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The Key to Hearing God’s Voice
By Willie Estrada
Since the beginning of time, people have experienced the desire to hear from God. Many of us think that His voice is audible and that’s not the case at all, but today we’re going to learn what it takes to hear the voice of the Lord.
As some of you probably already know, I'm a part-time English teacher (As a second language). I have students of all ages, usually teenagers, but yesterday morning I had a group of 20 children (Ages 7 to 10).
Every time I work with children, I try to carefully study their behavior, and I'm always amazed to see how rebellious they are. This clearly indicates that we are born with a sinful nature. If you're a teacher, like me, you'll understand what I'm talking about. It seems as if we are programmed to do everything wrong, and sometimes, we are programmed to do evil things.
A few weeks ago, for example, Gabriel Taye, an 8-year-old boy took his own life two days after being allegedly kicked and struck by his classmates at his public school in Cincinnati, Ohio.
We are born evil, but as we grow, we learn to suppress that sinful nature, but that doesn't mean that it goes away. Just look at everybody around you. People are evil. Especially those who are not saved. Most people's lives are a big mess.
No matter how old we get, some of us cannot control ourselves. I tried to change people before, but believe me, they don't change. At least not that easy.
The only way to change our evil nature is by dying to ourselves. We may be able to hide it like most people do, but that's not changing. This is why sometimes we see well-respected people getting in trouble.
They were not able to hide their evil nature any longer, and they were exposed. We see this evil nature at all levels of society, from presidents and Kings, to homeless people. We're all evil, and there are no exceptions.
Dying To Yourself
According to experts, dying is a process (When you die of natural causes). This process is often times painful. To die is to suffer, and nobody likes to suffer, but it’s necessary. The Lord, in all His wisdom, taught us that dying was actually a good thing, and this is why many of those who heard Him rejected His message.
Verily, verily I
To the people of the world, this message sounds preposterous, who in their right mind would want to die? Think about it for a moment. Death is always involuntary. Even to those who commit suicide. It’s not that they want to die.
They kill themselves because they have no other choice. Life was not good to them, so they have a tremendous pain inside. Physical death requires pain, one way or another, and it's no different in the spirit.
Remember when you came to the Lord? You didn't come to Him because you were happy, did you? You came to Him because you were wounded. You couldn't take it anymore, and somehow you heard His message of hope and salvation, so you received it willingly because you were ready to hear His voice.
This is because you were dying inside. The pain in your heart was unbearable, so you died to this world and began to live in the Spirit, but this is definitely a process.
When I first accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior, I was hurting badly. I was just 19 years old, and I found myself completely alone in New York. My entire family had been deported, and I stayed behind.
On top of that, I had horrendous memories of the war in my country (El Salvador). It wasn't easy, and I was desperate. Slowly, I began to die inside until one day I just couldn't take it anymore.
Nobody presented the Gospel to me. The day that the Lord called me, I was completely alone in my apartment. It was a few weeks before Christmas of 1989. I was watching the movie of the crucifixion, with an intense pain in my heart.
The Lord opened my eyes that night, but it wasn't until three days later that I got to a church and accepted Him at the altar. From that day on, my life began to change because I had completely died to this world.
This is how we come to the Lord. We have to go through a painful process and die to the flesh, but the rewards are greater. In the beginning, we feel alive in the Spirit. We feel as if we have found the greatest treasure, but Satan puts up a fight.
He tries everything to keep us alive in our sinful nature, and this is why many of us turn back. In some cases, we may not go as far as turning back to our old nature, but our hearts grow cold and weary.
For some people, this might happen a few times during their lifetime. It's kind of like a yo-yo diet. We lose the weight, but then we gain it back, and then we lose it again. This process continues throughout our lives, and it's extremely difficult to stop it. The same thing happens in the spirit.
Today we might be on fire for the Lord, and we might keep that feeling for many years, but eventually it wears off, so we go back to our previous lifestyle or lose the desire to worship the Lord.
These are the lowest points in our spiritual walk, and it's in those moments that we lose our faith and trust in God, but ironically, it's also in those moments that we gain back our faith. Right now life is not looking good for you.
You feel like you are in a hopeless situation, and although you have probably tried everything, nothing has worked. But don't try to fight it. The Lord is preparing your heart to plant the seed of faith in it.
