Are You Listening: #5 Recognizing God's Voice

Everyone claims to speak truth but not every voice is from God.

This message from 1 John 4 challenges us to test the voices we listen to, recognize false teaching, and become people who know the voice of Christ.

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Well, good morning. So, This morning I wanted to start out with this question. How do we recognize God's voice? How can we recognize God's voice? And are there voices out there that are claiming to speak for God that really aren't speaking for God? And of course, there are. And the question is, is how can we discern what is truly God's voice and what is not God's voice? And of course, familiarity. You know, has a lot to do with it. Like, who doesn't know, their mother's voice? You could be, completely turned away from your mother and hear her voice and know that that's her voice because you're familiar with it. Any of you who are following my sister's, case of our son who was, murdered in Singapore? No. The part of the story where the Singapore police presented to her this typed, note. And as soon as she started to read it, she said, my son may have killed himself, but he didn't write this letter. Why? Because she knows her son's voice. She knows the voice, and she knows whether it's authentic or not, because she is familiar with it. A voice that claims to be God's voice, is one that we need to be able to discern whether it is truly God's voice or not. Even the Bible can be used to distort God's voice. Not every time somebody opens a Bible and starts reading from it. Are they speaking God's voice? One example of this, was probably about 20 years ago. I was watching a preacher on TV, and he was preaching from a passage in Deuteronomy, a chapter I was very familiar with. And he starts teaching in this passage in Deuteronomy. He was a faith, teacher. He was a, you know, name it, claim it teacher. And he started teaching this idea that is by our own strength and by the assertion of our own words and by the power of our own faith, that we become prosperous. And then he used this verse in Deuteronomy to, to, establish this idea that it is by our own strength. And he reads this verse that says, by my power and by the might of my hand, I have gotten this wealth. And see, there it is, by your power and by the might of your hand that you have gotten your wealth. And when I heard that I about fell out of the chair because I knew the context, and it was actually saying the exact opposite of what he was teaching. Let me just read to you what a few verses surrounding that verse say. It says. Beware, lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth. You shame you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. And he may confirm his covenant that he swore with your fathers, as it is today. And if you forget the Lord your God, and go after other gods, and serve them and worship them. I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, you shall perish because you would not obey the voice of your God. Now you know, it just struck me at the time that every person that was listening to him, the vast majority of whom were Christians, all they had to do is open their Bible and read the passage that he was reading out of, and they would know that he was teaching the exact opposite of what the Bible was teaching. If the Bible can be so easily distorted by evil teachers and say the opposite of what he is saying, surely the other ways in which God speaks to us can also be distorted. What are the ways that God speaks to us? What what are some of the ways that God besides through his Word, which is the main means by which he speaks to us? What are some ways in which God speaks to us that we hear his voice through other Christians, through other Christians giving good advice, or through other Christian teaching, or through Bible studies or, you know, through our friends or wise counsel. What are some of the other ways that God speaks to us? Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have a discussion with you afterwards on that. Impression. Sometimes he brings impressions or visions or dreams. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is just, moving and speaking in our hearts. So inspired thoughts. And even very rarely to a few people in the course of history. God speaks audibly like Moses and the burning bush. There are a lot of different ways that God speaks to us. And, the question is, is how can we recognize whether it is truly God's voice or some other voice? There's really three choices that we have. It can either be God's voice or the serpent's voice. Our own voice. Telling us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear. But how do we know that? When we think God is speaking to us, that is truly God. That is speaking to us. You know, it is possible that when we think God is speaking to us, it's really the serpent disguising himself in the voice of God. Or it's also possible that it is our own voice speaking to ourselves. You know, think of things, things that I've heard as a pastor over the years. God has led us to, go on vacation and put it on the credit card and defer our, financial obligations. And say, well, that's fine, as long as you drop the God is leading part, because I don't think God is leading you to go into deeper debt to to have, discretionary, spending. But, that, that's, that's just one example