God has been showing me that I haven’t been listening carefully enough. I’ve been hiding things and avoiding going deep, failing to hear Him well because I didn't fully understand the true mechanics of how He operates.
Overcoming Circumstances and the Natural Realm
Part of the reason I fall into selective hearing—blocking things out or avoiding certain depths—comes down to my natural circumstances. So often, we allow our immediate situations to limit what we will allow God to say to us. We look at something God is nudging us toward and dismiss it, thinking, "That’s crazy, that’s not possible, so it can’t be God."
This reaction isn't new; we see it right in the Scriptures with Sarai (Sarah). When God declared that she would bear a son in her old age—decades past her natural childbearing years—she literally laughed behind the tent door in bitter disbelief. It felt biologically impossible, a stretch too far for her natural mind to grasp. Yet God proved that His word always supersedes human limitations, and when the promise was birthed, the boy was named Isaac, which means "laughter." What started as a bitter, doubtful laugh was turned into the very joy of God's miraculous fulfillment.
We see this same divine reality taken even further with Mary conceiving the Son of God. In her case, it wasn't just past natural timing; it was completely outside of human biology. A virgin conceiving a child was entirely impossible in the natural world. Yet, when she received the Word, the supernatural overrode the natural realm completely.
We so easily let what we can see, hear, and feel with our five physical senses become a massive blockage, keeping us from soaking in the true Word of God. As Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower, the seeds planted along the path can easily be snatched away, or choked out by the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life. We get trapped in doubt, fear, anxiety, or stretched faith, forgetting that the supernatural always supersedes the natural realm. God’s Word reminds us that the joy of the Lord is our strength; He must build something on the inside first before it can ever manifest outwardly. God's ability isn't bound by human logic—if you can get the supernatural built on the inside, it will ultimately overflow and break through every natural limitation.
The Soft Heart and the Posture of Surrender
To hear God clearly, you must first address the state of your heart. The Bible speaks of God removing the heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh—a responsive, tender heart (Ezekiel 36:26). A hardened heart puts up massive walls to the voice of God. Over time, layers of grime, dirt, and spiritual blockages build up, preventing the Word from penetrating into your spirit.
To break through this, you have to get into a posture of total surrender and vulnerability. When you sit down to spend time with God in your prayer closet, your goal is not to figure everything out, go to war with every thought, or try to be God. Your job is simply to receive Him.
Jesus says in Revelation 3:20, "Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends." Opening the door means sitting there with open hands, completely transparent and unshielded. You don't have to spend your energy desperately sifting through what you think is God and what isn't—let God do the sifting. Even if thoughts feel uncomfortable, weird, or raw, just stay there. Pay attention to your heart. Eat the meat and spit out the bone. Stop chasing only the things that tickle your ears or give you goosebumps, and allow God to wash away the grime so His Word can hit your spirit unhindered.
Unmasking the Lie: Perception of the Master
This need for a soft, unblocked heart becomes painfully clear when you look at the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. The first two servants trusted the Master, multiplied what was given to them, and were invited into His joy. But the third servant buried his talent in the dirt. When the Master asked why, the servant confessed: "Master, I knew you to be a hard man... so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground."
The Master replied by calling him a "wicked and slothful servant" and sarcastically exposed his flawed logic: if he truly believed the Master was that harsh, he should have at least put the money in the bank to earn interest.
The breakthrough in understanding this parable lies in what wickedness really is: believing lies about God's nature.
This primary strategy goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The serpent launched its entire assault on humanity not by attacking Adam and Eve directly, but by twisting their perception of God's character. It started with that insidious question: "Did God really say?" The enemy's whole playbook is designed to make God look like a withholding, harsh, or deceptive dictator.
When you buy into the serpent's lie, it immediately distorts your view of the Father's heart—and that distorted perception dictates your behavior. Just like the third servant, when you believe God is cruel or out to trap you, it births fear, and fear causes you to bury your calling, bury your talent, and hide in defensive self-preservation. Scripture states that "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment" (1 John 4:18). If your image of the Father’s heart is twisted, you won't be able to multiply or walk in your calling because you will be too busy hiding from a God you think is out to crush you. Correcting your spiritual vision—seeing God as good, generous, and trustworthy—is what breaks the serpent's lie and frees you to let His Word take root.
The Donkey vs. The Warhorse: Dismantling the Tyrant God
When you break this all the way down, everything hinges on receiving a true revelation of God’s love.
Every blockage, every fear, and every impulse to run out into fleshly performance comes from believing God is an overbearing, hard tyrant. But that isn't who He is. Look at how Jesus revealed the Father when He entered Jerusalem: He didn't ride in on a Greco-Roman warhorse, flex physical muscle, or come as a He-Man figure to overthrow Rome by force. Israel was expecting a warlord who would crush their physical enemies and rule through domination. Instead, Jesus rode in on a humble donkey (Zechariah 9:9).
Throughout His three years of ministry, even His own disciples struggled with this. They kept expecting Him to act like an earthly conqueror—asking to call down fire on villages or pulling swords in the garden. Right up until the cross, people completely misunderstood who He was and what He was doing because His kingdom didn't look like human military power. Yet His path of humble, self-giving love was a million times more powerful than any earthly conqueror.
