How to Hear God's Voice-Pt 3-Clean the Pantry

Do you have that one area in your home where, every time you open the door, you think, “One day… this has got to be cleaned out”?! The book of Hebrews tells us to set aside weights that slow us down. Join us in The Father’s House as Liz shares an experience that brings a Scriptural truth to light and discovers how physical and spiritual weights we carry around can actually be hindering us from hearing God clearly and not allowing us to find what we’re truly searching for.

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Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-3

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, this is Pastor Gill from the Father's House TC in Jensen Beach, Florida, and we welcome you to our weekly podcast. Thank you for joining us today for the relevant messages and genuine conversations. We hope dreams and God's promises for you are awakened and restored. Be inspired, be challenged, and be reminded that God is not done with your story, and he has more for you than you can think or imagine. Enjoy the message.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Good morning and welcome into the Father's House. We're just coming straight out of worship right now, and the Holy Spirit is very strong here. Can we sense his presence? I mean, it's like the song just drew us um right into his presence, and the last song we sang was I Surrender. And I just want to share an experience I had with the Lord this week. Gil and I are reading together. The book is actually about 20 years old now, but it's an amazing book, and it's radically changed my life. It has helped me to come through and realize the purpose of the desert and the wasteland and the long season of disillusionment and fighting unbelief and doubts, and what is our purpose? What is our calling? What are we to be doing? And the song I Surrender came out of an, like I said, an experience I had with the Lord earlier this week. It was in the we early morning hours, and I just got up and I was reading to finish this book, and there was a chapter called A Surprising Invitation. I'm not going to read it, of course, but I'm just going to share what the Lord was working in me. Surrender, I don't know about y'all, but surrender to me is a very hard thing. To surrender, it's saying, God, whatever you have for my life, that's what I want more. And God, I surrender to your will. And that can be the hardest thing for somebody to do. Maybe it comes easy to you. It might come easier to you than it does to me. But that's been a very, I'll call it a big hurdle that I've had to come to because I can come to that place where I've said, oh God, I surrender. I've said it, you know, and I felt I meant it. But I'm realizing that if we're going to be surrendered to the Lord, we'll have to make some steps to show that. It's like He doesn't allow us to just say, I surrender, and then we just keep on doing what we've been doing. We have to be very led by the Holy Spirit. But you alone know what God is telling you inside to do. Other people or other voices can confirm that or be in opposition to it. But you alone know deep inside what the Holy Spirit's asking you to do. And I'll just share from my standpoint: I can make things look really good in my head. I can come up with a lot of ideas of how something could work. And all of that's well and good to a point, but it's got to be laid down at the cross. Because, you know, when Jesus went to the cross, he had his greatest, hardest struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before. And the struggle was with his will. And to surrender, we are literally laying down our will and trust that the God that we serve is everything he said he is. Every promise he has given you and I, he will do, even if we don't see it right now. We still have it. When Jesus surrendered his will at the cross, he said, Father, it is not my will that I want done, I want yours. And the Bible says in Hebrews 12 that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He endured the suffering. Because he knew what awaited him. And it's for the joy we can struggle and we can strive and trying to make our lives work. But if God, by the power of his Holy Spirit, is speaking to you, it could be a still small voice, or he could start shouting at you. Your circumstances could change, or or or your um, or your uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Your uneasiness, your lack of feeling like you're doing the right thing, your lack of fulfillment. These are all things. They're not a punishment or anything, but it's part of what God could be using to draw you to what is really going to fulfill you. Because we're only going to find that when we surrender. If we're believers, there will come times in our lives where Jesus had the one cross that he had to endure, but he had other crosses too. And I believe that in our lives, you know, we all suffer and we go through different things, and these things are all good and they're preparation and they're proving us. And then there's going to be that time when you really surrender to the Lord and a change can come into your life because you're you're taking that step of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. You're taking that step of faith, and God is then able to begin to change your direction, or maybe not take you from where or what you're doing, but just pour his blessing upon it because it's no longer you working and struggling and striving in it. That's the difference, and that's the key. I don't know where y'all are at that are here within the Father's house today, or listening to the podcast, or seeing it on social media