Can You Hear the Lord’s Voice?

Here’s the fourth of six testimonies I promised you in the previous post from one of my Lifestyle of Learning™ mom friends who went through the five mini coaching programs “Making Heart-Level Connections”.

After reading Teri’s thoughts about her life, I’d like to encourage you to check out the short introductory video at the bottom of this post. It’s only 15 minutes long, and along with my own commentary, you will get to hear the voices of several moms openly sharing their thoughts with you. My team and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to hear this message, so if you’d rather read the contents of the video instead of watching it, you can download the script here.

Here’s what Teri P. says about her life since participating in the coaching programs:

“It is beyond challenging to summarize all that God has done and is doing in me and my family since going through all five of the coaching programs! Everything about my walk with God has changed, deepened and grown by leaps and bounds! Every area of my life has been touched and changed on some level!

I have been doing SO much repenting and have received SO much mercy and forgiveness these last months! Everything seems to look different now as the Lord has literally given me new lenses! I am able to accurately see my sin and self-centered ways immediately; when the old me would blame-shift, make excuses, try to manipulate and control and behave in many other unloving ways as well! This is changing my marriage on every level and opening my own heart up to really be able to give and receive real love! I have been repenting for ways that I have also tried to manipulate and or control our children and I have been completely freed up to just celebrate them! I’m not only falling in love more with our children, I’m seeing them fall more in love with each other and I’m seeing them connect in with their own unique learning processes!

I absolutely LOVE this new life! Just being able to hear my conscience all day long and KNOW that I can 100% TRUST His direction in the small things has been so life-changing! Before, I honestly had never heard (even growing up in church) that God was speaking to me ALL day long and how simple it would be to just choose to listen and follow that up with a completely surrendered heart!

Repentance isn’t scary to me anymore. I no longer need an “altar” to run to after a church meeting or a song to “move me”!  Instead, I just live real life with God every day and I find myself  “laying on the altar” no matter where I am, pouring out my life in worship!! Thank you Jesus for your tender mercies!! I have been freed to REALLY get to KNOW God and His tangible love and to trust His voice in the “simple” ways it comes everyday! It’s humbling and oh so wonderful! I’ve been freed from so many fears and false standards, many I didn’t even know existed prior to the coaching program series! I’m freed from the fear of “being misunderstood” and my “fear of man” and looking for approval. I am freed from the fears I had of “damaging our children”, and the fear of “never getting to do anything really great for God”. I have literally had my mind renewed about who God is and what the true function of the Holy Spirit is in our lives!

I’m learning to see when my guilt is false or when I’m allowing someone else’s opinion to trump what God is actually speaking to me, and I am filled with hope now that God is truly at work and will complete the good work He’s begun! I feel like I have been crying out for “the real” my whole life and doing so while seemingly stuck in an “artificial world”! There are so many ways that leaving the artificial world behind has and is changing me and every relationship I have! The struggle to obey the Lord is gone from me! My tears flow as I write this….yes, yes it truly IS gone!!  Oh thank you Lord!! Letting go of so many fears, repenting, allowing the healing work of God, partnering with Him in obedience, taking practical steps into what He’s saying and trusting Him wholeheartedly is MORE than rewarding!! I only wish I hadn’t waited so long, but am overwhelmed by His amazing mercy and abundant grace!!  I am a life that has been and is being radically changed!!           

God is just too good and I’ve learned He’s SO worth trusting with EVERY area of my life! I thought that I knew what that meant prior to the “Making Heart-Level Connections” programs, but now I realize that I had NO idea. I was living WAY below His best and I can see now how He’s been wooing me and preparing me for what these programs would open my eyes and heart to!! I have literally been given a whole new life!” ~ Teri P

Can You Identify with Teri?

If you are like Teri, you may have felt like your walk with the Lord wasn’t as real as it could be, and not have known how to connect into hearing that “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit you’ve heard so much about. You may even have had a nagging sense that you might be guilty of sin and needing to repent, but the idea of repenting is frightening to you, and so you hide out even though you know your marriage needs some healing and restoration. A close relationship with God and all the miraculous changes that come as a result of obedience is just as possible for you as it was for Teri. The heart-level changes and Spirit-led life that Teri describes has been impacting her whole family! God has been teaching Teri how to walk with Him, and teaching her family how to love as they receive His correction and instruction for the personal dynamics of their family relationships.

Teri is Connecting with God in Faith 

We’ve all been given a measure of faith (Romans 12:3), and it’s self-evident before we even begin to trust God for His promises, because we’re taught from birth to trust in many things, and often in things that don’t profit us. Even then, most people view faith as just a set of beliefs. But God’s Word tells us that faith is not just a set of religious doctrines to conceptually agree with, while only believing in God’s existence and power in general ways. Hebrews 11:5-7 says that we must believe He actually exists in us, and that He will reward those who are diligent in their pursuit of Him.

You may be aware that fear and faith are closely connected, and that when you don’t have a strong trust in God, you end up with many fears. Another way to look at it is that fear is like having faith in bad things happening while faith is belief in things turning out right. These inner movements of trust and fear, govern your decisions and actions, and this is what makes faith a force within you. The good news is that when you become aware of God’s work in your heart, your faith is turned away from trusting in your own efforts for a successful and fulfilling life, and turned toward trusting in God for heart-level transformation for you and your family. Through this trust, you come to know His faithfulness in tangible and practical ways toward reconciling your family relationships and your whole life to Him.

Note toward what you are to apply your measure of faith. This is in 2 Peter 1:5, “For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue.”

While God wants you to learn to trust Him for all of your concerns, Peter is pointing to the most important and first place your focus should be when exercising your faith—“exercising your faith to develop virtue”—which is character. This idea points to how you may be mis-directing your faith, because if you haven’t been trusting God with your inner life, and relational habits, then the question is, what have you been turning your faith towards? The Lord wants you to trust in His generous grace to make the necessary heart-level changes to your motivations and relating practices, and then to further trust Him for the process of making your family relationships happy and whole……(This is an excerpt from the free article, “Your Hope Inspired”–You can sign up below to read or listen to an audio of it in entirety.)

Continue reading the testimonies here. And don’t forget to go get your complimentary gifts from me! There’s an article and my own personal testimony that you can get in pdf to read or as an audio if you’d prefer listening.

My Newest Book—Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith

Don’t forget to check out my newest book Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith. Go here to learn more about it:

http://transfermoralvalues.com

So grateful to be in the Lord’s service,
Marilyn Howshall for Lifestyle of Learning™ Ministries

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