Teach a Man to Fish

Posted by Dion Todd September 9th, 2024 1,455 Views 33 Comments

Today, I want to talk about something crucial for our spiritual walk: listening to the Holy Spirit for ourselves instead of relying on someone else to tell us what He said. It's kind of like that old saying, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." If we depend on others to hear God for us, we'll only get by for a short while. But when we learn to hear from the Holy Spirit ourselves, we're set up for a lifetime of guidance and growth.

You see, we need to get to a place in our walk where we can discern what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us. That means spending quality time in prayer, reading/hearing the Word, and being still enough to listen. It's about building that personal relationship with God where His voice becomes familiar to us. Then, once we've heard from Him, we wait for His confirmation to come through others - not the other way around. Too often, we look for others to tell us what God is saying, and then we try to make it fit into our lives and make a mess. But the Holy Spirit wants to speak directly to us, and when He does, He'll confirm it through those around us.

Jesus spoke a lot about hearing the Holy Spirit:

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

(John 14:26 NKJV) But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

(John 16:13–14 NKJV) However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

Jesus said this seven times in Revelation after He had ascended to heaven:

(Revelation 2:29 NKJV) "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." '

Jesus said the Holy Spirit will declare to you the things that are to come. He will bring things to our remembrance we have heard before. The Apostle Paul found some Christians in Ephesus who had never heard of the Holy Spirit:

(Acts 19:2 NKJV) he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" So they said to him, "We have not so much as heard whether there is a Holy Spirit."

Then Paul laid hands on them, and they began to speak in tongues and prophesy. Knowing the Holy Spirit is interactive: we pray, He speaks and gives direction, then we take action. He will rarely do it all for you. All the great people of the Bible had to hear the Spirit for themselves because others would mislead them, whether intentionally or not.

I have heard preachers say that the Lord only speaks to those in authority over you, like Moses, meaning them - but the Bible does not teach that. For example, when the Lord began speaking to young Samuel, the high priest Eli did not hear the conversation until Samuel told him.

When the Lord began speaking to young David, King Saul did not hear it. This means that the high priest Eli could not tell Samuel what the Lord said, nor could King Saul tell David what the Holy Spirit was saying because they didn't know. It was imperative that Samuel and David learned to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying because those over them could not.

In Acts 4:18, the religious leaders at the temple tried to forbid Peter and John to preach about Jesus anymore, but they knew better because they listened to the Holy Spirit, while the leaders did not. There is great spiritual danger when a sheep cannot recognize the Shepherd's voice. That makes it very easy to be misled, deceived, and blown about by every wind of doctrine.

There is an interesting story in 1 Kings chapter 13. The Lord sent a young prophet from Judah to Bethel to prophesy there. King Jeroboam was standing beside the altar, and when he heard the negative word that the prophet was speaking, the king pointed at him and said, 'Seize Him!' As the king did this, his arm shriveled up, and the altar collapsed. The prophet then prayed for the king, and his arm was restored. It was a sign from God that this was a true prophet, and signs and wonders followed him.

The Lord had warned the young prophet not to eat or drink anything at Bethel, so he started back home, but an old prophet who lived there found him on the road and convinced him to come to his house and eat. We pick this up in 1 Kings 13:18:

(1 Kings 13:18–19 NKJV) He said to him, "I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, 'Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.' " (He was lying to him.) So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house, and drank water.

The old prophet lied to him and said that the Lord told him to bring him back to his house. The young man believed him and went to his house. Unfortunately, when the young prophet left, he was killed on the road, and his story ended.

It is imperative that you learn to hear the Lord yourself, for others may unintentionally mislead you. Times and seasons change, and we need to be able to discern the will of the Spirit for us today.

When we pray, the Holy Spirit may speak to us in a thought, an impression, a vision, a dream, the words of song, or an unlimited number of other ways. He communicates with each of us differently, but there is usually a quickening of our spirit, a sudden inspiration, and something becomes much clearer than before. You just know it is the Lord speaking. Jesus said that He was the Good Shepherd and His sheep would recognize His voice:

(John 10:3–5 NKJV) To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."

If it is about an important decision, then God will usually confirm His word through other means, often from two or three different sources. As you practice listening, you will grow better at discerning His voice.

An example from my life: when the Lord began to push me into my own computer business, He would always put me in things that were way over my head to teach me to rely on Him alone. Computers used the command line then, and we didn't have cell phones. This was before we had the Internet, Google, or AI. I had no formal education, but the Lord gave me spiritual gifts in the late 1980s through a prophet. He called it "an ability to understand science and an understanding of things complex."

I worked on computers as a hobby at night. One day, an accountant's office called that had a networked database full of their customer's tax returns that had become corrupted and wouldn't open. It was vital to their business, and they needed help. I had never heard of such a thing and didn't want to go. I was about to tell them no thank you, but I prayed and felt like I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, "Go, and I'll go with you." So I reluctantly agreed to go and prayed in the Spirit all the way there. It was about a 40-minute drive to Pawley's Island.

I walked into the office, and they showed me the network server with the corrupted database. I sat down, typed a few commands to get the layout of the system, and suddenly knew exactly what to do. It just all seemed so natural, though I had never seen a networked server before. I successfully repaired the database, brought it back online, and was gone in half an hour. They thought I was a computer guru, but it was nothing but the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Soon, I had over 50 clients like that.

In Acts 4:13, the Pharisees were astonished by Peter and John's boldness. They knew that these apostles were uneducated, common fishermen, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. It was the power of the Holy Spirit. This is still happening today, and we need to get our inspiration directly from the source. We need to learn to come boldly to the throne of grace, to pray, and to listen for His inspiration more than ever before.

You can pray this with me if you like:

Prayer: Heavenly Father, please speak to me in a way that I understand. Teach me to recognize Your voice and when you are speaking. Teach me to hear Your Holy Spirit myself and protect me from deception. Please guide me into all that You have in store for me. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

If you would like to find out more about the Holy Spirit and hearing God's voice, please visit our Pastor's Corner for Pastor Dion's series' on the Holy Spirit and hearing God speak.