What are the voices in your head that you can mistake for God's voice?

Outline:

Introduction: Respect God’s Name
The Voices in Your Head
Taking Control of Your Own Mind

Scriptures:

Deuteronomy 13:1-5
Romans 8:14
Hebrews 5:12–14
Philippians 4:8

Introduction

Respect God’s Name

Why is the Bible more important than what I say or what the Pastor says?

Because it’s God’s word

Any Word from God overrides what man says...right?

The Word of God is the highest authority in a Christian’s life

Therefore we need to not throw around the term of God “speaking”

I want to make sure we don’t trivialize the “Word of God”

If God says something today theoretically it should have the same authority as scripture.

Story: Birdman Interview

“Put some respeck on my name”
He said Cash Money doesn’t pay artists

False Prophets

What is Prophecy?

Foretelling the future?

No, Prophecy is saying what God said. It is speaking for God.

If you repeat something and attribute it to God then you are prophesying.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5

1 “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.

The penalty for false prophecy was death
The penalty for saying that God said something He didn’t say … was death

In Matthew 7:15-23 Jesus says to the false prophets: “‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

They prophesied in His name
Did miracles in His name

If a Pastor ever says God said something was going to happen and it doesn’t then he is a false prophet

God said if you donate you will be blessed …
God said that you (pointing at TV camera) will …
Predictions
Jehovah Witness leadership predicted end of world - 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918 and 1925

So it is crucial that we can discern God’s voice from some voices

We don’t want to trivialize the name of God by stating that everything is God speaking.

When we talk about “hearing From God” we mean any method that God communicates to us

Bible
Angel
Preacher
Prophet
Unction of the Holy Spirit
Etc...

Holy Spirit

Sufficiency of scripture
What then is the purpose of the Holy Spirit within us?

Being Led By the Spirit

Romans 8:14

14For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

How can you be “being led by the Spirit of God” if It doesn’t communicate with you?

The guidance we can get from the Holy Spirit was not available to Old Testament saints

Maybe God?

Example: Maybe God?

maybe Marquis - iPhone

Story: girlfriend said God told I was her husband

God doesn’t speak to people

The Voices in Your Head

every voice you hear in your head is not the Lord’s voice

Where Our Thoughts Come From

What does it mean that a thought can appear in your head? Where does it come from? What does that mean?

Thinking is an active process
If a thought came into your head where did it come from?

Is that “thinking”?

Think about it :-)

Your thoughts can come from multiple places

Your Mind
Your Flesh / Gut
God
The enemy

We will start by looking at the different voices in our heads. After that we will discuss how to know if it is God’s voice we are hearing.

To help us distinguish God’s voice we are going to first identify some of the other voices

Deafened By Your Own Voice

Story: Opera singer off key

Doctors try to treat her throat and larynx
Dr. Alfred Tomatis
1 meter; 140 Decibels
loud as a rock concert
It is louder in her own head
Was being deafened by her own voice
If you can’t hear a note you can’t reproduce it
Tomatis syndrome

We can’t reproduce what we can’t hear

We’re having problems repeating what we haven’t heard

We are suffering from a deafness caused by our own voice

Fear of other people’s opinion
Fear of rejection
Fear of embarrassment
Fear of failure
It may be drowned out by your prideful opinionated voice
It may be drowned out by the pounding of a past experience voice
An unforgiving voice
A self consumed voice
A refusal to try anything new voice
I need to see proof voice
The world - society
Bad theology
Fear of doing something so controversial that you will be isolated

Whatever voice is the loudest voice in your head is the voice that will drown out the voice of God

Is it Your Plan?

You want something. Your goals are good, and you're trying to get on board with God.

Let's say you've been watching God weave you and a friend together with weird "coincidences" and know this must be your future spouse.
Or maybe you need to raise funds for a ministry goal and you just met a wealthy neighbor. People encourage you. "Don't worry. God won't let your ministry close."
In faith, you haul out verses about provision or healing or whatever's appropriate.
You pray like crazy, share it with people, plan accordingly.

This must be God's plan. Except it isn't. It's your plan.

You're believing that God will fulfill a promise that He never made. And when He doesn't, your faith comes crashing down. You're confused, embarrassed, angry. He didn't do what you expected--but He never said He would. You put words in God's mouth that He never said. And when your dreams didn't come true, you think He failed you.

Confirm to Yourself That You Heard From God

If you're thinking "God told me," ask yourself when He said so, and how you know that it was Him. If you're leaning on your feelings, or the clues you've gathered, remember you're fallible. Scripture says our hearts are deceitful. You may be setting yourself up for a big fall.

Taking Control of Your Own Mind

Hebrews 5:12–14

12For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. 14But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses* trained to discern good and evil.

This doesn’t say “have your spirit trained”
“Senses” is physical and natural

*aisthētērion

faculty of the mind for perceiving, understanding, judging

How Do You Train your mind to discern?

