Hearing the Voice of God with Jim Osman

Can you show me, because we're going to use some hermeneutics, can you show me anywhere in the Old Testament where that word perpetual is not perpetual?

Because, again, I understand you're appealing, again, sure, no, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, wait a minute,

I thought I was going to get to have a talk here. You asked a question. Hang on a second, sir. Be quiet. Well, there you go.

I will mute you because it's not your show. You asked a question. I'm going to give you the answer. Genesis 6 -4, the word olam is used, referring to those who are of old.

Deuteronomy, I'll just rattle off all the ones where it's used, not referring to perpetual. Genesis 6 -4,

Deuteronomy 32 -7, Joshua 24 -2, 1 Samuel 27 -8,

Job 22 -15, Psalm 24 -7, 24 -9, 25 -6, 41 -13, 77 -9, 90 -2, 103 -17, 106 -48, 119 -52, 143 -3,

Proverbs 8 -23, Proverbs 22 -28, Proverbs 23 -10, and Ecclesiastes 1 -10.

Should I go on for more? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is

Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I always love that highly intelligent answer that he provided when, yeah, he thought he had a great question there, and that's one of the classics.

All right, so welcome to another edition of Apologetics Live. We're glad to have you with us.

This is presented by Striving for Eternity. This is where we hope to answer your questions.

We can answer, I argue, I can answer any question you have about God and the Bible. If you doubt that, just join us here and we can find out.

But I don't know is a perfectly good answer. So we're going to deal with a video tonight.

We're going to do another video review, a much shorter one. We can actually get through, well actually,

Chris and Drew made it through maybe five minutes of that video. So let me bring

Drew in. Drew, welcome. Your internet is hopefully stable for tonight. We're going to find out.

Yeah, we will find out. If it cuts out, I'll just hang out in the background and monitor comments and things like that.

All right. So we're going to talk about a video that was sent to me.

And let me give some, well, before we get that, let me bring in our guest here,

Jim Osmond of Kootenai Community Church. Jim, welcome. Hey, gentlemen. Glad to be here.

Now, he just likes to show off that beautiful scenery of Idaho. Isn't that great?

Yes. You know, you can't see right behind him. He's got a great garden right over there, over his left shoulder there.

Yeah, you can't really see it. Is it behind the trees? No, it's in front of the trees.

Kind of almost. Oh, okay. There you go. I got it. Yeah. You got corn there now.

All right. Yeah, yeah. I plan on, you know, while you're away, I plan on going to the garden and just picking things.

I have your knowledge. Just going and stealing some vegetables because they cost too much at the store?

Yeah, exactly. So, all right. So, we did,

I was thinking of actually triggering Jim here because just before we started the show,

I saw a clip there, Jim, of Nancy Pelosi praising Adam Schiff for restoring faith and integrity to our government.

If anybody can do it, Adam Schiff can. Faith, integrity, and government are words that don't go together.

That's exactly right. Yeah. So, this video that we're going to play was sent to me by a gentleman.

He was in an evangelism group and basically he was challenging those of us in this evangelism group saying that the reason we were not really seeing success or, you know, people coming to Christ in our evangelism is because we were not, or at least

I was not, learning how to hear the voice of God. And so, he gave me this video that explains how we can hear the voice of God because his argument,

Jim, was that hearing the voice of God is necessary to have evangelism because that's how you get, you know, fruitful evangelism.

And so, we invited you in because, well, I think you've written the world's best book on the subject.

I think I have it right here. There you go. Oh, that's my praise. I appreciate that. The only problem

I found with that book was the forward. I mean, you bumped me for John MacArthur, really?

Well, sometimes. It was really close. I thought, oh, Andrew, John, I don't know which, but.

Yeah, I mean, I was just looking to get an early copy of it, but yeah. So, but no, so let's first, before we play a video for folks who may not have seen you around, maybe people are new to this show and haven't seen you, just introduce yourself to folks so they'll know where you're at, how to pronounce that town your church is in.

Yeah. You know, it took me like a year to pronounce it right, but. Yeah. My name is John Hoffman.

I pastor a church in rural North Idaho in Kootenai, K -O -O -T -E -N -A -I,

Kootenai, Idaho. It's called Kootenai Community Church. Yeah, I had the hardest time with that the first time.

So, let's talk real briefly about the book God Doesn't Whisper. It's a book you've written. Just give a real quick overview of your background and why you wrote that book.

Yeah, I grew up, well I shouldn't say I grew up, I grew up in a, not a church going home, but my early exposure to Christianity as a new believer was among people who taught and believed that you could hear the voice of God and that we needed to hear the voice of God to make decisions in day -to -day life like which college to attend, whether I should go back for a second year of college, which woman to marry, when to get married, all of that stuff, the day -to -day mundane decisions.

And that was what I had adopted as sort of my worldview, my Christian perspective on Scripture and being led by the

Spirit. That's what I thought being led by the Spirit was. I was quickly disillusioned of that and started to research how

God leads us and what Scripture teaches about the voice of God and whether we should hear from God or not.

And so I began to examine a lot of the presuppositions and Scripture passages that are pressed into service for that worldview or that Christian view that says we should be listening for the still, small voice, being led by nudges and nudgings and promptings and impressions and feelings and signs and Scripture and all of that.

I started to evaluate whether any or all of that was biblical, and I found that that's not exactly how

God says that we should make decisions and that there's nothing in Scripture that promises that we will hear the voice of God and there's nothing in Scripture that teaches that we should be listening for the voice of God.

So I came to write the book basically as an answer to a previous perspective that I had had on hearing the voice of God and being led by the

Spirit and what it meant to walk with God. And the book basically kind of deals with those three presuppositions that people bring to this view.

One of them being that we need to hear the voice of God, and the second, that we can be taught to hear the voice of God, and that we then should be listening for the voice of God, that God needs to communicate the voice of God, His voice to us, and give us that guidance.

I kind of deal with those three presuppositions and then the various elements of the methodology in the book as well.

So that's kind of a brief overview of it. All right. So let's go and play this horrific video.

He's got three. So he has three points that he looks to make in this.

So he describes this video as how to hear God's voice, three powerful strategies for increasing accuracy and consistency.

Now, I mean, just right off the bat, I know I saw this comment in here. Justin Peter says, if you want to hear the voice of God, read your

Bible out loud. Actually, what he says is, if you want to hear the voice of God, read your Bible. If you want to hear it audibly, read it out loud.

So that is how we hear. That is how we properly hear God's voice. But let's play the first part and deal with each one of these in order.

So here we go. Hey, are you a Christian who wants to hear God's voice?

Or maybe you do hear him, but you want to hear him more accurately and on a more consistent basis.

Listen, whether you are new to the faith or you've been a believer for years, these three strategies are going to help you tune your spiritual ears and develop a more intimate hearing relationship with the

Lord. And for our Jesus veterans, the first two may seem a little cliche, but stick around for step three, because I've got a challenge for you that is guaranteed to stretch anybody who participates.

Let's get into it. Step one, read the Bible. I know, cliche.

You may even be really tired of hearing it. But people are saying it because it's true.

Familiarity with the one true God and his unchanging character through the scriptures is key to accurately hearing the voice of God.

Are you or have you ever been in a relationship where healthy communication has been important?

Of course you have. And did that healthy communication come 100 % naturally, or did you have to work on it?

The more you get to know the person you are trying to communicate with, the easier it is to hear and understand what they're saying.

Read God's word with him. Meditating on it. Studying it. Asking him questions about it.

Learning about his unchanging character, the eternal nature of our God, perfectly revealed to us in the

Son of God and God himself, Jesus the Christ. Listen, like detecting counterfeit money, it is the careful study of the authentic that will help us discern the counterfeit.

And there are counterfeit voices. Step two, journal your prayer life.

Okay, so step one. I'll back that up a bit. Step one. If he stopped at step one,

I think we would be good with this, right? Partially. I mean, there are some definitions that we need to work out here.

I would totally agree with the statement that if you want to hear God speak, you should read scripture. Because I would say that it's in scripture that God speaks, but not in the mystical way that he's talking about.

And I don't mean the same thing by that that he means. So I would differ with him on two points.

First, when we say if you want to hear

God speak, read the Bible. And if you want to hear him speak, audibly read it out loud. That's Justin's quip.

When Justin says that and when we affirm that, when I say that, what I mean by that is that the voice of God comes when

I read the text of scripture and rightly understand the meaning of the text. So when

I am reading 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and I hear God's words say that his will for my life is my sanctification, that I abstain from sexual immorality, and that I do this and that I do that, etc.

I hear that. I understand that the Spirit of God is revealing the mind of God to me in that I'm hearing the voice of God through the pages of scripture.

So scripture is the medium through which we hear the voice of God. The meaning of scripture is the voice of God.

So when he says, when people like this in the Hearing the Voice of God movement, or HVG movement, when they say that you should read the

Bible, you'll notice that what he was saying in that was that we read the Bible so that we can become familiar with who

God is. So we can know more about his nature and his character, not so that we can hear the voice of God in the pages of scripture because scripture is the medium.

Scripture is the thing that informs or tunes our ears so that we can know what

God's voice is like, so that when we hear the voice of God, it's not in scripture. It's outside of scripture coming to us through some other medium.

