009 Says Who?—Me

This short series is all about knowing who you're hearing from inside and outside of prayer. In this episode, we take some time to get to know ourselves. Join us in this episode as we learn to know when we are hearing our thoughts and feelings in times of prayer instead of hearing from God. If you know how you talk to yourself, you can better align yourself with Scripture, and more confidently know when you're hearing from God.

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Transcript

Welcome back everybody to Holistic Christian Prayer. 

Today we begin a three-part mini-series. A while back, I created a public Facebook group for the podcast. I created this group so that you and I can have more back and forth interaction, as well as provide a place for like-minded people to share insights, encouragement, and to make suggestions for the podcast. Now, a few weeks ago, I asked those that joined that Facebook group to vote on which topic they were most interested in hearing me discuss on the podcast. Well, the votes are in, and I'm ready for the topic. For those of you who'd like to join the Facebook group, I'll leave a link for you to join in the show notes. The topic that won the vote was How do I know when I'm hearing from God, myself, or from Satan? Well, I'm excited, so let's get started. 

Did you know that it's not just mentally ill people who talk to themselves? It's true. And in fact, we are all constantly talking to ourselves. And often we continue talking to ourselves even as we are engaged in prayer. As a result, it can sometimes make it hard to know if we are really hearing from God or just our own thoughts and feelings. We will talk about that a little more in just a bit, but first, I think I need to convince you that you really do talk to yourself all the time. 

All throughout the day we are internally talking to ourselves about all sorts of things. In our minds, we are conversing with ourselves about what we think and feel, about all sorts of things as they come up. And often we are internally discussing what we are considering as we go about making decisions. We drift in and out of awareness of these silent and internal conversations that go on within our mind. Sometimes we are very aware of what we're thinking and feeling, and at other times we are unaware of how what we are saying to ourselves in our thoughts are affecting our decisions. 

Talking to ourselves is actually a part of normal psychological development and is known as egocentric speech or private speech. Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and genetic epistemologist who lived from 1896 to 1980. If you were to ask him for a definition of egocentric speech, he would say that it's a mindset that, quote, vivifies the external world and materializes the internal world. Yeah, not super helpful, right? Others have provided a more helpful definition of this concept. According to PsychologyGenie.com, Piaget's concept of egocentric speech is, " speech in which there is no attempt to exchange thoughts or take into account another person's point of view". If we break down the word egocentric into two parts, ego and centric, it becomes a little easier to understand what Piaget is talking about. 

Whenever we say someone has a big ego, we mean that they think a lot of themselves, often in an exaggerated, overinflated, and flattering manner. We may even call them egotistical. I'll give you my own definition of ego that might help you. Ego is composed of all the things a person thinks, knows, or believes about themselves, whether that is positive or negative. Some of these thoughts of the self can also be things that we are either consciously or unconsciously aware of. 

If you were to Google ego right now, chances are you'd find articles referring to Freud's work on the id, ego, and superego. Please note that in Freud's field, known as psychoanalysis, ego involves additional concepts that expand the idea of ego beyond what I just stated. Freud, and those who followed after him in the field of psychoanalysis, would agree with the definition I gave, but would insist that ego involves more than I've said. For the sake of this episode, I'm not delving into those more complex concepts. After all, the point of my definition is to make things easier to understand, not harder. So for those of you that study psychology, please know that I am aware that ego in psychoanalytic theory involves more than what I've said. And in a moment, I'm going to give you guys a definition that would appease the people who are into psychoanalytic theory who study psychology. So for those of you who are satisfied with the definition I just gave, ignore the actual definition of ego according to psychoanalytic theory that I am about to give. 

According to the Encyclopedia of Britannica, ego in psychoanalytic theory is defined as, " That portion of human personality which is experienced as the self, or I, and is in contact with the external world through perception". Right. So that if that didn't make sense to you, back up a couple seconds to hear the definition that I gave, it's more like operational, gets you an idea of what we're working with rather than exactness when it comes to psychology. 

