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Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
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Father, I thank you for the unction.
The anointing of the Holy Spirit that is
ours by faith.
Lord, you put something in my heart, and
I bring it to this people tonight.
And I humble myself before you, and I
acknowledge my need, Holy Spirit, for your endowment
and your power.
Lord, I ask you to open the ears
and the understanding of all this people, and
I pray that you touch me in a
special way.
Let the light of the word of God
go forth.
Sanctify me that I will be a vessel
honorable and clean and pure.
Clean hands and a pure heart, blood sprinkled
and ready to proclaim the word of God.
I thank you, Jesus, for the truth.
Lord, we're not going to lean on our
own understanding.
We're going to turn to you in all
of our ways.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Now, ever since I was a child, I've
known what it is to hear the voice
of the Lord.
His voice led me out of the hills
of Pennsylvania years ago to found Teen Challenge,
and now it's a mission that's gone around
the world.
And that same voice of God led me
around the world in crusades to multitudes of
the lost.
That same voice that I heard brought me
back to New York City and said, build
a church in Times Square.
God kept His word.
That was all through the voice of God.
I've learned His voice.
I've known His voice for years, since I
was eight years old.
But I also have known what it's like
to become confused about His voice.
And many of you sitting here tonight, confused.
I've known what it is to go so
long, so many times, hearing clearly, the word
came to pass, and I rested in it.
But there have been times, even lately, that
I would hear a voice and nothing would
pan out.
It wouldn't come out.
There were confusing voices that rose up in
my heart, walking circumspectly before God, not living
in sin, but a voice inside that sounded
so sweet, a voice that was so clear,
and yet it didn't happen.
And I began to question.
In fact, I went to God in prayer
not too many weeks ago, and I said,
Lord, I wonder if I even recognize Your
voice anymore.
After preaching about it, after walking all these
years, being so convinced that I was hearing
and it was clear, everything You said, Lord,
came to pass.
And then I went into a test, a
great test about the voice of God.
And so much so that I went to
God in confusion, despair, and I had it
out with Him.
We had a confrontation in my secret closet.
I said, God, I don't understand this.
All these years, You speak so clearly.
Now, folks, I want you to know before
I start, I'm not living in confusion.
I know I have His anointing.
I'm walking in His Spirit.
But there was a test.
He tests us concerning His voice.
He tests us about all of His ways.
I said, Lord, I was so sure of
Your voice, but anymore, what's happening?
I don't think I know it anymore.
I don't think I know Your voice.
I knew He was with me.
He never forsakes me.
He said He'd never leave us nor forsake
us.
I've never believed God would ever forsake me.
Never believed that I was on my own.
But those little voices.
Paul said there are many voices in the
world and none of them were that significant.
There's significance to all of them.
There's a meaning to all of them.
The Holy Ghost graciously answered me.
I asked Him clearly.
I said, God, what's wrong?
I think I even talked to Brother Phillips
about it one time.
I said, Bob, sometimes I hear so many
wonderful things, but I wonder if I even
know His voice sometimes.
Now, am I the only one like that
sitting here tonight?
A couple honest people saying amen.
Here's what the Holy Ghost answered.
David, I do speak to you when you
seek Me intimately and when you give Me
quality time and wait, when you're convinced that
you're ready to do My will.
I've always spoken to you, but what you
have done is allowed your own personal human
understanding to take a voice.
You are trying to reason things out.
You've walked with Me so long in trust
and now in your 60s you're trying to
figure it all out.
You're trying to give human reasoning to everything
and I tell you something and rather than
you just relaxing in it and resting in
it and believing it, you've got to figure
it all out.
And then you add all of these human
understandings and this human understanding takes a voice
and presents to be the voice of God.
Proverbs 3, 5, Trust in the Lord with
all thine heart and lean not unto your
own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge the Lord and
He will direct thy path.
That means don't rely on it.
Don't trust in your own understanding.
Listen, our own understanding is corrupt.
I don't care if you've been born again.
I don't care that the blood's been applied
to your heart.
Our human understanding is corrupt.
It's untrustworthy.
It's suspicious.
It's full of fear and many times that
human understanding rises up in such fear, such
suspicion pretends to be the still small voice
of the Holy Ghost and begins to lead
us astray.
Scripture says, God said, My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways and my thoughts are higher than your
thoughts.
I want to share with you some of
the dangers of leaning in your own understanding
and allowing your understanding to surface as the
voice of God.
