S9E35
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Good morning my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here with you and I am grateful to be coming at
you with Self Brain Surgery Saturday is Saturday, actually recording this on Friday.
I am getting a cold, my voice is starting to fade and I'm pretty sure I won't be able
to talk by tomorrow. So I'm giving you Self Brain Surgery Saturday recording one day early and I'm grateful to
have the opportunity to do so.
And today I'm going to give you an episode, I've told you about it already.
A couple weeks ago I had a chance to sit down via Riverside electronically with Greg Pruitt.
Greg is the president of an organization called Pioneer Bible Translators.
He has written an incredible book called Extraordinary Hearing.
Okay, Extraordinary Hearing. It's about how you hear God.
And I told you I was going to hold this until after I had my interview with Pete Greig,
but the Holy Spirit is doing something to me.
He's telling me it's time to bring you this, and I'm going to tell you why.
You if you're looking back through the episodes on the podcast wherever you
listen to you'll notice that yesterday afternoon I re-released an old episode
called the suffering substitution that was one of the early cell brain surgery
Saturday episodes suffering substitution if you haven't heard it yet maybe stop
what you're doing right now and go back and listen to it before you listen to
this one with Greg and the reason is I talked about very vulnerably talked about in that episode. A time when I was certain that I heard something from God.
I'm not a person who goes around saying that I hear God speak to me or I hear
God's voice. I'm not a charismatic person. I'm very careful always that to not
attribute to something to God that could just be my own brain happening. So I'm
careful saying that thing. I'm not real comfortable with it. But I want you to
know that God speaks to us, not just through the written word. He does,
communicate with you. And that's why yesterday, on Front of the Lobe Friday, we
We talked about the importance of keeping your mind open and available to Him.
We talked about alcohol and how it diminishes the capacity of the prefrontal cortex and
how your prefrontal cortex is involved in helping you make good executive decisions.
And so I just want to tell you that I was going to hold that episode with Greg, but,
I've been looking at 1 Peter and if you think about what's important, if an author is trying
to make sure you get the message of something that's important, or a public speaker wants
to make sure that you get the message of something that's important, they start
with it and they end with it. Right? My dad used to always tell us about public
speaking. He would say, hey, tell them what you're gonna tell them and then
tell them and then tell them what you told them. And that comes from way back
in Zig Ziglar and even before that, way back to Aristotle, like this concept of
how do you get a message across? Start with it and end with it. And I'm gonna
tell you, in the book of 1st Peter in the New Testament, he ends with the thought
in chapter 5. Let me go to it real quick. In 1st Peter chapter 5, Peter, the
apostle of Jesus Christ, says this.
He's talking about what kind of time they're in and what you need to do to be prepared
for such a time. And he says this, 1 Peter 5, 8, Be alert and of sober mind.
Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
He's saying keep your mind open, be vigilant, be sober, be listening.
Friend, I'm telling you, we're in a time in our life right now when there's a lot going
We're in a time of a world where people need the hope that you have.
People need to know that you are able to help them find their way out of this suffering
that this life offers. And if you're going through trauma or tragedy or some kind of massive thing, you need to
hear that voice.
You need to be able to know that God, like I said yesterday in Isaiah 30, is going to
give you that, hey, don't go that way, go this way. I'm trying to help you out here, friend.
Listen, hear my voice. So let me tell you, so I told you, Peter ends his book, 1 Peter 5,
with saying, hey, be alert and of sober mind.
He also started his book that way. Check this verse out, 1 Peter 1, 13.
So in the very first chapter, therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober,
set your hope on the grace to be brought to you
when Jesus Christ is revealed as his coming.
The King James translates that this way.
And Tata and I are gonna talk about this on Tuesdays with Tata next week.
Peter says this, 1 Peter 1.13 in the King James,
wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober and hope to the end for the grace
that is to be brought to you.
At the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Gird up the loins of your mind. What does that mean? It's an old phrase.
It's used in the Old Testament a couple of different times.