God is not a tyrant king standing over you with a club; He is a loving Father who rode in on a donkey, laid down His life, and offers unbelievable grace and forgiveness. As 1 John 4:19 reminds us, "We love because He first loved us." When you realize how loved, supported, and safe you are in Him, the walls collapse. You don't have to defend yourself against a loving Father.
Inside Workers vs. Outside Workers
Once you truly know His love and see that He isn't out to crush you, you can finally stop striving. This brings us to a crucial law of the Kingdom: You must be an inside worker before you can ever be an outside worker. The "outside worker" is strictly post-inside work.
The whole process relies entirely on the Word of God hitting your spirit and taking root as a divine seed. It has to drop past your carnal mind into your innermost spirit, undergo a spiritual death, and sprout up to produce real fruit. As Jesus revealed in John 12:24: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."
Jesus highlighted this hidden, automatic growth in the Parable of the Growing Seed: "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself..." (Mark 4:26–28).
This is not about you doing stuff for God; it’s about what God does inside of you when that seed is planted.
Every demon on this planet, along with your own out-of-whack flesh, will try to force you to rush out of the prayer closet prematurely. Distractions, trials, worldly cares, and anxieties are all designed to pull you out of the internal work so you start running around in human self-effort. But self-effort achieves nothing. You cannot earn your way, work hard enough, or "help" God in your flesh. God doesn't need the flesh’s help at all. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 3:6–7, one may plant and another may water, but God ultimately gives the increase.
The key takeaway is this: Complete the process. Finish the work on the inside before you move a muscle on the outside. Don't rush out to act on a partial word. Stay in His presence until you know you have encountered Him—until the internal work is finished and dunamis power is ready to burst forth.
Drinking to the Overflow
The Christian walk isn't human activity—it’s spiritual absorption. It’s about drinking, meditating, chewing on the Word, learning His voice, and soaking until you are completely full of Him. You don't have to think; you just have to drink. The psalmist captured this reality perfectly: "My cup overflows."
When you get impregnated with the Word of God—filled to the brim until spiritual breakthrough takes place on the inside—you never know which way that cup is going to spill. You can’t manufacture, force, or control it. You might be standing at a gas station or walking down a grocery store aisle, and suddenly that cup tips over, spilling God's presence, healing, or power onto someone next to you. That is what true ministry looks like—not self-powered striving, but an inevitable, spontaneous overflow of the divine life within you. Once your flesh submits to His Word and gets fully saturated, His Spirit takes over. You almost go on autopilot, walking in an ability that was never your own.
The Divine Disruptor and Undeniable Proof
Yet, even in this germination and growth, there is zero room for human ambition or pride. Zechariah 4:6 reminds us that it is "‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts." Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 1:29 establishes that God intentionally operates this way "so that no flesh might boast in his presence."
Because of this, the Sword of the Lord acts as a massive disruptor. While Jesus offers true spiritual peace, He explicitly stated in Matthew 10:34, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." The Word of the Lord acts as a blade that cuts, separates, and violently shifts the natural into the supernatural.
This divine disruption is deeply testing for families, friends, and the people around you. When the Sword of the Lord lands on your life, it completely upends the comfortable, natural flow of things. If those close to you aren't hearing what you are hearing or experiencing what you are experiencing in the spirit, it creates intense irritation, friction, and conflict.
You see this exact dynamic play out in the birth of Jesus—the ultimate proof that man gets zero credit:
• God sent an angel with a Word.
• Mary received the Word, and it impregnated her with the Savior of the world.
• It was zero percent Mary's effort and zero percent Joseph's effort.
• Yet, it immediately disrupted their natural world—Joseph thought she was unfaithful and planned to quietly divorce her.
From the very beginning, God structured the gospel so that neither Mary nor Joseph could ever stand up and say, "We did this." It was entirely God's power manifesting through a surrendered vessel.
Practicing the Presence
Learning to practice the presence of God and get accurate with His voice takes time. It’s a process. You might sit down for several prayer sessions a day and feel like you're not getting anywhere—it can feel confusing, uncomfortable, and downright weird. But as you obey the call to "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10), enduring the process without rushing out into fleshly activity, you lock in.
I also believe that when Jesus told Peter in John 21:18 that when he was older, someone would bind him and carry him where he did not want to go, it meant more than just physical captivity. It speaks to an inward journey—being led by the Spirit into the deep, uncomfortable places within ourselves to allow God to do an internal work that ultimately transforms everything on the outside.
Looking back over years of struggle, I realize that even my difficult circumstances—the natural places God has brought me to where I had no choice but to surrender—were all His doing in the background. God forces us into places where human effort fails so that we are compelled to master the internal work.
When you finally stop striving, drop your defenses, and let the incorruptible seed of God’s Word penetrate your spirit, you will be utterly blown away by what God can accomplish. In just five to ten minutes of real vulnerability and deep rest in His love, God can do what years of human effort could never touch. It has never been about our ability—it has always been about His.
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