So for this guy, scripture is not the medium through which we hear the voice of God, and the meaning of scripture is not the voice of God.

Scripture itself only simply tunes your ears, your tuning fork. It simply tunes you to hear

God outside of scripture. So for him, scripture is not the voice of God itself or the word of God itself.

Now he would probably argue, if you pressed him on it, to be fair, he would probably argue that scripture is the word of God, it's the inerrant word of God, it's the infallible word of God, it's the inspired word of God, and there's nothing else like it, and that's why we should read it.

But for him, it is all of those things, but the benefit of scripture is not that we may understand the will of God and thus hear the voice of God through the meaning and the medium of scripture, but scripture's benefit is in helping us know the voice of God when we hear it outside of scripture.

That's the main benefit of scripture when you read people like Henry Blackaby and Joyce Meyer and Priscilla Schreier.

Those who talk about hearing the voice of God outside of scripture, when they talk about scripture and the benefit of it, it's that it allows us to hear

God outside of scripture because scripture sort of tunes our spiritual ears to know his voice when he's trying to speak to us and we're trying to hear him.

So that's the first distinctive, is that for him, scripture doesn't contain the word of God, it is not the word of God, it just simply helps you hear the word of God outside of scripture.

Yeah, there was a second one that I was going to get to there, but I skipped my mind now. Well, while you're thinking about that, one of the things that got me was the guarantee.

He guarantees you can hear, he's going to give you a way to guarantee that you can hear from God.

Yeah, and then to guarantee that, he has to guarantee that God is going to be speaking to you because if God's not speaking to you, you're not going to hear him no matter how hard you listen.

If I don't say anything to you, it doesn't matter how well trained you are in listening to me. If I'm not speaking to you, you're not going to hear anything from me.

So his assumption is much like Robert Morris' assumption and frequency that God is always speaking.

He's always just like a parrot with his tail on fire. He's always talking and that all you have to do is tune in in order to pick up that frequency and listen to it.

He can guarantee you that you will hear the voice of God, but in order to do that, he has to guarantee that God's going to be speaking to you and he can't guarantee that.

As if God could never choose to be silent, he always has to speak. Nobody can make that guarantee.

Yeah, well, I think embedded in that, it gets to the idea that what

God is doing is he's sitting there wanting to talk to everybody. It's just that we're not listening. Yeah, or that he's always talking and we're not able to hear him because we're not tuning in.

That's the other aspect of it is that I need to be taught how to hear the voice of God. There's nobody in Scripture, just to deny the whole premise of this video, there's nobody in Scripture that ever had to be taught how to hear the voice of God.

Nobody. Paul never taught classes on it. Moses never taught classes on it.

There's no indication in Scripture that anybody who heard God speak ever had to be taught how to do so because you don't need to be taught to hear something like that because when

God speaks, he speaks audibly or infallibly and he's infallibly able to get his message across.

So it doesn't matter if I have my head underwater with earplugs in, I will still hear God speak if he speaks to me.

There's no necessity to cultivate any kind of a discipline to hear

God's voice because God doesn't struggle to be heard when he intends to be heard. Yeah, there's a comment here that says

Samuel and I think he's referencing Samuel when Samuel was sleeping and he heard the Lord say his voice but then he went up and I forgot who he was going to see, but Eli.

Yeah, and Eli had to say, no, that's the Lord. So when you hear it again say, here I am Lord. Well, that wasn't

Samuel having to be taught to hear the word of the Lord. He just heard his name and he thought it was

Eli and Eli said, no, that's God, hear it. He heard it and he understood it perfectly and it was clear.

He understood every single thing that God said to him and at no point did Samuel... The only thing

Samuel was confused about is where it was coming from because the text says that the word of God through prophets was rare in those days.

So Samuel never expected to hear the voice of God. Contrary to what HVG teachers and these continuing revelationists say today,

Samuel never expected to hear the voice of God. He wasn't tuning in to hear it. He was laying down. He heard somebody call his name and he didn't even think it was

God. He understood it and he heard it and he didn't have to learn how to do it. He understood it and heard it and that's it.

There's no running to be done. I like what you had said with the tuning because that is really what it sounds like he's getting to.

He's got to tune into God. God's just talking over the radio waves non -stop and we have to tune into the right channel is almost how it sounds.

Curtis is... I saw a comment from Curtis. He is watching. He said hey sorry

I couldn't join StreamYard. I've got about 15 minutes. So if you do want to join just go to apologexlive .com

and I did mention to him when he first sent me the video that we were going to do this review of it.

But just go to apologexlive .com. Scroll down. You can watch it there.

You can watch the show but you can also scroll down to where the duck icon is. That's the StreamYard. Click that and that's how you can join.

And if you do that folks you've just got to allow the camera and video to be used by your browser.

But that's how you join every week. We change that link so it's always set so you can just always go there, join, ask any questions that you have.

So the one thing that I saw was the guarantee but the other thing is you know when we when he's making the case as if this is something that you know like it's really it gets down to the core issue

I have with a lot of this is that sufficiency of scripture isn't enough. And I should mention

Jim you mentioned the initials in your book God Doesn't Whisper. You have the acronym for hearing the voice of God as HVG.

So folks if you hear him mention HVG it's just shorthand for hearing the voice of God. And so so yeah so I mean that's the real thing is even you mentioned in your comment is it's as if what he's doing is saying hey scripture's not enough.

Like use get the scripture to be able to get into the real conversation. So it's really just a springboard for that more important conversation hearing

God speak to you personally. Jim have you in your experience having dealt with this for years you've had people that have say they hear from the voice of God.

Do they all agree? No no no I mean they get mixed messages all the time.

It's amazing how subjective the voice of God is to people. You know and I I just dealt with this recently so I was down in Washington D .C.

doing a tour at the Museum of the Bible and what ended up happening is we were in a hotel that night and I was in the hot tub and as Drew you know

I like to go in hot tubs to evangelize we would sit in a hotel hot tub you have different people coming in and going out every 40 minutes and you just start conversation.

So the first person I was in was this woman named Susan who identified herself as a apostle right there

I had a problem but she said she was in the church of Christ and I'm like I didn't think they have apostles in the church of Christ?

And they don't have women but I think the issue is that I was really concerned because I was like oh well you're kind of you know she

I ended up finding out I don't think she's church of Christ I think she said that's the name of her church but I think it's a oneness

Pentecostal because she hung out in the hot tub and I now you know was talking to this guy

Connor Connor was 18 years old explaining the gospel it was it was a great conversation and just as he gets a point he says you know

I said is there anything stopping you from praying to receive Christ right now and he goes no I think this is something

I really got to do and Susan who had been quiet like she was telling her boys to come in this man's preaching this man's preaching and so she was thrilled with it until I asked him if he wanted to pray and receive

Christ and then she goes wait a minute sir you didn't tell him he needs to be baptized first which is kind of funny because we were in a you know we could just dunk you right here right and unfortunately the conversation went from him like talking about him praying to receive

Christ to her arguing against the Trinity she said that well how do you baptize you baptize in the name

Jesus is the father is the Holy Spirit it's a you know it's one person so I'm like oh okay and so I'm trying like and I know you guys have probably experienced this as well you want to focus in on the one person you're talking to right and yet now

I got to get into a kind of an argument debate over the Trinity and whether baptism saves and things like that but here was the thing she ultimately went to this she said to she said

I know that my doctrines right my teaching is right because God spoke to me and so what she said was her son was in surgery they couldn't get his son to wake up after surgery from the anesthesia they had been trying for three hours and before he went in he was singing some song and they brought her in and told her he won't wake up and she you know

God told her what to say to him based on the song he was singing beforehand and soon as she referenced that song he woke up and so she's like so that means that God speaks to me and I can't be wrong and that that right there

Jim is the thing I struggle with is when I'm sitting there saying well this is what scripture says and she just jettisoned all of that because God spoke to her directly and gave her a message that you know we don't see in scripture right but she was saying she's only giving me scripture

I'm like that whole story wasn't scripture show me in the bible where that story occurred I know a lady who left her husband and moved in with some other guy and had an affair and then ended up divorcing him and all of that stemmed from the fact that she felt that God had spoke to her and revealed to her that this is what she was supposed to do the fact that scripture contradicted that and did not grant her that freedom meant nothing to her it was irrelevant and that's the danger

I see I see Curtis I'm going to bring him in and see if we can at least hear him

Curtis are you there? yes can you hear me? we just can't see your video it has the

OBS signal saying that the camera is off ok well

I'm not anything to look at right now anyway so I don't know how much of it you heard and if there's anything that I think

I've heard everything from the very start yeah I wish

I had more than like 5 minutes because this is such an honor to have the video reviewed but a few of the things that you were saying

I felt like were maybe a misunderstanding of any claims that I was making or at least an overstatement of those things so the very description of this your conversation today on Twitter when

I responded to you in that Biblical Evangelism group I mean by no means do

I intend to say that people aren't coming to Christ because people aren't listening to the voice of the

Lord, I don't agree with that whatsoever I believe it's the gospel the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everybody who believes

I guess a couple more things that I could maybe clear up and maybe you'd have a follow up question about clearly