of many where God's name really is used in vain to justify what we want to do. If you want to do what you want to do, don't don't put God's name onto it. It's better just to say, I want to take a vacation, and I'm going to put it on the credit card. At least if you're going to say God told me, don't tell me God told. So the question is, is how do we recognize today as we continue in our series entitled, are you listening? We're going to be asking the question, how do we actually recognize the authentic voice of God? How can we test the voices we hear? Can we be confident? How can we be confident? Then we what we think. What we think is God's voice really is God's voice. Recognizing God's voice is the name of the message this morning, and we'll be looking at John chapter, first John rather, chapter four, verses one through six. First John chapter four, verses one through six. Heavenly father, Lord, as we come before your word this morning, we pray as we read it, Lord, we would hear it as it is, and we understand it as it was intended, and that we would apply it as it was meant to be implied in Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right. First John, chapter four, verses one through six. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh from God, and every spirit that is from God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus, confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and in and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So it is, It is a wrong idea about faith to think that our faith is something that doesn't fit with, or can't be tested with reality. If a person says to you, you just need to put your faith in Jesus. And by that I mean without being able to test it or prove it. Our, our have some evidentiary Evans of its veracity. That is really not faith. The faith that we have as a faith here that we're called to test. Well, if we hear, the word asserting something that Jesus is the Christ, that the Christ, the Anointed One, has become flesh and dwelt among us. We are invited to test that just as much as we're invited to test. Any other idea here? We're invited to test what we believe to see. By virtue of our own critical thinking. Whether or not something is true when we say we have biblical faith, we mean that what we believe, we really believe really happened historically. Really happened. There's some fantastic things we believe, like the virgin birth. And people would say, how can you believe the virgin birth? But we really believe that it really happened. And it was historical. Our faith isn't just in some mystery, myth that we think has some allegorical truth. We really believe that it happened. And why do we believe it? Well, we believe it because of the veracity of the people who witnessed it. You know, we do not think that Mary and Joseph are likely candidates to be liars. When they said what they said about the angels visiting them and when they, gave the testimony of what happened to them, both of them together. Through a reliable witnessing of of the, New Testament writers give a, a sense of truthfulness about themselves. They're honorable people who would not lie. And their character as portrayed by others, is one of the highest standing. And so we believe that what they said happened to them, because we believe, in the veracity of what they're saying now, if it could be proven that Mary's a liar and a scurrilous person and Joseph went along with her lie, then we should stop believing it. But what we believe, we believe for a reason. Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we listen to the ideas that we listen to? Why do we accept what we accept and reject what we reject? Well, we should test what it is that we put our faith in. How do we know if we're listening to God's voice, Satan's voice, our own voice? Are we in danger of being too naive when it comes to people claiming to speak for God? Well, the theme of this morning. Is this the answer to that question is yes. There are many false prophets. The first thing we see in this passage is that, we're we're commanded to test, the voices out there because there are many false prophets. Verse one. Again, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. Now, a false prophet is a person that professes to be speaking for God, but really is not speaking for God. Person who says that I am, prophesying that which is true, about Scripture, but really isn't speaking what is true. According to verse one, there aren't just a few of these guys. There's a lot of these guys. There are many, many false prophets. So, we need to become discerning when a person claims to be, a sheep speaking for the shepherd. That's what a false prophet is. A false prophet is a sheep. One of us claiming to speak for the shepherd. And it turns out there are a lot of wolves and sheep clothing there. It turns out there are many. That's what a false prophet is. A false prophet is what Jesus calls a wolf in sheep's clothing. And there are many of them. The problem is that to truly, become a Christian tends to cause us to become naive. It happened to me. And it may have happened to you when I, before I was a Christian, I wasn't nearly as naive as I became after I became a Christian. And I think the reason why is because we tend to see the world and project the world through our own character. And when you're less, jaundiced and more honest, you tend to