One in Job when God says, hey, gird up your loins because I'm getting ready to question you
and you're gonna answer me.
And Paul uses the term when he talks about the armor of God, gird your loins with the truth.
Be ready. This is basically as a saying that means you get yourself ready because something's coming and you need to be ready for it. And Peter starts his
book by saying, gird up the loins of your mind. We're always talking about
That you can't change your life until you change your mind, right?
There's so much more to this But greg pruitt is going to give us an opportunity to understand how to hear god
And i'm going to give you that episode now We're going to do two more episodes about hearing god before the end of the year one from pete greek
And one from dr Lee warren about how you learn to hear the voice of god how you can use it to be ready
For whatever comes along so without further ado Here's the episode I recorded with Greg Pruitt, and I had already recorded a
preamble and post and all that. I'm just gonna tag this on to the front of it, but
I want you to be ready, gird up the loins of your mind, learn how to hear, go back
and hear the suffering substitution and frontal lobe Friday from yesterday. If
you haven't, that'll prepare you for the full impact of what Greg is gonna give
you. And don't forget my friend, to start today. Hey my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here.
So glad and honored to have you join me for another episode of Self Brain Today we're going to talk about how we can change our minds and change our lives in the realm of learning to hear God,
More effectively in our lives if you've been through some massive thing, and I know you have,
Or you're going through it with somebody else or you wouldn't be listening to this show,
Have you been through something really hard?
There's somebody you love is going through or has gone through something really hard one of the things you'll know,
One of the things you'll learn if you haven't.
Is that it can get really hard to feel like you're connected to God, your doubts
spring up, faith begins to crumble, and you can find yourself feeling very
vulnerable and almost like you can't hear from God, like you're not even sure
he's there. And so today we're going to talk to Greg Pruitt, who has written one
of the most important books I've ever read. It's called Extraordinary Hearing.
Another one of Greg's books that was really powerful was called Extreme prayer. And Greg is the president of an organization called Pioneer Bible
Translators. Pioneer Bible Translators goes into countries in the world, into
regions of countries in the world, where they don't have a written language. And,
they work and live among the people long enough to help them turn their language
into a written language. And then they translate the Bible into that language.
And you'll hear Greg say, how many countries and how many languages they've
done that. And now they're translating the Bible into video sign languages for
hundreds of languages around the world that have never been translated for
people that can't hear.
And so the word of God is coming to people in sign languages, in video form, in their own language
that they've never been able to hear before. And it's amazing the work that they're doing.
But along the way, Greg has discerned the need to be able to hear God in times
when you really need to know what he has to say. It might surprise you some of the things that
Greg talks about in his book, Extraordinary Hearing is fantastic. It's powerful, it's useful,
and it'll help you change your mind and change your life. And I'm so excited and honored that
that Greg took 45 minutes or so with us today
to help us learn how to hear God,
in an extraordinary and meaningful way.
And that my friend leaves me with just one question.
Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.
You have to change your mind first.
And my friend, there's a place for the neuroscience of how your mind works, smashes together with faith,
and everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?
Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope.
This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.
This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.
This is where we start today. Are you ready?
This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend.
Let's get after it.
Music.
Before we start, would you mind praying for us?
Lord, it's always a challenge to have the mental acuity to be able to answer questions on the spot.
I pray that you would be, what I'm asking you for is that you would exert your sovereignty
over this conversation, that it would glorify you as much as at all possible between me and Dr. Warrens.
And Lord, I pray that you would bless him and bless me, and I pray that you would anoint
us to be able to help people in pain, just as he said, to be able to find their way closer
and nearer to you, Lord.
What a blessing. I pray that it would really happen, that many people would come close to you and learn to
hear your voice, I pray in Jesus' precious name.
Amen. Thank you. Hey, so you're in Dallas. Shout out to all our listeners in Dallas and my parents and everybody down there in Texas
and all of our family, most of our family is in San Antonio still.
Hey, I asked you on the show today, Greg, because I want to talk about your most recent
book, Extraordinary Hearing.