I am a bit of a continuationist, I don't know I'm not a debater or an arguer really so I'm not used to supporting claims and that kind of language sorry let me make my point however clearly

I am somebody who believes you can hear the voice of God, however I do believe that the scripture as it's been given to us in the original languages is like you said oh your name's not popping up oh

Jim yes Jim as you said if you pressed me on it

I believe that the word of God is inerrant and complete and I agree with that I do agree with that and as I do believe that we can hear the

Lord presently, I believe that everything that you think you hear should be judged according to those scriptures and anecdotally my confidence in the ability to hear the

Lord is my experiences hearing him and having those things confirmed kind of trial and error can

I make one more kind of response yeah

I mean and let me just first say if I misrepresented the conversation on Twitter then forgive me no it's okay yeah absolutely and you can always come back in another week when you have more time so that's fine too you can listen to this on the podcast or watch it and next week we're going to be talking with someone

I don't know Jim may want to come in on this but we got someone that wants to defend Benny Hinn and his ministry okay so that's for next week that should be fun yeah that'll be fun for everybody let's see well

I can't remember what I was going to say so maybe I shouldn't say it well you can't say it if you don't remember yeah that's an easy out for me right well

I have a few minutes do you have any specific questions for me while I'm on the line or do you just want to continue with your process well the very end of the video okay this is important for me to clear up because my heart was racing as I heard you speaking about this because I was like no that's not what

I think the very end of the video I do say and you'll probably listen to it it's only a five minute video but I say it's

God's choice when to speak but we can prepare ourselves to hear him and that's something

I believe that's why I said it and the three points that I make the three strategies

I'm trying to teach in this video or hand off in some way

I'm not a teacher either but those three strategies are for that purpose

I believe those three things can help us cultivate a hearing and grow in a hearing relationship with the

Lord which I know Jim you don't believe but does that make sense yeah can

I ask you a question to sort of interact with that because I'd be curious to how you would answer a couple of sure I'll try yeah

I might say I don't know but okay that's fair one where do you see in scripture that this that this ability to hear the voice of God is cultivated or developed by anyone who heard the voice of God well the first things that are coming to mind are in acts the was it a group of no no no that was earlier

I don't know I don't know how to answer that with scriptures right now for you off the top of my head but I'm looking at the early apostles following the

Lord there's verses like when it's is it Paul who says and it seemed right to us and to the

Holy Spirit to go such and such and I'm thinking there might be a couple references to prophecies or people that were prophesying that the things that they heard did not come to pass or weren't yeah so you could be you could be talking about Agabus there so whether he was talking about Agabus yeah whether he was speaking infallibly or not and whether that was a false prophecy or not we could probably lay that aside for but I'm mostly interested in examples of people cultivating this discipline yeah well it's more of when

I look at whether it's Paul or Nebuchadnezzar or Abraham or Moses or any of the prophets or any of the apostles or any revelation that when

God wills to be heard he just simply speaks and ensures that those who to whom he is speaking have the ability to hear him he doesn't struggle to overcome our you know distractedness or our busyness or our deafness to his voice because God doesn't try ever to be heard he just speaks and is heard

I don't believe God tries to do anything hmm so that's why I was curious if you can come up with an example in Scripture of anybody who heard the voice of God who had to cultivate this discipline and then the

Curtis we don't have to have like a whole conversation tonight because I won't be able to I've got no

I understand that and I would love to come back on and and have you give a chance to to think this through it's like when

Drew and I debated pre -millennial he had to he had to go home and think it through a little bit so when if you if you if you think this through and come back with me

I would love to have more interaction because I'm curious to that if you can name anybody in Scripture who heard the voice of God that had to okay one or number two is there any place in Scripture that teaches us how to cultivate this discipline so for instance

Paul writing to Gentiles who had never been who had never received the oracles of God all the

Gentile churches to which Paul right you would expect at some point in one of those epistles to the Corinthians to the

Galatians to the Philippians to somebody that Paul would have if this discipline is so important that Paul would have laid out something about how to hear the voice of God because you would assume that that is pretty important like for Timothy for instance when

Paul wrote to him and second Timothy or Peter wrote to his readers and second Peter knowing that the Apostles were about to pass away from the scene they don't give any instructions to their protégés in the faith on how to hear the voice of God or to cultivate that discipline there's no instruction given the pastoral epistles there's no requirement to elders that they be able to hear the voice of God in order to lead the church or be qualified for eldership there's no requirement for deacons to be able to hear that and and is for those who are in the

HVG movement this is a very essential discipline for evangelism and obedience and faithful servants and Christian growth and yet I don't see any instructions anywhere in any of the epistles and we would expect most to see it as I said in epistles written to Gentiles who had not been the recipients of the oracles of God like the

Jews had. You would expect from epistles to lay out for us here's how you do this

I mean Paul tells us you know how to structure the Church of God how how elders should function and deacons should function in ministry and how the

Lord's Supper should be done and how Christians should judge one another set up their own course system church discipline all this essential stuff we have instructions on it spiritual gifts and yet not a word about how to cultivate this discipline so that's where I'm curious about yeah well one of my older videos that I took down now because I sensed kind of some arrogance in there and not not it wasn't helpful anymore

I went through Jeremiah to talk about the

Lord showing the almond branch to Jeremiah and then kind of teaching him how to what he was saying through that picture that Jeremiah was seeing and the reason why

I went into that is because a few times in my history with the

Lord I've seen something and then that has led to that being fruitful and then the other place

I this kind of seems a little bit like an argument from silence like you're making a point that because it's not taught on in the

New Testament it doesn't it's not for us or it doesn't exist and that seems well

I mean it seems like it feels like a strong argument the way you're saying it but I wonder if there's a lot of other things that we do in relationship with him that we don't have strong instruction on in the

New Testament don't you think that if this is such a crucial thing for our evangelism and our spiritual growth that there would be some oh okay thank you thank you

I don't believe this is a crucial thing I believe the cross is the only crucial thing

I I think you I don't I think maybe

I'm being grouped in with people that maybe there's people out there that believe this is an essential part of our relationship with the

Lord I I don't believe that I I believe scripture and scripture alone contains everything we need for what is that quotes in the law life of godliness or something is that sola scriptura yeah all that pertains to life and godliness yeah amen but there's a whole lot that's not in the scriptures that we practice and believe as well that is from us attempting to follow

Jesus in the scriptures and then we get church practices and history and such now did

I make myself clear that I don't believe you have to hear the voice of the

Lord in these ways in order to have a salvific and even experiential relationship with him

I just believe that it's available to us and I want to help people prepare to hear him if he does choose to speak to us so there was a question that came in that maybe

I can ask because I know you're short on time and I'm sorry yeah I'm I'm kind of 80d too can

I give myself five minutes I'll give myself a hard out at 745 okay okay because and we can we can look you can we can set up a time where you and Jim can both be on and we can have a two -hour discussion but you know

Rick Rick had asked this when you were explaining it it's and because I kind of in the comments it sounded like you were you're saying you you know it's the voice of God through trial and error is that is that what you're meaning to say yeah because I believe you know it's like any you know us attempting to do something in following the

Lord we're either gonna be right or wrong about it and that's why words need to be judged we're we're supposed to judge teaching by the

Scriptures we're supposed to judge everything by the Scriptures so if you believe in in faith you are hearing the voice of the

Lord in the various thousands of ways he speaks do we've got to judge what we think we're hearing and maybe you'll get to that in the no

I already said that in the clips that you watched already that there are counterfeits influences voices that we we got a yeah and that's something when you come back in I would like to dive into more because my question is to be good because you'll get a chance to hear some of our questions and and that way you can you can come for kind of prepared but yeah

I'm looking forward to it to hearing those if there's counterfeits like we we know

Mormons claim they hear from God you know I'll hear it with Muslims and others and that's so much

Muslims but only one Muslim I know it said that but but there are different groups if there's counterfeit voices how do you know that the voice you're hearing is from God you know for example at the end of this you're going to talk about getting a waitress's name yep

Lisa yeah how do you know that's God's voice and not a demon's voice because you can't go to Scripture on something like that and compare with Scripture and say oh

God's gonna give me a voice of my waitress sure if that was a demon's voice boy it led to some terrible fruit for the wrong side for them but you test it

I don't know I this is an interesting question that I've been asked before I've I'm starting to find that people that don't believe that you can hear the voice of God do believe you can hear and be influenced by the voice of evil spirits and that's that's odd to me what worry for us who believe that we hear the voice of God is that maybe you're not hearing the voice of God and it's it's a voice of another spirit instead yeah so Curtis to be fair for our side we're not saying that we can never hear from God we're only here from God in Scripture in Scripture yes okay experiences the experiences the nudgings the random thoughts that pop into our heads things that we could attribute to God that are outside of Scripture the question is how do you test that especially on something like yeah especially like something like my stewardess's name there's nothing in Scripture that promises

God's gonna well I'm not making that promise or guarantee they're only no right so speak or not yeah so so how can

I test that that's a revelation that I can't test it you literally test it you just go up to them and ask but but you're saying tested by Scripture now you're so I'm sorry yes okay

Jim my apologies what I was talking about judging was the if there was any sort of revelation in the word like you right before I was able to jump on stream yard you mentioned a woman that just did something completely unbiblical because she was like well

