How to Hear from God and Find Peace Without Knowing What’s Next – Episode 384

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Dr. Michelle Bengtson and Abby McDonald share how to hear from God and find peace without knowing what's next.

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Episode Summary:

The God of the universe is trying to communicate with you. Are you listening?

Have you ever felt like God was prompting you to do something but questioned whether it was his voice? Instead of acting, you waited for another sign. What if God has already given us what we need to know if a word is from him?

Today’s guest, Abby McDonald, addresses a key misconception about God’s voice: that it will tell what will happen tomorrow. We’ve mistaken God’s voice in our lives for a means of obtaining knowledge instead of embracing its power to give us peace for today. Since the fall in the garden of Eden, humanity has carried the same deception that misled Eve. We think more information will give us more freedom. But if we look at Jesus’s teachings, we see that his direction was never intended to give us a roadmap.

We can trade the yoke of certainty we carry for a better one: Jesus’s yoke. By focusing on three promises Jesus gave us in John 10, Abby McDonald, addresses a key misconception about God’s voice: that it will tell what shows a better way to live, empowered by God’s Word instead of a false sense of security. In this episode of Your Hope-Filled Perspective, we’re going to be talking about How to Hear from God and Find Peace Without Knowing What’s Next.

Quotables from the episode:

  • We can trade the yoke of uncertainty that we carry for a better one, Jesus’ yoke. By focusing on three promises that Jesus gave us in John 10.
  • I think all of our books are born out of something we’ve struggled with ourselves, but also out of conversations that I’d had for women over the past year, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily, and I kept hearing this question, how do I know this is God’s voice? How do I know this is God’s will and not just my desire. And I understood that question because like I said, I have wrestled with that question myself. And I have known that that angst and that anxiety. And so I started praying about it and reading the scriptures.
  • And what I found that is really at the heart of that question is this desire for certainty and this desire to know what is going to happen on the other side of our yes on the other side of our obedience.
  • The yoke of certainty, Michelle, is really the enemy’s yoke. And it’s the yoke that he put on humanity in that initial interaction with Eve in the garden. And what does he promise, Eve? Well, he promises her knowledge and he promises her that she will be like God. And I really believe that in that moment, we took on this yoke, this need to know more than God has chosen to give us for today. We chose to go outside of the promise of today and try to go into the future and obtain more than he chose to give us. And so, when we do that, when we’re trying to be like God, as the enemy said, then we’re taking on a yoke we were never intended to carry. We are not God.
  • When we try to run into the future and just ask these perpetual questions, I need another sign or show me what’s going to happen.
  • Yes, sometimes God will give us a sign because he’s merciful and he’s faithful, but eventually we need to act, and we have to move forward or otherwise we’re just going to stay stuck. And so, we can trade that yoke, that need for certainty for Jesus’ yoke. And he tells us his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And that doesn’t promise that our lives are going to be easy and light. He doesn’t promise us that, but he does promise to give us what we need for today. And there’s so much more peace living in today.
  • In “Breaking Anxiety’s Grip,” that was one of the things that I spent a lot of time talking about is that God in fact, cautions us not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough problems of its own. But we, I think we become so prone to anxiety, not just out of our desire to know what tomorrow is going to bring, but out of our desire to control it, which to me is being our own little g god, instead of trusting in the God who created us and gave us a blueprint for how to live.
  • Well, Michelle, I think that until we surrender those questions that, like you said, we’re just going to live in that state of anxiety, and we’re going to be worrying and trying to control what is not in our ability to control. But if we focus on what God has given us, the truth that He has given us, then we can live in His peace and we can have joy and abundant life. And that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make plans or we’re never going to think about tomorrow, but there’s a difference between planning and thinking and obsessing, you know, and just constantly just worrying and having that desire to know what’s going to happen.
  • Fear is an emotion that God gave us, right? And so, the answer is not to just try to sweep it under the rug or to pretend like it’s not there because fear has a purpose and it can keep us from climbing in a car with a stalker, you know, or doing something crazy. I don’t think that when we fear that God is just barking at us, saying, “Don’t fear.” But he wants to encourage us, and he wants us to come to him with that fear.
  • And so that’s what I mean by let it propel you toward Jesus is come to him and just be honest about your fear and tell him what it is.When we let those fears and those worries facing and I don’t know what to do or I’m worried about this job interview and can you please give me your piece and so when we let those fears and those worries draw us to him and we’re honest with him about it he can take that fear and just transform it into his peace and into desire to move forward. That’s what I’m talking about when I say let your fear propel you toward Jesus.
  • What would you say to the listener who’s thinking, but I’m actually afraid of God. I’m actually afraid of God’s response. I have been there too, Michelle. I actually talk about that with my book and not necessarily with fear, but just coming to God with my desires, you know, my hopes, my dreams. To me, that felt like putting my hopes and dreams into one of those giant claw machines and just watching the hand kind of haphazardly make its way around and then drop down and not ever come up with anything. So, I get that, I grew up with a very unhealthy view of who God was and I saw him as sort of this distant dictator, you know, who was just waiting for me to mess up. I would say to that person, God wants you to flourish. God loves you with a love that we cannot possibly fathom.
  • I would encourage you to get to know him because when you get to know him you see that he is not someone who is going to turn away from you when you come to him with that honesty. He longs for that, and he actually says in scripture that he no longer calls us servants but friends. And so, we can come to him with all of it. And I think it’s important, just as you mentioned before, that the enemy uses fear, but the enemy can also use our fear of God to keep us from that relationship. And one of the things that I think we can find comfort in is that God is big enough for us to be honest and say, “I’m really afraid of you. I’m afraid of how you’re going to react. I’m afraid of how you’re going to respond.” He can handle it. and I think you’ll find that his response is much more tender and gentler than you might anticipate.
