Second spiritual discipline – VIRKLER

Principle: life and ministry flow from listening to God. After checking in (SASHET), ask each other this question: What is the Lord saying to you today? The assumption is that each person is spending time each day in listening prayer. Be tentative as you share: “I think this is what He is saying…” Freedom to fail. Weigh what is said. Goal is to “strengthen, encourage and comfort”. (1 Cor. 14:1-3) Keep practicing. Your ability to hear gets better with practice.

Mark Virkler’s Four Keys to Hearing God’s Voice…

1. Quiet myself. I must learn to still my own thoughts and emotions, so that I can sense God’s flow of thoughts and emotions within me. Ps. 46:10 “There is a deep inner knowing (spontaneous flow) in our spirit that each of us can experience when we quiet our flesh and our minds”.

2. Fix the eyes of my heart upon Jesus. Heb. 12:2. Jesus, our perfect example, demonstrated this ability of living out of ongoing contact with Almighty God. He said that He did nothing on His own initiative, but only that which he saw the Father doing, and heard the Father saying (Jn. 5:19,20,30).

3. Listen for a flow of spontaneous thoughts. Jn. 7:37-39; 16:12-15. “For most of us, most of the time, God’s inner voice comes to us as spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings, or impressions. For example, haven’t each of us had the experience of driving down the road and having a thought come to us to pray for a certain person? We generally acknowledge this to be the voice of God callus to pray for that individual. My question to you is, “What did God’s voice sound like as you drove in your car? Was it an inner, audible voice, or was it a spontaneous thought that lit upon your mind?” Most of you would say that God’s voice came to you as a spontaneous thought.”

4. Journaling, the writing out of our prayers and God’s answers, provides a great new freedom in hearing God’s voice.“God told Habakkuk to record the vision and inscribe it on tablets… (Hab. 2:2). It had never crossed my mind to write out my prayers and God’s answers as Habakkuk did at God’s command. If you begin to search Scripture for this idea, you will find hundreds of chapters
demonstrating it (Psalms, many of the prophets, Revelation). “