I heard God's voice those like that's not that's not okay like clearly it wasn't

God speaking if it's in contradiction to well no but see the thing is is that in her in her example

Susan had said what she the voice told her to say and her son woke up now her doctrine is not biblical but and that's that's the whole point her her trial and error she it was confirmed by her son waking up out of the surgery that they couldn't do for three hours right so if I'm hearing what you're saying like that would

I didn't hear that part of the testimony wow yeah yeah amazing so so the he he wasn't able to come out of the anesthesia until she said what she claims

God you're saying that wasn't God because well I would say it wasn't God because God doesn't talk to us today in that way he speaks to us work a right and so that would be the difference like you're saying

I didn't it wasn't like something revealed that was in contradiction to the scripture no it's like God it's it's like you with the waitress it's it's not and it's not gonna be in scripture now

I mean yeah how could it be yeah and so to answer the question you asked about the demons I I think

I see I don't think that it's that God we can't hear God I'm saying that God isn't speaking that way okay and so can we hear from demons yes because they're trying to deceive so demons are speaking but God isn't in that way well

God has has given us an objective thing to examine yes he has yeah and you know why would we need anything more than that I'm not

I don't need I'm talking about availability to us God isn't just pragmatic he's a husband

I'm glad my wife doesn't only give me what I need we're in relationship with one another we give that's what grace is about it's not just for salvation it's for relationship

I'm sorry I have to go I was just gonna say we're two minutes over your yeah so I'll email you and we'll find it and so I appreciate you jumping in even for a few minutes and that's good we can then we we know we can ask you questions throughout so sure you'd be prepared it lets the people in the comments know that there's a real guy behind that video then that was my first attempt at a refreshing of my

YouTube to it was maybe a rough video but yeah okay and someone may know you better than me let last questions to be quick someone said there's no scripture about cultivating how to hear

God that's why he's stumped and he's a PhD do you have a PhD no

I have two years at a private Christian College and I dropped out to go to New York City and on mission maybe someone knows you better than I do

Wow maybe it's an honorary doctorate from the commenter thank you so much

I appreciate it you've all been very gracious and and yeah

God bless you God bless the rest of your discussion it's an honor to have the video reviewed yeah and Rick says thank you for calling in and yes that's good so we'll be able to and Melissa wants you to come back so all right so let's get on to actually before we get to the his second point let me just say there you know there was a comment

Jim you said you don't think God tries and and you know this is I'll be honest with you this is a real reason we have you in is because when you when you're on then we get missionary gamer to actually pay attention ever get him in and commenting is when you're on but hey he wrote exactly what

I was I wanted to say God doesn't try sounds like a great title for a book another another comment is from the one and only mr.

Justin Peters he says Jim the standard answer by HVG proponents to your question would be

Samuel might want to address that with him so we I mean we knew we were gonna have to address that at some point now what might be a good time to address that because of the things that were said so now be a good time you want to address so Samuel Samuel's proves the exact opposite of what

HVG proponents claim and that is that Samuel I mean Priscilla Schreier wrote an entire book on Samuel just first Samuel chapter 3 describing there how

Samuel learned to hear the voice of God and all the qualities that are necessary for one to learn to hear the voice of God and just a straightforward plain reading of the passage doesn't teach anything like that Samuel did not have to be taught how to hear the voice of God he didn't need to cultivate the discipline or posture himself in any way

Samuel heard everything that God said to him he heard it clearly he heard it plainly he didn't need to be taught how to hear it he or the only thing

Samuel got wrong was who was speaking the voice he'd be in now if God had said Samuel this is

Yahweh speaking then he would have understood exactly who it was and who was speaking but all he heard was his name and he went and pursued who he thought was calling his name which was

Eli and it wasn't and then he went back and he heard it again then he went back to Eli and Eli eventually recognized what was going on he said next time recognize that it's the

Lord who is talking to you so say Yahweh your servant is listening and then you have a conversation with God and that's what

Samuel did but Samuel understood what was said it wasn't a nudging it wasn't a prompting it was an audible voice which is why he got up and went to Eli because he thought that Eli was calling his name he didn't need to learn anything he heard it without ever cultivating that discipline right now there's there's also another another scripture people would use to say well you must you must find this way to quiet yourself and then learn to listen for the voice of God and that's the idea of the still small voice yeah yeah still small voice was a voice that's it's interesting that Elijah as a prophet heard the

Word of God come to him on a number of occasions before the reference to the still small voice when he is in the cave the look where the

Lord came to unto Elijah and he said you know the Lord said unto Elijah etc you read that all the way through the narrative all the way up to that point but they like to do is they like to grab that one phrase still small voice which is oddly translated and it's translated a number of different ways like the sound of a silent whisper the sound of a quiet nothingness it's the you know the sound of a gentle breeze etc that's how it's variously translated because it's only used that one time in that one place in all of scripture and it's a very odd Hebrew phrase that is very difficult to translate so rather than rather than looking at all the multiple examples of the

Word of the Lord coming unto Elijah where God spoke clearly and Elijah perfectly understood exactly what is said they glom on to this reference to the still small voice and then like Dallas Willard who makes a tremendous amount out of the still small voice nonsense he takes that one phrase and he blows this up into an entire theology of being led by nudgings and promptings and impressions and visions and dreams and signs and feelings and fleeces and everything else about it and that's all of the still small voice becomes this umbrella under which all of these various voices of God are sort of lumped so that the still small voice becomes that just a reference to anything that you know

I see a tree now and the Lord's just impressing upon me now that man I need to plant a tree he must be telling me to plant a tree in my own yard that must have been the still small voice to me or it could be a sign or it could be

I read something in scripture and a word pops off the phrase or it could be my neighbor says the word Africa to me and well maybe the

Lord's still small voice is telling me I should be a missionary to Africa that still small voice just becomes becomes a devil's brew of any subjective impression that people want to want to call the voice of God so that that is what

Elijah heard was something outside of the cave it wasn't an internal impression which is why he went outside the cave to hear it so it wasn't an internal impression it wasn't something inside of himself inside of his own mind and that's how people use the still small voice but he heard the still small voice and that he exited the cave which he would not have needed to do if what he was receiving was an internal inaudible divine revelation inside of his heart or his mind inside of his own thoughts so that is another passage that is abused abused out of hand every time it's used yeah yeah so all right so let's let's go on to his his number point number two all right we got three to do and we've spent an hour on the first one so we're gonna have to yeah they'll be quicker here we go our counterfeit voices step to journal your prayer life if you are truly a

Christian and not just because your parents told you you were but you have decided that Jesus is the

Christ and confessed him as Lord and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead he's given you his

Holy Spirit then you've already heard him Jesus said that no one can come to him unless the

Father draws them to he cried out to your depths and you answered his call journaling helps me funnel all my thoughts into one stream and as I begin to write what

I believe I'm hearing it focuses my attention on that one beautiful still small voice begin to journal during your prayer times as you keep an account of the conversations with the

Lord that you're having on a daily basis you will begin to hear him more consistently and more accurately hey has this been helpful so far leave a like and share it with a friend all right now on okay so I mean right there he you already answered almost as if Justin knew where this was gonna go that's still small voice

I mean the idea of journaling you know that's that's very common in the

HBG movement those who are continuationists Jack Deere suggests that you journal and write down your your dreams that you have or your visions that you have journaling becomes a way where you are recording your thoughts that ironically and I'd be curious to know

Curtis's response to this would be the whole idea of journaling what the Lord might be speaking to me was the way that Jesus calling came into existence yeah so I'd like to know then if my journaling and my writing down these revelations is important yeah very very good

Jesus calling anyone exactly right if writing down my revelations is important then if this is what

God is speaking and I'm writing it down then what exactly qualitatively makes it different than Scripture right less than Scripture and why is that not if God is speaking and God speaks authoritatively and God speaks inerrantly because he can't make an error and he speaks infallibly because he can't fail to do anything then how is

God speaking to me if I get it right how is it not on par with Scripture correct and let me just I have yet to hear an intelligent answer to that question yeah and let me just for folks who may have heard you mentioned

Jesus calling and not know the history of it but so in the introduction to that book she claims that she basically shut off her brain and got any of that and she claims it's

God that was writing the book and so she was just the funnel she was just the tool and the

Spirit wrote it now the reality is if that's what happened and and Peter from missionary gamer says if you journal and it's something

God speaks is it then to be added to the 66 books of the Bible that's basically what you're getting to Jim and that's what

I would say what Jesus calling if what Jesus calling is claiming is true this this auto writing where her brains shut off and God is is supposedly the one writing through it she she's recognizing a spirit is doing it but yet there's things in that book that are not in line with Scripture so I would end up saying what was demonic then but but if her claim is true or if journaling and and this is

God speaking to you should not we see this as they sit 67th book of the

Bible the what what gives Scripture it's authoritative inerrant and infallible qualities is it the fact that it's written down if so then if I take what

