Sid Roth: Now if you were to go in the average church of America and give them a test how many of you really and truly have intimacy with God? I think you would find that in some churches 98% – 99% of the people would say no. If you were asked how many of you hear God’s voice on a regular basis? How many of you are like Jesus who said, “I only do what I see my heavenly Father doing; I only do what I see my heavenly Father doing.” Very few, well I have a guest who teaches people on how to hear God’s voice and says it works 100% of the time. His name is Mark Virkler and Mark my audience and myself we’re all ears because the whole purpose of life is to hear God’s voice and be obedient as far as I’m personally concerned. Its Supernatural! And sometimes I say to God, “God, I don’t want this multiple guess work, I’m to pragmatic just tell me what to do and I’m going to do it.” I’ve actually said that to God, does that sound familiar to you Mark?
Mark: It sounds very familiar to me, and it lines up with my own frustration for the first eleven years of my Christian life I could not hear God’s voice. And I had no idea why I couldn’t hear it and I was frustrated as could be and it was eleven years of complete frustration.
Sid: Did you ever reach a point and there is a whole section of the Body of Messiah that’s reached a point where they’ve said, “I’ve tried and tried and I haven’t heard His voice, so I guess He just doesn’t do it that way anymore.” Did you kind of justify your deafness?
Mark: Well, I actually got saved in a church that told me “God didn’t do it that way anymore,” it said, “God doesn’t speak” and so I believed that initially.
Sid: Well, why did you change your mind?
Mark: Well, my heart was hungry it said, “I want to experience God” and I ended up leaving that church and I joined a Spirit filled church that did experience God. And I would ask them, I’d say “What does God really sound like?” And well they’d say, “Well, they would just say that you just know, that you know, that you know.” And I would just say, “Well, I don’t know that’s why I’m asking you.”
Sid Roth: You know, there is so many books that the implication is that you know, that you know, that you know, but we really are not taught how to hear God’s voice. That should be part of basic discipleship.
Mark: Well, it should if anyone could define what His voice sounds like, you know. I was listening inside for a voice because I assumed it would be a voice and I didn’t hear any voices. All I heard inside was thoughts. And I said, “Well, there is no voice here, and I said, “I’m not going to pretend there is a voice here because all that is inside of me a thought.
Sid: And you must have thought that a lot of them were your own thoughts.
Mark: Well, I thought that they were all my own thoughts; except I did accrue a few to Satan because they were pretty negative because I have some of Satan’s stuff some of mine. But you know what? It never crossed my mind hey, if Satan can talk to me as spontaneous thoughts that light up on my mind, I’ll bet when the Holy Spirit speaks to me it also sounds like spontaneous thoughts that light up on my mind. I never said that to myself, well I finally learned.
Sid: So, you go through the first eleven years of your life as a believer in this limbo, actually knowing there’s something more, but not being able to grasp it. What changed this?
Mark: Well, what changed is the thought came to me and said “Why don’t you spend a year of your life focused on learning to hear God’s voice?” And I objected and said, “I don’t spend a year learning anything, I read a book in a week and go on to the next book.” And I had a second thought say, “Well you’ve spent ten years in defused time for you didn’t get through, if you spend one year in focus effort and got through would be the best year of your life.” And I said, “Good point.” So I decided to risk one whole year learning one lesson which was how to hear God’s voice.
Sid: Out of curiosity what did your wife think of this thing of taking a year off?
Mark: Well, that was okay I mean I would still pasture a church and preaching and reading my Bible and income and so I was still doing a job.
Sid: Okay, so this is your goal tell me what it was like, “What did you do first?”
Mark: Well, focus effort for me means for every extra hour during the week I have I will focus on trying to learn this. So I read everything in the Bible on hearing God’s voice, I read every book on prayer I can buy, I experiment with hearing God’s voice, I go to conference on hearing God’s voice. And that year God taught me four very simple things which opened up His voice in two way prayer where I could write out a page or two of what God was saying to me and what I was saying back to Him.
Sid: Now you’ve literally had God speak to you in an audible voice and give you directions, what did He say?
Mark: Well, the only time I’ve actually heard Him an audible voice was when I woke up in the middle of the night with a audible voice saying, “Get up saying I want to teach you to hear My voice.” And I laid back down and said, “You can teach me in bed.” He said, “No, get up.” And so I got up, went over to my office which is next to the parsonage and I sat down and I began to journal and that’s when the first time that I really learned to hear His voice which normally for me comes as spontaneous thoughts that light up on my mind when my eyes are fixed on Jesus.
