So here's a couple of questions. When did you last hear the voice of God? When did you last hear God speak to you? What did He say to you? Have you done what He said? Have you responded to what He said? When we respond to what He says, it unlocks blessing, and the flow of His spirit in our life. So if it's a long time since you've heard God, then you've got a problem in your relationship with Him. You say: no I haven't, I don't think I have, I'm coming to church and I go to a meeting. No, no, no, no, coming to church is good, but it's no substitute for personally connecting with God.
In 1 Corinthians 6:17, it says: he that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit with the Lord. We are joined to the Lord. When you become a believer, the spirit of God enters your life, you become one spirit. You and the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of God, are joined; so that means it's possible for you to receive all the time, input/communication from the Holy Spirit. He is within you. Jesus, when He left, He said: now I'm going; but He said: I will not leave you an orphan, I'll not leave you alone, I will give you another comforter, the Holy Spirit, spirit of truth. He will lead you into all truth. So the spirit of God has come to live inside us. We are joined one spirit to the Lord, so here's the first key. The first key we see is, if I'm going to hear God, I will hear Him within my spirit, because that's where I'm joined to God. That's where I'm joined to God.
The second thing it tells us is this. It says in John 7:38-39, Jesus said: out of your innermost being, will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking about the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of the spirit. So here's the second key: The movement of the spirit of God to speak to you, comes as a flow like a river. Now we need to understand, that if we're going to hear God, we're going to hear Him from our heart, from our spirit, from our inner man; so if you are looking for God to guide you from outside, you're going to be mislead very easily. If you're looking for God to guide you by circumstances, you're going to be mislead very, very easily, because good circumstances do not mean we're in the will of God. There's a story in the Bible, where the weather looked great, everyone thought it was good to get on the ship, but Paul, hearing from God, said: no, I perceive that if we continue this journey, it's going to end in disaster. But everyone believed the captain, and the good conditions, and the good circumstances, and the story is history of course; the boat sank, and they lost the whole cargo. It cost them a lot of money not to listen to the voice of God, so circumstances looked good, but actually it was going to be a disaster.
Just the same, circumstances can look difficult, and look against us, but that does not mean God is not leading you that way. So you can't look outside you for guidance. You've got to learn to look within, and look into the word of God, and listen to the spirit of God, if you're going to let God guide you. So there's some very simple things: number one, that we're joined to the spirit, guidance will come from the spirit within; secondly, it'll come like a flow. Now we need to understand this. God has designed you. You have a mind and a brain, you can think. How many can think clearly? There's one or two - there's three people can think clearly, the rest are quite confused. Okay, alright - but we have a capacity to think and to reason, work stuff out. So the language of your head, and the language of your heart, are very different in nature. The language of your head, is quite different to the language of your heart. If God is going to speak to you, He'll speak from your heart and spirit, and the way He'll speak will be different to the way, or the language, of your head.
The language of your head is like this. First of all, it's very logical. We tend to reason, so: hmm, I'm facing this problem, what should I do? So we get into reasoning mode, we try to figure it out. So the language of your mind, or thinking, is a language of reason, it's a reason of logic. It's a language where you try to work things out, one, two, three. Well if I do this, then that may happen. If I do something different, then this might happen. It's about reasoning and figuring things out. How many know what I'm talking about here? In fact actually if you are doing some figuring things out, scientists say that the left side of your brain is incredibly active and busy, because that's where you process, and your thoughts come. So when we're listening to the language of our head, it's a language of structure, a language of order, it's a language of thoughts, one after the other. It's reasoning, but we can't reason our way into divine guidance. You can't reason your way, into the things of God.