or on the website. But what is God speaking to you today? What is he saying? I can only encourage you that if you feel he's saying something to you, but you're really not sure, call somebody, call someone that you respect and trust in the Lord. It might be your spiritual father, it might be your spiritual mother, it might be your pastor, it might be someone in your life that has walked this road ahead of you. And like I said earlier, deep down, usually we know what God is asking us to do. And it could be laying down something that you you love to do, but know that everything and every experience that you've had in your life up to this point, it's all preparation for that big thing that God has for you. And then once you get to the big dream or get to where you you feel like you're you're walking in that will of God, that dream again can change, but that's a subject and topic for another day. That's the joy of following God. God is never boring. God is never boring. If you are bored in your Christian life, it's just time to step it up and say, Father God, you know, just step it up. Step up your prayer, step up your listening, step up your obedience, and see all that God wants to do in your life because he's got fantastic things ahead. And trust me, he is just never boring. If we have an ear to hear, he is always speaking. And we'll hear his voice. We'll hear it. We might see a sign, we might hear it through others that will confirm what our spirit's saying unto us. But what is he calling for you to do today? Is there a place in your life that you maybe have not fully surrendered to the Lord, but you know exactly what I'm saying and you know what you have to do? So that's some food for thought for us. All right, I'll head into the message then. It's kind of a fun message. It's part three of how to hear the voice of God. I don't know if anyone has that one room in their house, or that one closet door they open up, or that one garage, or that one food pantry, that every time you open the door, you say, One day, one day, I'm gonna clean this. One day I'm gonna get this thing organized. Well, that was my day yesterday. I had finally had it up a foot past my head with our food pantry. Our food pantry and our kitchen was stuffed, unorganized. So let's get into the word today. Last two weeks I've been talking on how to hear God's voice. We're in part three, like I said, today. Part one was what what God's voice sounds like. And part two was about his whisper and how to discern it. Part two also showed us what God's voice is and what God's voice is not. So if you haven't heard those two messages, check out the podcast, they'll be there and listen to them because I think they'll really, really help you begin to discern what God could be saying to you. But I, you know, when I got up today, I got to thinking about something. God has been shaking everything that can be shaken. All the more reason to have and to be living a surrendered life to His will. Because God is doing exactly what He said He would do. He said that He would shake everything that could be shaken, and more is coming. But we're seeing it in our nation, we're seeing it in the world, we're seeing it in the economy, we're seeing it in the church. You may be seeing it in your personal life. Things are shaking, but shaking tests, and shaking proves our faith. And it proves if God is really your rock and your refuge. Shaking proves if you are really sheltered and under the protection of his wings. In the shaking, things in your life can get shifted around. You know, a life can shake when you lose somebody. You know, we experience the loss of my father, and of course, my mom's husband of 75 years, and you know that shakes your life. You know, somebody who you loved and cared for in their later years, but who just brought so much joy and wisdom. When that person's not there, your life is shaken. And many of you have been experiencing shakings. But when things begin to shift in your life, when you are going through a shaking, you might begin to realize some things that you've been lax on. Maybe there are some areas where you could have been undisciplined. Maybe there's some time that you are wasting. These things, whenever they're shaken, now I gave a very dramatic example of a time in our life when it was shaken by the death of my father, but even just other types of shakings that aren't quite that dramatic. But maybe you know something happens at your job, or maybe something happens in your financial situation, and things just aren't going along smoothly. So things begin to come to light in the shaking, and the reality of your situation can begin to scream at you, and it can be saying, something here needs to change. Something here needs to change. Because to endure the shaking, there's things in our lives that are weak that have to be strengthened or changed. There's a reason some things are shaking. They're shaking so that they don't remain the same. And shaking is not a bad thing. Shaking is a good thing. A storm will clean out trees of all their dead, dead limbs and dead leaves. And after a strong storm, I mean that that tree can be cleaned out, and then a few months later it's all blooming back again because a storm hit it. Shaking is a good thing in our lives, but that which is weak in our life has to be strengthened and changed. I know that in shaking in my life, I looked at priorities. We have to look at our priorities, and when you're being shaken, you really begin to think, hey, what is really valuable to me? What is really valuable to me? What relationships are really valuable to me? What is my relationship with the Lord? Is that in the place in my life as first and foremost