Speak Lord, Your Servant Is Listening
September 25, 2011 · Forty Days of Love
Scripture referenced 2 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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1 Samuel 3 Main passage read in unison and expounded throughout the sermon
1 The child Samuel ministered to Yahweh before Eli. Yahweh’s word was precious in those days. There were not many visions, then.
2 At that time, when Eli was laid down in his place (now his eyes had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see),
3 and God’s lamp hadn’t yet gone out, and Samuel had laid down in Yahweh’s temple, where God’s ark was;
4 Yahweh called Samuel; and he said, “Here I am.”
5 He ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am; for you called me.” He said, “I didn’t call. Lie down again.” He went and lay down.
6 Yahweh called yet again, “Samuel!” Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; for you called me.” He answered, “I didn’t call, my son. Lie down again.”
7 Now Samuel didn’t yet know Yahweh, neither was Yahweh’s word yet revealed to him.
8 Yahweh called Samuel again the third time. He arose and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am; for you called me.” Eli perceived that Yahweh had called the child.
9 Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down. It shall be, if he calls you, that you shall say, ‘Speak, Yahweh; for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 Yahweh came, and stood, and called as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak; for your servant hears.”
11 Yahweh said to Samuel, “Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.
12 In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from the beginning even to the end.
13 For I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves, and he didn’t restrain them.
14 Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be removed with sacrifice or offering forever.”
15 Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of Yahweh’s house. Samuel feared to show Eli the vision.
16 Then Eli called Samuel, and said, “Samuel, my son!” He said, “Here I am.”
17 He said, “What is the thing that he has spoken to you? Please don’t hide it from me. God do so to you, and more also, if you hide anything from me of all the things that he spoke to you.”
18 Samuel told him every bit, and hid nothing from him. He said, “It is Yahweh. Let him do what seems good to him.”
19 Samuel grew, and Yahweh was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground.
20 All Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of Yahweh.
21 Yahweh appeared again in Shiloh; for Yahweh revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by Yahweh’s word.
World English Bible · Read it in another translation
Keep this verse
2 Timothy 1:7
Cited to show God does not give a spirit of fear or timidity but of power, love and a sound mind
7 For God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
World English Bible · Read it in another translation
Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
This message came from First Samuel 3, the account of God calling Samuel as a boy in the temple. Pastor Casey used it to set the foundation for the church's coming forty days of love series, arguing that any spiritual practice is hollow if people have not first learned to recognize and listen for God's voice.
What was said
Pastor Casey opened by sharing what he had just come back from: a gathering of College of Prayer leaders in Atlanta, where pastors from Uganda, India, Syria, and other countries reported what God is doing around the world. One account stood out. A four-year-old boy, deformed and unable to speak, was brought to an outdoor meeting in Uganda. After prayer, his arms and legs straightened and he spoke his first word. The point Pastor Casey drew from it was not the miracle itself but the posture that preceded it: the leaders refused to presume on what God would do and simply gave the situation to Him.
That same posture, he said, is exactly what First Samuel 3 is about. Samuel was a boy living in the temple, responsible for keeping the lamp burning through the night. When God called his name, Samuel did not recognize whose voice it was. He ran to the priest Eli each time, because hearing God's voice is a skill that has to be learned, not something a person simply has.
Pastor Casey paused on the phrase the text gives to explain why Samuel was confused: he had not yet known the Lord. He was not ignorant of God in the way an outsider would be. He had grown up in a religious household and lived in the temple. But the knowledge had not moved from his head to his heart. Pastor Casey said that is the condition of many people in well-taught congregations: they know about God accurately and thoroughly, and yet they live as though they know nothing.
Eli eventually recognized what was happening and told Samuel what to say the next time: "Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening." That phrase, Pastor Casey argued, is the hinge of the whole chapter. Once Samuel said it and meant it, God spoke with clarity and with purpose, and the text says God let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground afterward. Everything God spoke through him came to pass because Samuel had started from a place of submission rather than a place of his own agenda.
From there, Pastor Casey offered seven tests for discerning whether a voice is from God, working from his notes. Among them: does it line up with Scripture, does it exalt Christ or self, does it reinforce what God has already been saying through His word and circumstances, and does it produce faith or fear. He illustrated that last test with a personal story. Before a conference where he was to speak, a man told him God had said his plane would crash. The moment fear landed on him, he said he also knew immediately it was not God, because God's voice produces faith. He went to the conference, and it was one of the most significant he had attended.
Pastor Casey closed by connecting all of this back to the forty days of love series beginning the following week. His concern was that the church not simply run through another program. If people enter forty days of spiritual practice without first knowing how to hear God, they will only be doing religious activity, checking a box when it is finished, and waiting for the next one. The whole point of the series, in his framing, is to become people who are actually learning to love, not people who completed a curriculum.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- The pastor described Samuel as someone who knew about God but had not yet entered into a personal relationship with Him, saying the knowledge had not moved the twelve inches from head to heart. Where would you honestly place yourself on that spectrum right now, and what do you think is keeping you there?