God speaks to me and I write it down is it not then Scripture so is the fact that Scripture was given is it the fact that it's old that makes it authoritative and inerrant and infallible or is it the people to whom it was given the apostles and prophets that makes it infallible it has to be one of those three things and I would argue that it is none of those three things it's the source because it comes from God it is therefore by nature infallible inerrant and authoritative and so if God is its source and if it has those qualities because it comes from God then if God speaks to you it must be authoritative inerrant and infallible by definition it can't be anything else

Scripture has no category for a revelation that comes from Yahweh that is possibly errant possibly fallible and not authoritative there is no such thing if he speaks it it is canonical and it is authoritative well

Sarah Young if if I remember correctly in that very introduction she says

I had Scripture but it wasn't enough I needed more yep that's right they say the quiet part out loud yeah yeah yeah and you know and what you see with that and and Justin Peters has a great video you know taking all these guys from 2020 and their predictions and then you know just pointing out how they all every one of them missed kovat missed

Trump not being president I mean every one of them missed those two major events and and yet they just go well hey it's okay we're all we all have to be 85 % right like this this is you know they're claiming

God said these things and yet it's wrong consistently and you know one of the things

I find with the journaling is I remember a guy that I was talking to on the plane and he was trying to say he does this he journals and he would journal his dreams and they always come true the issue is is that I said well you know give me some examples and they he couldn't he couldn't remember them all too many offhand but the ones he could remember were so vague it's kind of like when

I was in in college and there was a girl that I knew that she I mean she just really trusted in the horoscopes because every day it came true and for one month

I made her read all 12 horoscopes and all 12 came true every day it's amazing you know because they're so general that when you're looking to get it to be true and the thing

I said with this guy on the plane was have any of yours not come true and he said well some of them haven't been fulfilled yet I said but so anyone that that didn't happen yet you just go well that's still future so if so if you got something wrong it's going to happen in the future and therefore it's never actually you know with this trial and error type of method it's never actually wrong with the journaling because it just hasn't happened so you're you're looking at in God spoke to you and told you this and and that you know

I'm gonna get a job you know at Apple well I get a job at IBM but we'll see what that doesn't mean it hasn't how

I will eventually get it from Apple right and and until the point you die I mean

I remember someone I knew in college her mother believed God spoke to her and she was gonna get a million dollars one day she died never having the million dollars but up until the day she died she kept believing that it was gonna happen in the future well that's the whole thing

I have the issue with I guess with the journaling is you you're looking for it to be true so when you find enough that you can say

I'll see that fits that's the proof now I can I can say God spoke this one to me but you're you're believing all the others he spoke spoke to even though they haven't been fulfilled yeah and and you just push that fulfillment off to you know so until I guess till you die yeah the trial and error approach to this ends up undermining our confidence in Scripture and here's how it does it if if I learn to hear the voice of God and I only hear it accurately through trial and error then how can

I be how can I be assured that the Apostles and the Prophets got it right and that they didn't get it wrong how can

I be assured that Scripture is not their trial and error because they're men like us and so if I if I can only be if I can only hear the voice of God by giving it a swing my doing my best and that's the only way that I can develop this discipline and hear from God then how do

I know that somebody that wrote was the writer of Scripture that they got it right every single time if we if God can speak and the recipient can get it wrong then how do we know that the that God spoke and the recipients who wrote

Scripture got it right what is our guarantee so again what what makes

Scripture unique what makes it sufficient what makes it authoritative is that the fact that it came to those men well those men were sinners like we are those men were fallen like we are they were men who needed to be redeemed there were men who made mistakes so if God can't overcome my inadequacies and failures to communicate accurately to me every single time then how do

I know that he did that for Paul that he did that for Mark that they're Matthew and John there's that that trial and error approach this whole yeah we just take a swing at it hopefully we get it right and well he's gonna get to this in the third part of the video where you get more into the trial and error aspect of it but it can't it doesn't instill any confidence in either

God's ability to speak or God's ability to make sure that that we are we are hearing accurately what he says you know that's a really good point though Jim and I guess

I hadn't heard that or thought about that but if if that's what we're supposed to do is just God speaks to us and we write it down and it could be from God it could not be

God but if if if it's got me what when Paul wrote it wasn't

Paul that made it inspired and God wasn't dictating to him that's why we say it's

God's Word because God word through Paul so it's it's God's Word because God had

Paul write that and it's the nature of who God is that makes it inspired right and so if God is writing is telling working through you to write something in your journal then yeah it's inspired your journal right to communicate yeah well let's so so he did go hold on let me let me develop that a little bit so if God speaks and I don't hear him then he has tried to communicate to me and failed and therefore

God can fail so just work out the implications of that God or fail because of a lack of power or because of a lack of knowledge one of those two

K one of those two or you take power nor knowledge and therefore he cannot fail yeah or you take the the side of the word faith that says

God's trying to communicate and you were the problem yeah you weren't able to do it yeah something's wrong with trying to communicate it still if I have failed to hear that then

God has failed to communicate to me hmm so it's you you have you have set up this is a false

God this is an idol people have created an idol and the idol is a God it's not

Yahweh but it is a God who is trying to speak trying to get his message across trying to trying to direct us trying to correct us trying to guide us and our inabilities to hear this or our lack of discipline and cultivating this ability or any number of things keeps

God from being successful in what he is trying to do and it keeps him from doing it and succeeding in it and from accomplishing what he sets out to do and that is not the

God of Bible the God of the Bible the God of the Bible sits enthroned in the heavens and he does as he pleases he accomplishes all of his good pleasure as the scripture says so God communicate infallibly all the time and it will be infallible authoritative inerrant revelation and Jim this is why this is so important for the point that you just made people don't even recognize it's it's so subtle that they're suddenly have a

God who is not the God of the Bible that's right not not even realizing that that shift occurs so that I mean that's why because I mean people people that well why why should you write this book

I mean I got asked that by someone that well this woman Susan that I wanted to give her a free copy of your book she she didn't want one but I told her you know

I'll give you a free copy if you'll read it and she was like why would someone want to write a book on that and I try to explain exactly this right because you're not realizing that you're shifting from what the

Bible says to what you wish the Bible said yeah and and you end up having a different God than the

God of the Bible without even noticing it yeah so and Curtis is doing that because I think he would disagree

I don't think most people who practice this are intentionally saying I'm gonna set up an idol and I'm gonna worship that idol or I'm gonna disparage

God but these are the implications of bad theology and assumptions that we make when we come to the text of Scripture that's that's the implications of it

I don't disparage Curtis's sincerity or his love for the Lord or anything like that I'm not trying to shortchange that in the least

I'm just saying that when you start teaching this you've got to be you've got to be a second -level thinker you've got to think in terms of you've got to be thinking in terms of what are the implications of this theology that I'm believing in and practicing you know am

I believing that God needs to speak to me outside of Scripture so if God is speaking outside of Scripture then it is it because he needs it or because I need it if it's because he needs it then you're saying that God needs something and and therefore you know that's that's a false idol

God needs nothing he's not served by human hands Paul says in Acts chapter 17 he has no needs whatsoever he is completely self -sufficient so does

God need to speak to me outside of Scripture and which means that he is not self -sufficient and it means that Scripture is not sufficient because he needs to get something to me that he hasn't put in Scripture which you would think he would think forward enough to know what

I need and put it in Scripture for me if he were an infinite God he could do that or is it because I need him to speak to me outside of Scripture and if that's the case then that's saying that Scripture itself is not sufficient to go back to something that Curtis said earlier we we get these revelations and then we test them by Scripture to see if they're true and valid in keeping with Scripture well if it contradicts

Scripture then I have to reject it but if it is in keeping with Scripture and Scripture already addresses then

I don't need that revelation and so if I end up having a revelation that I can't test by Scripture and it doesn't contradict

Scripture but there's nothing in Scripture that affirms it like the name of my waitress in the restaurant this is an unnecessary revelation there's no and then

I can't test it at all and therefore the whole idea that we should be testing everything by Scripture falls apart yes the only revelation that is of any use to us then is stuff that we can't test by Scripture because Scripture doesn't address it what's it's kind of like with the the the gift of languages everyone wants to say they speak in angelic language because there's no way of testing that and verifying it it's the same thing here all of these all of these voices that variances yeah yeah all these experiences are something can't be tested with Scripture and therefore it's just hey you just got to trust me and and that's the whole the whole thing with it okay he's got he's got one point left let's and this is half the video or almost half the video so let's play this to our third and final strategy ask the

Holy Spirit about people around you and test the info I told you it would be a challenge listen you have been given the same

Holy Spirit that you read about in the Scriptures the same Holy Spirit that raised

Jesus from the dead who leads and speaks and shows if our

Commission is about sharing Jesus with everyone around us and discipling the nations don't you think that the presence of Jesus in us and upon us will be interested in speaking into people's lives so here's the challenge choose a person or ask the

Holy Spirit to highlight someone then ask the Lord about that person the first thing you see feel hear the first impression you have ask the

Lord about that impression you may hear more you may not now approach that person and test that information just ask them about what you felt you could say hey sorry

I know this is weird but is your name blah blah blah and you may say hey Curtis what if I make a mistake

I don't want to misrepresent the Lord what if I didn't hear accurately number one you probably will make a mistake but you will also hear him accurately and you won't know until you test it number two you are not claiming to be a perfect and inerrant prophet of God and if you are stop it say you ask a person if they are an oil painter they're into oil painting worst -case scenario they're like no