But before we do that, tell us a little bit about the work that you do as a Bible translator,
a little bit about Pioneer Bible translators and that important work and how people can
get involved if they want to.
Sure, Pioneer Bible Translators, disciples, the Bible-less peoples of the world, so everywhere
people are without Scripture.
And especially in those places where they're unreached or unengaged with the gospel, we
put together teams of people and try to find ways to actually make sure that not only are
they getting the Scriptures translated into their language, but they're also learning
to use it to transform lives in their community.
And we happen to be in a really incredible moment in time where the whole Bible translation
movement, even though it really started picking up steam in the 1930s and 40s, back then they
had no idea how big of a job it was.
And we're finally at the point where in just the next five years, probably, our clear list
of language translation needs is going to get really close to zero.
And by 2035, every language on earth will be in progress that needs it.
And so we're just in this beautiful moment in the Bible translation movement where everyone,
is starting to get scripture in their language. There's not anybody left behind.
And right now, everybody can get involved in that. It costs like $35 to translate a verse on average.
And you can go on Pioneer Bible's website and find our verse-by-verse webpage and just,
say, I'm going to translate one today and just do it.
That's incredible. How did you get into Bible translating as a way to spend your life?
As it turns out, it was my wife's idea.
I was very interested in missions. I wanted to work. Eventually I decided I wanted to work among Muslims.
And it was my wife who wanted to do Bible translation.
And I didn't want to do Bible translation. So we compromised and we did Bible translation. That's a wise man.
But I ended up finding out that really God made me to be a Bible translator.
Leader, that I would have missed the whole point of my life and my created purpose if
I had not listened to my wife, and now there's no living with her because she was right.
She was right about that, so who knows what else she's been right about since, right? That's right.
That's amazing. So you went many years into the field, literally living among the people who needed the Bible
in their language. So talk about that kind of part of your life as a missionary.
You raised your kids, had your kids on the mission field.
We moved over when we didn't have any kids to West Africa country and we lived in a remote
village where they had no scripture but also just one church among the ethnic group on
our side of the border.
And it was one church of 40, 50 people among literally 80,000 Muslims.
So we lived there and we were there about 12 and a half years and then we keep going
back periodically, and any day at any moment, probably during this podcast, somebody will
call me on Facebook Messenger from over there, we're in continual communication with them,
and those are practically our relatives now.
Jay Smith Yeah, that's incredible. So you literally spent years talking and working among people who didn't have the ability to
read God's Word in their own language, and in some cases, didn't even have a written language, right?
Part of it is sometimes translating a language that they can read and write in, teaching
people how to read in their mother tongue, right? Almost every language community where we work, part of the issue is that their language just
has never been written down.
Or maybe the next language over that's very similar has been written down, and we have to do
research to try to figure out, okay, what's a really proper way of writing this? You don't
want to mess up somebody's alphabet. You've got to get it right. If you think about how hard it
is to spell in English or in French, you can see how having a messed up writing system can have
far-reaching impact on education. So that's always an issue. It's always a part of it,
at teaching people to read their own language, or in a lot of cases we end up, for the masses,
we'll do an audio recording of the whole New Testament.
That's remarkable.
So, at some point you started writing books. I've read two of your books, Extreme Prayer and Extraordinary Hearing.
Tell us, just in case somebody hasn't read, talk just for a second about Extreme Prayer
and what that book's about and what the message is.
Okay, it comes from a period of desperation in my own life when I was transitioning from
being in West Africa, and I was over there minding my own business, translating the Bible.
I was really gifted at hunting warthogs and fixing dryers and living in remote parts of
the world and off the grid.
And then they called me on the satellite phone and said, Hey, we want you to be the president
of Pioneer Bible Translators.
At first, I was pretty, I don't know, maybe flattered, impressed, or eager, and then I
realized, no, man, I'm in big trouble.
I'm going to get over there in this board meeting, and they're going to say, President
Pruitt, what's the big idea, what's the strategy that's going to take us into the future?