- When Fred and the bishop in Uganda were asked to pray for the deformed four-year-old child, the pastor said the temptation was to worry about what would happen if nothing changed, because prayer had become about their own reputation rather than about God. When have you held back in prayer for that same reason, and what would it look like to genuinely leave the outcome in God's hands?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 7,894 words
0:12
Speaker 2Casey. What happened? What happened? She done. Here we go.
0:40
Exactly. I love them nothing. Let's switch. What? Alright.
1:14
Good morning. We're gonna go ahead and get started here with some worship. If you guys wanna stand with me, we will get to cruising. Good morning. It's nice to see you this morning.
1:26
Let's open with a word of prayer. Dear God, thanks for this morning. Thanks for, the beautiful sunshine outside and the continued nice weekends that we've been having. I pray that you would just be glorified today in our worship and in the sermon, and I pray that we would leave here with renewed hearts, renewed spirits. We love you.
1:46
Jesus name, amen. Thou burning sun with golden beams, thou silver moon with softer gleam. Oh, praise Him. Him. Oh, praise him.
2:37
Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thou rushing wind that are so strong. The clouds that sail in heavens alone. Oh, praise him.
3:36
Yeah. Let all things their creator bless and worship him in humbleness. Oh, him. Hallelujah. Praise the father.
4:00
Praise the son. Him. Oh, praise him. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
4:25
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son, and praise the Spirit three in one. Oh, him. Excellent. Nice to see you guys this morning. Why don't you guys go ahead and greet one another?
6:08
Christ alone. My hope is found. He is my life, my strength, my song. This cornerstone, this solid ground. Scorned by the ones he came to say till on that cross that Jesus died.
7:39
The wrath of God was satisfied. For every sin on him was laid. Here in the death of Christ, I live. There in the ground, his body lay. But with the precious blood.
9:14
In me. From life's first cry to final breath. Jesus commands my death. And calls me home. Here in the power of Christ, I stand.
10:26
Alright. Let's pray. Dear God, once again, we wanna come to you and just say thank you for allowing us to be here this morning. And just wanna worship you this morning. Thank you for everything you do for us, for the blessings in our life.
10:43
In Jesus' name. Amen.
10:45
Speaker 1Amen. You may be seated. Wow. Great start. Glad to have you here with us.
10:50
If you'll take out your little information packet, let me quickly go through a couple of things that you want to be reminded of. Today, we start everything. Everything's kicked off today. A one tonight at 05:00. Is it 05:00?
11:04
05:30. Excuse me. 05:30 to seven along with our junior, senior high, middle school, everything tonight. So if you look at the announcements, look at where they're at, and be here, it's gonna be an exciting time. Everything happens in this place tonight from 05:30 on, so you wanna be there.
11:21
Also, you'll notice that this morning kicks off our Sunday school for our sixth to eighth graders at 10:00, at 10:15 as well for our children downstairs. So follow that as well. Know what's happening that way. Also, if you look parents and see meeting at the at the at the poll, see at the poll, at at Coulter, at Jackson Hole Middle School and High School, look at those times and encourage your kids to be there. Staff will be there praying with them, of asking the Lord to bless the year and encouraging the kids to be together and serving the Lord together.
11:54
So it'd that'd be a great opportunity for you to be a part of that, and you don't wanna miss that. Am I off? Yes. I knew that. I've been off for a long time.
12:02
I'm not on meet I'm not on New. I'm on. I'm on. So it's your fault back there. I'm not resuming responsibility for that mistake.
12:20
Are we okay now? There we go. All right. Did you hear all the announcements in the first part? Say yes.
12:26
I don't even go to them again, did you? They're all there. But I want you to be mindful of it because this is going oh, now I am on. I can hear
12:31
Speaker 2the
12:31
Speaker 1echo. But this is important for us as we kick off the day. And now, we begin our home groups this week. And some of us signed up last week. Some of us didn't have a chance to do that.
12:44
Immediately after the service, and what we'll be doing every Sunday now for now until the first of the year, is our service goes from nine to ten. And from ten to eleven is kick is a coffee clutch time. And so we want to have an opportunity to meet with you if you're here for the first time. And if you have any questions, and so we're gonna go over into the fellowship hall. So when we leave here, we'll just go right over to the fellowship hall.
13:05
Turn left, go straight back, and there's coffee and cookies there and everything. And we'll sit and chat. And it's an opportunity for you as well to meet with the home group leaders. If you're a home group leader this morning, would you stand up, please? There's one with us.
