It is important to distinguish when you are hearing the voice of God from when you are hearing either your own voice or the voice of the enemy. The characteristics of the voices are very distinct.
Your Own Voice:
Your own voice is preoccupied with your comfort. Your own voice will always plead with you not to change anything. You will want to maintain your sense of your physical comfort and emotional well being.
Your own voice will always push back against change because mankind sees himself as being inherently vulnerable. And so, when your own voice is talking to you, it will always stir up a resistance to things that are new, to things that are different, difficult even. Inertia is the cornerstone of human society because it allows for predictability. It is particularly true among those who control society that any new changes threaten the hegemony that they already have established over others within their metrons or circumstances. They do not want change. Humans do not prefer change. Change introduces uncertainty and the threat of the potential loss of control. So when you hear the voice pushing back, saying “I know these things, and they sound true, but how on earth are we going to ever engage those things?” that is you speaking.
“If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” (Matthew 26:39) Even Jesus had to overcome His own voice. That was not the voice of the enemy. That was not the voice of God. The voice of the enemy had said to Him earlier, “You will not die.” He responded by saying to the one speaking in that vernacular, “Get thee behind Me, Satan.” His own voice says, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. I do not want to suffer.”
The Voice of Your Enemy:
The characteristics of the voice of your enemy is equally distinct. It will always make you uncomfortable by accusing you. There will always be elements of belittling and humiliation to assert control over your emotions. The enemy will bring out of the box of your memories, as bad a thought about yourself as you have ever had, as is necessary to control you. He does not always bring out the big guns, but if he has to, he will. In an ordinary conversation, when you are the one that had the question that everybody else wanted to ask but nobody else dared ask it, when you are the one who said, “Well, excuse me, what about this?”—later, when the enemy attacks you with that, this is what he will say, “That was pretty stupid. Everybody was watching you. How come you did not know that? Did you notice that nobody else asked? Because they all knew. It was just you. You were the odd person out.”
No. They all did not know. They were just glad you were the one who took it upon yourself to ask what they wanted to ask. But that is not how your enemy will replay it to you. The way he replays it to you is, “You are so stupid. They were all watching you, and you know by now they do not like you. You are making them uncomfortable. You do not even belong among them, and you have been trying all this time to fit in. You have served some of these same people. You went to visit them when they were sick.” He will bring back all the things you ever did, and pretty soon you are on this rabbit trail. You are running down a road that is unprofitable, and before you know it, you are upset at people with whom you have had no exchange at all. It all took place in your head because a voice said you were out of step with everybody else, and you believed the lie.
This is called a fiery dart. It is based in wickedness. A fiery dart stings you. (See FAQ: What is a fiery dart?)
If you followed out the thought that you were thinking after the fact that you have done everything you can to fit in with these people, and they will not make room for you, what do you do then? In your mind you begin to back away from them because the seed of an adversarial relationship has been sown in your mind, and it robs you of trusting their motives when they did not do a thing. In fact, they would be shocked to think you thought that. If people stayed around long enough, if you could overcome the embarrassment of that attack upon your person by the enemy—because usually when that happens, you want to get out of there quickly; you want to get out as quickly as you can—but if you had stayed around, some of those same people might have told you, “I am so glad you asked."
The enemy knows how to torment you with the twisting of things that happened to you to make you feel as though you were the cause. Or even if you know you were not the cause, he wants you to feel naked. He wants you to feel vulnerable. Whenever you feel this sting, this fiery dart, know and understand, that is the voice of your enemy. Never engage the enemy by responding to the accusations. You never give an explanation. If you do you will have empowered the enemy and given him the right to challenge you. Instead you say "get behind me Satan." You lie down in the reality of who God is, in the posture of rest, tithemi, and God will inevitably stand up in that circumstance.
The Voice of God:
The third voice you will hear—the first being your own: it does not want to move, it does not want to shift, it does not want to change; the second voice you will hear will be fiery, drawing upon your emotions, making you uncomfortable like a sting of a serpent—the third voice is the voice of God. He will always say to you, “Lazarus, come forth! Come out! You have already escaped death! You are a new creation.” He will call you forth, and His words will pierce the silence of death and establish in you the truth of who you have become. He will challenge you, but you will feel strangely at peace and you will not feel endangered.
That is why elementary doctrines include repentance from acts that lead to death. Do not give in to the voice of your enemy. This is a fight. Whether you are a young believer or an older believer, this truth transcends all the realms of maturity, and you can find the place to stand. If you are a young believer, ask your spiritual father for help. Bring it into the light. Talk about what it is that you are being oppressed with. You may not understand the whole depth of the sting. It is when you open the matter up that you will get the answer that shows you the connection between what happened in the past, what the accusation is now, and how you are to untangle the works of the devil. If you are an older believer, by now you ought to be practiced in falling into the place of tithémi, of rest, any time and every time you are attacked by your enemy. Because as surely as you die, He will raise you up. When He raises you up, it will be to a newness of life that you have not previously experienced. Eternal life is progressively given to you commensurate with your maturation.
More on this teaching may be found within South African Conferences, Expressions 2019, Session 10: Total Victory.
