“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT)
The past few days I’ve given you several ways you can test an impression to know if it’s from God. There are two final questions you can ask to test your idea.
You need to ask, “Is it convicting or is it condemning?”
A lot of Christians go through life living under condemnation and guilt, thinking it’s the voice of God. But it’s not. That’s the devil!
Conviction comes from God. Condemnation comes from the devil. The purpose of conviction is to correct something that’s out of whack in your life. The purpose of condemnation is just to put you down and make you feel miserable and guilty and ashamed. The motivation behind conviction is that God loves you and wants to help you be better. The motivation behind condemnation is that Satan hates you and wants to make you miserable. When God speaks to you about an area in your life for conviction, he’s very specific. Condemnation is general.
God will give you a specific area of your life where something is out of whack. Then, he gives you the solution. You confess it to God, and the feeling of conviction leaves instantly. Condemnation, on the other hand, goes on and on and on.
Romans 8:1 says, “There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (NLT). God will never attack your value. If you hear a voice that says, “You’re hopeless! You’re worthless! You’re unlovable!” you can know that is not the voice of God.
Finally, you need to ask about your idea or impression, “Do I sense God’s peace about it?”
If you get an impression and it makes you feel pressured, overwhelmed, or confused, you need to question whether that impression is from God. Because God doesn’t want us to live under pressure. He wants us to sense his peace.
Satan wants to drive us compulsively. But God desires to draw us compassionately. Peter Lord used to say, “Ninety percent of what God says to us is encouragement.” Have you sensed God saying anything encouraging to you lately? Or is it all about pressure? God has some encouraging things to say to us.
There is a word for the pressure that comes into our lives that drives us away from God’s peace: worry. But Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
These verses tell us that worry is never from God. It only creates pressure in our lives. Those verses also give us this incredible promise: Take your worry to God, and leave it there. Listen to his voice. It will bring peace if you only obey it.
PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >>
Talk It Over
Take some time to write down these seven questions on a notecard, and put it somewhere that it is easily accessible so that you can reference it when you want to know if an impression is from God.
- Does it agree with the Bible? (John 7:17)
- Will it make me more like Christ? (James 3:17)
- Does my church family confirm it? (Ephesians 3:10)
- Is it consistent with how God has shaped me? (Ephesians 2:10)
- Does it concern my responsibility? (Romans 14:4)
- Is it convicting rather than condemning? (Romans 8:1)
- Do I sense God’s peace about it? (Philippians 4:6-7)
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