13:19
23456. There's one in the back, 78. So immediately after the service, this first service, if you'll meet them in the thanks, guys, and gal. At the Fellowship Hall. It would be a great time to connect, sign up, or we missed out last Sunday.
13:40
It was a great time last Sunday. Really powerful prayer time, wonderful opportunity to sing and worship the Lord. Exciting, exciting moment. And we want to see how God continues to move that way in our lives, allowing God to show us, and we've been telling you here this morning throughout the year that the Holy Spirit reveals truth to us, and as he reveals that, we walk in that truth. We understand the word of God as God reveals it to us, and we live in that word, and we understand what he says.
14:03
And so next Sunday, we'll begin the teaching on the forty, days of love. And, and so the groups will be getting this week. You'll be signing up, getting books, and getting started. And so we'll go through that together as a church, both services, and it'll be an exciting time. So we want you to be a part of that and not miss it in any way.
14:19
So that's gonna be cool. Yesterday, we moved in. It took us two weekends to move in from, where we were living out near Hoback and, actually, Melly Ranch. And, to come back in, it was exciting. So many people helped.
14:33
We thank all of you that were a part of yesterday and the weekend before in getting us moved from one place to another. It was a journey we won't forget and lots of great experiences, and and I'll tell you about them in some of the messages. But I got lots of sermon lots of sermon illustrations, especially from Craig Swink, not not to mention him personally, but there are just a lot of great sermon illustrations I got from him yesterday that we'll use in the coming weeks. Don't squirm. Alright.
15:03
We'll wait on you this morning now for tithes and offerings. So I'll ask the ushers to come and I love that. That's great. They're saying amen. They're getting early.
15:39
Let's pray. Lord God, thank you. Thank you for a beautiful day, for a beautiful week, for your goodness, for your kindness, for your overwhelming love to us. Thank you, Lord, for how you meet every need, spiritual need, physical need, emotional need. Lord, we thank you for that.
15:55
Lord, would you take these gifts now? Would you use them? Would you multiply them for your glory? And we'll give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.
17:47
Speaker 3Alright. For this last song before we go into the sermon, if you guys wanna stand up or sit down or however you wanna worship, feel free. I'm gonna go ahead and sing one more.
19:07
Speaker 2My land. Your spirit's like water to my soul. Your word is a lamb book to my feet. Jesus.
21:03
Speaker 1Lord Jesus, we proclaim that today. We love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and body. And we thank you that we're able to be here today to hear from your word. Would you teach us? Would your Holy Spirit reveal truth to us?
21:20
May we today walk in that truth. And we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Great having you with us this morning.
21:34
Just out of curiosity because I was outside and maybe missed it if you did it already. How many are here for the first time this morning? Let me see your hand. Where are you from? North Carolina.
21:43
North Carolina? Oh yeah, I see that. Spartans, bless you. Where are you from?
21:46
Speaker 2Michigan.
21:47
Speaker 1Michigan, it's cold in Michigan but that's good. Anybody else? No Alabamians here? Dallas. Dallas, alright, nice and warm and hot in Dallas.
22:00
Anyone else? Snow Beach, California. California is hot, cold, it's everything in California, isn't it? I mean you can get up at the grate. Anybody else, yes?
22:11
Montana. Montana, great. Well welcome, glad to have all of you here today. Did I miss anybody else? Oh you're just waving the flies away.
22:17
Yes, where? Atlanta. Atlanta. You're in Oklahoma. Yeah, well you're here, Lee.
22:27
Lisa, she's a Jacksonite, she just happened to migrate over to Oklahoma. Glad to have Lee back. Welcome. It's I just left Atlanta. Was at Atlanta for a conference, College of Prayer.
22:40
Many of you know that we started the college of prayer in 1996 with six, six people. We started on a college campus. And and from there today, we have now 25,000 students, and we're in 83 different places. And that's how God does it. And, this last week, we were at, every year, every couple years, we bring our leaders back for, just to find out what's happening around the world and then getting ready for this next year.
23:09
And so this last week we had guys from Uganda, from India, from Dominican Republic, from Syria, from Jerusalem, places that were just starting college campuses. And it was an exciting time to hear what God is doing around the world. That's when you realize that you're not alone. When you understand that your world is larger than maybe the box that you put ourselves in or a home or you realize when you hear what God is doing around the world that you're a part of something really big and exciting. The kingdom of God is big.
23:40
The children of God are many. What God is doing is exciting. And sometimes we don't hear that and sometimes we forget it and sometimes we think, you know, no, it's not working. It is working. God is moving around the world.
23:52
The nations are coming to Christ. Even these difficult days when it looks like you know things are falling apart, God is doing extremely extremely wonderful things. And it was marvelous to hear some of their testimonies. The guy from Uganda, the the head of our school, there are three of us now. We started with three and we start this way, we get an older man, a younger man, an older man, a mid sized age, middle aged and a young.