believe other people are too. What happened to me when I was first a Christian? I'll tell you that story in a minute. But, I just think that we need to examine this idea that just because we are becoming more trustworthy as Christ is moving and changing in our lives, doesn't mean other people are, and that we should, still test what people, are telling us, independent of whether or not we ourselves, tend to become more honest. If if we are honest, we tend to think other people are honest. One of the things that happened, my wife and I, when we had been Christians for a couple of years is, some guy came along with a business proposition growing, houseplants. And, you know, we were listening to the business proposition. But when he came in and sat down at our in our living room and we were looking for a little small business opportunities, he saw the Bible on my, coffee table, and he referenced it and said he was a believer. And so all of a sudden, all of my defenses were down and I believed everything he said. It turned out to be a con. The guy who perpetrated the con was taken to court. And I don't know what the ultimate disposition of that court trial was, but, we were swept up in a con that all started with trusting somebody because they said they are Christians. You know, since I've been a Christian, I have noticed that every time I go to buy a new car and, car dealer finds out that I'm a pastor, universally, they're all Christians. Now, I enjoy asking two questions, when they tell me of their devotion to the Lord, I like to first ask them where they're going to church, and usually they come up with an answer. You know, they know the name of a church. But I love the second question, and I have yet to have one answer. The second question, who's your pastor's name? Oh, well, not that there aren't Christians, car salesmen. Please, if you have somebody in your family that's really a devoted I. I'm just telling you my experience, you know? Okay. You know, there are many false prophets claiming to speak for God and intentionally perverting their word, and and, we can be, really, naive. I'm going to tell you, you know, a funny story and a serious story. Well, neither one of them are all that funny, but I'm going to tell you, a story that, you know, where where there really is no guile and a story where there is guile, the story where there is no guile. You know, happened when we first started our church, and there was a man who I highly admire named Ralph, who is part of our church. He's since passed. Ralph was a man filled with the Spirit of God. He was somebody who could, go into and talk to a hostile person and have him smiling. And a few minutes he would share his faith with everybody on the road. He'd pick up hitchhikers. This guy just was really, an inspiration to me. But Ralph was very naive. And one day, Ralph came to church and Ralph was said, pastor, pastor, I, I was watching TBN and and guess what? There there was, there was some geologists in, in Russian and they, they had 13 miles of microphone cable and they put it down into this hole that they were exploratory hole that they were digging in. And they they heard voices from hell. And, I, I thought, oh, my goodness. I said, Ralph, could you do me a favor? And guess what? I said, could you not tell anybody that story until I check it out? I'm thinking in my mind how many geologists drive around with a truck with 13 miles of microphone cable on it and, automatically, you know, but I don't I don't want to not be full of wonder the possibilities of God. But, you know, and my baloney detector was going off. And so the funny thing about the story is, because I loved Ralph, I needed to check it out. This the story, what the true story was that there's this prankster named Dick tuck, and Dick tuck has been pulling pranks on everybody as far back as you can remember. In fact, one of dick tax best pranks was on, Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was, during his presidential campaign, was on a train tour through Southern California. He'd stopped off at Whittier. He was speaking to a crowd on the back of the caboose. And Dick talked, dressed up like a train conductor in the middle of of, Nixon speech. Dick tuck waved the train on, and the train pulled out of the station with Nixon speaking to this audience. That's the kind of guy Dick tuck was. Well, Dick tuck decided he was going to goof on the Christian community. And so he gets this magazine article from Germany, just a regular German magazine article, and he sends it into the TBN Christian, TV station with a transcript that says all this stuff about this geologist in Russia that had nothing to do with the article, and they didn't. They believed it and they didn't translate it, and they communicated the idea. And I heard that idea from, pastor, six months ago. And the first time I heard it, it was, you know, some 25 years ago. And so it's still alive out there. Don't believe everything you hear. Yeah, yeah. Here, I'm going to talk about something more serious. We'll step on some toes. Back in the early 80s and 90s, right when I was, you know, going into ministry, going to seminary, I started hearing, a, a ubiquitous teaching that was going throughout the Church of Jesus Christ, throughout Campus Crusade for Christ, throughout everywhere. And, just to give you a little bit of background, I already had heard this voice. It's the