Scripture Text: Proverbs 3:5-6

I've heard God's voice so clearly so many times that I learned to trust what He told me, and it always came true.

But I also know what it's like to not understand what He's saying. There have been a lot of times when I thought I heard the Lord's voice, but nothing ever happened. It didn't work out.

Many people who follow God have been through what I'm talking about. Other voices come from inside us to confuse us. These voices are so clear and sweet, but they say nothing. You may have thought that the Lord told you certain things about people, events, and situations, but they didn't turn out the way you thought they would.

In fact, you may have been frustrated and confused for a while because so many things didn't work out. Maybe you went through a hard time when it came to hearing God's words, and you wondered if you had ever heard it at all.
Many people have prayed to Him:

"Lord, why am I hearing so many wrong voices? Why can't I hear You clearly? I was so sure it was Your voice, but it wasn't! In fact, often things have turned out the exact opposite of what I thought You'd told me. After walking all these years so sure, I don't think I know Your voice anymore. What's going on?"

In fact, this is happening to me right now, and the Holy Spirit was kind enough to tell me that I have let my own thoughts and plans take over. He told me in a whisper that though this is not where God wants me to stop, He wants me to learn something out of this situation to make my life more beautiful. He plans something better for me, and I need to let Him take me there. God can never be wrong! The Holy Spirit told me to talk about this subject, and I'm glad He led me to the right source.

The Bible says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding. Honour Him in everything you do, and He will guide your steps" (Proverbs 3:5).
The Lord knows that our own way of thinking is wrong, that we are selfish and only care about ourselves. It doesn't matter that we've been reborn and had the blood of Christ put on our hearts. Our thinking is still not good!
God has said, "My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Some of the dangers of relying on your own knowledge—World Challenge Org.

1. Most of the confusion about hearing God's voice comes from putting our trust in our own understanding.
There is a lot of confusion in the church about how to hear and know God's words. People say "The Lord told me..." and "The Lord said..." everywhere you go, but very little of what they say is really from God.
Many Christians do something I think is very dangerous: they want quick answers, but they don't know that getting to know God's words takes a lot of time and getting close to Him. It takes honest soul-searching so that God's will is the only thing on your mind. But they don't want to spend time alone with God and let go of themselves.

Instead, they spend time thinking. They clear their minds, putting them in neutral, and become passive. And that empty, passive mind is easy for the flesh and the devil to control. Satan can come in and say anything he wants there.

When these lazy Christians hear something, they don't put it to the test with God's Spirit or His Word. They haven't learned how to recognise His voice, so they think that anything that comes to mind is from God.

Our knowledge of the world can come to us as a clear-speaking angel of light. But it is our flesh, which pretends to be God.

In 2 Kings 7, when Elisha was in a place called Samaria that was suffering from a famine, the Lord sent him a message. There was no more food or water. Things had gotten so bad that two mothers had become cannibals and agreed to eat each other's children!

Elisha then stood up and spoke a prophecy in front of the king and the people:
"A measure of fine flour will be sold for a shekel tomorrow around this time, and two measures of barley will be sold for a shekel in the gate of Samaria" (2 Kings 7:1).



That was God speaking! But the word was too offensive for the officer of the royal court who was in charge of the city gate. Barley and flour that don't cost much? Were these to appear overnight, when there was nothing else in sight, not even a cup of grain?
The gatekeeper's common sense kicked in, and he said, "Look, if the Lord were to put windows in heaven, could this be?" (v. 2). In other words, "For this prophecy to come true, God would have to open the heavens and make it rain grain on us. That's impossible!"
Often, when God speaks to us, what He says is so wonderful, amazing, and life-saving that we can't take it all in! So our flesh—our human understanding—rises up and starts to speak. Instead of resting and putting our trust in what He says, we start to rely on what we think. We ask, "How could this ever happen? It's not possible from a human point of view!" Suddenly, we've set limits for God and hemmed Him in on all sides.

Beloved, our human understanding of God will always be limited! God told Sarah, who was an old woman, that she would have a child and become the mother of many countries. What a wonderful, amazing word! But Sarah's common sense told her, "I can't be a mother at 100. My womb is dead, and my husband is old. It's impossible!" She laughed at the idea.


Has God ever told you something that didn't make sense? Did you believe Him and trust that He would do what was best? Or did you laugh at the idea and rely on what you knew and what was going on around you instead of His Word?