Sid: You know for myself, I have heard God’s audible voice, but it’s been so infrequent it’s almost like, “God, why do You wait so long in between with Your audible voice?” I mean I have to tell you, that I know that God speaks through our thoughts, but I’m so pragmatic I just wish it was audible all the time. – Its Supernatural.
Mark: Well, I think we all do and I think we all have the same frustration you have and which I have. And I think I’ve heard God’s audible voice once, “You can’t build an intimate love relationship with one conversation.” I mean I hear my wife’s voice everyday and God wants to speak to you and I every day, that’s what the Garden of Eden was all about; walking with God in the cool of the day. So every single day we can hear God’s voice and since I learned these four keys I’ve been able to hear God’s voice every single day and write out a page or two or more of what God is saying to me. And you can too and every single listener can, I promise they can. Ha-ha.
Sid: And now to me, I can’t picture any true Bible believer that would not give anything to be able to hear God’s voice every single day. But I have to ask you, how do you know that its God’s voice verses your thoughts or the Devil?
Mark: Well, there’s a couple of really easy things to do the Bible says that “Every Rhema, attest to all things, hold fast to what is good, and in the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact. And the word in the Greek is “Every Rhema is established.” So a Rhema word is a spoken word, when God speaks into your heart what I teach people to do and what I do is I take it to my two or three spiritual advisors and I say, “Here’s what I felt God was saying to me, does your heart bear witness this came from God?” And if my three spiritual advisors say “Yes Mark, I think that’s God.” Then I’m willing to say that’s God, because it’s confirmed the way that God told me to confirm it, which wasn’t in the brilliance of my brain, it was by the mouth of two or three witnesses. So I encourage everyone establish two or three spiritual advisors, take your journaling to them, particularly for the first few days. I mean the first day I journaled I took it to my wife, after half hour of writing and I said, “Patti would you read this and she read this?” And she read it and I said “What do you think?” And she said, “Well, I believe that’s God” and I said, “Really” and she said, “Yes,” and my faith leapt and I went back and journaled thirty more minutes and I took that to Patti and she said, “I believe that’s God too and my faith leapt again. And I went back and journaled thirty more minutes and I took it to Patti and she minutes and I took it to Patti and she said, I believe that’s God” and my faith leapt again. I spent five hours that first day I learned to hear God’s voice I spent five hours writing down what God was saying to me and having it confirmed by one of my spiritual advisors every thirty to sixty minutes. So that’s the best way that I know is to have it bounce it off from two or three spiritual advisors, of course you know that it has to line up with the Word of God, it has to be full of the Spirit of God; love, joy, peace, mercy, faith. It’s got to be full of that and your heart you know should be comfortable and true and if I get a spontaneous thought that came when my eyes were not fixed on Jesus then I will go ahead and I’ll test it bay fixing my eyes on Jesus, presenting that spontaneous thought to Him. And I’ll see if in the picture if He looks uneasy like He wants to move away and if He wants to move out of it and edge out of the scene and then it’s an indication that the thought didn’t really come from Jesus.
Sid Roth: Now itt seems to me that we in the west are the decided disadvantage as opposed to people in the east, why is it so hard for us here in the west?
Mark: Well, we’ve been influence in 1200 AD with rationalism which swept through the European Universities and it’s swept into our culture and it’s the God that we worship, everything must funnel through my little reasoning brain. And I looked up every verse in the Bible on reason you know and I’ve found God never even told me to reason.
Sid: Sometimes I wish that I didn’t have a brain and I could just live 100% out of my spirit, wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Mark: Well, it would then you know…
Sid: You know my spirit knows everything, my pea brain knows only what I put into it.
Mark: Well, that is the exact truth and when you teach this to kids, like in Sunday school they can all do this effortlessly, quiet themselves down, fix their eyes on Jesus.
Sid: You mean become like a little child like Jesus said?
Mark: You know that’s what Jesus said and you know what I tell people that when you are there with Jesus in a vision why don’t you picture yourself as an eight year old kid. I tell them that every weekend when I go out and teach, because if you picture yourself as an eight year old kid it takes you out this adult frame work; it takes you back to your childhood and lets you approach God as your suppose to and your brain is out of the way.