First of all, I believe that almost all
confusion about hearing the voice of God comes
from trusting in our own understanding, our own
reasoning, looking at circumstances, our present circumstances and
judging everything by those present circumstances.
You've heard me tell of that first year
that God sent me to New York City
and this was burning in my heart and
God said, Raise up a church.
We had very little money, hardly any money
at all and I said, Well, God, where
do we get a theater?
Where do we get any place?
And we had been meeting in Town Hall,
if you recall.
Some of you remember that.
And I found out that the Biltmore Theater
was for sale on 47th Street between 8th
and Broadway and I went over and looked
at it.
Now, remember God had told us that he
was going to give us a theater that
would take our breath away and it didn't
take my breath away.
It was run down.
Seat 750.
But you see, God said, I'm going to
give you a theater that will take your
breath away.
But then my human reasoning came in and
I remember praying over here at the hotel
right next door here.
That's where we were staying and about one
o'clock in the morning I'm praying and
I'm thinking, Biltmore, Biltmore, Biltmore.
It's two and a half million.
I don't have any money.
If we're going to have a miracle, that's
a big miracle.
Two and a half million dollars.
That's a big miracle.
We don't have any people.
750, that's a lot of people as far
as I'm concerned.
And a little boy said, That's God.
The Biltmore Theater is all yours.
Go claim it.
I get up one o'clock in the
morning.
I'm standing out there like a fool in
front of the Biltmore.
And I hear a voice.
Claim it.
And I'll fill it.
750 people.
What a miracle.
Two and a half million dollars.
What a miracle.
How much more do you want?
I said, That's enough, Lord.
750 people.
Two and a half million dollars.
We're on Broadway.
We went on Broadway.
That's way over here almost near 8th Avenue.
But you see what had happened.
God had said, I'm going to give you
a theater that will take your breath away.
And this is that breathtaking theater by the
way.
I don't know how many days and nights
I walked back and forth in front of
that Biltmore claiming it.
And that little nagging voice said, This is
God's sweet, quiet, lovely, angelic voice.
I'm giving you the Biltmore.
Well, God didn't give us the Biltmore.
And then I said, Lord, where did that
voice come from?
This urging voice.
Look what I'm doing for you.
It was human reasoning.
And human reasoning, human understanding, always limits God.
Always limits God.
So I thank God that I'm not trusting
in my own understanding because this is what
He gave us.
This was God's plan all along.
I didn't have the faith to believe it.
There's so much confusion in the church today
concerning the voice of God.
Everywhere you go, I hear, The Lord told
me.
You ever hear that?
The Lord told me.
I've had people come up and shoo me
out and say, The Lord told me.
Very little of it has come from God
at all.
You know, I'm astounded by Christians who believe
every voice they hear is God.
You know what they do?
They're meditators.
They don't want to pay the price of
intimacy with Jesus Christ.
They don't want to spend the time, the
hours along with Him getting to know Him.
He said, My sheep know Me, and that's
why they know My voice, according to the
Scripture.
You know His voice by knowing Him intimately,
and they don't want to pay that price.
They don't want to spend those hours siding
with God with quality time and getting rid
of all of their own ambitions and emptying
their spirits of self.
And they sit there and they meditate and
say, God, I've got to have an absinthe.
I need it now.
And so they meditate and they put their
mind in neutral and become passive.
And a passive mind is a fertile ground
for the enemy to come in with flesh,
sin and the devil, and whisper anything.
And we have people running around believing everything
they hear is the voice of God.
They don't testify the Word of God.
They're not siding with God.
They just, whatever pops in their head, that's
God.
Macaroni for dinner, that's God.
The human understanding comes as an angel of
light.
It speaks clearly.
It speaks fluently.
But it's flesh.
You know, in 2 Kings 7, the Word
of the Lord came to Elisha.
Now remember, Samaria was famine stricken.
There was no bread.
There was no grain.
There was no water.
Mothers were becoming cannibals.
They had just slain two babies.
Remember, the mother said, we ate ours and
she said we could eat hers.
And now that we ate mine, she won't
share her baby and I want to eat
half her baby.
And everything that the prophet had prophesied had
come to pass.
And they were in total famine.
Prophet Elijah stands up before the king and
all the people and says, tomorrow at this
time, well I'll read it, tomorrow about this
time a measure of fine flour shall be
sold for a shekel and two measures of
barley for a shekel here in the gate
of Samaria.