The second portion of the word in egocentric, centric, is similar to the word central, which means of the greatest importance, principle, or essential. In the same way that the sun is at the center of our solar system and everything else in it revolves around it, egocentric speech is all speech that revolves around or centers on the self. Remember that at the beginning I said that talking to ourselves is a normal part of human development? Well, Piaget saw egocentric speech as something that occurs between the ages of three and seven as a child is learning how to speak. He observed that during this developmental stage, children speak to themselves and that they almost always use loud speech. 

Piaget explains that this kind of speech arises before a child learns how to use social speech, that is, speech that takes into account the thoughts and feelings of other people. Piaget believed that as social speech came into maturity, it would replace egocentric speech. 

Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian psychologist who developed a theory of sociocultural theory who disagreed with Piaget on this point. According to PsychologyGenie.com, Vygotsky said that children used egocentric speech because, "... they had not yet developed the concept of internalizing their thoughts. The child, he said, had not yet learned the concept of being able to think his thoughts through, deduce them, and then speak. He was in the process of learning, and therefore the constant instructions that were passed on to him were verbalized loudly without processing them". Eventually the term egocentric speech was replaced with the term private speech. Now, some of you listening so far might be saying, yes, that is all very well and good, but what does this have to do with prayer? Well, as it turns out, it has a lot to do with it. 

Whether we realize it or not, the person we talk to the most is ourselves, and we're often talking to ourselves in times of prayer. Despite our best efforts to quiet our minds when we go to pray, we often find ourselves continuing to talk to ourselves. Knowing when this is going on can be helpful in at least two ways. The first is that it helps us to know who is speaking to us, and this helps us to weigh the content of what we're hearing. The second is that if we can know that we are hearing our own thoughts and feelings while in prayer, we can take those thoughts and feelings to God in prayer. 

I've often found when I'm trying to quiet my mind during prayer, and my own thoughts and feelings won't quiet down, that's usually an indication that I need to pray about what's coming to mind. Even if it seems unrelated or insignificant, I take these loud thoughts and present them to God. I'll say something like, God, I don't understand why I'm seeming to ruminate on this or why these things keep coming up in my mind. Show me why my mind is fixed on them and what you want me to do about it. I want to stay focused on you in my prayers, and right now these things seem only to be distractions. Help me to know how to pray about them through your Holy Spirit. 

I've also found that sometimes it is God's will for me to take a long look at what I'm thinking and feeling and why. God cares about what's on my mind and how it's affecting me. And so sometimes God will actually be the one who is causing these things to surface in my mind during my prayer time. There have been many times where God wants to address what's going on in my thought life, that is, what I'm saying to myself, because it's harmful to me, to those who are close to me, or my relationship with God.

In fact, I go as far as saying that refusing to take these things to God in prayer is simply allowing our pride to turn away the help that God is eager to give us. Just in case you think I'm merely stating my personal opinion, listen to what God says in 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 6 through 7. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you". Notice that what Peter is saying here is that to bring your anxieties to God is an act of humility. So to refuse to do so is an act of pride. For some people, they don't bring their anxieties to God because they pridefully believe that they are capable of handling those things on their own, or because they have been led to believe somewhere along the line that they should be able to handle those things on their own. 

For other people, they don't bring their anxieties to God because they consider them to be too small or too insignificant to bother God with. When someone really loves you though, nothing is too small or insignificant to bother them with. A person that truly loves you wants to know what's on your mind. Especially if that's causing you discomfort or pain. And God truly loves you. Deeply loves you. That's the second half of what first Peter chapter five verses six says. It says casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. 