that it should be? What is my relationship with my family? Is that in the right priority in my life? What is my relationship to my community, my church community? The you know, as I said, even our families, our family is a very strong support community. How is it my relationship with these people? My priorities in my time, and in my time management, and in our my money management, are those things in order? Because when things aren't in order and you get shaken, you realize how much it's not in order. Now, our body, we have it, we have a skeleton, and that skeleton is the bone structure of our body. Without that structure of the skeleton, our body couldn't stand. We couldn't stand. So if there are things within your spiritual life structure or your physical life structure that is not quite right, a shaking will reveal what needs to be lined up. A shaking will reveal what needs to be strengthened. A shaking will reveal, hey, this spiritual discipline, it's not what it used to be, or the Lord could be saying it needs to grow. Or even our physical disciplines. You know, getting out on that walk or going to that gym or riding that bike, our physical disciplines, eating well, taking care of ourselves, these are all so important. So just realize this: God shakes us to awake us. He shakes you to awake you. So I'm just want to encourage you today, let yourself be awakened and hear what the Holy Spirit's saying. If you have your Bibles, I'm gonna read Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3 from the New Living Translation. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race set before us that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Who, because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding the shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people, then you won't become weary and give up. Oh, let's just unpack this for just one minute. Let's go back to verse one. Strip off the weight, strip off every weight that slows us down. Slows us down. Now I've heard my husband Gil tell this story many times because he was a swimmer on his high school swim team. They did very well, they were won state championships, etc. But their training was intense. But one aspect of their training was wearing pantyhose when they swam, even the men. Now that sounds funny, but he said that they created a drag on you in the water, but you trained with them, and then when you took off those pantyhose, you could really swim faster because you were used to pulling a drag. Okay? Think about it, church, if we shake off these weights now. What about if we say, okay, I've been carrying this weight around and this weight around? It's time to shake it off because if I shake this off, I'm going to be able to fly. Just like Gil could swim like a fast fish in that water and get to new times. That's what we can do if we can shake off the weights and let go of the weights that are slowing us down. And then it says on verse one, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. Now, let me say something here. Sin is not always the person that's addicted to drugs or has a real anger problem or any of those things. Those are obvious things. Sin, one of its meanings is to miss the mark. To miss the mark. So we have to ask ourselves a question: is there a mark I'm missing because of weights that I'm carrying? Ooh. Is there a mark I'm missing because of weights I'm carrying? Is there a mark? Is there a will of God that we have not yet surrendered to that we are missing because this sin of missing the mark is tripping us up? Therefore, it's causing us to not be able to reach the purpose and the destiny that God has out there for us. You may be in or coming out of a desert season in your life. You may be in a wasteland season where things aren't gelling like where you want them to gel, or just where you just feel like you're just in that sweet spot in your life. You could be in that time of disillusionment, disillusionment, and and doubt. And that's called shaking. You're being shaken, aren't you? Something didn't work out. Maybe hopes and dreams seem like a miserable, unfair, complete waste of time. Trust me, my hands are both up when I say that. Personally, and Gil and I together as a couple, we have had hopes and dreams that we have gone after that after even after years and energy and resources, they didn't produce. And it's not a good feeling. And I hear that everybody goes through these seasons. But we have to realize that these seasons where we might end up with nothing, they were not for nothing. Because God was at work through that whole time. When we're in a wasteland or in that desert, your life, your faith, your values, your priorities, your direction, everything is shaken. And anger and confusion set in. So, how many of you here today think that you're currently in a desert or a wasteland space or experience in your life? And another question, how many of you think that you're in the thick of it and you don't see your way out? If this is you where you feel like you're right in the thick of it and you can't see the, you can't see the forest for the trees, you just can't see a way out, I want to encourage you, don't miss your diamonds in the sand. What is that? Diamonds in the sand are those evidences that are at every turn where God has been gracious and merciful to you and working in your life. I know that with me, as when we were in these times, we would see evidences of that. And God never failed us. One thing, we never missed a bill. You know, even when money could have gotten tight, we never missed a bill. That's an evidence that God was working. God is good. And in these times, He's preparing you for your big dream.