I'm not why did you ask that and you turn around and say hey listen I'm I'm a Christian and I'm practicing hearing

God's voice what is your name what are you into and then you tell them how much Jesus loves them and you share the gospel with them begin simply begin boldly and whatever happens share the gospel challenge accepted check out this video where God told me my servers name before we got there and the

Lord used our brief encounter to transform Lisa's life completely let me know in the what you think and how it goes okay so that covered this brings back terrible memories from when

I was in the vineyard church okay so so we used to do this thing where that were called treasure hunts where we would get together and we would pray and everyone would basically ask

God for a vision whether it be you know what someone specifically looked like or a color t -shirt or something like that and then we would pray and then we would wait to hear from the

Lord and then we would go out to the park or we would go to the store the mall or something and we would just look around first for someone who fit the description of what

God gave us and it was the biggest failure every single time and when

I finally realized that I was moving away from from charismatic teaching and actually reading my

Bible I just I quit kind of participating and I went to go just to kind of watch and observe and one of the things that happened was one of the guys that was with us he he got this specific vision of a woman her son on a swing at a playground and I thought well that's kind of weird because we don't we're not going in to visit playgrounds you know this is kind of odd but we were walking by somewhere and he said oh

I think that's her and I said okay we'll go give her the gospel and he said no

I think the Lord was just wanting me to be obedient and I said I don't think that's it so then I went to go give her the gospel right so you could have cut out everything that he just said in that last point except for that the very end where he said hey my name is such -and -such let me tell you about Jesus that's all you need to do because that's what we're commanded to do anyway we don't need any of the other garbage and nonsense and then the benefit is that you don't end up misrepresenting

God or making it look like you're what to tell her about a God who can't speak accurately right well see the thing that the thing that struck me is

Curtis says in there you will be wrong like expect that God speaks to you in such a way that he tells you something that's wrong well yeah and then again then back to the reliability of Scripture if God if God if I can do that then how do

I know Paul got it right correct yeah I'm not playing baseball here where batting 300 gets me into the

Hall of Fame okay that's not how God operates it's either it's either a thousand percent or it's nothing yeah and because the thing is when you have people that will try to cherry -pick the

Bible like well this is inspired and this isn't you know there's people that try to do that and what you end up finding is when they're doing that they're setting themselves up as judge over God's Word they're the ones now that is gonna say this is

God spoke this but not that that's a dangerous place to be well he's kind of doing a similar thing in the sense of saying you're gonna go and try this out but who are you giving this credit to so you're gonna go up and say to the waitress hey your name's

Lisa and she's gonna go or is your name Lisa she's gonna go no well now you're claiming that was from God right now look the simple reality is is that are for many people your mind may pick things up unconsciously you may maybe you overheard someone call the waitress

Lisa and you know or she said that but you didn't you didn't pick it up like enough to know that she said it and then you're thinking oh

God's good I think her name is Lisa I'm gonna ask her right and then you all see it's confirmed well it may just be that your unconscious mind heard something that your conscious mind didn't realize and then you think that's of God but the thing that gets me concerned is when you have people when he's saying to just try this and know you're gonna be wrong then you know it goes back to Jim's next book right because God doesn't try okay yep

I mean that's the whole the whole thing that I see with it is that you're saying this is of God well

God cannot lie Titus 1 2 he cannot give you error because this is a really scary place in my mind is if God can deceive somebody into thinking

I'm speaking to you and I'm giving you false information then how could you trust anything in the

Bible because all of it could be part of God's deception I mean this is an argument that I make with Muslims all the time because they'll they'll they end up sitting there and saying well you know they're gonna argue that God can give contradictory information in the

Quran in believing that the Trinity is the father the mother and the son or that the sperm of men are in there in their low parts of their back okay that's error but they're they're crediting that error to God that's what

I think happens when you try this and say this is God speaking and it's just your own feelings well a lot of the people that I know that still think that God speaks outside of scripture the question that I ask them all the time

I say what is it that God has not said in his word that he must say outside of it and they have yet to come come back with an answer yeah that's a very good point trial -and -error approach

I mean you listen let's take Curtis's example that he gave really what you're saying in a situation is that God either gave him the wrong information or couldn't give him the right information because the assumption is that God is speaking in that moment or that he will speak and if the assumption is that he if the assumption is not that he is speaking then why do you assume that you should be trying to listen you have to know if you're going to try and listen you have to know that he is gonna that you're expecting him to speak and that's one of the presuppositions that I deal with and God doesn't whisper is that we can expect to hear from God outside of scripture so that's the assumption that he's operating is that I can expect that God's going to give me the name of my waitress or tell me something about this rando that I come across in the mall

God's going to give me some piece of information it's going to give me a platform to share the gospel with this person which we don't need any of this as you already pointed out to show the gospel isn't share the gospel but the assumption is that God's going to give me this piece of information so if I get it wrong then one of two things happened either

God gave me the wrong information which case he's lying and deceiving or to he was unable to give me the right information because there was something that was more powerful than him so either way you have a false

God that is not Yahweh so here's a question that Adams asking

Curtis mentioned something about the Holy Spirit what would you say to him about the

Holy Spirit's role in evangelism the first thing I would say is that the

Holy it's not the role of the Holy Spirit to reveal to me information about whoever I'm talking to the role of the

Holy Spirit is to move in the heart of whoever I'm talking to as I'm giving them the gospel in order to point them to Christ convict the world of sin righteousness and judgment to come that's what the

Spirit does and spirit gives us enables our giftedness and works through us and gives us the words and as we communicate the power of the gospel the spirit either uses that message to harden the heart of the hearer or soften the heart of the ear the spirit of God is at work in that but you know just to say that the role the spirit of God is to give me that piece of information to give me a platform to do that that's that's not what scripture says but scripture does say that the spirit convicts and the spirit draws and the spirit regenerates and the spirit opens the eyes the spirit grants repentance the spirit creates faith within the spirit does all of these activities and works in us sharing the gospel including giving us the opportunity in the venue to do so and giving us the words and bringing scripture to our mind so that we are effective in doing it in the moment that's the role the

Holy Spirit well you know it looks like Caleb has an answer for you with the

HVG where it could be found in scripture Jim so here you go Caleb says

HVG can be found in Revelation 22 22 drew you want to go look that up real quick and read yes yes yes

I got it right here right here in my NASB it must there must be a textual variant here because it's not here yeah cuz the verse 21 says the grace of the

Lord Jesus Christ be with you all amen the end there is no yeah

I saw that left he says later

Revelation 22 22 is my go -to verse these days well

Caleb I'm stealing that one I like it all right let's get

I know Melissa's backstage has a question that she want she wants to ask about God's will let me just get through some of these questions real quick with you

Jim that came up so let's see all right so John says question do you believe

God could not speak a word of wisdom or knowledge today or God simply would never would but and I don't know if this was a question he had for you or or when

Curtis was on but so so you know if God could speak in the

New Testament times a word of wisdom and a knowledge you know is it that God just doesn't do that today yeah so so I'm not making any claims about what

God can or cannot do I'm making claims about what we can expect God to do based upon what is revealed in Scripture so God could speak to me through a leprechaun in my refrigerator if he wanted to but I have no reason to believe that he will and therefore

I'm not likely to go stand in front of my refrigerator waiting for revelation from God God can make a donkey talk but you're not going to see me this evening after the broadcast

I was standing next to the fence my neighbor's field talking to the donkeys waiting for revelation from God so we're not talking about what

God can or cannot do God can do anything God could speak to me right now if he wanted to but I'm what

I am saying is that we're we're describing what is normative for us as Christians to expect and we should expect

God to speak to us in his word he speaks to us in his word when we understand the text so there's no need for a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge and a lot of times what gets lumped into that category is unusual insight or sometimes

Providence you know I feel an uneasy feeling about something and so I just kind of get out of an area turns out there was a stabbing there

I find that out on the news the next day was that a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom or was it just an uneasiness in the situation that I was subconsciously picking up or the

Spirit of God by his providence was just moving I don't call that the voice of God I would I would call that extraordinary providence

I would call that God working in my circumstances and my situations I would

I would even contribute that to God directing my steps I believe that God directs every last step that I take everything that I do everything that I plan everything that I execute everything

I accomplish he is sovereign over all of it he address and direction ordains all of it but I don't distribute it to the voice of God and I don't claim its revelation or him speaking to me

I just do what God has commanded me to do in Scripture and I trust that in obeying that that I'm going to end up walking out his will living in obedience to him that he's provided everything in his word to that is necessary for life and godliness and for me to live an obedient God honoring

Christian life he's given me everything I need so I strive to obey that trusting that God will establish all of my steps and accomplish his will for me and that's hard enough to obey scripture to keep me busy for the rest of my life yeah

Andrew what if we what if somehow you and I went up to Idaho there we go dress dress me up like a leprechaun and I hid in Jim's fridge

I need to drink the almond milk it's magically delicious well

I think I think that I I I think I have a word from the Lord that if I open

Jim's you know refrigerator I'm gonna find bacon in there because because I think every dish that I know okay so Drew I don't know if I shared this with you but when