He loves you, he cares for you, and he wants you to share with him everything and anything that is causing pain or anxiety. Just to be clear, you don't have to feel anxious about something in order for something to be considered an anxiety. It's enough that you can't stop thinking about something. Bring anything at all that causes you to worry, to despair, to feel frustration, to fear, to feel bitter, to feel jealous, to feel envious, or anything that your mind fixates upon. Bring it all to him. Especially if they cause you to withdraw from prayer or from spending time with other believers. Now back to some more psychology stuff. Although Piaget and Vykotsky might see private speech as a part of human development, I contend that private speech is something that persists throughout a person's lifetime. We all continue talking to ourselves throughout our lifetime, not just during what was the ages three to seven, I think it was, or two to seven, three to seven, that Piaget said earlier. No, we we do this all throughout our life. And although in most people that speech becomes internal and therefore inaudible, what we say to ourselves has a huge impact on our lives. So it becomes inaudible, goes internal, and what we're saying internally, inaudibly to ourselves has a huge impact on our lives.

If you spend any amount of time observing the way you talk to yourself and your thoughts, you'll notice a couple of things. First is, as you're thinking about something, in your mind you're hearing a version of your own voice. The voice that you hear is similar to your natural audible speech. In terms of tone, pitch, phrasing, and other linguistic mannerisms, the way you think is similar to the way you speak. Keep in mind that what I'm talking about is an internal experience and not an audible voice. Nevertheless, as we think about these things, the thoughts are experienced as a kind of voice that we hear, in some sense within our minds. 

If I were to ask you to recite the alphabet in your head, chances are that you are hearing yourself recite the alphabet in your mind with a voice that sounds very similar to how you sound when you speak out loud. Another time you might hear this inner voice of yours is when you're reading something to yourself silently. Chances are you are hearing a voice in your head that sounds a lot like how you would sound if you were to read those same words out loud. And when we do that, that's actually something called sub-vocalization. And if you're a speed reader, they tell you don't sub-vocalize. It really slows you down. So don't do it. 

But for the purposes of knowing how to identify the voice in your head when you're talking to yourself thing, it's a good way to know what that sounds like. So pick up a book, read something, and do that sub-vocalization, even if you're a speed reader, if you're at all unclear as to what your internal voice sounds like. 

Remember how a moment ago I said that the way we talk to ourselves and our thoughts will be similar in terms of tone, pitch, phrasing, and linguistic mannerisms? Well, I'll give a quick personal example. A linguistic mannerism of my audible speech is that I tend to drift off and not conclude a point I'm making before moving on to a new thought. This is in part because I have ADHD. My point in bringing this up is that in the same way that I tend to drift off in my audible speech, the same is true of the way I hear myself speaking internally within my own mind. This is a fairly reliable way of identifying myself as the source of what I hear during my times of prayer. I have other ways of identifying when it's me I'm hearing during prayer, but I believe these are particular to me. It will be your job to think about, pray about, and make note of the way that you audibly speak so that you can become aware of your own internal voice. 

Your internal voice might not be identical to the way you speak, but it will be similar. It is therefore valuable to learn what your internal voice sounds like, because not everything you hear that voice saying will be helpful or true. I'll have more to say on the content of what we hear ourselves saying to ourselves a little further into this episode. However, one way that you can know if you're just hearing your own thoughts and feelings in times of prayer is to know how you sound when you're talking to yourself.

Secondly, you might notice that sometimes you find yourself saying things to yourself that originated from what others have said to you or about you. When we are saying these things to ourselves, the voice that you're hearing in your mind most often sounds like the original source. That's why you hear people say things like, I can just hear my dad's voice in my head saying, you know, turn off the light when you leave the room. That was a big one when I was growing up. Turn off the light when you leave the room. Raised in a barn, you know, you can hear those things and you can recall them and you hear their the way it sounds in your mind. You're not audibly hearing it, you know, you know, it's not coming through your eardrums and your brain interpreting the air wave signals and all this stuff. No, you're not hearing an audible voice. But when you are saying some of the things that other people have said, it tends to be in that other person's voice. 

I say that that it most often sounds like that original source because sometimes we absorb what other people say to us so deeply that when we talk to ourselves, we don't hear their voice, but instead we hear our own. And that can make it harder to know who you're hearing from in times of prayer. Psychologists call this internalizing the voices of others. Depending on what's been internalized, what others have said to us can be a source of support and strength, or it can be the source of ongoing pain and suffering. I'll have more to say about this in the next episode.