serpent's voice. I heard it when I was a nonbeliever. I was sitting in a, as an undergraduate. I was in a psychology class, and, the psychology teacher said she was defining insanity, and she said insanity is complete and total self-absorption. And I raised my hand. Pesky little student. And I said, if insanity is complete and total self-absorption, why is it that all of our treatment modalities, all of our psychological treatment modalities, encourage self-absorption, silence, no answer at the heart of what Satan has been trying to get us to do from the very beginning is to become absorbed with ourselves. Nowhere in Scripture are you going to see it taught that you should focus primarily on yourself first. But that's the idea that was being taught through the second commandment. The serpent's voice started coming through the teaching of the second commandment. The second commandment is you should love your neighbor as yourself. Do you think that teaches you? To become self-absorbed? Well, that's exactly the type of teaching that was coming out of many quarters in the Christian community. I think it's kind of died off since then, but the idea was what was being taught was, before you can love your neighbor, this scripture is teaching you that first you must take your focus off of your neighbor and put your focus on yourself. And first, you must love yourself. That is not what that Scripture teaches that Scripture teaches. And it presumes that we love ourselves. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Now, if you have any question about whether you love yourself or not, let me just test you here. You may say, oh, I don't love the way I look, and I got an F on the test and I don't. Well, well, let me ask you this. Between you and your neighbor, who's mortgage would you rather have paid? Really, if you if you have a choice of you receiving some good fortune out of life, or your neighbor, who would you choose and look at? We may not like certain things about ourselves, but we care more about ourselves and we care about anyone else. That is the bottom line truth of all people. And here Christ is trying to pry us loose from this self-absorption and to start being others oriented. Love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength. Get your focus off of yourself and love your neighbor as yourself at least as much as yourself. Presuming that you already love yourself. What you do. Can you hear that? How that got twisted. And, maybe some of you still have incorporated that teaching into your thoughts. It's not a true teaching. It's. It's a serpent's voice. And we need to be able to hear the serpent's voice when he speaks, and especially when he speaks as though it's God's voice. If you're not convinced, let me just say one more thing. Jesus says these two great commandments. The second great commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself, are a summary of all the law and the prophets. So I'd like you to turn to the Ten Commandments and tell me within the Ten Commandments, where you can find anything that directs you to becoming self absorbed. They're all focused on, giving God his due and giving other people their due. Don't steal from other people that you know, don't don't covet, don't commit adultery. Don't lie about other people. You know, those aren't, directions that you derive this meaning that you are to become self absorbed to to focus on yourself first and then out of your own experience, just ask yourself, what were the best days of my life? What were the best moments of my life? And I can guarantee you they weren't. When you are thinking about yourself. Okay, so, if I stepped on your toes, forgive me. Now I don't forgive me. I say that because that teaching has permeated the church of Jesus Christ. Hopefully, it's on the wane. But I first heard it, and I said there were legions of, of smart people sitting there going like this whenever they would hear it. They should have heard that that was not an authentic, voice of God. It's the serpent's voice. It isn't consistent with any part of Scripture. If you look up, if you tried to Google, how does the Bible teach me to get love myself? You'd have a a tough time finding a single scripture that actually says that you wouldn't be able to, are we willing to face our own tendency in terms of our own negativity or our, and, and really face the ideas that we're listening to and put them to the test? Not everything that sounds good is good. We are called here in this passage to test the spirits, to test the voices. Because there are many false prophets. The theme this morning is that there are many false prophets. And point number one is don't believe everything you hear. Test the spirits, don't believe everything you hear. Verse number one, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. Test the spirits, test them to see if they truly are consistent with God's voice. Just because something sounds convincing does not mean it's true. One of the books I've read recently, last couple of years, was a book called Future Babel and future Babel was not a is not a Christian book. It's a book. Just looking at all of the predictions that people have made, whether it's environmental predictions or religious predictions or world population predictions, all the predictions that expert prognosticators have made that have failed to come true. And, it asks the questions, why