And I didn't have anything.
So it was real clear what we had to do. We had to double in size because we had been, eight years, people had been asking us for
scriptures and we had to say, listen, we don't have any resources right now to meet your need.
And so I just remember thinking, no, we can't – that can't be the norm for us.
We have to get double everything.
We have to get more capacity worldwide in every circumstance.
And so that became for me the big question and I decided, hey, I'm a Bible translator.
Maybe I could read the Bible. Maybe there's something in there that might actually help me.
And I found all these open-ended promises in Scripture by Jesus where he promised that.
He would do anything under certain conditions.
And so I started looking and digging out those principles.
And I said, what if this is it? What if this could be?
What if prayer, instead of talking about our strategies, what if we made prayer the strategy of our work?
And we just centered everything around the core of prayer. And we really trusted in God, and that became the way we do everything.
That's the premise of the first book, Extreme Prayer, and probably I never really had another
great idea after that.
But that one idea was enough.
I don't need two ideas. That one's so powerful.
And so we've organized everything around that and we have seen God – we've become
a movement of God's Holy Spirit and we've seen God move in great power.
And back then, we were translating the Bible for about 9 million people, speaking 35 languages in five countries.
And now, instead of 9 million, it's 190 million people. And instead of 35 languages, we're translating the Bible into 126 languages in 31 countries
instead of five countries.
And so we've just seen God answer our prayers over and over again.
And it's a little bit humbling when you're a one-trick pony CEO where all you've got
is we're going to pray about it.
And they say, where are we going to get the money? Well, we're going to pray about it.
Where are we going to find the people? Guess what?
It's the same thing. And just over and over again, that's all we really rely on.
And it turns out it's really good.
It's a good strategy. I remember an old story about an elders meeting where they were having a big fight about something
going on in the church, and finally one of the elders says, maybe we should pray about
it. Has it come to that? Is that all we got?
Like prayer, really? I love it. So I've read three books in my life aiming at learning how to hear God.
The three best books I've read about learning how to hear God.
Dallas Willard's book, Hearing God, was really seminal in my formation of understanding that.
And then more recently, Pete Greig wrote a really wonderful little book called How to
Hear God, A Simple Guide from Normal People.
And then your book, Extraordinary Hearing, which I have to tell you, I found some common
ground with you because we share a faith background, an upbringing of a similar style and group.
And the way I was raised, we were taught without any question, God's already said all the words
He's ever going to say, and they're in the book, and that's what you got.
And so don't be out there listening for God to say something else, because He's already
said all of it. And I don't know if yours was that explicit or not, but.
So I spent a lot of time in my life trying to find answers to questions I couldn't find
answers to and wondering why God didn't seem to be showing up, and especially when I lost my son.
I mean, I spent some time, where is God in this and why can't I feel Him?
And sometimes you need to hear Him.
And so maybe just talk for a second about the concept of why so many of us don't think.
That God speaks anymore, and how you find your way through that idea.
I think it's so much more convenient when we can control the outcomes.
And we feel comfortable. We feel comfortable when we're sure that we've got just one book
to look into and there's nothing else coming. And I think that that comfort, that certainty
has led a lot of us to the theology that you can find and that people can identify in Scripture.
If they work at it, they can be pretty persuasive where, you know, now that the Bible's come,
And that's the end of Revelation.
But I don't find that to be a very biblical perspective after I've thought through it,
and I also don't – my experience doesn't bear that up.
And there's passages in the Bible where – just think about in Revelation where he
says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. He's talking to the church.
He's talking to a church, and he says, If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I'll come in and eat with him and he with me and if there wasn't gonna be a voice.
It would it was a terrible thing to say Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot in there in in the last days,
It says that your young men will dream dreams and your old men will see visions or or vice versa
I can't recall it. Yeah, it doesn't say that's gonna end. It says in the last days which.
Presumably we're either there or it's ahead of us It's not behind us.
But that's going to be happening in the last days. There's a lot of things in the Bible that when you read it, it doesn't imply that
God is going to stop speaking it.