The third thing you will notice about this internal voice you experience is that it tends to repeat things that are consistent with your personality, whether the content of those thoughts are positive or negative. Not many of us go out of our way to inflict pain and suffering upon ourselves. It's almost universally true that human beings avoid pain as much as possible and seek pleasure as often as possible. However, the effect of sin on human personality and the rational mind is that sometimes the things that we can hear ourselves saying to ourselves does inflict pain, pain on ourselves. 

I said earlier that it's important to know when we are hearing ourselves speaking to us, especially during times of prayer, because not everything we hear is true or helpful. I also said that what we hear will be consistent with our personality, whether negative or positive. A person suffering with depression or low self-worth may hear things during times of prayer that are in line with their depression or low self-worth. A person who struggles with a lot of self-directed anger or self-hatred might hear things during times of prayer that support or deepen those feelings of self-directed anger or hatred. The problem is if we don't realize that we are really hearing from ourselves when we go to pray rather than hearing from God, we might come away from prayer time thinking God is saying things to us that He isn't saying. 

It's really important to know when we are hearing ourselves in prayer because even people who are emotionally and psychologically healthy will have areas where they tend to think things about themselves, others, and God in a way that is contrary to God's word, contrary to Scripture. If they can become aware of what they tend to say to themselves, they can take those contrary things to God in prayer and bring them under submission to God's word and therefore renew their mind to think more true things. If we can recognize when we are saying things to ourselves that are contrary to God's word, that helps us take every thought captive to Christ.

For those of you not fluent in Christianese, that's the language Christians tend to use when discussing biblical concepts or elements of the Christian lifestyle. This means that this kind of awareness allows us to surrender those contrary thoughts to God and exchange them for truth. This kind of awareness enables a Christian to live in obedience to what the Bible commands of us, in passages like Romans twelve, two, which says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." 

If contrary thoughts and feelings are not brought before God to be challenged, defeated, and replaced by God's truth, they can become strongholds within us. More Christianese, I'm sorry. If we continue saying to ourselves things that are contrary to God's word, contrary to scripture, eventually they will create fortified places for themselves within us that strongly resist allowing God's truth from entering in and liberating us. It becomes much harder for us to bring those contrary thoughts and feelings out and surrender to God's truth when they are walled inside of a stronghold. Wow, a lot of metaphors here, I'm sorry. Basically, the longer we let untruth reside and reign within our hearts and minds, the harder it will be to surrender them later. We need to be aware of our thoughts, especially if they're contrary to the word of God. 

But if we are monitoring our thoughts to make sure they are in line with God's word, we also therefore need to know what God's word says. Right? This seems fairly obvious. You can't say something's contrary if you don't know what the original thing said. And that means we need to know what the Bible says, right? We need to know. And that means that we have to read our Bible and understand it very well. That's a topic for another episode. If this idea of taking every thought captive to Christ seems overwhelming to you, consider what 2 Corinthians chapter ten verses three through five says because Paul is ascribing what Christians do with contrary thoughts and strongholds. 

"For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." 

Man, divine power to destroy strongholds. And every argument and every lofty opinion, that includes our own lofty opinions. They're destroyed. We destroy them because they are contrary. And so we make our thoughts captive and we cause them to obey Christ. All of those lofty thoughts, all those opinions, all those thoughts that we have, and we will them to submit to God's truth, to obey Christ. At this point in the episode, you're probably thinking, dude, come on. Tell me how I can know when I'm hearing my own thoughts and feelings versus hearing from God already. Alright, okay, fair enough, fair enough. 

Truth be told, a lot of the time we won't be able to say with absolute certainty who we are hearing from when we're in prayer. However, we can be reasonably sure that we are hearing from ourselves rather than God by keeping our eyes and ears on the lookout for the following things.

