Seeing, Hearing and Sensing
Intro:
· Welcome to our second class.
· Our first class addressed the heart of the prophetic person. It was very focused on cleansing our hearts and coming into right alignment with God’s heart and perspective.
o Finding a deeper revelation of Jesus and the grace of God over us.
o Beginning to step into a deeper knowledge of who God is and who God says we are.
o Starting to tackle our Goliaths
Positioning ourselves to hear
Worship – praise and thanksgiving
Ps 100:4 NKJV
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
· We enter with thanksgiving and praise.
· Most of time we enter with asking!
2 Kings 3:13-15 NKJV Then Elisha said to the king of Israel, "What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother." But the king of Israel said to him, "No, for the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab." 14 And Elisha said,"As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not look at you, nor see you. 15 But now bring me a musician." Then it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.
· Elisha needed to worship to get himself into the right place before he could hear the Lord well.
Cultivate a relationship of deep intimacy with the Lord.
Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Meditation – stillness of heart
Ps 46:10 NKJV
Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!
1 Kings 19:11-12 NKJV Then He said, "Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord." And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
· Learn to bring yourself into the peace of God.
· Meditation is all about waiting on God.
· Stilling our hearts so we can enter into conversation with God.
Open the eyes of the heart
Eph 1:18 NASB I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
Hab 2:1-2 NASB
1 I will stand on my guard post
And station myself on the rampart;
And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me,
And how I may reply when I am reproved.
2 Then the Lord answered me and said,
"Record the vision
And inscribe it on tablets,
That the one who reads it may run.
· We open our eyes to hear!
· Write down what you hear God speaks. Value what He tells you.
· Open all our senses to hear and receive.
The difference between our spirit and our minds.
· 1 Cor 2:14 NKJV But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
o We receive the things of God in our spirit, not in our minds. Our natural minds are hostile to the things of God.
o It’s our spirit that communes with the Holy Spirit.
o The mind is rational, logical, organized, constrained by facts, data and “reality”.
· The language of the Holy Spirit is parables, images, impressions, feelings, mysteries, riddles, questions, ideas, concepts, thoughts, impossibilities, etc.
o So that’s what our spirit receives from the Holy Spirit.
o Often times what our spirit receives is not logical or even in order.
· The natural mind is very good at organizing, sorting, and trying to make sense of what we’re seeing or hearing.
o I was praying for a man and I saw scene of him being hit by a car. Then I saw him get up and he was hit by another car! When he got up again, another car hit him! Then lastly, I saw a scene of him crossing the street.
That’s the order that I saw it in, but as I was trying to understand it, my mind put the scenes in the proper order. I emailed the man and shared with him that the Lord had shown me that he had been in at least 3 car accidents and that the devil had tried to take his life but the Lord had protected him each time.
When he emailed me back, he confirmed that he had been in 4 nearly fatal car accidents but that indeed the Lord had preserved him each time.
· Be aware that what you see in the natural can interfere with what the Spirit is trying to tell you.
o This can be tricky because the Holy Spirit can give you insight by what you see.
o But what you see or know in the natural can mislead you or prevent you from catching what God is trying to show you.
§ Sylvia – transvestite.
§ Way people are dressed
§ Facial expressions and looks.
§ Samuel saw David’s brothers and was convinced that God had chosen one of them to be the next king.
§ Eli saw Hannah weeping and crying out to God silently and thought she was drunk.
· If our spirit does not win the battle for primacy with the soul, then our faith will always be at the mercy of our logic. A logical, analytical mind will always talk us out of a supernatural experience.
Exercise #1
· Scan the room slowly, starting from your left going all the way to your right.
· Look at each person as you go around the room.
· What enters your spirit for that particular person?
o It may take a moment for you to realize that God is showing or telling you something someone.
o You may even have already moved a few people past that person.
o Once you realize that God is trying to show you something, return your focus back to that person.
· What’s the 1st thing that enters your awareness in your spirit? Not your mind, but in your spirit.
· What are you seeing, hearing or sensing?
o Is it an image or a moving picture?
o Are you hearing a stream of thoughts, insight, concepts, etc?
· Write it down.
· Ponder and meditate on it with the Lord.
o Now you use your mind to sort through it to try and understand what you got.
o Is it a word of knowledge, word of wisdom, discernment, or prophecy
· See what God shows you for at least three people.
Increasing our spiritual eyesight
Seeing
We have to see it before we can become it.
God wants more than just mental acknowledgement of what we believe.
We need to see it in the spirit and in our hearts before it can come to pass.
Jer 1:10 NKJV
See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms,
To root out and to pull down,
To destroy and to throw down,
To build and to plant."
Ex 7:1 NKJV So the Lord said to Moses: "See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.
Gen 15:5-6 NKJV Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
· In each of these scriptures, the Lord was urging them to see, really see and believe what He was showing and telling them.
· Jeremiah had the authority to root out, pull down, destroy, throw down, build and plant.
