Now lots of people call themselves Christians, but to be a follower of Christ implies a dynamic of a walk with God; so if you're coming to meetings on Sundays, and this is your home, then God would be saying something here. Either through the worship, He'll say something, in the meetings He'll say something. Usually I find when I speak and minister the word of God, about a half, if not more of the church, were already thinking about that, studying it or had heard something on it a week to two weeks before, meaning God is speaking to the church. He doesn't just speak one Sunday, then another Sunday. Usually there's a flow, and He's speaking about a number of things, and He's wanting us to adjust and respond; hence the importance of keeping and taking notes. I notice so few - I just don't know about you. I can't remember an hour later what anyone said, except my wife - sometimes. [Laughter] Then I'm on to the next thing. I'm a man you know; that was then, I'm on to now, and so I don't always retain what I've heard.
I've made it a discipline over years, write down when I'm in a meeting what was said, what happened. I do it in personal meetings, I do it in group meetings, I do it in Sunday meetings. I write down what was said. Even when the young guys are preaching, I write down what they said, what the message was, because in it, I'll hear from God. So I might record the message, and write the notes on it, but as I'm writing the notes, I'm listening: God, what are you saying to me? And I'll write at the top of the page: I heard this. Now either you believe God's talking to you, and you respond; or you believe God's talking to you in your head, and it's ho-hum, oh yeah, okay, move on. You see the relationship with God requires response: My people hear My voice, and follow. Follow, means I make decisions to respond to what I've heard. Getting the idea? You all got quiet all of a sudden. I must be getting in too deep. I need to lighten up [laughs] praise the Lord.
Now here's a couple of ways you could think of, of helping yourself, on whether you're hearing God. One of them is: on Sundays, just take some notes. I notice the newsletter that you get, there's a little space to write them down. All you've got to do is remember to bring a pen, write something down. Here's the second thing you could do: Get involved in a small group, where they can ask you these two questions: what has God been saying to you? What have you been doing with that? Now we think that our Christian life can be lived alone. It cannot be lived alone. It's never designed to be lived alone. We're designed to live in community, so not only does God speak to us individually, the Spirit speaks to the churches - not only our church - He speaks to churches all over the world. I have been to prophetic churches around the world, and I've found the very things I'm preaching, someone else has been preaching it in other places as well. When people are prophetic, they're picking up what God is saying, and He is talking about turning the church, re-centring on Jesus, re-centring on the harvest, re-centring on discipleship.
In this last couple of months, every place I've gone, the one thing that's been common everywhere, is the emphasis again on harvest of souls, and on discipleship. It is everywhere, so that means to not go and move intentionally that way, means we're not hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Getting the idea? When you hear what the Spirit says, and you respond, you become an overcomer! Being an overcomer's not that hard really. It's not like I'm on top of it all the time. Have a look at all the people in the Bible. One thing that's got to be common, with all the great heroes of faith, is how many times they were defeated; and fell down, fell over, or made mistakes, or just plum outright sinned; yet they were all core men of faith, because when God spoke to them, they responded. So I don't think being an overcomer means I'm on top of everything all the time. I think it means that when I hear God speak, I say: yes; and do it. You start to do that your life will shift immensely. Amen.