As a matter of fact, the beginning of this book that I wrote was aimed at trying to understand
what's the God of the Bible, what's his character, and is that a character that continues to speak?
And it's interesting. It seems almost like from the Garden of Eden, the whole point of making people was that
he could enjoy fellowship with them.
That's right. And there were people that walked with God, and those people, he would draw them to his
side and he would explain things to them.
And he, just all through the Bible, the shocking thing is when he stops talking. That's right.
In that time, it was crazy. In that time, the Word of the Lord or the visions from God were not very frequent.
So without a vision, the people perish, right? Yeah, so it's, from my perspective, after looking through it very carefully, I said,
God, none of us can tell God not to speak.
That's right. And he's always spoken before. I don't know why suddenly, now that the church is inhabited by, each person inhabited by,
the Holy Spirit, why he would speak less.
You know, that seems unlikely. It does.
And your work in the field, especially in Muslim countries, I'm sure you've encountered
and you've written about people who first hear about Jesus through a dream or a vision.
Talk about an experience that you've had where you've heard something like that happen.
Oh, it's very common. As a matter of fact, up until I guess starting in the 1980s and 1990s, there began to be
great movements among Muslim people groups when there had never been before that.
And one of the big elements was that was around the same time people started praying for Muslims
during the time of Ramadan.
So a great prayer movement built up starting in that time, beginning in the early 90s,
it began to gain momentum.
At the same time as that great prayer movement, fairly mysteriously, Muslims started having
dreams about Jesus, and a lot of them came to faith in Christ.
Apparently some of them also did not, because I know of people that had those dreams that
were Muslims that did not come to faith, like the man who was the great diviner in our village,
context, his name was Manga Kumbong, and Chief Kumbong got up at one of our church Christmas
celebrations where we would always invite all these Muslims to come, the Muslim leaders
from our whole region to come to church so we could explain to them who Jesus is on Christmas.
And this chief got up and said, you all need to listen to these people because I had a
dream and in my dream I was standing between two towns and in one of the towns there was
singing and music and celebration and laughter and in the other town it was suffering.
And high up between the two towns, I saw this man, and I asked him, I said, I would like
to go into that town.
And he said, you can't because you're not following Jesus.
Or maybe he said, you're not a Muslim, or you're a Muslim, so you can't. I can't recall. But,
the guy woke up and he said, let's pay attention to what these people are saying.
But he was very old and he died still a Muslim. So, I figure.
Jared Well, so it's not a magic trick. People still have free will and some people will come to Christ to believe in him and some to not believe
in him, even in despite of his appearance to them.
That's fascinating.
It's like it says in the book of Revelation, and in spite of all of this effort on God's
part to reveal himself, people still didn't follow.
Wow.
And I've heard stories like that before, and I have to confess, cynicism and that sort
of thing, based on my conservative upbringing, when I've heard stories like that.
J.D. Greer's written about many of them when he worked in Muslim countries, and Pete Greer's written about it.
Just last week, I was on the 700 Club last week, and the day after I was there, a Muslim guy
who used to be a Hamas fighter presented his testimony of how he was arrested and put in prison in Malaysia,
and Jesus came to him in his cell,
and basically told him, I forgive you if you'll believe me, and presented to him an argument that made sense to him
in his Muslim mind of who Jesus was and who the prophets were.
And basically, this guy was converted to Christ by Christ in a prison cell.
And now I hear that story, and after reading your book, I'm like, that really happened.
This guy changed his life because Jesus came to him.
Yeah, we've had many experiences like that.
People coming to faith just on the evidence of dreams and visions that they had, and coming
into town looking for Christians.
You know, just looking for who might be out there that would know more about Jesus.
And there we are, and come and start churches that way.
Wow. That's incredible. Now, it's not just dreams and visions that God speaks to us.
You make it clear there's other ways that we hear Him.
So tell us, you wrote this story about when you decided to translate the Bible for deaf people.