  • There’s a number of different reasons why we can doubt our ability to hear God.
  • I think that, especially in the beginning of our faith, we just have so many questions and it’s natural for us to just go to somebody else with those questions, because we don’t necessarily trust our ability to answer them for ourselves or to go to God with our questions and to hear from Him.Most of the time in my experience, hearing from God is more like a gentle nudge. It’s more like a prompt or just this burning that I fill in my heart and I just know that I have to do something. And those are the nudges that we learn to recognize as we walk more with him.
  • And another thing is that we don’t learn to recognize those nudges until we act on them.
  • And so if we feel that nudge and we’re just in a state of inertia we don’t ever respond then we’re never going to see him move and we’re never going to see the faithfulness which is an attribute of his character because we’re not giving him an opportunity to do that but as we move with him we can create this track record And we look back and we say, oh, you know, when I moved and I responded to that nudge, I felt then there he was and he was faithful and he created a way where I didn’t see that there was going to be a way.There’s a number of different factors involved, but as we respond to him, then we create that track record and we can see, oh, yeah, that was God, you know, and we become more attuned to his voice. So I can hear the listener now saying, okay, so the more I put this into practice, the better I’ll become at hearing his voice. But what if I make a mistake? What if that wasn’t really his voice? How do you respond to that?
  • I would say that I believe when Paul says in Romans that God works all things together for the good of those who love him. He’s not just talking about these struggles and tragedies in our lives. He’s also talking about the times when we do mess up and we do falter. And so God can use even those things for our good and for his glory. But the key is, if it’s an actual sin, which it may not be sin, it may just be things don’t turn out the way we thought they would. But if it’s sin, then we come to God and we repent of that and we say, “Hey, you know, I messed up.” And God us, like I said before, he’s faithful, he’s loving, and he will be just to forgive that sin and to cleanse us from that. But if things just don’t work out the way we thought they would, then that’s just life, you know, and God can use that. God will create a way and a path around whatever obstacle it is that we’re seeing and provide a way forward.
  • I saw him sort of as this distant rule enforcer. And I think that when we see God that way, then we don’t feel safe coming to him with those desires. We don’t feel safe coming to him with our dreams because we don’t think that he’s going to treat them with a delicate hand, and we think it’s safer to just keep them to ourselves, but if we see him as the loving father that he is, then we can come to him with all of that, and we can trust that he’s going to create something beautiful, and it’s probably going to be something even greater than what we imagined because he is God. My kids have been the greatest teachers to me of this because they come to me with all of it. They don’t hide their desires from me.
  • I think that sometimes we perceive an obstacle as a closed door, Michelle. And many times, it’s not a closed door, it’s just an opportunity for refinement. It’s opportunity to grow our faith. But sometimes we take a step of faith. And when we’re starting something new, we have that fire and just that fresh energy in us and everything is fresh and new. And then we get to the work, you know, or whatever that looks like and we get to the middle and things aren’t as fresh and new anymore and we might encounter people who don’t understand our vision or we might encounter situations that we didn’t anticipate when we took that step of faith and we can see that as a closed door.
  • My encouragement is don’t quit when you simply need to take a nap or you just need to refresh yourself and to remember that fire that you had at the beginning of the endeavor.
  • There are some key questions we can ask ourselves. We can ask ourselves, “Is this just my discomfort or is this an actual closed door?” We can ask ourselves “what is the benefit of staying where I am?” A lot of times that may be comfort or it may be just familiarity with the situation. And so, as we ask these questions, I think that God will reveal to us whether or not it is, in fact, a closed door or if it’s just something that we need to work through and we need to persevere with Him. If it is a closed door, I think that God will make it clear because He is not a God of confusion.
  • It helps so much if we can remember that while we can get so focused on a goal or an achievement or a certain pathway, God is always very concerned about our growth and progress. And so, what can look like a closed door may actually just be a detour in the path that he has to get us where he wants us ultimately to go.
  • We live in a day and age, where we’re just bombarded by other voices and sometimes that creates dissonance between us and God, and they can be good voices too. They can be speaking truth and love and all of that, but if we don’t get alone with God for ourselves and we’re not very intentional about seeking him for ourselves and getting into his word for ourselves, then we’re missing out.
  • Sometimes, we think we can connect with God when we’re just bombarded with all these thousands of voices coming at us day in and day out, and we just can’t. We have to get along with him and we have to create that space for us to hear from him for ourselves. And so, I would encourage listeners to do that and you will see fruit from that.
  • We cannot know the voice of God if we do not know what his word says. And I think that a lot of times a lot very well-meaning people can speak those doubts and that negativity into our lives, and they may not even be aware. I mean, sometimes they are, but they may not be aware of that. One thing I ask myself often, and I’ve encouraged readers and listeners to do this as well, is I ask myself, “does whatever this action is show my love for God, and does it show my love for others?” If this person is speaking against that, then don’t listen. Then I continue to move forward. God is God. If that is not a path that he wants you to go down, then he is more than capable of blocking that path. But I would say move forward because you will be empowered by his love.
  • I want to leave them with the confidence that they can hear God’s voice. Like Michelle referred to at the beginning of the episode, John 10:27 says, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I believe that with all my heart.” And so keep seeking him and you will hear him. I can promise you that.
  • Let fear propel you toward Jesus instead of away from Him.

