Identifying the Voice of God

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, July 28. When you pray and wait on God for direction, how can you know when it's His answer you're sensing? Today's podcast continues the series on listening to God with clear scriptural guidelines for identifying the voice of God. When you're listening to God, how do you know that it's God who's doing the speaking or is it some other voice that you're hearing?

And this is a question that people ask me often. I'm asking the Lord to give me direction, but it's like I'm getting two voices. How do I know that God is the one who's speaking to me or if Satan is telling me this or am I just talking to myself?

And that is a very legitimate question that needs to be answered. And what I want to do is to help you be able to answer that in your life as you pray and seek His mind about those issues that are important to you. In the 16th chapter of Matthew, up until this point, Jesus has said nothing about suffering and dying on the cross. And He has asked His apostles, He said, whom the men say that I am, and they gave Him some answers. And finally, Peter came up with the right answer and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus is talking about building His church, and then He says in verse 21, From that time, that is, of that conversation in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Well, when He said that, the Scripture says, And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord, this shall never happen to you. But he that is Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interest, but on man's.