Now that was the voice of God.
That was the Word of God.
But the Bible says very clearly that the
royal officer who was the keeper of the
gate could believe it.
What God said to Elijah was so incredible.
He said, now behold, and he's mocking, if
the Lord should make windows in heaven, maybe
such a thing could be.
In other words, what God is showing you
is so impossible, I can't believe it.
He said, the only way your prophecy can
be fulfilled is that God really opens up
the heavens and rains grain and barley and
wheat on us.
How else could this happen?
Elijah said, you'll know tomorrow when they trample
you to death.
Now this is exactly the point I'm trying
to make.
God speaks to us and often what He
tells us is so wonderful, it's so incredible,
so unbelievable, so life-changing, we can't take
it all in.
And it's simply, rather than just trusting what
He said and going about your business and
waiting His time and letting Him do it,
we say, how can it be?
That's too miraculous.
It's humanly impossible.
The human understanding, human reasoning rises up and
takes a voice and limits God and it
cries out in the soul.
It's impossible.
Couldn't have been God who spoke to you.
Just look at your present circumstances.
There's not a single evidence of that happening.
Now folks, we find it very easy to
believe all of the woes and judgments in
this book.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
You believe that.
You believe that if I regard it equally
in my heart, the Lord won't hear me.
You believe all of the Scriptures about judgment
and wrath, and we should.
But then when God comes to you and
tells you something so marvelous, it just sweeps
you away.
He tells you something about your life, about
your future.
And folks, you may not believe it, but
God loves to surprise His children.
He loves to make promises.
He loves to turn things out for good
to His glory.
He loves to bless His children who walk
righteously before Him.
Some of us have such a small God.
We have created this tiny little God, and
when God speaks, it's so incredible.
I know God said something to some of
you that are sitting here right now.
God spoke to you.
I don't know when He did.
You were in prayer and the Lord spoke
to your heart and it was glorious how
He was going to use you perhaps, things
He was going to do, doors He was
going to open.
And here you sit now, and you really
don't believe what He said, because there's no
evidence of it happening.
It seems so impossible.
And then human reasoning rises up inside and
takes over and tries to figure out how
can God do it?
And we begin to limit.
We build parameters and we hedge God in
on all sides.
And I am here to tell you that
God has spoken to my heart that some
of you have got to come back to
believing what God told you and not lose
that voice of God, not lose that thing
that He said to you and spoke life
into your heart.
God's bigger than the promise He made you.
God's more able than anything you've ever heard
yet.
The flesh always rises up.
I'll tell you what, I believe God's in
the business of opening the windows of heaven,
by the way.
I believe He opens the windows of heaven.
Prove me herewith.
See if I will not open you the
windows of heaven, and I'll pour you out
a blessing that there shall not be room
enough to receive it.
How many have had blessings that you can't
even contain yet?
What you got was a little taste.
He said, listen, if you had the windows
of heaven opened on you, He said, I'm
going to open the windows of heaven and
I'm going to pour you out a blessing
you can't even hold it.
Who am I preaching to tonight?
Where are you?
I'm telling you, God wants to open the
windows of heaven for you and pour you
out a blessing that there be no room
to contain it.
God told the elderly Sarah, you're going to
be a mother.
And she looks at her wrinkled 100-year
-old body and her dead womb, she considers
and she laughs.
You know why she's laughing?
She's looking at Abraham.
She said, he's been dead for years.
I'm going to be the mother of nations?
Now, you laugh at that, but how many
times have you, in your spirit, laughed at
things God told you?
God made you a promise that seems almost
impossible.
It's Sarah here and you're going to be
a mother and you're going to give birth
to a son and that son will be
the forerunner of many, many nations.
She laughed.
Now, God didn't hold it back because she
laughed.
And sometimes what God tells you seems laughable
to you.
But folks, I'm really convinced more and more
that when God really speaks to you, it
has to do with glory.
It has to be with His greatness.
And I wish we could jettison and put
aside this small concept of God and see
that He does speak great and mighty things
to our hearts.
Folks, it was an impossible dream that God
would raise up a church here in Times
Square, that He would bring so many hundreds
and hundreds of people together from all backgrounds
and all ethnic groups and put us all
one together and raise up a testimony to
the world of what Jesus can do right
in the seat of Babylon, right in the
devil's top seat.