do we believe what we believe? Why do we believe with confidence, people who turn out not to be true. And it's interesting. In this book it says there's two types of prognosticators of the future. He breaks them into two categories. He calls one group foxes and the other hedgehogs. And he says the foxes are the ones that speak with great confidence and absolute surety that this will happen. And these are the reasons why it will happen. And you can put total confidence in it will happening and it happening. And then there are hedgehogs are kind of like, well, this might happen or this might happen. This is a possibility or that's a possibility, but I think this will probably be what will happen. Now. He said that that, as it turns out, that in those two categories of people, the people that are almost always wrong are the foxes, the ones that are confident and the people that tend to be right are the ones that aren't so confident. But the interesting thing he notes in that book is no one ever believes the people that aren't competent, confident, they only believe the people that are that exude a confidence, that confidence sells. And, and, and it sells in such a way that that people believe, a confident, intelligent sounding voice, over, more circumspect. Well, maybe it will. Or maybe it won't. Type of voice. This happened to the church in the turn of the century where, popular Bible teacher was teaching about, all the crashes in the year 2000 that would occur as a result of the computer timing, turnover, as you probably all recall. And, at that time, I made some simple observations that irritated, some among you, when this Bible prognosticator was talking about planes flying out of the sky. And, I made the comment that, to, to people if, if, if the computer hard drive all of a sudden fried when the plane was at 30,000ft, is the plane going to fall out of the sky? There's a lot of computer hard drives are likely to fry when a plane is flying at 30,000ft. It's probably happened a bunch of times, but there's, you know, there's a recidivism within the plane to keep it aloft. And, and I said, if, if, if a computer hard drive frying doesn't bring the plane down, how does a date change over going to bring the plane down? Just a simple just a simple question showing the flaw in the thinking. And yet the confidence that was there, caused people to just embrace this idea that the banking system was going to collapse. Everything. It was the degree of confidence that gave the teacher alluded, that gave people the the confidence that he was telling the truth. Let's be a little more careful and a little less naive and not believe everything we hear. We don't. I'm not saying that we should be suspicious, but we should. We should come at things with wonder. I wonder if it's true. I wonder if it's not true. Well, let me spend some time seeing if this is consistent with God's Word or whether or not it fits reality. I don't you don't have to embrace everything you hear just because a person is convincing, you can take your time and and, not necessarily believe everything you hear. We shouldn't automatically believe and we shouldn't automatically disbelieve. If you hear about some miraculous healing, don't be so callous as to disbelieve it. It might be true. Or if you hear. But, you know, but but let's let's not automatically just embrace it because the source of the, of the information was so confident, you know, just be willing to take the time to test it. Is it really true? Is it really true? We don't have to come to final conclusions in an instant. We can take our time, as it says in this passage. And test the spirits. So, Oh, yeah, there's my Y2K slide here. Yeah. There are many false prophets. That's the theme this morning. We are in a world where there's going to be many voices that are going to be pretending to speak for God, who really don't speak for God. We need to be aware of that. Don't believe, everything you hear. Do not believe everything you hear. You know, don't disbelieve it either. Just go into things with wonder. And point number two is test what you hear. Test what you hear. Verses one through six, it gives us just a whole criteria of testing what it is that we're hearing. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world by this. You know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming. And now, is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So, really, there's two criteria Paul is laying out here. One is, those who speak truly about the very nature of who Christ is and what Christ has come to do are, are those who are lining up with the truth. And the other criteria is those who, listen to and conform to our witness as the apostles, and that which we are testifying to be true are speaking the truth of God's Word. So you have these two criteria who the person of Jesus Christ is and what Christ came to do, and the message given by the apostles. If, if, if the idea that we have can be, tested by these two criteria is we can test whether or not it's true, the first or the second criteria there. The apostle's teaching goes along with what it says in Second Timothy. All Scripture is God breathed the Bible is a good source to test ideas with. Are these ideas consistent with the testimony of Scripture? All Scripture is God breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. It is a pattern by which we can test our