Through practice
Practice of what ?

The first step to figuring out what God’s voice sounds like is to figure out what your own voice sounds like

You need to first discern what voices in Your Head Aren’t “You”

We’re going to look at the solution from two approaches:

A worldly/clinical/psychological approach
A Biblical/Spiritual path

Inner Critic

Philippians 4:8

8Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

What type of thoughts do you dwell on?

What Is the Inner Critic?

The inner critic is that voice inside our heads that constantly says negative self statements.

It is the self doubt that causes us to question our intuition and instincts.
It is the narrative of comparison and judgment that makes us doubt ourselves or causes shame.

Is that shaming voice that reminds us of the things we’ve done bad

It tells us that who I am is wrong

The basic message of the inner critic is “you are not good enough and you aren’t capable of becoming good enough “.

It whispers things like:

“I’m useless”
“I’m dull and boring...no wonder I’m not the center of attention at parties”
“Why did she pick me to do the presentation? It’ll be awful, and everyone will see I’m a fraud”
“I’m fat and lazy, I wish I was like her”
“He’s a selfish horrible nasty person, but she likes him more than me”
“Nobody likes me, I’m not nice”
“I’ll never have somebody to love me”
“let’s face it, I’m too unattractive to have a happy life”
“no wonder my wife isn’t attracted to me any more, I’m a mess”
“If they found out all the bad things I’ve done they would know I’m pretending to be a Christian”
“I can never stop sinning”

It will tell you come and have a drink it will make you feel better. But as soon as you start drinking it will say “why are you drinking?” you are such a loser.

Our self esteem and self image are developed by how we talk to ourselves, how we think of ourselves.

Not Your Realistic Thinking Voice

The inner critic voice is different from your critical thinking or realistic thinking voice. You can tell the difference by the tone of the thoughts in your head. inner critic is very repetitive and keeps saying the same thing. There’s no way this is going to work, there’s no way this is going to work. The inner critic voice is very black and white. It will talk to you for sure in meaner than the way you would want to talk to someone else.

The critical thinking voice is not repetitive, it's forward moving. The realistic thinking voice will move you to thinking about a solution. It has more of a curious tone. It is also able to see the gray where the inner critic is not.

It’s not the Holy Spirit’s conviction

Where did our inner critic come from?

The words of

Parents
Teachers
Bullies

It can be a mix of learned behavior and beliefs from:

Parents / caregivers
authority figures
Peers
Relationships
traumatic events
media saturation

These contribute to the rules for living and moral boundaries we set for ourselves, the rigid and inflexible ‘should and must and ought’ demands we apply to ourselves and others and the world. The resulting inner critical voice can give us a hard time and takeover to affect our quality of living and potential happiness in a big way.

Mirroring

We learn through mirroring and modeling what we see in our adult caretakers.

Judgment

You were judged harshly or frequently by parents or other family. You could begin to feel wrong, bad, and adequate or worthless especially if this judgment was accompanied by anger yelling or abuse.

Shame

Being shamed or ridiculed by parents, family, teachers would cause an inner critic self to come out to shame your child self. This is intended to protect you from doing what caused the shame in the first place. Kids may repeat the scolding phrase to themselves on their own.

Punishment as Control

Parents overreacted and punished the child for something they did and said they were bad. telling the child they are bad when they do something makes them feel bad about having natural impulses. This activates an inner critic part of the child that undermines or guilt trips the child and uses the same harsh approach that was used on him.

Rejection or Abuse

If your caretakers ended up rejecting or abusing you the child will feel that it doesn’t have the right to exist. This would create an inner critic part that blames you for the abuse to prevent you from fighting back and getting harmed even more or being abandoned entirely. It blames you to give you the illusion of being able to control or prevent the situation. It also prevents you from fighting back which would cause further abuse.

Guilt

If your parents use guilt to control you this would create an inner critic that guilts you into doing things or causes you to caretake for the parents. if they scolded you for wanting attention or gifts which is normal. Or if they represented themselves as martyrs and made it your responsibility to take care of their pain and make them feel good.

Diminishment

If you were judged or ridiculed whenever you are strong visible or capable. It will also activate an inner critic part to now protect you from further criticism.

Why Do We Have it?

The inner critic actually thinks it’s helping us, protecting us from surprise hurts or disappointments. But it’s not rational, and it is not constructive. Every time it ‘attacks’ it keeps our self worth low and stops us living a rich life. It becomes our boss.

It was there initially to help us.

When we got punished, ridiculed or criticized for some behavior, we began to criticize ourselves as protection to prevent us from doing it again.

The intensity of the inner critic’s attack will be proportional to the pain that the child felt. The more pain that the child felt the stronger and aggressive the inner critic will be to protect the criticized child.

The Solution: Silencing the Inner Critic

How do we silence the inner critic?