The first is if it sounds like you, it's probably you. And that seems really basic, but that's where we're going to start. If it sounds like you, it's probably you. So that's again underscores the importance of knowing what you sound like. Maybe you're not aware of you you tend to talk to yourself in very uplifting ways most of the time, but in certain areas of your life, you are fairly pessimistic. Um and you wouldn't know that unless you're paying attention to the way that you talk to yourself internally. Also, if it sounds like you, it's probably you. It often does sound like your own audible speech. So if you're hearing stuff in your times of prayer, and it just sounds like how you normally talk out loud, it's probably you. 

If uh what you hear repeats over and over, similar to the way that like you kind of ruminate on things that are stressing you out or causing you anxiety or worry, it's probably you. And I've I've also noticed that people tend to be fairly critical of themselves, even the people that are like really, you know, uh, I'll just say like emotionally well off, people who are very healthy that way. We we all can be fairly critical of ourselves and we utilize a lot of negative speech. In fact, there's um I think it I think it was the Ministry of Celebrate Recovery, I had somebody had shared at one point about the way that we talk to ourselves should be more like the way that we talk to our friends. 

Because few people are harsh and critical with the way that they talk to their friends, and few people do it with the regularity that we do it to ourselves. We we regularly talk to ourselves harshly and in a critical way, and we do it often. If we talk to our friends the way that we talk to ourselves most of the time, we probably wouldn't have many friends. So if what we're hearing is overly negative or critical, chances are it might be ourselves that we're hearing. 

Another obvious source in that instance, if it's overly negative and full of shame and causes you to feel down and all that kind of thing, another likely culprit's probably Satan. But we'll get to that later. 

The second thing, the first thing that we said was if it sounds like you, it's probably you, and I gave you a couple of little examples. And the second is if what you're hearing is contrary to God's word, it might be yourself that you're hearing. Again, Satan might be the other culprit.

 There's, you know, there are other potential sources for you hearing things that are contrary to God's word, but it can be known for certain that anything that we hear that is contrary to God's word is not coming from God. God doesn't contradict himself ever. That's why you'll hear pastors and uh people who study the Bible and teach the Bible, they say that scripture agrees with scripture. God agrees with God. He doesn't contradict himself ever. So if you read something in the Bible, and then later on you're in prayer, and something floats into your mind, into that, you hear that internal voice, and you think it it might be God, but it's in conflict, it contradicts something that you know to be true in Scripture, then you can be confident that it's not God. And it's either you or the enemy. 

So, with that, in order, again, to know that something's contrary to God's word, you have to really be familiar with God's word. So that means that you have to study it and understand it well. That takes a bit of time and practice and a little bit of uh you can self-educate and get help from other people on how to read the Bible well, how to read it contextually. But it does require that you know what Scripture says. So that way, like when something is said that is contrary to it, you can be like, ah, that's not God. At the very least, you can be confident that God's not saying things to you that are contrary.

The third point is if what you're hearing is encouraging you to sin, so you're in prayer and something seems to be encouraging you to sin, to rationalize committing any sin, or justifying uh justifying you committing any sin, it might be you that you're hearing from. And again, it's definitely not God speaking to you. In the book of James, chapter one, verse thirteen, it says, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. And again, God doesn't contradict himself, so he's not going to tempt you. He's not going to try to encourage you to sin, rationalize committing sin, or justifying any sins. He's not going to do any of that. He doesn't do that. And again, by knowing Scripture, you would you would know that that's not the kind of thing he does. And so you can flatly, resolutely reject it. 

Number four, if a prompting to do something that God approves of is followed up with a reason or excuse not to do something, it might be you. It might also be Satan. All these ones where I'm saying it might be you, it might also be Satan. But we'll get to Satan later. You guys are going to hear me talk about this quite a lot later when we talk more about the Holy Spirit in particular. But I call it when when the Holy Spirit is like sort of nudging us to do something, I call it prompting or nudging. And there'll be times where it seems like God is nudging or prompting us to do something, sometimes while while in prayer, but also just you know, day-to-day living, he'll prompt us to do something that is clearly something that God approves of, wants us to be doing, because it's found somewhere in scripture that he wants us to be doing those things, like sharing the gospel, for instance.