Jim had his first conference and I spoke at the conference at the end of the weekend I made a comment to Jim every single dish that was made in his home had bacon in it

I was like did you do that on purpose he goes yeah I just want to make sure you weren't kosher anymore all right so so Tracy is when

I'm saying that Susan claims to be a prophet an apostle she goes for sixty six hundred dollars

I can I can become an apostle and then I'll be able to hear the voice that hear God right that's right

I'll give it to you for 550 yeah I think that's exactly how it works so so this is a question that's geared toward Curtis so you know when he comes back we can may get an answer but D is asking

Curtis why would someone need to hear the voice of God and how exactly does one does hearing the voice of God's what does it sound like so this is the thing that gets me is that you know people will say they don't need it but God does it and yet there's so much time focused on teaching people how to I mean look

I just before the show I decided to a quick search on hearing the voice of God or how to hear the voice of God and there's a ton of videos teaching people this well yeah why why do we need to focus that much time on something scripture never teaches and second when yes what does it sound like it seems to always sound like what people want

I mean I'll go back to my days in college where a guy he got a word from the

Lord that this girl who was engaged was gonna was gonna marry him and she she broke off the engagement and married him you know saying this is it's

God you know God spoke so she you know you know I got to do this they're divorced today by the way so yeah you know going back to what

Curtis said about well we we hear from demons you know people on our side we hear from demons you know what

I wanted to tell him was I don't need to hear from demons because I have my own flesh that's warring against me yeah yeah that's that's demonic enough right

I need to I need to continually put that to death and and this was again earlier with some of what he was saying is why would

God allow you to hear an error and this so this is kind of Jim you brought this up and that's a question you know we would have for Curtis like what why would this trial and error he you're gonna hear something that is gonna be wrong yeah so years worthwhile she's saying he contradicted himself by saying it's an impression and that you could be wrong while also saying you're hearing from God and I think this is the point you're trying to make

Jim is that you can't God can't be wrong yeah that's right and so she decided to look it up and said impression an idea feeling or opinion about something or someone especially one formed without conscious thought or on the basis of little evidence even

Oxford language knows so she looked it up in the dictionary and realizes you know this is not something it's just a feeling you have but it's it's amazing to me that so many people hear from the voice hear the voice of God saying what they want

God to say yeah and there's nothing in Scripture that says that our feelings are the voice of God or that our impressions are the voice of God it's just not in Scripture that's that's not what the still small voice was and there's nothing in Scripture that teaches that our impressions or nudgings or promptings or feelings are any reliable measure of truth they're not in fact we are commanded in Scripture to look away from our heart to not trust our heart and instead to look outside of us to the objective revealed

Word of God HBG teaching ends up causing us to focus and and look inwardly to introspect and to examine and exegete our own feelings and that's the polar opposite of what would honor

God we're commanded to do that with Scripture and to look to Scripture and Scripture alone yeah and I mean look

I in all the times I've noticed that people that say they hear from God it's always you know it's something that's in line with what their will is what they want there's only once that I had someone tell me that they heard

God speak to them and they they didn't want it to come true they were against it but they they ended up doing it because they they realized it was from God and it was a woman who felt that she was called to go to become a pastor in a

Lutheran Church and she said that she did that because God kept telling her she should go and be a pastor and I pointed out but Scripture is very clear that he wouldn't want you to be a pastor and and so the issue is she was like but but I wasn't looking for this

God kept telling me to do this well that wouldn't have been God yeah no

Tanya Harrison in her book what's it called

Tanya T -A -N -I -A Harris H -A -R -R -I -S I forget what her book is called but it is

I was on Justin Brierley's broadcast unbelievable and she and I had an hour hour and a half discussion or something like that on her book and my book because they're polar opposites of one another and after the broadcast

I asked her that same question because she pastors a church and I said Scripture is clear and yet you have this conflict between what

Scripture says and what you think you heard God speak to you and she had no response to that other than just that she just appealed to her experience the experience is that and Scripture can't mean this and so she found a way of explaining the way

Scripture in favor of her experience and I found that to be the case ninety nine point nine percent of the time that people have visions impressions promptings or nudgings that contradict

Scripture yeah and that's there is the red flag all right so let's let's see

I don't know if we have okay this is just a comment John is saying Curtis Curtis teaching are simply shocking dumb in vehicle and straight up a cult brought into Christianity he has to repent before it's too late now that's gonna be hard to hear but this it is from the occult that is where we see the cult and the occult

I mean some some of this the practice that we see we've seen in Mormonism years before hundred years before we saw it in Christianity and and so the fact that the occult is like and and there's so many groups that they they trust that this is the proof this is what vindicates and so here a question from Melissa how come none of these people ever hear

God rebuking them yeah I'll add one to that how come they never hear God clearing up fine points of doctrine over which we differ

I mean we never we never get any reliable God -inspired revelation on anything outside of Scripture that we need some some more clarity on the meaning of first Corinthians 1529 for instance things like that we never get any any reliable revelation as to authoritative on those issues that's a good point so all right let's we got through most of the questions

I know we're gonna have Melissa come in she's been waiting backstage but before we do it'd be a good time for us to mention our sponsor

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SFE to get your discount all right let me bring Melissa in and so there we go

Melissa welcome to the show you had a question about the the will of God yeah

I am talking about the part of the Bible known as the

Lord's Prayer and it says for his will be done and the other day

I heard my pastor I think you were just saying that it that only refers to I don't know maybe

I could be wrong but it refers to like the gospel but does it go further than that does it like mean like certain things he wants to be done that's how

I always thought about maybe I'm wrong so you're the energy phrase to make sure

I understand the question so you're saying does in the Lord's in the Lord's Prayer where he says thy will be done is that just referring to sharing the gospel is that only referring to in the sense of the gospel to be to be to be done yeah shared or is it more than that I would say it's more than that Jimmy looks like you were gonna say son but yeah

I would say it's more than that I mean it would incorporate certainly gospel proclamation in advance and the growth of the church but it would have to go beyond that too

I want God's will to be done concerning the judgment of the wicked concerning the nations the rise and fall of Kings because God's will is holy and pure that I want to pray that his will be done even in my own life in terms of what he ordains for me and his steps and what he appoints for me and my children and my church

I want God's will for those things not my own will and so that's that's the instruction there we should pray not for my will to be done but God's will to be done we want to see his will is his is the glorification of his name in the advancement of his truth in his kingdom and so when we pray that prayer for God's will to be done we're praying for God to advance his causes and his purposes and to receive glory for what he has done in creation and so that would incorporate not just gospel proclamation but I think the minute details of each of our individual lives and ministries as well does that mean like like we're praying for in our life for like his will be done like for us to align with God do you think that's good thing yeah yeah

I think that's entirely appropriate I want I want to line up with God's will I want to do God's will and I find that in Scripture so I take the principles that he has given to me in Scripture and the direct commands and and then

I obey those I work those out in my life and I seek to obey those putting to death my own desires and trying to do that which pleases the

Lord and when I do that then I'm walking in truth and in his path and in his holiness and what he has ordained for me so I'm striving to be obedient to him which is his will

I'm striving to pursue my own sanctification which is his will pursue holiness without which no one can see the

Lord and to obey his commands and so those elements of my own personal sanctification and obedience those are aspects of his will as well yeah no no

John John is saying this Jim says don't ask drew that question because he's post meal

I would actually agree with everything that Jim just said yeah

I don't think that particularly has to be any any type of eschatology attached to it

I think what Jim explained is perfectly biblical yeah but being post meal you also think you you know you'll bring in the kingdom you'll bring in God's will hey you know you'll get a kick out of this but so someone someone came to church and had to a bunch of books from two authors one was

Michael Brown and so the pastor was given these books donated he figured the one in church who would read these would be me but the the five volume set from Michael Brown on answering

Jewish objectives and I only had the first two so I was glad to get the other three and the other three books were

Rush Dooney yeah yeah so I have those now

I figured I would I would have a home with them with I'm sure so yeah

I got those and I may I may send them your way but I figured I may

I may you know they'll go on my heresy section of the okay well we do it's

Melissa anything else I know you always wrote your show go ahead

I think it goes up actually when when I actually mentioned it I think it some people start listening so it's truth be told radio .com

truth be told radio .com check it out that's my show thanks for answering my question everybody thanks

Melissa thanks all right so we had we had a couple more questions that they were one directed toward me this was early on and I'll give the answer that I immediately thought of but someone said and can

Andrew name one male or female name that starts with Q off the top of his head

I I can ask any question right haha so yeah male and female

I could do that Queen and Queenie because those were the two guys that were dressed in tutus pretending to be girls dancing in front of me in New York City when

I was evangelizing so yeah one guy was named Queen and one was Queenie so it's both male and female so there you go

KT said and Andrew been praying praying for you

Andrew keep us updated so yes so just real quick I'll give an update I have not been able to see

I saw the neuro ophthalmologist with the double vision that I'm having I do appreciate the prayers it has been really a struggle being you know being on the computer is not helpful so even doing this show

I'm having to like look away and things like that because it's trying to read is very difficult and and it has to do with the way