24:14
When we first started the old guy, I was a mid sized middle aged guy and then we had our young guy. Now after all these years, I'm the old guy and the middle guy is the president and the young guy we just hired brought on. So we keep it that way so that's always older mentoring younger and that's how we work it. Anyway, the mid aged guy now who is the president of it, Fred, he was in Uganda with a group of our of our staff, and they were having this meeting outside. There were 30,000 people that came to the meeting.
24:42
And, many people came to Christ, about 3,000 that came to Christ. But they came also for healing, and this one this one mother brought a baby. It's a small child it looked like. It was four years old, all deformed, wrapped up hands, feet, couldn't speak. And and she brought and when and we always ask these questions, what do you want God to do for you?
25:06
And is there anything in your life that would keep God from doing it? So the question was asked by, bishop, what do you want God to do for you? Because it's so easy, isn't it, when when people come to pray, you say, what can I do for you? Then immediately the thought is, the pastor can do something for me. If you haven't heard it before, let me remind you.
25:23
There's no pastor in the face of the earth that can do anything, only God. There's no person that has any power apart from what God gives them. So let's put it where it belongs, on God. So he asked, what do you want God to do for you? And he said, want you to pray for my child.
25:35
He's four years old. Look at me, he's deformed. He doesn't speak and I know he's gonna die and I want you to pray for him. I want God to do something. What would you do if if somebody asked you to do that?
25:44
What would be the first thing that would go in your mind, oh God, it's not going do anything here. I mean four years, four years to form. Word of thought well man, what if I pray and nothing happens? Ever felt that way? What if I actually pray and and some of us experience that, haven't we?
26:00
Haven't we asked God to do something for us in in the way we wanted it and it didn't happen the way we wanted it and and so we think, you know, God doesn't hear our prayers. He does. He does. But God knows what he wants to do for us and through us for a broader picture and a greater thing. So Fred was there and Bishop was there.
26:16
And so Bishop said, what is God saying to you? And Fred said, God's saying that we need to pray. We need to pray. This belongs to God. It's not our thing.
26:23
This is God's thing. So they began to pray. And as they were praying, and Fred just and Bishop is there, and Fred is sharing a story with our staff on, on Tuesday. And he said, the arms started stretching out, the legs started stretching out, the baby said, mama. Well, you can imagine what happened when that happened.
26:46
I mean, everybody just began to cry and then praise the Lord. But what it taught the African pastor and what it taught again Fred was you don't decide for God. You don't presume on what God is gonna do. Our responsibility is to give it to God. That's our responsibility.
27:07
And if it's not about us, then it doesn't matter, does it? Because we're giving it to God. But if it's about us, if it's about our if it's about our resume, if it's about how we're gonna look, if it's then then it makes a big deal if it happens or doesn't happen. But if it's about God, doesn't because God's gonna take care of it. And when everything done in proper way, in proper perspective, in proper order, God does it his way.
27:27
God gets the glory and God understands what he wants to do in people's life. God sees the whole picture. We only see one And sometimes that picture is blurry, isn't it? And sometimes that picture has several different lines going through it, little squares, like a computer zipping through, and we don't get the full thing, but God does. So God asked us to trust him, step out of faith and believe him and leave it in his hands.
27:51
Do you know what happens when you let things in God's hands? When you let things in God's hands and God heals, God builds, God restores relationships, God bring, God brings deliverance, God takes care of those things. Marvelous thing. So for, three days listening to one testimony after another after another after another, You can imagine how excited it was to be there and to get back, be able to share some of that with you. And so this morning we're going to first Samuel because I wanna talk as we prepare for the forty days of love.
28:24
Last week we spent concerted time in prayer and thank you for your emails. There were so many of you who were blessed last week that we're moving in that direction and allowing God to speak. And even if it was uncomfortable for some, and you know it is, praying out loud is uncomfortable sometimes. And praying in groups sometimes uncomfortable. That's okay.
28:42
You know what's going to be the most thrilling thing that happens over the course of these next months is the God to take us out of our comfort zone. Wouldn't it be fun to be out of that? You don't want to be in a comfort zone. You just don't want to be there because when you're in the comfort zone then you control it. When you control it's like controlling a thermometer.
28:58
I'm gonna control the hot and cold. God doesn't he wants to take you out of that. So I I want us to walk that way over the course of these next couple of months. As the Lord has has us here, as he's preparing you for your next pastor, we believe our responsibility to you and before God over the months that we have is to get you to be able to hear from the Lord in such powerful ways that when he speaks, you know it. Not when someone else speaks, but when the Lord speaks.
29:32
And then when the Lord speaks to you, you're you're gonna shed your fear. You're you're gonna shed your preconceived ideas. You're gonna shed your your questions. You're gonna receive by faith what God has for you as he walks with you and teaches you and and moves you into his word. These can be the most exciting days of your life if you allow the Lord to teach you.