Just open your heart and let the Holy Ghost work in you. These are the times when God restores your faith, but it's necessary that He prepares your heart. The fear inside of you has to die, so instead of rejecting that pain, you have to welcome it.
I wish I could tell you that there's an easy way out, but it doesn't work that way in the Spirit. Don't try to take shortcuts because you're just going to make things worse.
I don't know if you're a parent or not, but if you are, you will understand what I'm about to say. When you have children, you always wish the best for them, isn't that right? You try to buy them the best clothes and give them the best education, but you also need to teach them responsibilities and to appreciate life. This requires discipline. You can't give your children everything in life. They need to suffer sometimes, but this is the only way that we learn.
When my wife passed away, I was
As I later learned, grandmothers are the worst people to raise your children. They love them to death, so they spoil them rotten. My mother let my daughter do whatever she wanted, but that was a big mistake, or perhaps it was a blessing because life taught my daughter a big lesson. It was terrible, but I knew that she had to go through it.
Back in 2013, my daughter met a guy. He had just graduated from law school, so he seemed like a good candidate for her, but he wasn't a Christian, which didn't bother my daughter because she herself had stopped going to church many years before. I advised her to give herself time with that boy because I knew that he wasn't a Christian.
It didn't matter anyway. She was going to do whatever she wanted to do, no matter what anybody said to her. I'm the type of man that doesn't force anybody to do anything. If you want to stick your foot in the mud, go ahead; knock yourself out. I'll advise you not to do it because if you do, you're going to get muddy like a pig, but I won't stop you if you don't listen.
My daughter was
But she didn't listen, of course. About a year later, she came home one afternoon with a positive pregnancy test and let us know that she was going to get married. Again, I talked to her as a father, but she told me that she was doing the right thing and that she was in love, so nothing was going to stop her. "Alright," I said, after trying to make her come back to her senses. "You do what you have to do." Those were my final words.
I knew that she was making a big mistake. Her
This is what happens when we're not dead to this world. We do things that later we regret; things that bring us to lose our faith, but ironically, it is those things that also bring us to die to this world. This is why I believe that they are necessary, even though we may not like them. Our hearts are like the soil that needs to be pulverized so that the Lord can sow the seed, but that seed grows into a tree and one day gives abundant fruit.
And my daughter was about to grow a major tree in her heart, but she didn't know that back then. She got married, and since she's an American citizen, she wanted her daughter to also be born in the United States, so she went to have the baby in Houston, Texas. They named her: Mia Valentina, and today she is the joy of our hearts.
In the beginning, everything was fine. The first year of marriage, there weren't any problems at all; well, at least not that I know of. But one day, a couple of months after my granddaughter was born, my daughter came home crying.
She and her husband had a major argument. He had verbally abused her and from that day on, everything began to go downhill. I tried to counsel them, but again, my daughter didn't listen to my advice.
Everything happened so fast. Their relationship got worse with each passing day. My daughter's husband treated her like garbage. He humiliated her to the point that my daughter would burst into tears out of nowhere. I knew that she was suffering, but I also knew that it was necessary for her to go through that pain. She was dying to herself and to her ego.
Within a few months the relationship ended, so she moved out and started a new life. It was a sad situation, and she went into a great depression for a while, but as a result of her ordeal, today, after almost three years, she's on fire for the Lord, and now she serves God because she heard His voice, and she continues to hear His voice every single day.
She started to go to church again, and I know that God will take care of her. She asked me to forgive her for not listening, and I understood her because I, myself, had gone through the same thing.
This is something that we all experience when we come to the Lord, and the pain that we feel inside is the key to open the communication between us and the Holy Spirit, but why is that? The answer is simple: The pain is what makes us die to this world, and when we’re dead to this earthly life the Spirit comes and dwells in us.
It’s at this point that the love of God is manifested in us, and His voice becomes clear. We’ll talk more about that love in the next chapter because it’s necessary that you understand this concept.
If you are a Christian, you were called to die to this world the minute that you accepted Christ into your heart. Suffering is part of us because we don't belong to this world. Those who let themselves be guided by their earthly desires don't like to suffer at all. They fear the pain in their hearts, and this is because they are alive in this world.
No matter what you're going through today; if you're still attached to this life, you will feel the pain. Dead men don't feel a thing, so that means that your pain won't let go unless you're dead and dying to yourself is what will bring you to hear the voice of God today.
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
(Colossians3:1-3)If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
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