And you tell this beautiful story about how God revealed to you that He was angry about
the fact that we've ignored them, largely.
And then it was verified in another way. So tell about that.
I thought that was the most fascinating story.
When I got involved in writing this book, because people ask me a lot of questions about
hearing from God, and at first I thought to myself, really, I don't know anything about,
that. It was just an assumption that you had to do it.
And then I started realizing, no, it's actually my job to receive guidance from the Holy Spirit
well and lead the organization Pioneer Bible Translators into the future that God dictates for us.
This was an example of that experience, and I've realized, okay, I must be doing something
because that's really a lot of what I do is try to ask God, what should we do next, and,
then make sure that we're doing what he's expressing to us through the power of his
spirit that we must do.
This was an example of that experience where I became aware that there were 400 sign languages in the world.
Who knew, right? We were professionals at this and we didn't know that those were languages like any other
languages, even just with a different, maybe really a different kind of language, but nevertheless languages.
And I got to the point where I realized the Bible translation movement has planned the,
entire movement to succeed at crossing the greatest milestones in Great Commission history
where everyone, everywhere, as long as they can hear, is going to encounter scripture.
And we've been acting like...
Jesus only died for hearing people and he didn't also die for these deaf people, 70
million of them worldwide, 400 different languages.
We planned the whole Bible translation movement, excluding those 70 million people, and we
were going to complete it. We had it all lined up and we were reluctant to add 400 languages to our list, knowing
that we didn't know really how to accomplish that.
That wasn't what we were good at. sign language translation, think about a video of a person signing the content and meaning
of scripture. That's different than writing. And that's their way of communicating. They,
can also sometimes read written languages, but those written languages are not their
language. That's English, not American Sign Language. These are different languages. So
That was a big shock to us, and then the big question was, what must I do, and what must
Pioneer Bible Translators do?
Because we've never done this before.
And so I put together a letter, a funding letter, and I put together a plan, but I was
not 100% sure that God wanted us to do sign language Bible translation ourselves.
It just wasn't something we had ever done before.
And I really felt like I needed to know because if I sent this letter out and,
announced to all of our donors that this is what we were going to do,
it would be eventually, if it wasn't of God, it would be a train wreck.
And I would be the guy blowing the train whistle the whole way. So this is,
I got to know, I really got to know. So I just sat down in this very chair.
And one day, I said, Lord, you've got to tell me. There's no other way.
I can't think my way out of this.
And I remembered, Lord, do you want us to do Bible translation in sign languages?
And I remember just tilting my head up like this, pointing my ear up to the sky, thinking
maybe that would get it a little closer up there to hear better or something, as if I
was going to hear a voice.
I was expecting an internal voice.
And then all of a sudden, at a certain point, I had the most singular experience of my lifetime
where I found myself on my knees, on my face, next to my chair instead of in my chair, and I was shaking.
And I had the sense that, yes, not only were we to be personally involved in doing Bible
translation, but he was angry with the church for not paying attention to the
deaf. And it was a, it took me a while to sort through why he was so angry about.
That. But at that very moment, it's like when your mother's mad, the first thing
you do, or you're going to start washing the dishes. I just got up off my, off the
floor. I sat down in this desk and I opened up YouTube and I Googled American
sign language learning, and I just started right there studying American Sign Language
thinking we have to start learning about this.
So now we have, I think, around 17 or more Deaf colleagues on our staff, and I've learned
quite a bit of sign language.
And we have a plan, and we're working the plan, and now God is blessing that.
And it's like the Book of Acts if everybody in it was Deaf.
We're in that moment where the deaf are rising up to be missionaries to the deaf.
Is there anything similar about the difference in how blind people experience scripture when they read?
It's very different, actually. Blind people are hearing English, and they learn to communicate in English.
And then, if they want to read, they can also use Braille.
But all of that is sound-related language. It's like when you're trying to teach a kid to read, you say,
Sound it out. What's the k-o-u-t?
That's right. It's all sound. But deaf people have never heard a sound.
