When your steps seemed shrouded in uncertainty, it is the unexpected calm amidst chaos that whispers of a higher plan. This episode is a journey into the heart of such divine guidance, where we explore the transformative power of tuning into God's gentle nudges. We dissect the echoes of peace that often signal His direction, sharing candid moments when that still, small voice has led us through life's tumultuous seas. Far from being an exclusive dialogue for the spiritually elite, we reveal that God's communication lines are open to each one of us, patiently waiting for us to listen.
When your steps seemed shrouded in uncertainty, it is the unexpected calm amidst chaos that whispers of a higher plan. This episode is a journey into the heart of such divine guidance, where we explore the transformative power of tuning into God's gentle nudges. We dissect the echoes of peace that often signal His direction, sharing candid moments when that still, small voice has led us through life's tumultuous seas. Far from being an exclusive dialogue for the spiritually elite, we reveal that God's communication lines are open to each one of us, patiently waiting for us to listen.
Alright, good evening everybody. Thanks for joining us and welcome to another edition of the Jordan and Kristen record show. We hope you guys are doing well. Tonight's topic is a very exciting one. You should be excited about this. It's hearing from God, and if that doesn't get you excited, then I don't know what will. It is something that's absolutely essential to the Christian walk of life and something that you're very capable of, more so than you even know. But before we get to that, Kristen, can you open us up in prayer please?
Speaker 2:Thank you, lord, thank you for this new year, thank you for new beginnings, lord, and thank you for an intimate walk with you, which you are inviting us to, lord. You are speaking to us, lord. Help us to tune in to your voice. Thank you, lord, for talking to us and speaking into our heart intimately. Lord, thank you for wanting that personal, deep intimacy with us. Lord, and help us to take advantage of that and follow you with our whole heart. In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:Whenever I watch these videos afterwards, I always notice how much I move around when you're praying and talking, and so now I'm like, do my best to stand here. You know, like I've been frozen for centuries.
Speaker 2:The bad kid in church. Right, yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 1:All right. So tonight's topic is hearing from God, and this is not an optional thing. It's actually an essential thing for the Christian walk of life. The Bible says that faith comes by hearing, and so it's therefore essential to actually hear what God is telling you. Ok, that should. That should really just blow your mind that the creator of the universe cares so much about you that he actually wants to communicate with you. But then again, I guess that's true of every relationship. So, chris, and why don't you start us off on this topic and maybe, you know, share a personal experience if you don't mind.
Speaker 2:Well it's. I just like you say, I'm so amazed that God is speaking and wanting to speak to us. That is just that just fills my heart with joy. When I was a teenager, I remember learning the lesson of how God's voice is one of peace and the enemy is one of panic, and I understand that there. You know, I feel like we overcomplicate it sometimes and I remember there were several different experiences I had within a couple of years that I started really tuning into. Ok, god, if I had this like panic thing in my heart and my that's a warning bell for me. It was a person I was dating, that I was didn't know if I should keep progressing the relationship and that that warning bell told me no stop. It was another experience in a business venture, and I'm just so grateful that God lays that out for us and gives us peace. Even if it means taking us out of our comfort zones, we will still have peace in the process. Yeah, you know it's a good point.
Speaker 1:The Bible says the steps of the righteous person are ordered by the Lord. It doesn't really say that we can wander through the earth and things will just kind of randomly work out. So if they're ordered, we have to know how do we discern what that order is? The example I like to give to people is I remember when I was in college trying to figure out what law school to go to, there were people who said, well, you know, just go to whatever. And I said, no, it's not just whatever, and even though the Bible doesn't tell me what law school to go to, it does tell me that God has a specific plan for my life and I have to therefore discern what that plan is.
Speaker 1:I think what prevents a lot of people, first of all, from hearing the word of God or hearing God's word, is they think that it only applies to certain very special people, like the Old Testament prophets, you know, like Elijah and people like that, and they don't realize that no, this is for everybody OK. But the problem, the problem people have OK, is not so much that they're not able to hear from God's voice, but there's so much other noise on top of it that they're hearing God's voice. Like you said, kristen, it's not necessarily a thus sayeth the Lord moment. Like you know, moses, in the burning bush, it's not some audible voice. I mean, if that happens, god bless you. But you know, for the most part it's not some actual audible voice that you're going to hear coming over. You know the loudspeaker, or something like that. The Bible describes it actually as a gentle whisper, and one of the things we were talking about ahead of time is that passage in Kings where Elijah goes to hear God's voice and what it says is the Lord said to Elijah go, stand in front of me on the mountain and I'll pass you by.
Speaker 1:Then a very strong wind blew until it caused the mountains to fall apart and large rocks to break in front of the Lord, but the Lord wasn't in that wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a quiet, gentle sound. When Elijah heard it, he covered his face with his coat and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice said to him Elijah, why are you here. So you have these massive events, you have this wind and this fire and this earthquake right, and God is not any of that. He's in this very, very small voice and I think, chris, and what happens in our lives and I know I'm going along in my time here you know what we need.
Speaker 2:We need like one of those bell?
Speaker 1:No, we need like one of those chest timers, you know, one of like. We both give each other like six minutes and I just use up my time and you hit the button.
Speaker 2:Here's the problem that, like I have like thoughts that are passing by.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the point is this we don't have an actual fire or earthquake or tornado preventing us from hearing God, but we have all this other noise in our head. We have anxiety, we have depression, you know, we have, you know, social media and television and music, and we have our friends and our jobs and we have all these other things Also, the noise in our head, and we don't take the time to get into a quiet place and just shut everything up and say, ok, god, I'm tuning the rest this out. Now I'm ready to hear from you, because I think God is actually talking to us all the time. We just can't hear it because we've got 20 other stations playing in our head.
