse.
• 17:47
  Speaker B: Yeah. And. And that's another big thing, is to expect him to answer. Sometimes you ask him a question, you don't hear an answer. You go, oh, no, he doesn't want to answer. He doesn't want to answer that. Just expect the answer's coming. Thank him. That the answer's coming even if you didn't hear it right away. And then be. Pay attention to things that you're going to see throughout the day. You're going to experience. And he's going to speak through maybe something different. Maybe, maybe he's going to speak to you through a dream. You might have a dream at night when you, when you feel the Lord on a dream. Write that down. I feel like God is speaking into my situation. Sometimes we might see something in our imagination. It could be just a quick picture, like a. Something that flashes through your brain real quick. Sometimes people will say, oh, I had this vision and it's this big elaborate thing. Sometimes he speaks just through. It's a quick picture in your mind. Pay attention to what's happening in your imagination. That's why he gave us our imagination, so he can speak to us in pictures. Isn't that wild? I love that. I love that so much.
• 18:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it could even be like you have a thought about a friend and then you see a picture of them maybe crying or laughing or whatever it might be and you're just like, oh, that was weird. And we tend to brush those things off. But that really could just be a quick text that's like, here, you okay? You know, hey, I just checking in on you. Wanted to let you know I'm thinking about you and maybe that's exactly the encouragement that they need. So just really paying attention to those little pictures that come in a flash. God could speak to you in reverse of that where somebody reaches out to you and says, hey, I've been thinking about you. Just wanted to encourage you. A word from a friend is just such a beautiful way that the Lord reaches us. So just thanking him and recognizing that when that happens, that's often the prompting of the Lord in somebody else's heart to speak. Speak to you.
• 19:29
  Speaker B: We have a six year old who is so full of love.
• 19:32
  Speaker A: Yes, he is.
• 19:33
  Speaker B: Like he is constantly telling us how much he loves us. He's always writing us little love notes. And I just think of that as that's God's human, little human love note to me. Yeah, that's just God expressing his love to me. Yes, through our little boy who's so sweet and so caring.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, he really is. And then through nature, I think this is a really cool way that God speaks to us. We. I'm not one of those, like, I'm not Snow White, you know, like where I'm like the birds and the little animals and they all speak to me. That's not anything in my nature. I generally tend to stay away from nature because it makes me nervous.
• 20:09
  Speaker B: It tries to attack me.
• 20:10
  Speaker A: It tries to attack me. Yes. But I had this experience where I was in a season of just feeling like I was inconstant, chaotic motion of just like, I have to take care of this and this and this and this. And there was so much, and I felt overwhelmed. And the Lord began to send me hummingbirds, which felt really unique and odd to me. And there are hummingbirds in our area, so it's not unusual to see them. But literally one day I was washing dishes, and there was a hummingbird in the tree outside the window. And it came up to the window and just looked straight at me and was lettering there until I noticed it and I saw it and flew away. And I was like, oh, that was really interesting because was like it was waiting for me. And then it flew away. And then it came right back and just fluttered in the window for another minute and then flew away. And I was like, okay, that was interesting. And then a few days later, I was sitting out on the porch just having time with the Lord, and the same thing, this hummingbird came flying over and just hovered in the air for a minute and then flew away. And so I was like, lord, are you speaking, Speaking to me through hummingbirds? So I looked up. This is the way that my brain works. Some people will sit and have a conversation with God about it, right? But I was like, I'm just gonna look up what hummingbirds mean, how they function. And what I found, which I believe the Lord led me to also, was this whole article about how the. The hummingbird. The wings are in constant motion, and they look like they're doing a lot, but the center of the hummingbird is always still. And I felt like the Lord was saying, karina, you can be still in the middle of what feels like chaos and chaotic motion around you. You don't have to be crazy because your arms are going in a hundred different directions. You can be still and centered in me. And it was just a really cool experience. It was the first of many more experiences where the Lord has spoken to me in nature and through animals and trees and things like that. But it's just a really cool way that if we pay attention, God speaks through everything and anything. It doesn't have to be the ways that we expect. And it doesn't have to be that still small voice. It could literally be anything that you come into contact with in a day. God will speak to you because he is always speaking and you're always connected. So paying attention, what is God saying through whatever I'm experiencing today? It could even be a message on a billboard or a number that you keep seeing over and over. Every time I open my phone or look at the clock, it's 5:55. I can't tell you how many times I've seen 5:55 in the last months. And so we know that five is the number of grace. And so I'm just like, okay, Lord, that's. Obviously you are extending grace in this season. And so I just thank him for it and keep moving on. But these are things that when we hear him and we actually begin to increase our awareness that he is communicating, then we can ask him about those things and we can enter into deeper conversation and we can hear his heart at a. At a different level.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, God is so creative. You just look around the earth, the universe. He is so infinitely creative. Why wouldn't he be so creative in the way that he speaks to us? And it's just again, an invitation to lean in. If you see a number, ask him, God, what is the significance of this number? Need me to understand what you're trying to speak to me in this number or in a dream? We have these weird dreams. God, are you speaking to Me in this dream? What does that mean? What's the significance of, of that? And just explore it with Him. He's always an invitation to go on a walk with him and explore and to understand better what he's trying to say to us. Just remember, it's always for our good. He's always growing us. He's always, always communicating to us. It might just be in different way than we expected. And so right now, God is releasing a grace over you to lean in and to experience him in new ways. Experience the way that he's communicating to you in a different, new and creative way. And he's just tuning you. He's tuning your radio to his channel so that you can hear even more clearly than you ever have before. And he just wants to be creative and to enjoy time with you. We just bless you with that. Thank you so much for joining us. So just in recap today, we're always connected to Him. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us. We're always connected to Him. Make sure that you're taking time to be quiet, to actually listen. Don't just do all the talking when you pray. Spend some time listening and then look for God communicating to you in a new, creative way. And explore that with him and it's going to be beautiful because he's amazing.
• 24:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, I just want to leave you with this verse. Ephesians 1:13. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believe you are marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, you are marked and you are sealed by the Holy Spirit. Your mind, your imagination, it is sealed with the Holy Spirit. And so listen and look for him and know that you are always connected and he loves to speak to you. Talk to you. Next time. Hey friend. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds to share this podcast with someone who may need encouragement or practical tools for fighting their battle?
• 25:22
  Speaker B: Then rate and review this podcast. Help us spread the message of transformation far and wide.
• 25:28
  Speaker A: All right, time to walk back into the noise with peace, purpose and maybe a tiny bit of guffing.
• 25:33
  Speaker B: We'll meet you back next Thursday for another episode. Bye.