Dear saint, you need to believe what God has told you again. You shouldn't forget what He told you, because it once gave you life. God is even bigger than the promise He gave you. He is smarter than everything you've heard so far!


In fact, it makes Him happy to let His saints into heaven. He is in the business of sending wonders and making things happen that can't be done. "Test me now with this," says Malachi 3:10, "and see if I won't open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing so great that there won't be enough room to hold it."

2. When we rely on what we think we know, we make bad judgements about other Christians.
Paul said, "We are sure that God's judgement against those who do such things is true" (Romans 2:2).
God judges based on what's in a person's heart, but people judge based on what they see and their own flawed, human knowledge. And Christians are so quick to judge other Christians wrong. Most of it is cruel, bad, and totally pointless.

Many have done this before. A young woman came to a pastor's office for help a few years ago. Her eyes were full of darkness. Her voice was quiet and flat. The pastor's first thought was, "She's a lesbian. Her eyes look evil and ominous. He'd seen this look before. She must have done something very wrong to have this look!"
But this pastor started was crying inside within five minutes because he realised how wrong he had been about her. He had been judging her by how she looked, but her dark eyes showed that she had been through a lot of hard times. She was a prayer warrior who believed in God and had never done anything sexual. Christ was her husband. He felt so embarrassed!

A young woman preached about Jesus to a man who take dangerous drugs. As she was praying for him the Holy Spirit told her that the man had only few days to live. Meanwhile, this man already had a dream that his family members were attending his funeral. He was so desperate when  he got home that he fell on the floor of his living room and cried out, "Oh God, I'm helpless against this hellish crack. It's overwhelming me! If You're real and what she says is true, You have to show Yourself to me. Please help me!"
Suddenly, there was a lot of light in the room. He knew it was out of this world! He could feel God's presence all around him. When the light went out, he knew he had to go back to his room, but he didn't want to see those burning strange symbols anymore. So, he chose to hang pictures on the walls where the symbols had been.
He took a nail in each hand and picked up a hammer. When he looked down at the nail holes in his palms, he heard Jesus say, "My nail-scarred hands give you power over your addiction. Trust Me; it's no longer your battle, because I've already won it at the Cross. You can be free!"
His urge to use crack was taken away right away. And for the past two years, that young man has been growing in his faith by going to our church. What an amazing thing to say about God!
A few months later, this same man was walking by a pub without a roof when he felt a strong urge to go in. But it wasn't a desire for something physical. He told me, "I knew it wasn't the devil, so I went in. I thought, "What am I doing here? God can't be like this!"'
A young performer sat down next to him and said, "You don't look like you fit here. They started talking because she said, "You're different." He set up a time to meet the lady performer outside, and they went for a walk. He told her about how Jesus had set him free from crack, and they talked for a while. The lady "I hate what I'm broke down and confessed she didn't enjoy her job at the pub but took the job because she was broke and had no other way to make a living. She did quit, and she gave her heart to the Lord. Soon after, she and the young man got married, and now they go to church and are on fire for God.

One could relate the story of this young man to prophet Hosea's:
"The Lord told Hosea, 'Go, take a wife of adultery and children of adultery.'" "Love a woman who is loved by her friend but is an adulteress" (Hosea 1:1, 3:1). In other words, God was telling him to go find a harlot and marry her."This girl wasn't a harlot, but she was in a place where harlotry is common. There went my whole opinion!

How true it is that God's ways are higher than ours and that we can't figure out what they are.

Paul tells us, "Why do you pass judgement on your brother? or, why do you ignore your brother? Because we will all stand before Christ's judgement seat... So, each of us will have to answer to God for who we are" (Romans 14:10, 12).
Paul is telling them, "It's hard enough for you to judge your own heart. Stop thinking about everyone else's problems!"
I don't want to stand before Christ's judgement seat and cringe as I see people I misjudged being called to Him as His chosen. I have thought of many saints, "There's something about his spirit that doesn't witness with me. I don't feel comfortable around her!"But when God opens the books and judges me, what will He say about the fact that I trusted my own judgements, which were based on human fears and wrong conclusions.

The Scribes and Pharisees got everything wrong about Jesus.

They said that the Son of God liked to drink a lot of wine and go to parties, and that he was working with the devil.



Christ knew how blinding this kind of judging could be, so He said, "Judge not by what you see, but by what is right" (John 7:24).