If you are in that situation, you're being prompted by God to do something that he approves of, and it's immediately followed up with a reason or an excuse not to do that something, it might be you that's trying to talk you out of it. Again, also could be Satan, but it might be you trying to talk you out of it. Because in times that we're, for instance, like if we're living in sin, unrepentant sin, or when we're simply spending not that much time with God, it's a lot easier for us in those times of our lives to it's it's more common for us during those times to try to wiggle out of following whatever prompting God gives us. And you might notice this in times of prayer. 

He might be like, all right, I want you to be, I want you to be more frugal with your spending. And I also want you to be, I want you to increase your tithe or something like that. And you already feel strapped for cash. You initially have this thought that bubbles up, and then you have the follow-up thought, which tries to give you a good reason to like wiggle out of it and not to do that thing. That second follow-up idea is probably coming from you. Also, in times when our perspective is set on worldly things and not the things of God, our minds are quick to suggest reasons why we shouldn't follow that prompting from him. 

We'll say things like, hmm, or think, you know, to ourselves, hmm, maybe that wasn't really him. Or, well, they don't look like they need my help. Or, I'm already really broke, I can't afford to fill in the blank. I have this and this and this responsibility. God wouldn't want me to be irresponsible with this, or that would be just really awkward. Or, but what if this happens, you know, fill in the blank? What if that happens? And we we threw up all these reasons to hesitate or to not go forward or to ignore these promptings or nudges that I call them, promptings and nudges. Um, and we can experience that whether we're in prayer or out of prayer, but when we're in prayer, that secondary thought that is quick to try to make us turn away from doing things that we know God approves of, that's generally speaking, that's us. Again, Satan could be involved, but I don't want to blame everything on Satan. So it's most likely probably us. So, yeah, if if we if we hear God telling us to do something that we know he approves of, we we know that from Scripture, we know that based on his character, and we decide not to do that thing that we're being prompted or nudged to do, yeah, it's probably us, but it's a sin. If you uh read James, the book of James, chapter four, verse 17, it says, "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is a sin." 

So just be careful that if you get these nudgings or these promptings from God, that you're not going along with like the shutting down of following through with it. Because if you know it's something that God wants you to do and you don't do it, the Bible says that that's a sin. And I don't really have a way of softening that blow at all. It's it is what it is. It does take some time and also some practice for you to be able to act upon what you believe the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do or nudging you to do.

But no matter how much practice you get, I want you guys to hear me really clearly, you will get things wrong at some point. That's okay. And getting things wrong blesses us by humbling us. You're gonna get things wrong. So if you're a perfectionist, man, it's gonna be really hard for you to follow God. And I would know because that's me. So be comfortable with the idea that you're gonna get things wrong, you're gonna feel awkward, you're gonna feel embarrassed at some points, and that's okay. The worst that happens is that we become more humble, that we uh listen more carefully. We really strain our ears and hearts to hear from God. So, not the worst thing that can happen to you. 

The fifth way you can know that it's probably you that is speaking in times of prayer is that what you're hearing is in conflict with what you know God has said to you. 

So there's the things that God uh has said to all of us through Scripture, but then there's things that God has said to you, that you you have good reasons to believe that He He did, in fact, say this thing to you. You have no reason to doubt that that you misheard it or whatever. You are confident that God did tell you something, and then later on during a time of prayer, you hear something that is contrary to what God told
you. Usually a sign that this is what's going on is that God will tell you something to the to the effect of uh something that that's kind of like scary and uh risky, requires a bit of faith in order for you to do. And you felt very strongly at the time that he told you that, hey, I want you to do this, and like you're like, okay, God, I hear you loud and clear. And then later on, it might even be within the same day, you might be in prayer later, and a thought comes across your mind, it kind of, you know, you're questioning is that God or not? 

