WHEN GOD SPEAKS TO YOU ...

Jesus was God when He walked on this earth as a man but it He did not walk around as God in a human body. 

• He was God in a human soul with a human body. 

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 

• but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Philippians 2:5-7 (NIV) 

Jesus lived as a man who lived in intimate personal friendship with His Heavenly Father. 

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. 

• For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 

• For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. John 5:19-20 (ESV)

Jesus loved His disciples and taught them by His love and His example how to have a close personal relationship with God.

No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; 

but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. John 15:15 (NKJV) 

The life that Jesus lived is our example, not just in humility, kindness and virtue but also in supernatural faith. 

• His disciples learned to live with the same kind of faith, hope and love. 

• Then they taught the early church to connect to God in the same personal way.

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: 2 Peter 1:1 (NASB) 

Peter called himself a bond servant (or slave) of Jesus but he was also a close personal friend of Jesus. 

• It is this combination of humble devotion and personal friendship which produced the supernatural transforming power of Peter's faith.

God is inviting you and me now, to come close to Him as friends, not as equals but not as religious servants either.Religion leads us into customs and traditions, into binding duties and predictable pious habits.

The Pentecostal movement began over a hundred years ago with a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit, who released believers into amazing liberty, love and power. 

• Yet now we see so many Pentecostal churches leading believers into traditions and predictable patterns of behaviour, man following man rather than each sheep hearing the shepherd's voice.

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me..." John 10:27 (NASB) 

When you hear the voice of God and He hears your voice, there is a personal connection that sets you free in the Spirit and releases the power and love of God on this earth.

When Jesus resisted the temptations of Satan in the wilderness, He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures.

But He answered and said, "It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'" Matthew 4:4 (NASB) 

Jesus loved the Scriptures and we must too. The Bible for Him was not just the Book of God although it was and is THE BOOK OF GOD.

• Jesus was also listening to THE VOICE OF GOD... to every word proceeding out of the mouth of God.

• Jesus was the greatest of all Bible teachers but He did not only teach Bible truth. He spoke what He heard from Heaven.

Jesus is inviting us to enter into the same kind of personal connection to God, where each one of us HEARS what God is saying NOW.

• When you hear what God is saying to YOU and act on what He says to you, HIS power and love is released in your life and flows through your life to others. 

• When God speaks, don’t be afraid to do what He says.

• When God speaks and gives you a message to share, don’t be afraid to speak to others.