We are to judge with righteous judgement, not the thought of our flesh. When God shows us something, we are to think about it in our hearts and pray about it.



God does give some people a strong sense of insight. Those who are close to Jesus know by His Spirit, "when evil is present in someone, it registers in their spiritual mind."



But the gift of discernment should never be used to tell others about their sin or ruin their image. Doing so makes the one with the gift a worse sinner than the one with an evil spirit!

"All women have a natural intuition," I've heard. A woman once told me, "I'm never wrong! When I'm around a fake, I always feel like an alarm is going off.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. The Bible says, "Don't trust it; it's just your own human understanding!""

Jesus asked, "Does our law judge anyone before it hears what he does?" (John 7:51) This means that we shouldn't judge someone before we get to know them, talk to them, and find out what they're about.

"Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. " This is another warning from Jesus that really gets to me. For the way you judge will be the way you are judged, and the way you measure will be the way it is measured back to you" (Matthew 7:1-2).

When you question someone else's faith and sincerity, someone else will do the same to you. You can be sure that you'll get what you give out.

3. When we rely on our own understanding, we get a wrong idea of how God works in our lives.

Right now, a lot of God's best workers are going through very hard tests and trials. Maybe you're one of them, and you're being overwhelmed by sudden troubles, fiery trials, and incredibly stressful times. Your trial could be spiritual, financial, or emotional.

Maybe as you've been reading this message, you've come to believe that you're under God's anger and rod of correction. You keep thinking, "You're going through this because you've failed God!" You're in the fire of trouble because He gave you to the devil to teach you a lesson."

Beloved, you shouldn't trust your own understanding when you're going through fire or water. You can't reason your way out of hard times. Your own thoughts about your tests will trick you.
What does God's Word say about the problems you're facing right now?

The writer of Psalm 66 said, "This is all God's doing! He has a reason for putting you through this trial. This is not the work of the devil; God is testing you."


No matter what you're going through, you can be sure that the Lord is behind it—He's testing you. He's testing you to bring out something beautiful in you—a complete trust in His trustworthiness.

But then the psalmist says, "Thou broughtest us into the net; Thou laidt affliction on our loins" (verse 11). He says that God led you into the net and put this heavy burden on you. He is the one who weighed you down.

"Thou hast made men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water" (v. 12). God let people walk over you and take advantage of you. The Lord let you go through fire and water. It's all God working in you.

Our logic tells us, "The devil is trying to kill me! He has made me suffer and given me a lot to do. He is trying to sink my ship."

But from cover to cover, the Bible makes it clear that all of our purgings and tests come from the Father and not from Satan. "And I will turn my hand on you and purely purge away all of your dross and take away all of your tin" (Isaiah 1:25).

 God tells us, "Do not think it strange about the fiery trial that is to try you, as if something strange had happened to you, but rejoice" (1 Peter 4:12-13).

Dear saint, stop trying to figure out why you have to go through hard times. Stop asking God, "Why do I have to go through this?""Leave your human thoughts behind and rest in this: "God is doing something in me. God is at work here!"

You may not like the testing you're going through, and it may seem overwhelming. But God has never left you alone in your testing, even when you feel like you've failed Him.

The person who wrote Psalm 66:9 said, "He holds our soul in life and doesn't let our feet move." He meant, "God is holding my soul in His life!" He won't let me lose my balance. He is keeping me steady until this is all over."



He came out of his trial with a strong faith and said, "Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I'll tell you what He's done for my life" (v. 16). This means, "Gather around! I've been saved in a great way. I want to talk about how great God has been to me."

"Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy [fruitful] place" (verse 12) is the testimony of those who don't panic but believe God through it all.

Beloved, don't listen to what your fears tell you. Stop trying to figure out what's going on and just stand still, trust, and watch God work.

He'll get you out of it and put you in an excellent place, and you'll be on fire with praise for how true your God is! Hallelujah!

If you would like to give your life to Christ just say this short prayer:

"Lord Jesus Christ I come to You now, forgive me my sins, come into my life, take control of my life and change my world. I say bye-bye to the devil, I enter into the Kingdom of Light. Thank You Jesus, in Jesus name I pray, amen!

Congratulations!!!

God bless you!

Peace!!!

Also read https://www.worldchallenge.org/danger-leaning-your-own-understanding#:~:text=The%20Lord%20knows%20that%20our,my%20ways%2C%20saith%20the%20Lord.