Hearing The Lord

We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Hearing The Lord
Topic Started: Aug 17 2008, 02:00 PM (64 Views)
Wil	Aug 17 2008, 02:00 PM Post #1
Administrator Posts: 9,247 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: September 21, 2005	HEARING THE LORD - PART ONE Aaron Pierson Aug 17 2008 01:22PM June 21, 2005; 1:00 p.m. Luke 10:39, "And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His Word!!" I believe the most common question that I am asked on a daily basis is, "How do you hear God? How do you know when He speaking to you?" I think this verse about Mary sitting at Christ's feet is the single greatest answer to hearing the Lord. We have the comparison of her sister Martha who was busy with many, many things. Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the best of things to do which was to sit at His feet and listen to Him!! I am watching Him requiring everybody, even people who have been walking with Him for many years, to be still (!!), to be still physically, mentally, and inside, in the heart and soul! This is the greatest asset to being able to listen and obey as the Lord speaks to us!! Most of the body is so busy with the things of the world that their priorities are out of whack. They really do not hear the Lord! It is not for His lack of speaking but it is for our lack of being still!! Most people do not know how to sit and be still for even five or ten minutes! They are constantly on the go and on the move, always doing something just like Martha! So I am watching the Lord drawing people to a physical stillness so they can learn how to be still inside as well! It is much more important to sit at Christ's feet and be still like Mary than it is to do many things for Him like Martha! So much of the ministry of Christ today is performed from the heart of Martha and we do not really know Christ! So few take the time to be still as Mary did and simply listen to Jesus and learn who He is so that we can become like Him! I watch new converts who have just given their heart to the Lord and then get baptized in the Holy Ghost and they go around with great zeal poking people's eyes out trying to get everyone saved. They do not realize that they are doing far more damage than they are good! As the Lord is drawing these people to me, the first thing He is having me do is draw them back and teach them some wisdom in how to share Christ with people! Most of the time in our pride, we pound people over the head with the Bible because it is yet to be written in our heart through brokenness and tears! It is through the brokenness and tears that we learn how to minister forth the Word of Lord in the love of Christ! The even greater tragedy today is that many in the churches that have professed to know Christ for many years have yet to gain the love to truly minister forth the Word of Lord to bring people to true salvation! This results in putting an inexperienced person, a novice, in a position that they are not ready for. This is quite common for most pastors today as well. They are placed in a position in churches simply because they have gone to school and gained a tremendous amount of head knowledge but they lack the fundamental heart knowledge and love of Christ to truly help anyone. Instead, they get up and preach a message for everyone else and forget that they need to first apply it to themselves. When the Lord got a hold of Paul, He took him out in the Arabian Desert to break him and crush him and make him ready to preach the gospel. He went through much suffering to be made ready to be a messenger of the Word of God. We see that the first thing the Lord did was to blind him and send him to the house on the street called Straight. He made Paul fast, pray and be still until deliverance came. We look at the preparation of any man of God in the Scriptures and see there was a deep time of preparation before the Lord was ready to use them. Just to name a few, Moses spent 40 years in the desert being prepared, Joseph spent many years in slavery and in prison being prepared, David spent many years running from Saul in the wilderness being prepared, Jeremiah spent much time in prison and in the pit of mud being prepared. We could go on and on but it is always the same. The calling of God upon our lives and the commission of God to release us into ministry are two different things! So why do we think that we are ready to go preach the gospel when our heart has yet been prepared and made to be Christ-like? What is lacking in people today and in the ministry of Christ is the LOVE OF CHRIST!! People preach the Word of God all the time but they lack the love to lead people to repentance (!!) because they have yet to repent themselves of the hidden pride in their heart!! We must always apply the Word and Truth to ourselves so that we can lead people to repentance into Jesus Christ, not just with empty words, but also by living the example of Christ in everything we do. If we are not willing to be still and listen to the Lord, how can we ever hear Him and obey Him?!! This is why the first thing the Lord told everyone to do was to forsake everything and follow Him! In other words, He wanted to do away with all our outward distractions first! Then He begins to deal with the inward man and all the hidden sin. It is in the time that we learn to be still before the Lord that He works the deepest in our heart to remove the pride. Many of the people who are coming around and are seeing the depth of love the Lord has worked into my heart feel like they are going to grow to the point where I am at in a matter of days or weeks. They have no idea the depth of sorrow, pain, and suffering the Lord has taken me through to get where I am. I remember taking a walk up in the mountains with someone about ten or eleven years ago. We had been walking together for about six months. He turned and looked at me and told me that he felt he would catch up with me spiritually in about six months to year. I remember laughing inside and telling the Lord, "He has no idea where you have me, or what you have done to get me here." I did not say anything to the brother at the time and I just waited for the Lord to grow him up enough to see how prideful his statement was. About a year and a half later, we had a discussion on the subject after the Lord had broken him a great deal showing him how prideful his heart was. I brought up the statement he had made a year and a half before. He looked at me and said, "Brother, forgive me. How prideful I must have sounded when I said that." Once again, I had a good laugh and was joyful that he now was starting to understand the depth of humility that it takes to walk in love and be a servant to others. It is not something you are going to learn in seminary. It is something you are going to learn in the school of Christ!! The Holy Spirit is the only one who can walk you through to teach you true love and humility. Someone who the Lord has done this work in can help lead others to find the same love, humility, and truth. I have always said you cannot give what you do not have! In other words, if you do not have the love of Christ how can you share that