If you’d like to subscribe to Last Days Warriors and be notified of future posts, please complete the fields at the bottom of the Home Page.

but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.

Deuteronomy 8:2–3 (NASB95)
2“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
3“He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

Moses preached to the Israelites prior to their crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land, and told them that all that they had been through in the wilderness for forty years had been God’s working in them to humble them.  The trials, testing, and miraculous provision and deliverances all had a singular purpose – to bring them to the point of faith that:

“man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

That is the sum total of where God wanted them, and according to Habakkuk and the Apostle Paul (see THE LIFE OF THE RIGHTEOUS IN THE VERY LAST DAYS) that is what God calls us to today.

Likewise, the sum total of God’s working in your life to date has been to bring you to the point of living by hearing His Voice and obeying – living by Faith.

At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus dismissed Satan’s temptation in the wilderness by telling him He was not interested in physical bread, but would only do what His Father said (Matthew 4:4);  and later in His ministry Jesus testified;

John 5:19 (NASB95)
19Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

John 12:49–50 (NASB95)
49For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.
50“I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.

If we are His disciples, this is our testimony as well. 
When He says;

John 10:27 (NASB95)
27My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;

He doesn’t say, “My sheep can learn to hear My voice.”  He says, “My sheep do hear My voice.”

Do you hear His voice?  Are you of His sheep?  Are you living “by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”?  Is that your life?
Or are you a fake disciple?

Do you have “ears that hear” – truly hear such that what you say and do is what God has said for you to say and do? 

Or are you in fact a “non-disciple” – but you desire to live by faith, having ears that hear. Do you desire to be a disciple who hears and obeys that which proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord?

If that is you, hearing God is not a craft that you can just learn or acquire.  As with the Deuteronomy passage above, you must allow God to work that which is necessary in you to bring you to that place of communication and relationship.

For your part, there is but one thing you can do to start.  Repent.

If you are, in fact, born again of God but not hearing His voice, here are three possible hinderances:

      1. You’ve been wrongly taught that God does not work in His people (sheep) in this way, and this kind of relationship and communication is not real or available. You cannot just blame your false teachers.  The Scriptures and the Holy Spirit have always and continually been there telling you the truth.  You, for your part, must repent of your unbelief and your willingness to be seduced by error.
      1. You have become both “in the world” and “of the world”. You have forsaken the true God of your salvation for the god of this world.

1 John 2:15–16 (NASB95)
15Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

This, at the root, is idolatry and spiritual adultery; just like the Israelites forsook the Lord repeatedly as they moved into the Promised Land.  The remedy, again, is true and full repentance.

      1. You live your life by your own wisdom and understanding rather than by by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, holding yourself above God in your daily life. This is not How Jesus lived, and not how He commands us to live.  It is the same as if Jesus had succumbed to Satan’s temptation and made loaves of bread out of the stones.  “Non-disciples” often have the attitude that “God gave me these talents and expects me to use them.”  Terrible theology and rebellion at its heart.  If anyone ever could have lived this way it was Jesus, who was/is truly God.  But He lived His life always in complete submission to His Father.

Philippians 2:5–8 (NASB95)
5
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,  7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus did not make loaves of bread out of stones; and “having this same attitude in ourselves“, neither do His disciples.  This might seem extreme, but always “ceasing from our own labors” is true freedom and God’s Sabbath Rest (Hebrews 4:9-11); and the path to having ears that hear, and abiding in Him.

So, having repented of any and all of these sins, approach your loving all-wise God in faith.  Open your ears to hear Him and truly seek Him with all your heart. 

Moses has again spoken to our condition four chapters later:

Deuteronomy 12:8–9 (NASB95)
8“You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes;
9for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

Through faith in Jesus Christ, and by the grace given us by the indwelling presence of His Spirit,

We can hear His voice.
We can obey His voice.
We can enter into God’s rest, ceasing from our own labors.
And we can stand firm, abiding in Him in these Last Days.

This is Jesus’ most important and urgent call and message to us in this time.

Do you have ears to hear?

Psalm 32:8–9 (NASB95)
8I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.
9Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, Otherwise they will not come near to you.

Duncan
(March 28, 2020)

duncan@1st-love.com

Leave a Reply