29:57
They can also be the most frustrating ones if you don't. Because you're gonna see some people fly with the Lord and it's gonna frustrate you. You're gonna say, I'm not there. How can I get there? You know, I I don't I don't believe that.
30:08
I don't wanna do that. Let it go. Let God do what only God can do and test everything by his word. So this morning, we wanna start our forty day campaign by going to first Samuel third. And so I'm gonna ask you, we're gonna stand together and read the word.
30:27
Can we do that? Let's stand together. You got on both sides, and let's read this in unison. Let's just read the passage together. It's, the third chapter of first Samuel.
30:35
Let's go. Here we go. The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions.
30:45
One night, Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out. And Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, here I am.
31:06
And he ran to Eli and said, here I am. You called me. Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down.
31:18
Again, the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, here I am. You called me. My son, Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down.
31:32
Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel a third time and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, here I am, you called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, go and lie down.
31:54
And if he calls you, say speak Lord for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there calling as at the other times. Samuel, Samuel, then Samuel said, speak for your servant is listening. And the Lord said to Samuel, see, I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.
32:23
At that time, I will carry out against Eli everything I got spoke against his family from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about. His sons made themselves contemptible and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, the guilt of Eli's house will never be atoned for sacrifice or offering. Samuel lay down into mourning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord.
32:54
He was afraid to take Eli the vision, but Eli called him and said, Samuel, my son. And Samuel answered, here I am. Was it he said to you? Eli asked. Do not hide it from me.
33:07
May God deal with you, be it ever so severely if you hide from me anything he told you. So Samuel told him everything hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, he is the Lord. Let him do what is good in his eyes. The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and he let none of his words fall to the ground.
33:28
And all of Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there revealed himself to Samuel through his word. May God add his blessing to the reading of his word. You may be seated. Now this is really, really powerful, and I want you to catch it in the few moments that we have.
33:45
You have the outline in your in your outline in your information packet. And I wanted you to read the whole thing this morning so you could get the context. Israel was in in denial, Israel was in rebellion, Israel was in sin. The leadership was not following God. The sons of the leader was not following God.
34:03
The temple was being destroyed morally, and everything that was supposed to be good turned out bad. So in the midst of this, Samuel now, and you know the story of Samuel, Hannah couldn't have any children and so she went to the temple as a custom, her and her husband to be blessed and to give an offering. And she prayed and asked the Lord to give her a child and she said, if you give me a child and honor me that way, I'm gonna give him right back to you and you can have him all the days of his life. And so, she goes home, she she's, she gets pregnant when, Samuel is finished being weaned. As a little boy then he goes and he lives in the temple with Eli.
34:39
And one of his jobs at this early age was to make sure the light stayed on. The light of the temple was a flame and it would go all night long and so it was his responsibility to make sure that that fire always was there, that flame was always there. And so he would lay down and and but he was always conscious of the fact that I gotta make sure that that light is on. And so that's the context. And, but in this, the story of first Samuel chapter three, the story here is that we can hear from God and when God speaks, he speaks clearly.
35:10
And when God speaks, he has a purpose in what he wants to say. And when God gets into our life, he makes sure that we understand it and then he equips us and empowers us to do what he asks us to do. Let's look at it. Here he is in the first part. God's love you to talk and here it is.
35:25
His voice is clear as any other voice. The Lord called Samuel and Samuel said, you go back to the first part of that again? We go. I I would tech people love me because I go back and forth back and forth. There we go.
35:43
The next one. Samuel called. Then the Lord called Samuel and he said, Samuel. And Samuel said, here I am. And so he's thinking that it's what?
35:59
He's thinking it's Eli. But God speaks to him and said, Samuel. And imagine Samuel's in bed laying there. He's not asleep because his job is to make sure the fire doesn't go out. So he's awake.
36:11
Samuel, Samuel, right here I am. Now isn't it interesting he uses this phrase here I am. He says, here I am. Here I am. And he and he runs to Eli because that's who he thinks is calling.
36:25
He didn't know it was God. He he was not used to God talking to him that way. He was not yet in that place in his life where he had a relationship where he could understand God's voice. So so God's speaking to him, Samuel, but he doesn't know the difference between God's voice and Eli's voice. So because hearing God's voice is a skill that needs to be learned.
36:44
He runs to Eli and he says, here I am. You called me, but Eli said, I didn't call you. Go back to bed. Even Eli didn't know that it was God that was speaking to Samuel. He thought he must be having I mean hallucination.
37:00
Whatever it is he's not thinking correctly, it's not me. Eli didn't start out saying, it's God. He didn't know who it was, he just said, it's nothing. You're hearing voices. So you go back to bed, it's not me.