Anthropomorphize It

Example: treating dogs like humans

Clothes
Doggy daycare
Acupuncture
$58.5 Billion on pets this year

“We are going to ‘personalize and externalize’ it.

We’re going to see it as a living entity that is a separate thing to our actual self. Create a visual image for your own nagging unhelpful stupid inner critic. Make it small, make it ridiculous, give it a silly voice, give it a name if you like. Make it look and sound as silly as it is.

Remember the inner critic thinks it’s helping you, making you avoid or recognise things so as to keep you from shocks and hurts and disappointments – so it’s not an evil toxic monster, rather it’s a silly, confused, irrational, distorted, unhelpful bossy pest.

Most importantly, remember that it’s not actually YOU!”

Learn When It Speaks

~~~ Now, we have to learn to recognize his arrival and spot him chattering his destructive nonsense at us, and decide whether to ‘obey’, ‘argue’, ‘ignore’ or ‘laugh at’ it, (not ourselves, IT!). ~~~

It can attack when:

you’re feeling down
in response to negative stressful events
when meeting new people
when meeting people you find attractive
when you make a mistake
when you are being criticised
when you’re dealing with challenging people
during conversations where your fight or flight turns on and you get flustered
when you’re negatively mind reading how you think other people are perceiving you and your behaviour
when you’re negatively predicting an event that hasn’t even happened yet

(‘it’s going to be awful, etc.).

As you can see from the above examples, whenever we’re feeling an emotional disturbance, the idiot inner critic is bound to be around, clouding our rational brain, popping up to ‘help’ and ‘analyse’ and ‘problem solve’ the situation for us in his own peculiar ugly negative way. We can learn to ‘turn him off’ and neutralise him, we can learn to take away his power over us, the power that causes us upsetness and unhelpful behaviours – and we can replace him with our own new learned voice of calm evidence based rational thinking.

TIP: A widely used trick is to wear a loose rubber band around our wrist, and to snap it slightly each time we notice the inner critic, this can create a great psychological association for routine and rejecting the thoughts.

Self Awareness

We get more change by becoming deeply aware of who we are rather than striving to become someone we are not.

Once we realize the critic, our default response is to try to fight the inner critic or prove him wrong. This just puts you into the trap of thinking that you were not good enough and you have to change. That hinders the “you are already good enough” voice.

We need deeper awareness and acceptance of what is without judgment.

We can’t become whole in an environment of judgment and comparison.

Asking it to Step Down

The ultimate goal is to turn the inner critic into an inner coach

Once you personify the inner critic:

Don’t judge it
Realize that it came to help you
Empathize with it
Explain to it that you are more capable of handling yourself now
You no longer need its services
And ask it to step aside and let you handle things from now on

5 steps to Tame Your Inner Critic

Our personal power comes from the ability to observe what we think rather than just react to what we think.

Observe rather than react
Dis-identify from your thoughts
Order your negative self talk
Rewrite/reframe the messages
Ask if this is how you talk

Observe the thoughts that come into your head

We believe that we are not worthy of love we may not know it. We deal with codependency by

Our attachment to other people
People pleaser
Shutting down
Ability to disassociate

Dis-identify from your thoughts

You are not your thoughts. you are not your negative self talk. they are the product of negative self talk and childhood trauma. They are the product of your super ego trying to keep you safe in what was most likely an unpredictable world.

Order your negative self talk from 1 - 5

5 being the most abusive.

Take down in a notebook and write down your self talk. You may hear yourself saying I’m fat I’m ugly I’m lazy I will never get ahead in life. The ones that hurt the deepest when you read them that would be a number five.

Rewrite/reframe the messages

Your brain needs something to say in place of those messages.

For example you can refrain a fear of aging with “ it’s good that I making. It’s wonderful to be alive today “. “ every wrinkle is a laugh“

Now when I hear the negative self talk I will think about my new phrasing.

Ask if this is how you talk

Is this how you were talk to a best friend? Is this how you were talk to a child? would you want someone you love to have to struggle with those types of phrases?

This would help you acknowledge the pain those phrases would have if you were speaking to someone who is innocent. It’s important to recognize that the self talk is painful. When is your self talk you are feeling the pain of it but it turns it into shame.

It doesn’t happen when you observe the phrase happening to someone else.

Often times the things that we say to ourselves we would never say to anyone else.

When the brain understands that this phrase is negative and painful it will not want to continue using the phrase on you. Because the brain wants to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

You want to develop positive self talk.

My Approach

Story: preparing this bible study

Turn it over to God

If you’re following God’s will then the results aren’t up to you

The results don’t matter

You’re only responsible to do your part. The results are up to God.

Instructor: Michael Leadon

References

A CBT Technique: Silencing the Inner Critic (Visualization & Self Talk)

https://iveronicawalsh.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/a-cbt-technique-silencing-the-inner-critic/

Hearing from Heaven: How to Know the Voice of God (Justin Peters) - Podcast

Silencing the Inner Critic