Folks, if I had written out a scenario,
all the things that we have seen God
do already and there were only promises back
there, I wouldn't have believed a third of
it.
And folks, the best part is the half
hadn't been told yet.
God's been promising us we're going to see
and hear things we've never seen or heard
before of His glory.
We're actually going to see this kind of
glory before it's all over.
The house will be literally filled with His
presence.
All the promises I get from God have
to do with Himself and His glory.
Hallelujah.
Secondly, leaning on our own understanding is the
cause of misjudging other Christians.
I want to talk about misjudging.
Paul said, We are sure that the judgment
of God is according to truth.
It's according to truth.
God judges by the heart, by the motive,
but man judges by what he sees.
There's a lot of misjudging of Christians in
the church of Jesus Christ today and it's
very damaging, it's hurtful, and it's totally unnecessary.
And I've been as guilty as anybody else.
I've been terribly guilty of misjudging other children
of God.
I remember a few years ago, a young
lady coming to my office, coming to her
office for...
I didn't know at the time what she
wanted, but when she came into the office,
she had dark, foreboding eyes, penetrating dark, and
sadness on her face.
My first impression is, Uh-oh, there's a
lesbian sitting across from me.
Or she's into the occult, because you can't
get that look.
I've seen that book and I know that
look.
She's a lesbian.
She's into the occult.
She's a witch, because those dark eyes are
looking at me.
And I'm sitting there, I'm judging her.
I'm saying I'm going to get her out
of here as fast as I can.
I'll say a little prayer, read a scripture,
and out the door.
I don't feel like talking to a lesbian
today.
And I sure don't want to talk to
a witch within five minutes.
I was crying inside, because I had been
reading her outward appearance.
Come to find out that that look in
her eyes had to do with 25 years
of suffering, incredible suffering.
Here's a woman that was so married to
Christ.
Here was a woman who knew nothing of
sensuality.
It just blew me away.
And I felt so sad, I felt so
hurt for myself that I would have so
misjudged.
It's like another sister in this church.
And I would see her on the streets,
she had sunglasses on all the time.
I said, oh boy, a cool cat, she's
trying to be cool.
Everywhere I went she got these glasses on.
And I went up one day and said,
what's the glasses about?
Because I'm thinking, cool.
She said, Pastor, I'm sorry if they offend
you.
I don't like to wear them.
It's a doctor's order.
I have a condition that dust and sunlight
bothers my eyes.
I said, oh boy, there I go again,
judging by outward appearance.
Come on, you've been doing it, you do
it every day just like I do it.
Like the girl said, he's been staring at
me every time I come to church.
He's been staring at me three weeks now.
He looked a hole in me.
The man was blind.
Last week I had a young man sit
in my office, tell me an incredible story
of how God delivered him from crack addiction.
His business was failing because he was so
wrapped up in crack, spending hundreds of dollars.
Every time he could get money, he'd spend
it on crack.
He stayed in his room.
And after a while, he began to see
visions, satanic occult visions.
And he saw occult symbols being burned into
the wall of his bedroom.
And there's a picture of a man and
a dog and the man's skin would melt
off his face and become a skeleton.
And he'd see other faces, and his parents
and others, and their skin would just come
off their bodies and they'd be standing there
as skeletons.
He would go into the next room and
fall on his face and cry out to
God.
There's a young lady in this church that
had been witnessing to him, calling him up
and praying for him, ministering to him through
prayer and counseling.
It just went from bad to worse.
One day, it just overcame him because he
was in a dream and his father and
his mother and his relatives were looking down
at him and he realized in this dream
he's dead.
He's gone.
And he realized that God was telling him
death was at the door.
And shortly after that, the young lady who's
here tonight called him and said, I had
a word from the Lord that you have
about two weeks to live.
And confirmed this fear that he had, this
vision of being at his own funeral.
But he couldn't get free of crack.
Went into the room, the living room area,
and fell on his face and piled to
the floor and said, God, I can't keep
from this crack.
It's overwhelming me.
It's become my God.
Lord, if you're real, you've got to reveal
yourself to me.
If what she says is true, you've got
to show me.
God, are you there?
This is overpowering me.
And suddenly the room filled with light.
He said for a minute or two, the
whole room was just flooded with light and
he knew it was supernatural.
And God began to speak to his heart.
And when the light left, he knew he
had to go back to that bedroom and
he thought, I don't want to see those
occult symbols being burnt into my walls anymore.
