For some time now, the Holy Spirit has been dealing with me on our Voice and how we can use our voice for God’s purposes.
Recently, I had the opportunity to present a program to the Hanna Sisters and spoke about finding and using our voice for God’s purpose for our lives. I hope you may find something useful here.
Opening Prayer: Shall we Pray: Father God, Holy Spirit, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to these ladies today. I thank you that you have given me some seeds to sow into their lives and I pray that you will let them fall on fertile ground. I ask you to anoint your Hand maiden this morning with your Spirit. Touch my lips, my mind and my body to deliver what YOU and you alone desire to be communicated this morning. Touch every ear and human spirit gathered here today to receive what they need to hear. In Jesus Name Amen
“One word expresses the pathway to the understanding of life’s purpose and I believe that word is “voice”. Those on this path find their voice and inspire others to find theirs. Those who do not are missing a great joy of knowing that they are being the person that God intends for them.
What is our voice? We are born with our voice. One of the first things a Doctor looks for as a sign of life is the cry from a baby. We begin using our voices as we begin to talk and say our first words. The power to discover our voices lies in the potential that was bequeathed to you at birth. Latent and undeveloped, the seeds of greatness were planted by our creator. You were given magnificent “birth-gifts”-talents, capacities, privileges, intelligences, opportunities-that remain unopened except through your own decision and effort to open them.
For instance, I have met so many people who were blessed with singing talents but chose not to develop them. One friend of mine told me that she was anointed to sing but she did not take the opportunity to train and use the gift that she was given. She told me that she began losing that gift because she did not use it. In life we struggle to use our gifts, our talents in school, on the job and whatever we choose to do and also how we choose to live our lives.
Our voices can be used for good and for evil. Anyone who has ever been in an argument with someone knows how easy we can use our voice to cut or demean someone. We can say I love you one minute and then in the next “I hate you” to the same person. We are the one’s that determine how we use our voices.
When we think about finding our voices four questions come to mind.
1. What are you good at?
2. What do you love doing?
3. What need can you serve?
4. And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? What is God speaking to you.
I believe that our voice is the overlapping of the THREE parts of our nature:which is our body, our soul and our spirit. I have a teaching on the body, soul and spirit. To KNOW our voice we also have to know our body, soul and our spirit. I don’t want to go into the full teaching on this today but briefly our body, our soul and our spirit consists of the trinity nature of man.
Man is a triune being because he is created in the image of God. “God said, Let us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). We know that God is a Trinity. The Holy Trinity is clearly set forth in the Apostle Paul’s benediction that closed his II Corinthian Epistle:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
Our Lord Himself said, in what we call “The Great Commission”: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Created in the image of God, man is likewise a trinity. He has a spiritual nature that is separate and distinct from the body in which it dwells.
I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow (body), and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).
The Bible states emphatically that man was created a trinity of spirit, soul, and body even as the eternal God is Himself a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The trinity of man is an essential part of the image relationship between him and God. Life is not just about the physical and the body is not the whole man. And we might add that neither the body in itself, nor the soul in itself, nor the spirit in itself makes up the whole man, but he is “spirit and soul and body.”
Body, Soul and Spirit
The Body
This is the area we are most familiar with. Our aches our pains are often at the forefront of our topics of conversation especially the older we become. This is our “flesh”. Pinch yourself and if you hurt then you know what the body is.
We listen to our bodies. Our aches, our pains. Our bodies effect our voice. Someone who is dealing with pain issues or disabilities or health issues of any kind will tell you that these things impact their voice and what they can and cannot do in the day-to-day living of their lives.
The Spirit
The word “spirit” when used in the Scriptures has several meanings. Whenever the word “Spirit” appears used with a capital letter, it has but one meaning. It is the name of the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit of God. The word “spirit” spelled with a small letter may have one of several different meanings. It can have direct reference to the spirit of man who is as much a part of the tripartite nature of man as the Spirit of the living God is a Person of the Holy Trinity. Or it can indicate an evil spirit such as any agent of the Devil. We will confine ourselves here to the Biblical usage of the word only as it relates to the spirit of man, one of the three constitute parts of his being.
In his unfallen state the ‘spirit’ of man was illuminated from Heaven, but when the human race fell in Adam, sin closed the window of the spirit, pulled down the curtain, and the chamber of the spirit became a death chamber and remains so in every unregenerate heart, until the Life and Light giving power of the Holy Spirit floods that chamber with the Life and Light giving power of the new life in Christ Jesus.
I said all that to make this point. The spirit of man, being the sphere of God-consciousness, is the inner or private office of man where the work of regeneration takes place. The Apostle Paul gives us the Word of God on this, a passage that I love. Quoting from the sixty-fourth chapter of the book of the Prophet Isaiah, Paul wrote:
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.
A great many people stop here, content to remain in ignorance. However, Paul continues:
But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:9-11)
As we listen to God through our spirits this impacts our voice. The more we listen to the Holy Spirit the more our spirits will become strengthened and able to sway the mind and the body.
The Soul
We not only have a spirit but we also have a soul. . The Bible says: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). We must be careful not to confound that which is truly spiritual and that which is merely soulish. We have seen that the spirit of man is the sphere of activity where the Holy Spirit operates in regeneration. Just so is the soul the sphere of activity where Satan operates making his appeal to the affections and emotions of man. So the soul then involves our emotions.
It is in the soul where fleshly lusts, desires, and appetites arise:
Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul (Peter 2:11).
These lusts war against the soul. We are in a battle. The flesh pulls our soul one way and the spirit renewed through the Holy Spirit pulls us toward the purposes of God.
As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country (Proverbs 25:25).
It shall be even as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite (Isaiah 29:8).
Isaiah made it clear that the soul has an appetite. When our spirit becomes regenerated then our souls and our appetites change and begin to seek God.
In that immortal classic of the Psalms, David says: “He restoreth my soul” (Psalm 23:3). The Hebrew word translated “restoreth” is said to mean quite literally “turneth back.” At no time had David lost his salvation, but there were times when his affections and desires were turned from the Lord, as in the case of his sin with Bathsheba. Having become one of the Divine Shepherd’s flock, he testified: “The Lord turneth back my soul.” The Christian who is enjoying unbroken communion with his Lord will then be able to say, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name” (Psalm 103:1).
Our voices are effected by our Soul.
If you learn what taps your talents and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul’s code.
This morning I hope to challenge you to find your voice and use it for God’s purpose for your life. People are internally motivated by their own needs: to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy. When they overlap, you have found what I like to call your “voice” This is your calling, your soul’s code.
You hear people who say that they knew from the time that they were a child that they wanted to be an actress or politician or nurse or Dr. From a young age they just knew. Other’s try different things and don’t really seem to know what their voice should be.
I think that it can happen all at once, but more so, I think that finding your voice is an evolving process. As people grow up, they are exposed to different fields of knowledge and different experiences. They don’t yet know what they’re good at or even what they will like doing. Once they have this exposure and education and they start getting involved, they start to find satisfaction, and that leads to success as it begins to give them a sense of their voice or what they really love doing that they do well. For some people, it does comes like a flash of light, but it is usually preceded by someone who really deeply believes in them-sees their strengths and affirms them when they don’t see their own potential themselves. This creates an opportunity for that voice to be developed and expressed.
Also, as our circumstances in life change so do our voices. What we did or wanted to do when we were younger and raising children or working changes when we have grandchildren. The truth is that life happens. Health issues, deaths in our families and job situations cause you to reevaluate our “voice” as we go throughout life. Our opportunities to use our voice changes.
May God help you to use your voice for his purposes.