· Moses was greater and more powerful than Pharaoh
· Abraham was already the father of more descendants than could be numbered.
Dreams, visions and trances
Job 33:14-16 NKJV
14 For God may speak in one way, or in another,
Yet man does not perceive it.
· God speaks in more ways than we know.
15 In a dream, in a vision of the night,
When deep sleep falls upon men,
While slumbering on their beds,
16 Then He opens the ears of men,
And seals their instruction.
Dreams – God speaks to us while we’re asleep.
· Because we’re asleep, the Holy Spirit is free to speak in His native language of parables, images, mysterious, paradoxes, concepts, ideas, feelings, impressions, etc.
· The Lord uses scriptural imagery. He uses symbolism – biblical, cultural, and personal. He uses things from our past and our memories.
Visions – pictures, images, moving scenes. Visions are dreams that we have while we’re awake. The Holy Spirit can show it to the eyes of our heart and He can also cause it to be seen in our physical sight.
Trances – What the Holy Spirit is showing has bled over into all our physical senses. It feels that what we’re encountering is really happening in the physical.
· Peter’s trance on the rooftop – Acts 10:9-15
· Angelic encounters. Heavenly visitations
Acts 2:17-18 NASB
17 'And it shall be in the last days,' God says,
'That I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all mankind;
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions,
And your old men shall dream dreams;
18 Even upon My bondslaves, both men and women,
I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit
And they shall prophesy.
· If you want to dream dreams, see visions, and prophesy more, then grab this scripture!
· Just like Moses grabbed Ex 7:1, and Jeremiah grabbed Jer 1:10, and Abraham grabbed Gen 15:5
· We have to see it and believe it before we can become it.
Ask the Lord for dreams, visions, trances, angelic encounters, and heavenly visitations. Then prepare yourself for what God will give you.
Increasing our spiritual hearing
Matt 13:9 NKJV He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"
· This scripture implies that it is up to us to decide whether we will hear or not.
· Husbands are notorious for hearing but not really listening!
· We have ears that can hear. We must use them to listen.
Hearing
It can be the audible voice of God.
It can be the ears of our spirit – spontaneous stream of thoughts into our awareness
Sounds
Sounds have meanings
· My cell phone makes a sound when I get a text message, another sound when I get a phone call.
· My microwave makes a sound when my food is ready.
· My smoke detector makes a sound when there is smoke in the house.
· I honk my horn when another car gets too close to me.
· When an army hears the bugler sounding the charge, then it’s time to attack.
· When the piano player starts playing the bridal march at a wedding, then it’s time to stand because the bride is coming down the aisle.
Ex 19:16 NKJV Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.
1 Sam 4:6 NKJV Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, "What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?" Then they understood that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp.
2 Sam 5:24 NKJV And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines."
1 Kings 18:41 NKJV Then Elijah said to Ahab, "Go up, eat and drink; for there is the sound of abundance of rain."
· Elijah heard the rain prophetically!
Listen for the voice of God, especially through spontaneous thoughts.
Listen for the voice of God through sounds and music.
· What is God saying through the sounds you hear?
· What is God saying through the music being played on a piano, guitar, drum, etc?
· What sound is God giving you prophetically? Rain? Weeping? Laughter? Victory shouts?
Tongues and interpretation of tongues
The Holy Spirit uses tongues to pray and prophesy through us.
· At least in private, access and use this gift as frequently and as regularly as you’re able.
· It’s the language of the secret place with God.
· It’s the language of intercession
· It’s the language of warfare, where we speak out and declare and pray things that the enemy can’t understand!
· Seek to increase and grow in this gift, like you do your other giftings.
o It’s possible to become multi lingual in tongues.
o You may develop a certain tongue for intimacy, another for warfare, another for intercession, etc.
· The increase of frequency and engagement with God through tongues increases our time in the presence of the Holy Spirit!
Ask God to give you the interpretation for your tongues and for other people’s tongues. It’s another way to hear what God is speaking.
Increasing our sensing
Impressions
Impressions are an inkling, a notion.
· It’s a tiny idea that leads from the back of our mind to the forefront of our heart. It’s a rabbit trail that leads to a footpath that leads to a hiking trail that leads to a street, then a road, then a highway, then an interstate straight to God’s heart.
When we get an impression, it’s best to keep waiting. Don’t be rushed into releasing something and going further than what we’ve actually received.
Graham Cooke shared in his book about going on a safari and being taken by a guide to see a lion in the wild. They hung a chunk of meat from a tree and then hid in the tall grass. They waited for hours. Then the guide whispered to Graham, “He’s here”. Graham looked and looked for a long time but didn’t see anything. Then he saw one blade of grass move contrary to the direction of the wind. That one thing out of place, was the hint that the lion was there. As he kept watching and waiting, then the lion came out cautiously, ate the meat. Then he was gone, as quickly as he had come. He had made no sound at all.