unknown 23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Something that is bigger and beyond anything that you could ask or even think of. Can I say that this is the time in your life that this time, let me say it this way: this time in your life is literally a loving gift from your heavenly father. This desert experience in your life is literally a loving gift from your heavenly father to you and to your future. His son experienced it. Jesus experienced it. We're going to experience it. The Israelites experienced it. They had the promise of the promised land ahead of them, but they had the wilderness in between. King David experienced it. Joseph experienced it being thrown into prison. But this time in your life is literally a loving gift from your Heavenly Father. Another question: how many of you think that you're you are coming out of it? You're not in it, you're not in the thick of it, you're you're coming out of it. Remember, when you're in that desert time, it's training, it's preparation, and there are many voices there. Many voices. And they're pretty loud. They're pretty loud. They like to kind of shout at us. The voice of discouragement, the voice of failure, the voice of fear, the voice of rejection, the voice of hurt. And they are the loudest ones you hear, but something else is happening, though. When those voices are shouting, they are muffling, they're drowning out the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. And it can be hard to hear God's voice, to know what He really wants you to do when you've been in the desert. But I'm I'm here to say though that coming out of that, coming out of that, it might be time to declutter. It might be time to clean the pantry. So as I said earlier, how many of you have, like I did, that one room or that one place in your house that every time you open that door, you say, one day I'm gonna clean this. One day I'm gonna get this organized. So for me, that one day came when I opened up that disorganized food pantry and storage, and here are the results of our disorganization. Duplicates and triplicates of the same foods. Wasting money? Oh my gosh, not a question. We wasted money. We were buying items we already had. Why? Because we didn't know we had them, we didn't know where they are, we didn't have a set place to look for them. Another thing that I found in our cabinets were foods, ingredients that we're not eating anymore. Let's see. We have a food pantry inside, we have exterior shelves out in the garage that we would store food on and supplies, we have two refrigerators and two freezers. Okay. So I must say that the freezer, one of them's not even being used right now, but one, it's organized. But that garage shelf with some foods on it, bugs, found bugs. It was gross. An infested bag of oatmeal, not even open, strong plastic, everything. Bugs infested. It was gross. And then in the pantry or on the shelf, expired food. Yes, expired food. How far back? I'm ashamed to say some was up to six years. Six years. Or if I saw something that was from Kroger, it was pitched. Okay. Kroger was in Tennessee. We haven't been in Tennessee for a while, so the food was done, okay. So on that cleanup day, one and a half garbage cans full of food. I feel really sorry for the trash man because those are two heavy garbage cans. But what's the result now? You open up our pantry, and by golly, it's neat, it's organized, it's half empty. We have a whole shelf. It's like, what do I do with this shelf? Yo, that's how much food we had accumulated, and we're still going out and buying stuff that we and we had duplicates and triplicates of. Crazy. But we can actually find something we can actually know where to put something back to. Instead of just throwing it in there, like hoping, hoping to God that the next time you open it, you can find what you're looking for, you know. But there's organized shelves in there, and there's a printed chart in there of where it goes to keep us organized so that we can keep okay, on shelf number two, three, four, five, this is what's here. It's an amazing feeling, and it's a blessing to the whole family. So, as I close out here, what about your life? Does anything of this resonate with you? Do you have closets in your life? Physical closets, spiritual closets, mental closets that need to be cleaned out. What you have, what you don't need. What you don't need is expired food. Yet, yet, we can carry it around. We've been carrying it around. We've been working around it. We've been stumbling over it. We've been rummaging through it, wasting time, energy, and money because of things in our closets that we don't need. Expired food in our spiritual closet. Expired food in our physical pantries. Maybe clothes that we don't wear in our physical closet. Mentally. What are we carrying around that we're having to rummage through and work around and stumble over? All in search of what we've truly been looking for. Do we get that? Do we get that? Our lives can become so cluttered that we can't even begin to find what we're really searching for in that closet. And that's what the Holy Spirit showed me. How long have we been fumbling around in that food pantry? Here's an example. Mom had bought a bottle of vitamins. I remember this, I can't remember the date of when it was, but I remember we had gone to Sprouts and we came home and we had bought, you know, food and they have vitamins, etc. And mom had bought some vitamins and she goes, Where are these vitamins? She couldn't find