ideas, whether they're true or not. And the other pattern that we can test is the character and nature of Jesus Christ. The word Christ means the Anointed one, the one who has been anointed as our King and our priest. Everything comes under the nature and the authority of Christ, and that which is consistent with his nature, with his order, with his authority, is true. And that which is inconsistent with it, with him is not true. The nature and authority of Jesus Christ and the principles that are revealed in His Word are two great tests for testing the voice of God, and the more familiar we are with the nature and the authority of Christ, the more familiar we will become with whether or not we recognize his voice. You know, if you were in a crowd like this and all of a sudden you heard a voice that you recognized, even though you had no way of identifying it, you would recognize that voice, say, if it was your brother's voice or your sister's voice or your father's voice or your friend's voice, you would know it because you had familiarized yourself with that voice. You'd be able to say, I recognize that voice because I've heard it so many times when we read the Bible, we are familiarizing ourselves with God's voice when we come to meditate on the person, the nature of Jesus Christ, and the glory of Christ, and what he did as our our servant, giving himself for our sins, we see what the humility and the, you know, in clothing the greatness and the glory of Christ. And we just ask, does that idea that we have match these things? Is the the idea I'm holding coming from God or coming from the world? Imagine you were just sitting with Jesus and the apostles and you said, I want to run an idea by you guys. What do you guys think about this idea? How do you imagine they would respond to your idea? I want to do this or I want to do that, or I think this is true, or I think that is true. And just imagine you're having an account, a council with Jesus and the apostles and imagine, do you know enough about them to know what they would say? And then it hasn't been uncommon that I've heard the term. I asked them if they would come and speak to you. Pastor. And their answer was, why would I go talk to him? I already know what he's going to say. Which means, I don't want to hear what he has to say. It doesn't line up with what I want to hear. So why would I go and and talk to him? Well, let's take the same criteria with Jesus. Let's take our idea before Jesus and before the apostles. What would they say? What would their counsel be? Well, wouldn't we often say, I don't really want to take it before Jesus and the apostles. I already know what they're going to say. Well, if we're worried about what Jesus would say or the apostles would say, then we might not be listening to God's voice. I can tell you this with absolute certainty Jesus will approve everything that God is saying. You can never go before Christ and say it and have Christ say what? Yeah, that's God's voice, but I disagree with it. Everything that God says, Jesus says and everything Jesus says, God says there, there, there in the father and the son are in agreement. Okay, so. The theme this morning is this there are many false prophets. And point number one is don't believe everything you hear. And point number two, test what you hear. I'd like to conclude this morning with the words of Jesus Christ himself on this topic. Matthew chapter seven, verse 21 through 27. Jesus says this, not me, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Not everyone who claims to be a follower of Christ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of the father, who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Yeah, but you didn't tell what was true. You prophesied in my name, but you didn't speak my words and cast out demons in your name. Didn't we even use your authority to overcome evil? While you may have and do many mighty works in your name. And then I will declare, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. There's a category of people that Jesus calls workers of lawlessness that claim to be his followers. That's what those are from the words of Christ. Right? I'm. Am I making that up? Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who builds his house on a rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came in, and the winds blew and beat upon the house. But it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. Kind of like what ash was talking about this morning. Our faith that sustains itself in the midst of all trials. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not, do them, will be like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blow and beat against the house, and it fell. And great was the fall of it. Listening to God's Word and applying God's Word builds a firm foundation that stands under all of the trials of life and any other foundation, listening to the serpent's voice will be tested and found wanting. Not, in my words. The words of Christ. Heavenly father, Lord, we come before you in our time. We may not even want to hear these words, but they are your words and we listen to you and we authenticate them because they came from your lips. Lord, may we profit by hearing your word and believing them because they came from you. And acting on them because it's wise. Help us hear your word or discern and build our lives on your word. Christ.