If it contradicts what you know God has said to you in the past, I wouldn't say it's for sure you, and you're just kind of like backpedaling. But it's it's fairly likely that it is. We would get nervous, we don't want to uh step out in faith, and so uh it can be difficult to continue marching forward to the orders that God has given you or the instruction that he's given you. And every now and again our mind will play a little trick and try to throw us a curveball and be like, oh, well, here's this other thing that God is saying, you know, quote unquote. God's saying this also, and it's in conflict with what he said to you earlier. So if that's happening to you, kind of give that a squinty side side glance look and view it with suspicion and uh don't let up on that thing. Keep praying about it, ask others to pray with you, get some wisdom and insight. 

Uh, another another indicator, speaking of talking about um other people, point number six, what you're hearing is in conflict with what God has said through other believers who are close to you. These are people who know you, who regularly spend time with you, who are believers, and who God has spoken to you through them. He used your your fellow believers that are close to you, some of your friends from your church or wherever, anywhere where you have believers that are actually close to you and know you, and God chose to speak through them and say something important to you. Now, when you go to go pray, should you hear something that's in conflict with what God has said through other people, other believers who are close to you, to you, God says it through them to you, if what you're hearing is in conflict with that, again, I would get suspicious of it. Not not like a black and white, like, oh that's for sure. That's you know, that's just you. But be suspicious of that. 

It is also, it's probably like about 50-50 chance that it should it's your own mind. But people are fallible, so sometimes the the believers around us, even though they're good intentioned and wise and they have their own gifts and and and things of that nature, people do get things wrong. But it should be like a red flag to you. If other people have spoken powerfully into into your life, maybe people have prophesied over you or given you like words of knowledge or wisdom, exercising gifts of the spirit, and all of a sudden you are hearing things during your prayer time that are in conflict with what other people have uh said to you by the Spirit of God, I would, I would really, I would be very hesitant to accept that contrary thing that you're hearing. I'd wrestle that thing to the ground in prayer, and I'd ask other people to pray with me, to pray with you, and to figure that out. Because again, God does not contradict himself. 

So if God's saying something through a group of other believers and they're all in agreement, and all of a sudden something bubbles up in your head that is uh in conflict with or completely contradicts the other thing that they're saying, yeah, I would not I wouldn't not view that thing as something that God is saying, because God does not contradict himself.

Speaking of uh how to know if it's you versus uh God or Satan, what you're hearing in your time of prayer is long-winded. So if it sounds like me right now, or it just goes on and on and on, it's probably not God. 

A lot of people have commented and reflected on the sudden, short, to the point, punchy sort of way that God speaks to people. And it it usually comes suddenly, out of the blue, or um just just very soon after a question is raised or an opinion is uh stated uh during times of prayer, and the answer surprises them, takes them off guard, and typically what you the person hears being said is short in terms of its length. So he's not gonna give you paragraphs of things generally. Most people, when they say they they hear God speaking to them, it's a short thing. So if it rambles on in the same sort of way that I talk, or in the same way that your thoughts seem to just keep going and going and ruminating on the same things, I would view that very likely to be your own thoughts. 

Point number eight would be if everything that you're hearing agrees with the way you typically think and feel, especially if those things are unkind or bitter thoughts about other people. 

So if it causes you to feel like if it causes you to feel justified in being bitter towards someone or withholding forgiveness from somebody because they didn't really show that they were that they were really repentant, that they they weren't really sorry. And, you know, you're in prayer and you're you're saying these things to God, and all that's coming back to you is like basically either no answer, it's like a silent thing, or it it just seems to sort of like nod in agreement with what you're saying, or even like kind of hear words like, yes, like they they need to be more repentant, or like they need to like they need to work to get back into your good graces, kind of thing. That that's that is uh huge red flag. 

But we're not we're not Jesus, we're not perfect, and uh often there will be at least something that when you offer it up into prayer, God will kind of like zoom in and double-click on that and draw your attention to and be like, hmm, is that are you really being like my son Jesus in regards to this? And if you're really honest, you'll say no. So if it agrees with everything you think and feel, especially things that are um things that would make you feel justified in withholding forgiveness or being bitter or being angry or in in treating people cruelly, then you can be very, very confident that it's probably you.