Sound doesn't make sense to them necessarily, many of them have never heard of sound.
And so it's all visual. It's not that they're – the big thing about them is not that they can't hear.
The big thing about them is how visually oriented they are and how visually capable they are.
And so everything they do is visually communicated.
It leads to a completely different perspective.
Wow. So on a practical level, Greg, somebody wants to learn to hear God more effectively, or
maybe for the first time, like I said a while ago, I have a very limited number of times
in my life when I can say, yeah, I know I heard from God on that.
How do we do that? How do we develop that ability to develop extraordinary hearing in our lives?
There's a lot that you can do to put yourself in a position to hear from God.
I think the largest section of the book is the middle section that talks about how to
draw near enough to God to hear him whisper.
It's all organized around the word proactive, and each letter stands for something.
And it makes sure that you're – it gives you how you can read scripture in a way that
puts you in a good position to hear from God and how you can spend time in worship and
thanksgiving and how you can confess and remove some of the static by removing sin from your
life and how you can invest in intercessory prayer and.
Spiritual warfare to get some of those. But all of that, there's even like a template that I find
helpful and some people it's not helpful to give you a way to organize your prayer life so that
you're drawing closer to God. You've got all the elements needed in your life that are drawing you
close enough to God that he would be interested in speaking with you about something. You've got
31,000 verses of scripture in front of you. If you haven't started obeying those, what does he have have to say.
The first thing would be, hey, get on those. So if you begin working in your life to learn to obey Scripture well, and you get involved
in something that God is doing in the world today, then you're putting yourself in a position
where He would very likely have something He would like to express to you.
Yeah, you said something about prayer, it just reminded me that is right in line with
what you just said. Let me quote you, to you, you said, let me find it first.
I'll edit that pause out.
Where is that?
I've lost my, oh, here it is. Okay. Prayer is not about getting whatever we want.
It's how God releases his power in us to get whatever he wants. I love that line.
Yeah, that definitely, I still agree. Well, you hear people, sometimes you hear people say things like, the Spirit led me
to leave my wife, or the Spirit released me to do this thing.
And whenever you hear that, you always have to go back and say, is this thing that I think
I heard consistent with the Word?
Because God's Spirit and His voice will never contradict what He's already told us in Scripture, right?
Pete Greig said, Jesus is what God sounds like. So if you want to know what he sounds like, know the word.
If you think about the way that we are created, it's not that we don't hear voices in our mind.
There's been decade-plus secular research done to show that people experience, often
they experience their thoughts as an internal monologue or some kind of, you hear about
people talking about intrusive thoughts and thought these hearing things in our mind is
actually hearing voices is not a sign that you're crazy. It's just what how human beings
experience their internal life. And so it's not a problem of hearing voices. Our problem
is discerning which of these thoughts and which of these voices are our own or are from
demonic influences on our life, trying to tempt us, trying to draw us away?
Or are they maybe the anxieties we get from human expectations?
Or are they actually the Holy Spirit impressing on us an idea of His so strongly that words
form around it in our mind and we begin to hear in our minds this voice of the Holy Spirit,
speaking to us?
And the way you discern is by, with some experience, being able to say, okay, this voice, these
thoughts that are like this, those lead, when I act on those, they lead to eternal fruit.
They lead to a sense of contentment, a sense of unity with other people.
And there are other voices in my mind that when I heed those, they lead to bitterness,
destruction, temptation, addiction, and learning from experience, which of these voices in
my mind are not contradicting scripture, which of these ideas are consistent, and being able
to corroborate them and say, okay, when I'm hearing something like this, it's consistent
with Jesus in scripture.
And so there's a sense of corroboration that has to happen. And gradually, like Jesus said, the sheep know the shepherd.
Gradually with time and experience, knowing the difference between the voice that leads
to eternal fruit and contentedness in our lives versus the voice that leads to destruction in our lives.
Or just human, my own personal thoughts that come out as just confusion.
When I follow those, just confusion at worst.