with anyone? If you do not have the true humility from the Lord, how can you impart that to anyone else? So much of what people say and do today as professing Christians is completely void and empty of the love and humility of Jesus Christ. This is why the church is so powerless today and looks just like the rest of the world!! We must look at the one difference between the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins. The five wise virgins were prepared!! They had taken the discipline of Christ and all the lessons to heart and it became real inside of them!! If we do not allow the Word of God to become the living Word within us, then we really have nothing to offer anyone. It is only as we are still at Jesus' feet, just as Mary did, that we truly begin to understand what Jesus wants from us! Jesus Christ has no interest in us going to seminary for four or five years and learning the ways of man, which have no life and no meaning, and then going and preaching from this dead religion and converting the masses to dead religion and church. We are not supposed to convert anyone to the church. We are not supposed to save anyone to the church. What is supposed to happen is that they are supposed to be converted into the love of Christ!! They are supposed to be introduced to Jesus Christ Himself, not to a dead empty church full of religious traditions and the opinions and ideas of men!! But the problem is summed up in two things. You cannot give what you do not have!! It is only as we come back to the true conversion into Jesus Christ that we have anything to offer anyone!! The baptism of the Holy Ghost is what happened to the believers in the beginning when the true Word of God was preached! Then they were taken to the river to be baptized in water!! It was not people saying yes to Jesus and walking in religion for ten or fifteen years and then being baptized in the Holy Ghost. It was the other way around!! So ask yourselves, why is it that way today?! Why do people walk down the aisle, say yes to Jesus and then spend the next ten to twenty years learning the Word of God? Very little!! Then at some point, they just happen to get baptized by the Holy Ghost!! That should tell you something is wrong, something is out of order!! What is out of order is that the pure Word of the Lord is not being preached in the churches today!! It is polluted with the opinions of man and the enemy come as an angel of light, a "religious demon". Schools of discipleship are a good thing when they are being led by the Holy Ghost, for example when Charles Finney was leading the college, because they prayed in a revival of the Holy Ghost every year!! He said he would not be the president of the school, if they could not have revival and true salvation! The greatest thing that could happen in America today is if every Bible College and institute of intellect was closed!! Then we would stop learning the ways of men and the wisdom of the Western world that bars Jesus Christ from the churches today!! The Holy Spirit is going to reinvent the school of Christ today by just what He did in the beginning where He called the fishermen, tax collectors, and the nobodies who had no education and no importance in their day and time. He is doing the same thing today, calling people who are nobodies and have nothing to offer the Church world!! Those who are highly educated and think that they know everything are going to find themselves shut out of the Kingdom of Heaven if they do not truly repent and find true salvation!! You see it really does not matter what you think you know. What really matters is that you have truly repented and have found Jesus Christ (!!), not the religious spirit that dominates the church today! The church today is the loveless church of EPHESUS and the lukewarm church of LAODICEANS spoken of in Revelations!! Many people take offense when I talk about the church in the manner that I do, yet they will preach many of the same things themselves. The problem is that when I am preaching it, I am speaking to them as well simply because I apply the Word to myself and, by the grace of the Lord, practice what I preach! This therefore gives a person full and complete authority to bring forth the Word of God and correction to others! In other words, when you practice what you preach, your words are not void and empty. They are full of the Living Waters of Christ. Therefore, they are full of the power of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction upon others! This is why we lack the power of the Lord to lead people to repentance! Again, if you do not have repentance, you cannot give it to others. If you do not walk daily with the conviction of the Holy Spirit upon every action in your life, then you cannot impart this to others either!! Repentance leads to repentance, conviction leads to conviction, humility leads to humility, and most of all true love leads people to the love of Christ!! So your true test when you go and visit churches and different ministries should be to see if the love of Christ is abiding in the preachers and teachers! If it is not, I suggest you seek the Lord on your own to find it (!) because you can preach all you want but it all boils down to one thing!! WHERE IS THE LOVE?? WHERE IS THE LOVE?? If you have not love then you are void of Christ! There are no two ways around it or about it!! That is the only test that we are given to know who is walking in Jesus Christ and who is not!! Their head knowledge has nothing to do with His love!! So when you are putting people to the test to see if they are true or false and truly walking in Jesus Christ (!!), this is your test. Do they have the true love of Jesus Christ for the people and the church? Then, does what they teach line up with the written Word? If they are not laying down their lives, picking up their cross and daily setting the example in everything they do, then they do not have the love of Christ and they are false!! Most ministers in the church today are simply a modern-day Pharisee!! This is where it comes back to, if we do not be still before the Lord and allow Him to transform our heart and turn us into a Christ-like vessel in all that we do, we will be found void and lacking in His love. We will end up being one of the unwise virgins who was put out of the Kingdom of Heaven and not allowed to enter in. So listening and being still before the Lord are two of the greatest tools that you will find in being prepared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!! Seeking His stillness and peace in all things!! His servant and yours, Aaron Living Water Ministries, P.O. Box 1882, Wimberley, TX 78676 Phone & Fax (512) 847-2212 (A & A Construction) www.foundationsforlife.com information@foundationsforlife.com All messages from Living Water Ministries may be reprinted in their "entirety" as long as it includes Living Water Ministries contact information



nightbird	Aug 17 2008, 03:10 PM Post #2
Advanced Member Posts: 171 Group: Members Member #2,322 Joined: December 10, 2007	Amen, excellent post.



1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)


« Previous Topic · General Discussions · Next Topic »