Point number nine, when the things that you're hearing encourage you to pursue what you want, even at the expense of other people, you can you can very reliably know that that's most likely you. 

In the book of James, chapter four, verses one through three says this "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask, you do not ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." 

So if there's elements in your times of prayer where your your thoughts or the things that you think that you're hearing from God tend to be where it's encouraging you to go after things, to get the things that you really want, the things that you crave, and they might be good things, it might even be things that God really wants you to have. But if He's if the voice that you're hearing is encouraging you to pursue and chase down those things, even if it means that you have to trample or put other people down in order to get it, that you are injuring people along the way, it's not God. It's most likely you, or again, you know who. 

And finally, point number ten, and there's probably more points that I could draw out, but this episode is already very long, so I'll end it with ten. The last way that you can be reasonably sure that uh the voice you're hearing is really your own voice, is if what you're hearing causes you to feel pride or to feel superior to other people. 

Philippians chapter two, verses three through four says this.

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." 

God is love. If you look at the way that Jesus interacts with all different kinds of people, he was extremely humble. He was Lord and Savior, and yet he put himself in the place of a servant. He served his own disciples. And he did look after the interests of his disciples. And uh as well as his own interests. You know, he had to eat, he had to work, he had to do things he had to do to get by in life. But he cared deeply about other people. And even though he was superior, he was superior to everyone. He didn't treat them that way. He treated them with humility and with love and with gentleness and speaking to them in truth. And so those are at least ten ways with like little sub points. How to know when you're in prayer that it's you that you're hearing from, rather than God or from Satan. There of course there are other ways to tell, and if I had more time, I would go over more of them. But like I said, the episode's already long. And I I really want you guys to come away from this with not so many things to consider that you just do nothing with it. 

I hope that you guys are able to really zone in on the way that you talk to yourself, and you become aware of the times that you are talking to yourself and being able to differentiate that from the way that God speaks to you. And that is tricky. That's that's a harder thing to learn, is to know how to know uh when it is that God is speaking to you. But it starts with getting to know how you talk to you, getting familiar with the way that that internal voice is chattering away all the time. 

Well, guys, yeah, the next episode is going to be interesting. It's gonna be primarily a talk about how to know when it's the enemy that's talking to you, both in prayer and outside of prayer. I'm trying to do a little bit of both, like inside and outside of prayer, how you can know when it's Satan that you're hearing from, or from any of his other demons that are out and about doing his will. So that'll be hopefully not too dark of a topic. And uh I'm I'm really looking forward to giving you guys that information because I think a lot of people just go about their life, even in their prayer life, unaware of all the horrible things that Satan is just continually like clogging up our minds with and causing us to fixate on. And I have lots to say on that. 

So thanks guys for sticking around. Um hope to hear back from you guys. Uh again, I will put the link in the show notes for the Facebook group, and um I'm excited to continue the mini-series. So let me know what you think. Rate and review, all that stuff. Please, please, because I don't even have a Spotify rating yet, guys. Come on, help brother out. On the flip side, 200 total downloads since the beginning of starting the show. So that is something, you guys. That's cool. And uh a couple different countries. I'm actually very surprised. Uh, so that's really cool. Um, so I'm just gonna pray I real quick. 

Lord, help us to know when it's just us talking to ourselves that um that the way that you talk to us is different than the way that we talk to ourselves. And uh help us to become aware of uh the internal voice that we use when we speak to ourselves that way we can know, at least for sure, that it's not you speaking to us when we're hearing ourselves. Um Father, I just ask for um I ask that through your Holy Spirit you give everyone listening uh discernment, you give them greater awareness of uh who's doing the talking and being able to identify it and be able to grow in this way so that way they can more reliably come to you in prayer and feel confident that they know they're hearing from you. Pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.