Even at times it's okay, but it's not the voice of God that, like Jeremiah said, that,
smashes like a hammer and burns like a fire. That's the voice of the Lord.
Man, I don't know how to mow the lawn, which is just human expectations or whatever.
These voices just churn and churn inside of us, and identifying and discerning takes experience.
But it's the results. It's the results that you can really trust. That's right.
And we talk about it on this podcast. We talk about neuroscience a lot because I'm a brain surgeon, and we talk about how we
have up to 40,000 thoughts a day, and five to one they're negative, five to one they're not true.
Or just chemical events in our brain, or things triggered by the environment,
or memories, or those other things. And some of those thoughts are demonic influences,
temptations, and all of that. But you can learn what God sounds like.
And your book really, you did a wonderful job of the theology and applying it in a way
that people can really do.
There's a template, like Greg said.
Friend, if you're listening and you're looking for a way to learn how to hear God's voice,
I highly recommend Extraordinary Hearing by Greg Pruitt.
This is a book, we'll put it on the website. And it's just a book that'll help you tune in
to the things that God wants you to know in a deeper relationship with Him,
which I just commend you, Greg, for giving us this tool.
It's become important in my life and I'm really grateful that you wrote it
and that you took the time to talk to us about it today.
It did take me about nine years between those two books to figure that one out.
If it's not any good, then don't tell me. It is good. Hey, listen, so somebody out there, Greg,
is in the midst of, we call it the massive thing, the hardest thing they've been through.
They just got the diagnosis, they just lost a child, the husband just left.
I hear from these people every day that are listening to this show.
And when you're in that state of the thing that's, the worst thing you've ever been through
is really raw and fresh,
like what's a way that people can, in that moment, can receive some help from God
that they might not know how to look for.
What would you say as a pastor to somebody in that fresh moment of pain?
I print it out and put on my wall and I'll read it to you, my scriptural answer to that.
In Isaiah 30, 15 through 16, he says, in repentance and rest is your salvation.
In quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
You said, no, we will flee on horses. Therefore, you will flee.
And the prophet is saying, quietness and rest and repentance and trust are the things that
will get you through that hard moment.
And if you say no, we're going to get on a horse and gallop.
I'm going to accelerate my life.
I'm going to use artificial intelligence. I'm going to use the latest technology.
I'm going to fill my life with books and TV and internet, what have you.
No, you will flee. You will accelerate your life out of control, trying to medicate your stress and strain.
But if quietness and repentance and rest and trust, if you can get quiet every day,
for a time and say, Lord, I am so lost and I can't find you.
Would you find me? Would you come and find me because I can't find you?
And he will come and he will find you.
And you will find rest when you get quiet.
Wow, that's probably the reason the Holy Spirit prompted me to reach out to you, Greg.
That's gonna help somebody.
Tyndale is your publisher. Katie is a publicist who set this up.
We're so grateful for Katie.
We'll shout her out here on the podcast. And I just encourage you,
even if it takes you another nine years, brother, write another book.
You're two for two. You're doing great work.
And just God bless you and your family. I'm gonna encourage the listeners here
to support Pioneer Bible Translators.
Lisa and I have been supporting y'all for a long time, and we believe in your work.
Our son Josh spent a year with you in Africa and just changed his life.
And so thanks for all that you do, Greg, and God bless you and your family.
Thank you, Lee, I appreciate it.
What an incredible conversation. Thanks to Greg for taking the time to be with us today
and for the incredible work that he's doing around the world.
If you're interested in supporting Pioneer Bible Translators,
please check out the website, pioneerbible.org, pioneerbible.org.
This is a great organization. We have been personally invested with them for a long time.
Our son, Josh, spent a year with Greg in Africa, translating the Bible and helping to take care of people
in Guinea, West Africa. It's been a powerful part of his story for many years.
And we're grateful for Greg and for you listening. Hey, please subscribe to the show
wherever you listen to podcasts or subscribe to this YouTube channel at the button below
and share with your friends if you think it's valuable.
God bless you, friend. Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
And the good news is you can start today.
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