Coming from a charismatic background, we desire to follow God’s personal inner guidance but often fear our sin prevents us from hearing his voice. We will dispell this myth and show how confidence in God’s grace makes it easy to always hear his voice.
The dreaded “Dry Season”
We believe God speaks to us today in many ways: dreams, visions, thoughts, feelings, intuition, inner peace, circumstances, open doors and favor, prophecies, prayer, the Bible, etc…
But many of us go through “dry seasons,” a popular term in the charistmatic church, where we feel like we are not able to connect with God. We feel like somehow we may have disappointed God and he doesn’t want to speak with us. Or perhaps we attach other noble reasons to this. Perhaps God is training us to hear him differently? Perhaps God doesn’t want us to depend on his voice that much? Perhaps he doesn’t want us to know what he’s saying so we’ll trust him?
Whatever reasons we give, for passionate christians, these are periods of great disappointment in ourselves or sadness about missing God. We hurry to get out of them but usually we are deeply afraid that God is judging us and these periods can last a long time. In many cases, we are not aware of how we’ve disappointed God
Faulty sermons encourage this disappointment in ourselves
We are feeling disappointed in ourselves that we can’t hear God’s voice and unfortunately, sometimes we hear things like,
“If you have sin in your life, God will distance himself from you until you change.”
“God won’t speak to you until you obey the last thing he said”
“You are at odds with God and can’t enjoy his presence or be right with him until you confess, repent of your sin, and change your ways.”
“Sometimes God doesn’t want us to hear his voice for training”
We double down on our efforts to fix ourselves, all the while feeling inadequate in ourselves. But as we try harder, we feel more distant than before.
Confidence in the Lord’s grace brings the season of rain
I spent years of my life trying to perfect myself so I could enter God’s presence. I was doing nothing wrong I could think of and yet I deeply struggled to hear his voice. I was working in the opposite direction.
I’ve since learned I hear God’s voice much more clearly, often, and openly when I’m confident in his grace, not in my flaws.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Ephesians 3:12 In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus…
Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
You see? God wants us to always approach him with confidence and freedom, in full assurance of faith! We are supposed to believe nothing can separate us from him.
No one deserves to be in God’s presence, not even the ideal christian. But God sent his son Jesus to do be obedient to God on our behalf, so that because Jesus did it for us we are counted as if we were fully obedient to God when we trust in him (Romans 3:21-24). In fact, he also died so that all our sins would be completely forgiven forever. When you’re convinced you’ve earned your righteousness you’ll also think you can loose it. But when you’re convinced your righteousness before God was a gift, you have confidence in his grace and it becomes effortless to enter his presence anytime of the day, no matter the circumstance, no matter what you’ve done, no matter how you feel.
We hide like Adam in the Garden when we don’t trust his grace
I think our subconscience, when we aren’t confident in God’s grace hides from him like Adam did in the garden. We dismiss ourselves from his presence because we are afraid of him and don’t feel worthy.
Effortless connection to God
But when God comes and shows us how pleasing we are to him because of what Jesus has done, when he assures us of his love for us and we believe him, we approach him and hearing his voice becomes easy.
You see, we’ve been running in the wrong direction! We thought we had to become perfect, but no one will ever become perfect. In fact, we didn’t need more obedience, we needed faith. Faith that God forgives us and loves us despite all our problems.
Try it out! Give up on thinking God expects you to be perfect and instead fully trust that you are right with Him, loved, and forgiven because of what Jesus did! Then open up your journel and write down what you feel like He’s saying to you.
God loves you, he is aware we will never be enough for him. But Jesus is everything to him and you are that too in Jesus. When you trust in Jesus you are right with God and there’s no reason why you can’t hear his voice!