Speaker 2:We need to be tuned into the frequency, like if you're on a radio station you need to tune in to that frequency because it's playing. But are you tuning into it? I always think about like always let your conscience be your guide. You know the old Jiminy Cricket it's not your conscience, but that's but the Holy Spirit. Always let the Holy Spirit. That's still small voice and you have to get so close to someone to hear a whisper. We have to be so intimately close we were. We were created to rejuvenate in his presence. We were created to have those moments, even if it's for five minutes, to just get alone with God. We can't live without it.
Speaker 2:I love, I love the saying garbage in, garbage out, meaning you know, we talk about what you ingest, what you eat physically. If you ate a bunch of junk food or McDonald's all the time, it would show in your habits and your lifestyle, in your health. But what you consume in your, through your eyes and your ears, it's very hard to hear the voice of the Lord If you're consuming, like you said, just like you know, filthy movies or just something, or even things that are not quote, unquote. They seem harmless but they're not the best. You're not. You're not soaking up everything God has for you by just totally being saturated in his presence.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you what, jordan, I think it's really interesting that you and I, when in meeting each other, the way God orchestrated it it's such a great example of sometimes God tells us for you, you needed to be told to have things in place, to come on, speed up, come on, get into gear here For me, I had to have things in place that told me slow down, I'm going to bring it to you, I'm going to bring the person you know. And that's just a silly example of it's not silly. It's wonderful of us meeting, but it's so important to know am I supposed to jump into this or am I supposed to wait? And that depends on the season.
Speaker 1:I think another one of the problems also is, a lot of times we will be able to identify what it is that God wants us to do and we say, no, I can't be God, he doesn't want me to do that, because we really don't want to do that. We don't want to part with that extra money in the offering plate or we don't want to. In fact, I think money is one of the easier things to give. I think one of the harder things to give a lot of times is forgiveness and mercy. And sometimes, you know I can't tell you how many times in my business or whatever someone has wronged me and I really want to just give him a piece of my mind.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, I don't want to say get back at them, because that sounds kind of ventral, but just, you know, just kind of be in the flesh, maybe write a very strongly worded letter or something like that, and I just feel something inside, just grab me and say okay, just let it go, just let it go. And I'm saying no, that's that's not, that's not. God tell me to do that. But Looking back I can tell which, which action was designed to gratify the flesh Right and glad to gratify me in that moment. Versus which was which was God telling me? Just relax, just be merciful, you know, just be forgiving, just like you require forgiving on a daily basis. Just be forgiving. And so I think one of the barriers, like I'm saying here, is not that you can't hear from God, it's that a lot of people just don't want to, because sometimes we just don't want to hear what he has to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like sometimes there's just an exercise of obedience. I've had that one time in my life, or many times, not just one time when God wanted me to do something and I did it, and it's not that any harm came of it, but I was just like, well, what was that about? Like why did I need to Tell that person something or do that? And I may not know the fruit of that, because I felt like, okay, I did it because God told me to, and I felt like I didn't see anything. And there's been those times in my life where God was saying that I just wanted to see if you would be obedient. Yeah, you know, and that that is, that is the true test of faith.
Speaker 1:Now don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of other Influences that are gonna try to manipulate you, and so some. Sometimes the question becomes well, how do I tell God's voice from all of these other, maybe small voices I have? And the second part of the verse we said faith comes by hearing. Second part is and hearing by the word of God.
Speaker 1:Yes right, and so there's really not a substitute for being in the word. But what that means, you know, I think a lot of times people think that just means reading the Bible. Well, that's part of it, reading the Bible. Having Christian friends, you know, listening to devotionals, listening to, you know, a Christian podcast, even going to church, just kind of music worship music, just kind of surrounding yourself with that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:That's what. That's what's going to allow you to kind of separate God's still small voice from these other voices that sometimes you know. The Bible. The Bible says the enemy sometimes presents himself as an angel of light Sometimes. So we and you and I can do a whole show on people who we know and know about, who did things they thought was the right thing to do, and you look back and you say there was no way God was telling you to do that, because they allowed the enemy to deceive them. And so the trick is not the trick. But the idea here is you have to be in the word. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. And the word isn't just the Bible, it's the whole, it's the whole Christian corpus, I would say.
Speaker 2:I. You were hit the nail on the head when you said that it's not the good decision, it's the God decision.
Speaker 1:Oh, I just mean that. No, that's good.
Speaker 2:But it's true, because it's usually the enemy is not going to present you with. Look how he's gonna present you with something that's okay, that's, that's good, but God I.
Speaker 1:Want you to pray us out real quick, kristen, then I have a very brief announcement. But why don't you just, uh, just pray it. Pray it for everybody who's a sense, real quick.
Speaker 2:Lord, we thank you. We thank you for your voice and we listen to that voice. God, help us to just shut off all the noise, all the Distractions, and just go after you with all of our heart and Jesus name.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. So check this out. If you're listening to us on the radio, we want to know that you're actually listening and here's how you can tell us, because we pay for this time and it's a significant investment out of our pocket and we don't ask for any money, but we do want to know if we're being heard. So, if you are listening to us on the radio not if you're one of our friends, not if you're Steve Estone or Chris or any of those guys, but people who we don't actually know Like our Facebook page for us, okay, go on to our YouTube channel, jordan and Chris to ministries, and subscribe to that channel. You know. Go on to iTunes or every listen to your podcast and subscribe to our podcast. Email us at Jordan and Kristen ministries at gmailcom. Okay, one of those things so we know that you're actually listening, because we have to figure out how to allocate our resources to and we want to make sure that we are sewing into good ground. Okay, guys.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. All right we are grateful for Steve listening. We are.
Speaker 1:All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you soon. As always, till next time, be blessed and be a blessing. Bye everyone.