 

Scripture References:

  • John 10:27 “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, they will follow me.”
  • John 10:9 “They will come in and go out, and find pasture.”
  • John 10:28 “No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

 

Recommended Resources: (If there are affiliate links in this post, meaning, if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you)).

 

What if the peace you’re looking for doesn’t come from knowing what happens next? Learn how to hear from God without needing certainty about tomorrow. Share on X What if your need to know what’s next is keeping you from the peace God has for you today? Learn how to surrender certainty and hear from God with greater confidence. Share on X

 

Social Media Links for Host and Guest:

Connect with Abby McDonald:

Website / Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / LinkedIn

For more hope, stay connected with Dr. Bengtson at:

Order Book Sacred Scars / Order book The Hem of His Garment / Order book Today is Going to be a Good Day / Order Book Breaking Anxiety’s Grip / Order Book Hope Prevails  / Order Book Hope Prevails Bible Study /  Website  /  Blog  /  Facebook / Twitter (@DrMBengtson)  /  LinkedIn  /  Instagram / Pinterest / YouTube / Podcast on Apple

 

About Abby McDonald:

Abby McDonald, authorAbby McDonald is the author of Shift and Surrendering Certainty. She is also a writer, speaker, wife and mom whose work has been featured on (in)Courage, For Every Mom, Crosswalk, and more. She writes for Proverbs 31 Ministries’ daily devotional, Encouragement for Today, and her passion is to empower women to grow in faith and hope, even when life is messy. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the University of South Carolina, and loves to teach at writing conferences each year. When she’s not reading or writing, you can find her wrangling her three kids and black lab while drinking copious amounts of coffee. Abby lives with her husband and three children in western Maryland.

 

 

Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson
Audio Technical Support: Ashton Bengtson

 

Do you find yourself asking God for another sign because you’re afraid of getting it wrong? Learn how to hear from God without needing certainty about tomorrow and find peace without knowing what’s next. Find encouragement to move forward in faith with what God has given you for today. SAVE this for the next time you’re unsure what comes next.

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