37:14
So Sammy goes back. Goes back to bed and what happens again? Same thing happens again. He goes up. He was lays down, and again, Lord says, Samuel.
37:24
Samuel. He goes back to Elijah. Here I am. You called me. Again, Elijah says, no.
37:30
It wasn't. Three times it happens and finally Eli gets the message. Wait a minute. There's something happening here that I'm not aware of. It has to be the voice of God.
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Is it hearing from God is something that requires a Holy Spirit revelation. And in here it says that Samuel had not yet known the Lord. Doesn't mean he didn't know about God because he was in a temple. So he knew about God. He understood the teachings of God because he came from a religious family.
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So it wasn't he didn't know God, it wasn't he hadn't yet entered into a relationship with the Lord God. The Holy Spirit hadn't yet begin begun to reveal truth to him. So he hadn't arrived there yet. He was young and he wasn't in that process yet and so he wasn't there. He knew it but he didn't know it.
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It hadn't gone from here to here. He knew about it intellectually but it hadn't moved to 12 inches yet to his heart and that's what happens so often in our church and our churches across our land. We know about it. We are the best educated people in the world. In the world.
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And yet we walk and we talk and we live as if we knew nothing. You stand and you hear humbly the testimonies of pastors from Syria, of pastors from Africa, of pastors from Israel, of pastors in creative access countries that I can't mention, pastors that have their life on the line every day. You hear their testimonies and what they talk about is not about what they have, but who they belong to and how they depend upon God's voice every day for every move because any move could be their last one. They have cultivated. Cultivated by the spirit of God, the hearing of the voice of God, and knowing when God speaks whose voice that is.
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So Samuel's not there yet. He's getting there, but he's not there yet. So finally, the idea and you know, the Lord loves repeating himself especially when we're not rebellious, and so he wants to constantly talk to us. He keeps doing it. Then he wants our undivided attention.
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In verse nine, Samuel said, listen. Eli says to Samuel, go lie down and this time when you hear the voice, say speak Lord for your servant is listening. So Samuel goes back and lies down in verse 11. He says this, the Lord speaks to him. Look at this, and the Lord said to Samuel, would you read that phrase with me on verse 11?
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Let's read it out loud. And the Lord said to Samuel, I'm about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. Let me ask you something. Won't you love the Lord to speak to you and say to you, listen, Eric, I'm about to do something. Listen, Russ, I'm about to do something.
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Listen, Ed, I'm about to do something that will make the ears of everyone in Jackson tingle. Would you love to hear that in the Lord? Wouldn't you love that, Dan, for the God to speak to you and say, I'm about to do something among the men in the valley that'll make their ears tingle? Wouldn't you love to hear that? We long to hear God speak to us that way, but we miss it.
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So here, Samuel is. He hears from the voice of God, and he said, okay. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. The key to hearing from God is a submission saying speak Lord, your servant is listening. Not speak Lord but your man is here and I want you to give me all I need.
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Speak Lord, you're lucky I'm on your side. Now for four days, I had an African American, three days an African American leading worship. You can imagine how that was with the piano and it's going on. They sing their messages. And so he got into this, but it came to a moment because so many of these pastors were so burdened, so heavy with stuff in their life.
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And we always start out our first meeting before we go into any teaching, we always start out with repentance for an hour, two hours, three hours. We never move into any teaching until we give opportunity for it to be cleaned up. So he's singing he's singing this song. God's gonna do something. God's gonna do something.
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He's gonna do it right now because God is a God of now. He is. He's a god of right now and so, you began to see these men as we as he was singing, tears begun coming down. Then, moved a second. God's gonna move all hindrances.
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God's gonna move all hindrances. God's gonna move all hindrances. He's gonna do it right now. Anything that would keep the spirit of God from moving. Now here are these pastors who I would not even be able to tie their shoes, who live in areas that I would not live in, who speak to people that I could not speak to.
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Humbly coming before the Lord, crying. And then he moves it and then he moves this way. God's voice is restoring. God's voice is restoring. He's restoring you now.
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Now, you had to be there to appreciate it. But the point I'm trying to make is, when God's voice speaks and it's clear, he moves. He moves. When we are humble and contrite before him, he responds every time. Not sometimes, not once in a while, but every time.
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Always God responds that way. So as Samuel said, okay, lord, your servant is listening, then God begins to speak to him. And he says, I'm gonna do something that's gonna make the ears tingle. Now what he did, he had to clean the temple, and so he he had to go and tell, Samuel, this is what's gonna happen to Eli because Eli had not had not done what I asked him to do, and he didn't, take care of his family and his sons, desecrated the temple and all kinds of stuff happened. So they're all gonna die, they're all gonna be we're all gonna go on.
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He went back and he didn't want to share that with Eli but Eli knew already. Eli says you got to tell me and then Samuel told him. The last part right here. Lord was Samuel as he grew up and he let repeat that part. He let none of his words what?
