Another area related to it, is unresolved grief and offences. Offences with people, and with God, are blockers to hearing from God. I just can't have my heart with offence in it. I can't stay that way, because I lose peace. It's just a horrible way of living your life. There's so much turmoil inside, about what someone did, and how hurt you are; you can't - it just drowns out the voice of God, which is very gentle. So when you try to hear the voice of God, if there's hurts and offences, resolve them very quickly. Another thing that can be a problem is mindsets, where you've got a mindset about something, or you've got something you've just set your mind to. For example a person's asking God to direct them over a relationship, but they've already got their mind made on it. They want to go in that relationship. They're just doing a nominal thing, asking God about it. You're not going to hear. You'll just hear what's in your heart already, so when we're approaching God for guidance and direction, we've got to come from a place where, whatever the Lord wants, we're happy with. If you come from the place: hey, this is what I've already got made up, I want You to confirm it, well that's crazy stuff. God's not going to rubber stamp your plans. You have to come with an open heart, and no mindsets about what it'll be. Mindsets often come out of hurts and offences, so come with a free heart.
Another thing that will hinder you, is an over-dependence on reasoning; where we've learnt to reason and work everything out, and we get stuck in our head trying to figure it out. You can't figure God out; so for most people, their thoughts, and the flow of their life, is off their reasoning; but God want us to learn listen to the thoughts from the heart. There are thoughts from your heart. These are the thoughts of the spirit man. We have the mind of Christ, so there's a flow from our heart and spirit, and we need to listen through that; then our thoughts of our mind - they can can be quite distorted. You can have an opinion about something, that's completely wrong. You can have an attitude that's completely wrong, but if I listen to the voice of my heart, then I can actually then re-think life. Now a lot of people, the moment they see something, go back into reasoning, trying to work it out. It just hinders them flowing with the spirit of God, so those are some of the most common hindrances.
Of course if you're loaded with demons that can make a huge problem too, just get full of confusion, and doubt, and condemnation. So the voice of doubt, and condemnation, and being put down, all of those voices do not come from God. They come from the demonic realm, through access to our mind. God loves you, He wants to talk with you; so what would be some of the simple keys on how you can receive from God? Lots of people have got different ways of doing it. Mark Virkler has written a brilliant book about Hearing the Voice of God, we've done a great course - how many have done that course by the way, Hearing the Voice of God? Well look at that, see, already so many.
Okay then, now here's what I have found helps. I'll just put it in language that's easy. The first one is: you need to free up your spirit. If your spirit is held down, because you're oppressed in your thoughts or emotions, you won't easily hear the voice of your spirit. So many times we come to listen to God, or want to hear God, our spirit is heavy, shut down. That's why, in the meetings, we encourage you to enter in, to give out something, to give something to God; so you can free your spirit up in a number of ways. One is by starting to express gratitude to Him. Another way is by praising Him, until you start to feel your soul and emotions move. Another way is by praying in tongues. Praying in tongues will stir your spirit up; so we need to actually do something, that our spirit is free.