In John 7:37-39, Jesus was speaking, and He said: out of your belly, out of your spirit, out of within, you will flow rivers of living water; and He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, or the ministry of the spirit. The word I want to draw your attention to is - two words; one is 'out of your belly', out of your spirit, out of deep within you - that's the first word. The second word is this: flow. Flow is not one, two, three, four, five, six. Flow is more like a river moving. It's a spontaneous movement; so the movements of the Holy Spirit, and the guidance or direction of God, or the voice of God will be: number one, from within you; number two, it will be a flow. It will be spontaneous, and there'll be a moving. Now that seems so very, very simple, yet there's a whole lifestyle of actually learning how to hear that voice. So God's voice is not going to be yelling at you, although He can. It's not going to be outside you, although it can be. It may not be very dramatic, although it can be. Usually, for most of us, most of the time, it's like Elijah described: a still small voice, very still. In other words, it's not loud, raucous, pushing, pressy; and it's very small, it's very little, and very easily stopped.
Now if we're going to hear the voice of God then, that means I've got to deal with inner noise, and learn how to come to rest. If I have got a lot of noise going on my soul, it will distract me from hearing God. If I've got a lot of turmoil in my soul, it will stop me hearing God; and so the reason a lot of people don't hear much from God, is because of turmoil going on inside their life; and usually in the turmoil, when you really most want to hear God, there's so much turmoil, it blocks your hearing; and so you've got to do something about the turmoil. Let me give you some of the common hindrances, things that literally obstruct that flow of the spirit; then we'll just give you some very simple ways, you could just develop it. It's not hard, but it's a lifetime of practice. Here's some of the things. One of the things that will stop you, or hinder you - I'll use the word hinder, because nothing stops God. Even Adam and Eve, after they sinned, heard the voice of God. So here's the thing: hidden sin. If you've got things in your heart God's been talking to you about, and you're not responding; that sin will create noise in your life, that blocks out God. It's like you just don't hear Him anymore. If I regard inequity in my heart, He shall not hear me; so it affects our prayer life, everything. Hidden sin opens the door to being: the voice you hear, is the one that condemns you, that's not the voice of Jesus.
So there are many voices, many impressions we have within; we have to learn how to distinguish what they are, and removing a few of the hindrances can help. One of the hindrances is sin, un-confessed, un-repented of. Another common hindrance, more common than you'd realise, is if we are disappointed with God. This is a bigger one than you realise, disappointed with God. If you are disappointed with someone, you're hurt, because they didn't do what you thought, the way you thought. What normally happens is, you close your heart up to them; and when you close your heart up to someone, then when you meet with that person, there's a distance between you, and you're not really receiving properly. So if we've been disappointed, we've prayed, sought God over something and nothing happened, there's a tendency to feel hurt, rejected and to blame God, and then shut down. This just hinders us, and here's the problem. If you're wanting to hear the voice of God, of course you're going to have to face this issue where you felt disappointed by God, [laughs] and I don't want to face that! So now we hold the hurt in our heart, it just blocks us. We need to resolve things, and if there's a hurt and a grief and a disappointment, God knows about it. The big one that's got the issue, that's not facing it, is ourselves.