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What? One more time. You know what that means? Everything that God spoke through him came true. None of his words fell to the ground.
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We had the expression blown into the wind. None of that happened. It all, everything that was spoken as God spoke to him and he spoke to others happened. Why? Because he started his day out with speak lord.
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Your servant is listening. We don't know how to do that. We can always, we can always say, lord, we we want you to speak but can you do it in our time frame? And I only have this amount of time And Lord, know, I'm busy today. I've got this practice, that practice, I got this game, that game, I got this.
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You know, I got Facebook, got I got too much stuff, God. Can you kind of plug me in later? Maybe before I go to sleep. I'll give you five minutes before you and then we we have good intentions. Okay, Lord.
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I'm ready to hear you and boom, we're gone. We're snoring. That's our spiritual heavenly sleeping language. We have so much stuff today don't we? That takes every inch and moment of our time.
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There's no time left to hear from God. We want God to react to us. We want God to speak to us. We want God to do things for us. We have no time to hear him.
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We have no time to listen to him. We have no time to receive him because we're busy doing his work. May I say anything that we do if we haven't yet heard from him before we do it will fail. It will fall, it will fail, it will not prosper in any way because it's our stuff. It's our stuff.
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Oh, we may get some accolades and we may say, oh, it's great. And all it is is a stuff, nothing deep, nothing profound, nothing that will help us tomorrow, just get us through the day. So Samuel had that experience in his life and then he realized that God's voice always takes dominion. Let me give you the last two points. When you hear God's voice, it's usually spoken to you in private, but often confirmed publicly, often affirmed by what God what God spoke to you in your heart the morning or whenever you're speaking to him and hearing from him.
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And then you'll go with that throughout that day and God will affirm that through someone else. He'll affirm it through his word. He'll affirm it through another activity. He always affirms what it is he says to us. Let me give you a few tests to discern the voice of God.
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You have it there in your notes. There are seven of them. There are many more of them, but I just broke them down to seven. The voice that you are hearing, is it true to scripture? Any voice that you hear from God, anything that you think is from God and it doesn't line up with the God's word isn't from God.
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Isn't from God. God does not speak things that doesn't come from him. There are a lot of people and a of voices out there, it's not coming from God. So I want you to understand that. The first test, is it true to scripture?
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Is it true to God's character? When you hear the voice speak to you and you hear, is this God? Does it make you humble or contrite? Does it exalt Christ or you? Does it re reinforce what God has already been saying through his word, through your prayers, through circumstances?
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Does that reinforce that? Does it induce faith or fear? Second Timothy one seven, God doesn't give you a spirit of fear or timidity, but he gave you a spirit of power and love and a sound mind that advanced Christ kingdom. I had a guy come in to me when when I was pastoring in LA, it's Lower Alabama for some of you. When I was there pastoring, had a guy come in and I and I when I started pastoring, I had, I've been missionary, traveled, I hated flying.
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Terrible fear of flying. And I was constantly in a plane. Every single bump where it was like a white knuckle experience. I'm holding on to the chair in front of me, the poor person in front of me. I mean, any kind of bump like that.
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Well, of course, person sitting next to you, they're not very encouraged. This old man, you know, by the time I was a young guy, and I was still scared, a young guy. Scared of heights, scared of everything. It's very fearful. Here I am 40,000 feet up and every bump, was gonna see end, it's the end.
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So I had this fear in me. And, this guy comes in and he says, the Lord has spoken to me and I I was about to head to a conference, that I had to speak at and, it was a college of prayer thing and and this guy came in and, he said, God spoke to me this morning. I said, great. What did he say? He said, you're not supposed to go on this trip on this airplane.
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You're not supposed to go to this conference. Why not? He said, because your plane's gonna crash. That's just great to tell me, you know. Well, thank you, Lord.
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I won't get on. No. I said, but immediately when he said that, I knew it wasn't from God. It didn't induce faith in me, it induced fear, which already was an issue. I had not yet been delivered from it, I have since, but at that moment I hadn't been in.
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And so when he said it, fear came over me and then did the same moment that the fear came over me, God spoke to my heart and said, that's not for me. So I said to him, I said, where did you get that from? What voice told you that? Oh, God. I said, no.
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God didn't tell you that. Because if God's gonna tell you something, he's gonna affirm it to me. He's gonna affirm it through scripture, gonna affirm it for prayer. You know, none of that ever came to me in any way, shape, or form. What you're saying is you're trying to keep me from going on this conference that I have to teach at because the enemy knows I have this fear.
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So if I buy into this and I'm not gonna go, I can say well God told me not to go. So we ended it and I went and was one of the greatest conferences I've ever been a part of. And I knew in the middle and that was a conference that the Lord actually delivered me from this terrible spirit of fear that was on me. Now I can fly anywhere. Does it mean that I enjoy bumps?
