Be Careful Of What You Hear

This week we will be focusing on hearing God's voices and hearing the right voices. If you look around you we can see that the intrinsic value of an individual is missing. People feel ignored everywhere. Educational pressure, job pressure and family pressure cause people to go into depression and fall into suicidal tendencies. Due to high intensity in jobs, in recent times we’ve heard of how people fall into cardiac arrest. Even talents and uniqueness are overlooked and cannot come to the forefront. We see around us that the value systems are crumbling, parents are not honoured, there is a lack of love and respect. We often see people running a rat race, without a goal in mind. The root cause for all this is SIN. As part of all this many people go through inferiority complexes and depression. Given all this, in the world that we live in, something that will make you or break you, is the voices you hear.

Romans 10:17 says, ‘Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.’
 
Faith comes through and it is through hearing that one’s faith is built, with ‘hearing’ being the key word here. Our faith grows when we hear the word of Christ. Faith grows through what we HEAR. Real faith comes through hearing and knowledge grows through reading. It is the RHEMA word and not the LOGOS word that gives you faith. Logos is expressed and written word. Rhema is the spoken word. The real faith is belly faith and not head faith. Real faith comes from the spirit, it’s not faith that stems from logical reasoning or thinking.

Mark 4:24 says, ‘Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.’

There are different kinds of voices that we hear. Behind each voice lies the voice of a person. The person’s intentions lie behind the voice that we hear.

A person normally hears four different kinds of voices. Adam and Eve heard four different voices and they are: ⁃ The voice of God ⁃ The voice of Satan ⁃ The voice of each other ⁃ The voice of self.

Here is an excerpt that shows the different voices.
Genesis 3:1 says, ‘Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”’
 
Satan attacks through weak vessels. It’s a talking serpent and behind the snake was Satan. When an army attacks a kingdom, they always try to attack the weak spot of the fortress and it’s from there that the first attack takes place.

Genesis 3:6 says, ‘When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.’

This verse represents the human voice where there was a discussion between the man and the woman.

Genesis 3:9 says, ‘But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” This verse represents the conversation between God and man.

Genesis 3:11 says, ‘And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”’
 
This verse represents the voice of the self, where Adam and Eve had a self realisation that they were naked and exposed. Man was created in the likeness and image of God from the clay found on the ground. 

When Adam opened his eyes, the first person he saw was God. God spoke to Adam, assigned his duties in Eden and walked with him everyday. It is only later that Adam, the first man heard the voice of Satan, each other man and self. However, even though man heard the voice of God, they did not listen to his voice. Eve heard the voice of Satan and obeyed. Adam heard the voice of his wife and obeyed. It is not the voice you HEAR, but the voice you HEED that determines your future. The moral of this instance is not that you should not heed the words of your wife, but it is that you should not place the word of anyone else above God's word. In this instance, Adam and Eve ultimately obeyed the voice of three people - they obeyed the voice of Satan, they heard and obeyed the voice of each other and also listened to their self voice which made them feel like they were naked. However their downfall commenced when they did not HEED the voice of God.