And he decided to get some pictures from
this room and go over and hang them
where those occult symbols were being burnt in
the wall.
And he went to his box and he
got some nails and a hammer.
He put the hammer down and took two
nails.
And one fell in this hand and one
here.
There are two nails and he's there with
those two nails in his hands.
And Jesus spoke to him and said, My
nail-scarred hands give you power over your
drugs.
Trust me, you can be free.
No more desire.
His desire for a crack was taken immediately,
totally immediately from him.
But then he just about lost me, what
he said next.
In fact, he came to this church two
years ago and Danny and I prayed for
him backstage and the Lord strengthened him mightily.
He almost lost me.
Next thing he said, You know, and this
is a number of months ago, he said,
I was going down the street and I
was passing a topless bar and something in
me urged me to go into that topless
bar.
And I'm thinking to myself, Oh boy, he's
losing me now.
He's losing me now.
And he said, Dave, I sat in that
topless bar thinking, God, this can't be you.
Why am I here?
He was not ogling.
He was not lusting.
He was just sitting there saying, God, why
this urge to go in here?
And a young performer came, a young lady
sat beside him and said, You look different.
Now, words to this effect, I don't remember
it clearly.
I don't remember it in every detail, but
this young lady recognized him as being something
different.
They struck up a conversation and were able
to meet after outside and take a walk.
And he told her about his deliverance, told
her about what Jesus had done for him,
setting him free from cracks.
And she said, Well, I am miserable in
what I'm doing.
I was penniless.
This is the only thing I could get.
And I don't belong here.
I don't belong in this crowd.
And there was something in her heart reaching
out to God.
And, of course, the story is that she
got saved.
I think they're both here tonight.
And they got married.
And the whole time he's talking, I'm sitting
there saying, Oh, no.
How can that be?
And I'm judging it.
I'm judging it from all the scriptures that
I have learned and preached and everything.
And then another scripture came to me about
the prophet Hosea.
And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take
unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children
of harlotry.
Go love a woman beloved of her friend,
but an adulteress.
Go pick a harlot out and marry her.
Well, there went my whole judgment.
I was ready to say, I don't believe
it.
God said, My ways are above your ways
and my thoughts are above your thoughts.
I'm about to give up trying to figure
God out anymore.
You see, I don't want to stand before
the judgment seat of Christ and see some
people stand there and their works are not
burning and they're being tried and they're coming
out as gold before Jesus and He's embracing
them.
And I'm backing off and say, Uh-oh.
That's the person I said, I can't stand.
There's something about their spirit I don't like.
It doesn't witness with me.
And I've been judging and I've been using
so-called discernment.
Now, God gives certain people discernment.
Those who are intimate with Jesus come out
of that intimacy with a keen sense of
truth, Holy Ghost, discernment.
And they can tell when they're near people
where there's evil present.
It's there.
It registers in their spiritual mind.
But what God made clear to me, to
my own spirit, and I want you to
hear it, we can judge righteous judgment.
We have to do that.
We stand by the word of the living
God.
Broadcast to other people.
These are things you ponder in your own
heart.
Because if you tell other people or you
broadcast it, you're more guilty than the person
you're discerning.
And I'll tell you, I have a sense
that a lot of people that I backed
away from and said, My spirit doesn't witness.
You see, my human understanding, I see something
in their appearance that I don't like.
I'll tell you what, 15 years ago, if
you put me with a bunch of long
-haired Christians, I'd have discerned them all as
going to hell.
But you see, I don't want to stand
before the judgment seat of Christ and see
people that Jesus saw as pure and holy,
and I judged by outward appearance.
And I really did them damage.
I don't want that.
I hope that's registering.
Jesus was completely misjudged by the scribes and
Pharisees.
They called him a wine guzzler, a party
lover, who was in league with the devil.
Now, how can you misjudge any bigger than
that?
And yet, that's the way we are.
Jesus said, Judge not according to the appearance,
but judge righteous judgment.
Romans 14.10. But why do you judge
your brother?
Or why do you reduce your brother to
nothing?
For we shall all stand before the judgment
seat of Christ, so that every one of
us shall give account of himself to God.
We will give an account of ourselves.
I don't have to give an account for
you or anybody else.
I give an account for myself.
And folks, that's a big enough job.
You've got a big enough job.
Quit worrying about everybody else.
Brother Bob, I've heard it said...