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No, I don't enjoy bumps, but I never grab a hold of the seat. Now I grab a hold of the person who's fixing me, no. It's not there anymore from that standpoint, but I don't enjoy flying 40,000 feet and bouncing up and down, but fear is no longer there. That and you know what I am and if you've ever had that spirit of fear, there's a difference between being fearful and having the spirit of fear on you. The spirit of fear means you just you can't do anything.
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You just start breaking them in sweats and and you're gonna you're gonna die that moment. It controls you. That's not from God. So when I was delivered from that and and the Lord took that away from me, it never came back and I haven't had it since. And at the end of that conference, there's so many people met the Lord and so many international people.
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It it was so powerful. When I came back, this guy saw me and he he repented because he said no, there was just no way that that came from I don't know how why he said I I felt just compelled to come and tell you that I knew you were fearful, I don't want you to go and something happened to me. He himself was living in sin and he God used that experience to to reveal to him what was happening in his own life and he repented and came back to the Lord. The point I'm trying to make is you will know the difference between the voice of God and the voice of the enemy. Because the voice of God brings faith.
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The voice of the enemy brings fear. The voice of the God builds you, exalts Christ, but builds you in following him. Does it does what the voice is saying to you advance Christ's kingdom? Everything that God's about is advancing the kingdom, advancing the kingdom, advancing the kingdom, having people meet Christ, having the Holy Spirit reveal truth. That's what God's about.
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So that's what his voice is gonna say to us, those things that move us that way. Then I give you a quick little two little thing, the shepherd's voice and the stranger's voice brings humility, exalts Christ, gives you a sense of contentment feeling is there for you. The point I'm making to you this morning is as we move into these forty days, it would be very very stupid of us to move forward in forty days of love if we didn't understand how to hear God's voice. We would be doing just a ritual. Aren't you tired of just doing religious things?
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Gary, does it get you do you get excited about doing another thing? No. No. No. No.
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You wanna do another thing? No. Do you? No. Why not?
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Because we're tired of doing things, aren't we? We're just worn out doing things. We want the Holy Spirit to refresh us and to teach us. So so we don't wanna go through forty days and say, check them up. I I've gone through forty days of love and now I can wait for the next one to go through.
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Some of us is like, we only go from project to project. When we need to hear from God, when we go through these things. And so the poor purpose of this morning is to let you know that God wants to speak to you. His voice is clear. He will continue to talk to you.
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He just wants you to give him time to hear his voice. Amen. And when? Thank you, sweetheart. You can follow her.
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I'm I'm that's not her job. I gave I gave her a $100 every Say amen in the right spot. I got it. But this is important for you so that you can grab it and embrace it. Then as we go through the forty days, the Lord begins to reveal things to us and we begin to see, wow, it's not just about going through it.
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I'm now becoming one of his child children. I I'm now learning to love and I'm I'm loving others and and it's seen in my actions and my words and and what I do. Do we fall? Yes. We make mistakes?
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Yes. But we don't stay there because we hear his voice. So I encourage you this morning to give the Lord a moment to hear his voice. And when he speaks to you say, speak Lord. Your servant is listening.
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And when he speaks to you and you hear him, follow. Father God, thank you. Thank you for your word. Continue to teach us Lord as we desire to hear from you. Lord as we get into your word, you will show us, you will speak to us.
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That's just what you wanna do. That's what you desire to do just like you did to Samuel. And so we as your children today say, speak Lord. Your servants are listening. We want to hear you.
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We wanna follow you. And we'll thank you, father, for what you do in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you. Let's let's worship together.
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Stand together and say.
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Speaker 2Stand together. And as soon as our piano player shows up, we will get going. Is our piano player back there? Nope. Okay.
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We're gonna go in there she is. Run. Come on now. Every mountain every field valley
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Speaker 1Hallelujah. Glory be to our great God. Say again. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
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Glory be to our great God.
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Speaker 2Glory be to our great
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Speaker 1God. Father, you have heard our cry. You have heard our plea. You have heard the joy in our hearts. We say hallelujah to you today.
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We say so be it to you today. We say, lord, you are great and we desire and we hunger and we thirst after you and we want to hear from you. So, God, these days, these hours, these moments, speak to us and we covenant and promise today before you to hear you, to clear our calendars and our daytimers and our stuff, to hear your voice, to follow your word, and to bring glory to your precious name. Would you bless these dear ones today now, God? Would you encourage them?
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Some are in in great need. Would you meet those needs physically, spiritually, emotionally? Today, meet them in Jesus, holy, powerful, and awesome name. And all God's children said. Amen and amen.
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Wanna invite you to be a part of our connection time afterwards in the fellowship hall. Let's go and enjoy God today. God bless you.
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