I turn my head creates more or less double vision so we think tomorrow

I'll go to an ophthalmologist who supposedly all they got to do is give me these special prism eyeglasses that I'll have to wear the rest of my life and that supposedly fixes it it's supposedly a genetic thing my father has it too he's got prism glasses so hopefully that's that's all it is and I'm hoping that there's some other way to solve it other than wearing glasses but if if that's the worst of it then that's the worst of it but I still

I won't have an update really probably till September but I go to the eighth

I'll go to a cardiologist to do a stress test and the same day I'll do an MRI so that's to rule out whether it's a an effect of a stroke that I may have had or if it's a brain aneurysm we want to rule those two out but the neuro ophthalmologist was very confident that this is what it is he says classic case it's genetic the fact that my father had it only vindicated it he one of the things is that way you compensate for this nerve for palsy is what it's called is

I tend to tilt my head to the left that gets rid of it if I tilt my head to the right

I have double vision and he said to go look at old pictures and you'll probably see that you've always done that and I was like as soon as he said it

I went yeah that's actually true and almost every picture my head is kind of tilted and turns out my son does that as well so yeah so that may be all it is that's we're hoping because kind of brain aneurysm sounds bad stroke sounds bad so you know so if I can if I survive my trip to Idaho which

I say that a little tongue -in -cheek because Jim it was you know last time was it was pretty you know members of your tragedy the head in your church tried to kill you didn't they yeah yeah the head of security no less yeah it was really fun

Jim introduced me that way he says you know he said that his security tried to kill him and he tried to make it look like an accident yeah well we've learned from our mistakes this time around we won't we won't drop the ball yeah yeah well hence the reason

I told I told Tom Thomas that I'm gonna bring you know two

Glocks with me just in case one gives out so yeah but Jim thanks for coming in real if we mentioned a couple times but I do encourage you folks to get the book

God doesn't whisper and you should really get that get the companion one

God doesn't whisper and God doesn't try get those today oh wait we got a pre -order the one when that's available but doesn't try is probably gonna go to the editor tomorrow

I'm hoping to have final formatting and everything done and up for publication by the end of September that's the goal yeah well also they can if you have

AG TV Jim has a video series on God doesn't whisper as well that's true yeah yeah so I do encourage you get get

God doesn't whisper we have it on striving for eternity you can go to striving turn org in our store and you can you can get it right from there it goes right from Amazon and gets to Jim still gets paid from Amazon and actually this is some people don't know and and so let me encourage you why you should buy cases of Jim's books because you're not actually helping

Jim not that that's a bad thing to do but the the money for the books actually go toward missionaries who've retired and left the mission field because when people retire from the mission field they come home and all the money dries up because they're not on mission field and Jim's has a heart for them and has been giving the money toward basically missionaries who need to have some income and living after the mission field so that's what you're actually supporting by buying a case of them to give away which is really good to do by the way if you're gonna do that go to my website

Jim Osman calm and contact me directly I'll give you a I'll get you a break on the cases so that you cut we cut

Amazon out of the mix and you get a good deal and the missionaries get supported yeah so John says great show thank you

Andrew drew the two of you always teach me something every week great job well we didn't do much of teaching this time he really didn't yeah yeah most of the show

I just sat here like this yeah going mm -hmm mm -hmm yeah agree agree like I don't need to say anything when

Jim's on this is we'll just let him turn ask him a question and turn them loose yeah but Jim I appreciate you coming in it's like I said it's the only way that we get

Peter to watch and comment he said so like out way to hurt a brother actually no the way that I hurt

Peter is by you know getting into ATV accidents and therefore not going out to do open air with him okay

Caleb is saying much -needed topic thank you for talking about this thank you

Jim thanks yeah I mean that this is I do think this is really an important topic and there's this is such you know

I did an interview today Jim with a podcast called doxological or doxologic and they had seen the conference the the cessationist conference we did up at your church and had asked me to come on and talk about miracles and you know one of the things is is that it was like why is this such a hard topic hearing the voice of God or the charismatic gifts that the view of cessationism why is it so hard I think the reason this is so hard for people is because they take it so personal like if we're saying they are not hearing from God I think what they hear is we're saying they're not saved yeah yeah you in many ways you've taken away what what they view as their personal direct line to God and so when you take away that experience or you question that experience or cause them to question that experience you're causing them to question something's very hard of their

Christian life and I want and my goal is never just to make people feel bad or to question their salvation or anything but I want people to do is make sure that you have the right thing at the heart of your

Christian life and that is a trust in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture and not in private revelations or feelings or impressions or promptings

I want people to have their faith grounded on the one thing that should be grounding their faith and that is the scriptures themselves so I I've had that experience where I've talked to people about this and they they get upset they get mad they walk out they storm out they they you know they send me nasty grams because they feel like I've cut the the bat phone to them they had a personal connection to God that now

I have severed now I've caused them to doubt whether that ever existed and for many people it's an emotional thing it's an emotional reaction not an intellectual or biblical reaction yeah and and that's the thing with sons like look if when we get asked well you know you saying this isn't from God then who's it from and you know

I as Justin says can't exegete your experience but it could be your own it could be your own thoughts it could be your own your own experiences it could be you conjuring them up and look there are people out there who have a random thought pops into their head they assume that it's from God and then you ask them well if that wasn't

God then what was it well it might just be a random thought that popped into your head you mean you could consider that right you could consider the fact that it could be psychosomatic you could consider the fact that demons could be deceiving you you could be just considering the fact that it's what do they call that phenomenon where you you assume something's the case and a confirmation bias right so when you walk into a situation you assume that God's gonna speak to me through this and then

I feel this impression or I feel this feeling and I assume that that's from God and then it works out well we'll see that's confirmation bias it was

God speaking to me after all and maybe none of it was from God at all maybe it was just circumstances that you are attributing to be divine revelation when in fact it's not divine revelation and and that's the whole thing that I guess

I'm trying to raise with folks is the fact that just because we're saying you know that it's not

God doesn't mean it's demonic that's right a number of clauses of this yeah and so you know because that's the big thing like everyone would jump to so it's like I just want to be clear no we're not saying it's demonic yeah so it could be many things like I said with the waitress it could be that you subconsciously didn't even know that you were hearing heard the name so so there's a lot of different ways to explain it but you know

I look forward to Curtis coming on Jim if you you can come on we can have a good dialogue about this and I think it'll be it'll be helpful for folks yeah if he's willing to do that then maybe it would be beneficial for me to draft up a series of questions or something that I would

I would challenge him with on this subject that he could prepare and think through it that way he's not caught flat -footed and and he has an opportunity to really prepare some substantive answers maybe some of them he's not thought through maybe some of them he has but at least then it wouldn't feel like oh

I haven't had chance to think through this and it could be a more profitable productive conversation and he could do the same thing and then we would not be going into it blind as it were and I'm grateful since we're passing on kudos

I want to thank Curtis for coming on I think he was gracious and to come into the lion's den as it were and to even spend 45 minutes with us or half hour what as what as it was

I took took a lot it takes a lot of courage and and I'm grateful that he did it in a gracious way yeah and and and now

I'll just publicly apologize because what ended up happening was I I had mentioned on Twitter that we were gonna review it but I don't know if I gave him the date

I might have but it would have been when we set it up and I just before we went live

I went and grabbed his email from YouTube and sent him a shot him a quick email so that may be why he wasn't really prepared and came in briefly and didn't have the time so I'm glad that he came in especially because it not only was able to clarify some things but also be able to set up where we can have a longer discussion which would be helpful

I think for a lot of folks so I look forward to that yeah so next week and Jim you're more than welcome to come in on this we have someone that wants to come in his name is

James Park and we got into a discussion on Facebook and he he wants to defend the ministry of Benny Hinn and so I'm hoping that I reached out to both

Justin Peters and Kosti Hinn to see if they would be willing to come in Jim you're more than welcome as well because you know

I don't follow Benny Hinn that much I just know that enough to know yep I'm not gonna be following this yeah

I don't follow him and that much either I mean I know some of the you know I know the basic stuff about Benny Hinn worries out what he's about but I don't

I don't Justin watches him I mean he's a fanboy if anybody's a fanboy

Justin as he watches all of this stuff so yeah well you know more

Kosti either one of those guys would be perfect great yeah better to answer questions about Benny Hinn than his nephew right that's right who worked for the ministry yeah and so the the after that I don't know maybe on on the 10th if both

Jim and and Curtis are available we could do a show then on yeah if you're around Pennsylvania that's right so okay so if we do it it probably while I'm out at Jim's so maybe

Jim and I could do it from from the church there so which would be good yeah very possible all right well folks

I hope this was helpful educational I hope that we got questions that you had answered and if you if not you're welcome to come in next

Thursday ask any question you have about God in the Bible and we will seek to answer it here and next week if you want to talk about Benny Hinn yep we're gonna talk about that so so let others know so it's it's always fun to you know the neat thing is watching the chat because the chat has their own we like sometimes the chat has things has nothing to do with the show so watching it live is yeah

I will look at the chat and go huh what's going on in chat and then you gotta scroll all the way up to find what conversation and then then you've forgotten about the show yeah yeah

I there's a new feature of StreamYard I'm gonna be able to download the chat at some point so I'm looking forward to that well there was if you remember when

I think it was Ben Zion was on and you asked me a question about something you said