them. Well, you know what? I found them yesterday. I found them. Where were they? On the bottom floor behind the crock pot in a sprouts bag was her whole bottle of multivitamins that she had been looking for probably six months ago. It's crazy, y'all. It's just crazy what we carry around, work around, stumble around, rummage around, waste money and time and energy because it's around. All in search for what we're truly looking for, but we can't find it. These are weights that need to be set aside so that we can hear God clearly. So that we can look into that food pantry and go, oh, okay, there's where the cereal is. We can look in our spiritual closet and go, oh, okay, yes, my prayer life, it's not what it used to be. Lord, let's get it back. Weights that need to be set aside so you can hear God clearly and move forward into the next season that He has for us. Here's the mental weights, wrong thoughts, unbelief and doubt, fear and anxiety, boring or not at all prayer times, no hunger for God and his word and to hear his voice. Set these aside. Set these aside, organize these pantries in our life, if I can call them that. Get them organized, get them decluttered, lay aside those weights, as the writer of Hebrews so encourages us to do. Let us strip off every single weight. Because when we begin to strip it off, we'll begin to hear God's voice more clearly. Because you don't have clutter. You know, our lives are so packed with information because of our cell phones and our devices and our computers and our work, and everything revolves basically around a device in some way. I know in my life I cannot work, I cannot do the work I'm called to do. I don't have my computer. You know, it's it's a necessary blessing and it can be a necessary curse at times. There are times that we just have to download. There are times that we have to actually declutter at the end of every day. Do a moral inventory of where your thoughts are. Are there thoughts in your mind that you need to get rid of even before you go to sleep that night? Is there something you have to confess to the Lord or maybe confess to a person so that you can rest better at night? All of these things can affect how clearly and how quickly you can discern and hear the still small voice of God. Remember last week in the message in the 1 Kings chapter 19 scripture, God's voice wasn't in the wind, it wasn't in the earthquake, it wasn't in the fire, it was in his gentle voice. But sometimes things are so loud around us that we can't hear it. I feel that I'm called today to call you back to a quiet time, to where you can hear his voice. And let me say this: when you hear his voice, it gives you the courage to surrender. It gives you the courage to hear his love and his acceptance of you, but also his guidance and the ability to trust him as your heavenly father because he's ahead of you. And what we're holding on to and afraid to surrender, he is already taken care of. And he has something ahead of all of us that's so much bigger than we can even think or imagine. God's voice can be that feeling deep down inside that you know there's something more. There's something more that's calling you on. Is that your dream? That you maybe need to surrender something to the Lord so that you can realize what he has for you up ahead. God has a race set before us, it says in this chapter on Hebrews. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Or maybe we have to get our eyes back to being fixed on Jesus. Fix your eyes, keep your eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects your faith. Run with him, follow his voice, and fulfill your God-given purpose and destiny for your life. Y'all, it's right behind, it's right beyond that wall of surrender. It's right beyond that saying yes to God and trusting that still small voice and doing the next right thing. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you. Lord, first we have to thank you for your love and for who you are. You are our Father, and everything about you is good. Father, I pray for each and every one listening within the sound of my voice. God, give us the strength and courage to clean out the closets, mentally, physically, spiritually. Lord, give us the courage to get them all decluttered so that we can hear you more clearly. Father, I declare, I declare and proclaim that as you do this, you are going to hear the voice of God. You're going to know the voice of God more, and you will have the faith and the courage to step out and take that leap of faith that you feel you need to take. But it's just beyond that wall of surrender. So, Lord, right now, we just lay down every, every, everything that we have held on to so tightly that we've been afraid of to release into your hand. Father, we lay it down right now and we surrender to your heart and we surrender to your will. Father, I thank you that your Holy Spirit is now ministering to your people, giving them courage, giving them hope, giving them faith, speaking to them, and showing them the next best thing. Lord, thank you. We love you with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength. Forgive us, Father. Wash us clean by the blood of Jesus, we pray. In your mighty name we pray, and we all said together, Amen.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, be sure to subscribe. Click the share button, and take a screenshot and share it on your social media pages. Tag us at the Father's House TC and visit us at tfhtc.org for more information. God bless you.