If You Would Hear His Voice

If You Would Hear His Voice

Then while it is [still] called Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion [in the desert, when the people provoked and irritated and embittered God against them].

Hebrews 3:15

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Everything challenging to us is not the adversary. Rebellion, in which one is simply not obeying what you know you heard God tell you to do, loose, stop, release,...whatever it was. Stop that! Those behaviors provoke God. Who wants God "irritated and embittered" toward them? I bind aside selective hearing. There is an ear and heart connection... or disconnect. If we would hear God, we must be tender-hearted. " Harden not your heart" implies we have a choice. We are the one's who harden our own hearts. In much the same way the Israelites did in "the provocation" of God: Through murmuring, idolatry, rebellion. We hear God with our heart by faith, for faith comes by hearing. What I have been seeing is folk don't want to hear. Because, then one is accountable to walk in the light received. A preacher comes with a word, and they are not always soft or tickling to the ear and people shut DOWN to the sound of the trumpet. That is nothing new:

Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hear and obey the sound of the trumpet!

But they said, We will not listen or obey. Jeremiah 6:17

Big mistake! There is a rest for the people of God and there is a way to enter into it. It is God's way. We have to stop trying to do things our own way. We cannot DO whatever we want to do! Harden not your heart! Let us learn from the Children of Israel, who replied thus to the prophet's exhortation:

Thus says the Lord: Stand by the roads and look; and ask for the eternal paths, where the good, old way is; then walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk in it!

Jeremiah 6:16

The provocation of rebellion was and is a dry, desert place. Maybe...just maybe there is a dryness in the spirit due to a hard heart toward the things of God and so one cannot HEAR God. Spiritually deaf! He wants to bring such out of a desert place "Follow the sound of the trumpet, ask for the eternal paths, the good, old way. Walk in it, my child! Understand me, there are desert seasons in our Christian walks. Even Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit of God before his public ministry was displayed. But that is just it, He was LED into and walked through that desert place by the Spirit of God. That implies hearing his voice and walking in the light! How much more for we "little Christs", we Christians?

Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

Hebrews 3:10

And so I was provoked (displeased and sorely grieved) with that generation, and said, They always err and are led astray in their hearts, and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them.

Accordingly, I swore in My wrath and indignation, They shall not enter into My rest.

Hebrews 3:10 AMP

Verse 12 of that same passage reads: Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. 

A hardened heart is "an evil heart of unbelief". God had been doing the miraculous for years and yet the Israelites did not perceive and recognize His ways. They tried God's patience. Now, It is not my place to speak on this: that is, the state of another's heart. It is a personal thing between the child of God and our Father in heaven.

You know; for You, You only, know men’s hearts

2 Chron 6:30

Like the children of Israel from whom we are to take a lesson, we don't know our own hearts. They did not see themselves as rebellious even as they declared, "We will NOT listen!"

The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]?

Jeremiah 17:9

All one can do is pray and ask God to show him or her their heart. And when He does, get it right through the washing of the water of the Word of God.

Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord;and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?

Jeremiah 23:29

Let the Word of God burn off the dross of hard-heartedness: Let it break the things which hinder a Spirit-led life. God speaks through his Word and it can and does minister to matters of the heart. Truly it is sharper than a two-edged sword!

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

I think God quickened this to me because there comes a time when He gives to us according to our ways. Selah! Now exactly what that means is between you and God. It is between God and I. It is an individual, personal thing. But, we cannot say Abba Father did not warn us. "Harden not your heart". Listen and strive to obey. Be quick to hear! Are you seeking rest for your soul? Eschew the Israelite's response to God's mouthpiece: Not only did they not listen, they purposed flat to deliberately not walk out their lives the way God wanted. It was a declaration they came to regret. One is self-deceived if they think you can be a child of God on your OWN terms. If you would hear his voice, be led of his Spirit, and enter into his rest. Allow God to give you a heart of flesh! Surrender that he might do a work in you and bless you with an undivided that only He can. Draw NEAR to God and learn his voice!

And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:

Ezekiel 11:19

He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying.

B’racha! (Blessings!),

Prophetess Vickie Lee