December 22, 2024 • 22 mins
This episode was released on April 26, 2024.
Join us on Charisma as Carl Wesley Anderson shares his powerful story of hearing God's voice and receiving 21 keys that changed his life forever. Find out how a simple question led to a life-altering revelation about life and death. Subscribe now for more inspiring stories and spiritual insights!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So I'm sitting on the swing and I decided to ask the Lord a question I had not asked him yet,
(00:05):
but a very serious question. I said, Lord,
am I going to live or am I going to die from this disease? I'd like to know right now.
Carl Wesley Anderson, it's great to have you here on Charisma to share your story of how God
has spoken to you and you hearing his voice has changed the direction of your life in dramatic
(00:25):
ways. And God actually gave you 21 keys. We're going to talk about some of those here, but
welcome to Charisma. Thank you, John. And hello to our Charisma audience. I'm super excited to be
here and yeah, share some testimonies of how God has been faithful to me and how he can be faithful
to you. Amen. Amen. Carl, the last time that you and I talked was in preparation for an interview
(00:50):
that you did with Stephen Strang on the Strang Report talking about the short documentary that
you did about the life of St. Patrick. That was around St. Patrick's Day, so it was very appropriate,
but that was just part of this series that you have with Love Speaks. Tell me about how God took
you from being a missionary to being a producer, documentarian, filmmaker with this Love Speaks
(01:18):
program. Great. Yeah, John. So the story goes back. My initial calling was to equipping evangelism,
which is kind of unique. I equip the church and in this case to hear the voice of God more clearly
and more often. So I'd been traveling, I'd been to 24 nations for the Lord, sharing in many churches
and Bible schools and settings like that. And really being a missionary of touching many,
(01:42):
many denominations and backgrounds. I love that part of my calling that I get to sort of dance
with many groups that all hold different theological views, but all love Jesus Christ.
And where Love Speaks came out of both the book and the documentary film series and the master
class, kind of the whole training equipping platform, is that about 10 years ago, I got a
(02:07):
very serious form of cancer. It was melanoma, stage 3B, began right here on my leg, spread into my
lymph nodes. And before I caught it, it had become very, very deadly. And I remember that summer
deciding that I would seek the Lord no matter what, that He is faithful even though we have
(02:28):
to battle through things that we cannot understand. I looked at this battle as a battle for my life,
because the Lord said the enemy is trying to kill you before your time. So I take that seriously,
like, okay, I'm under attack, and this cancer is a disease that's trying to take me out.
So when I went to seek the Lord, it was that I wanted to know from Him initially which treatment
(02:51):
to take. Because with melanoma, it's a very particular kind of cancer that basically hides
itself in your body. So my body couldn't detect it as a threat, my immune system. So they give you
very powerful drugs in treating it that, you know, that I talk about this in the article, they heighten
your immune system, but they give you a fever. So I knew I had to take one of those. I sought the Lord.
(03:15):
And the first thing He gave me was Psalm 32, 8, which says, I will speak to you eye to eye,
or in the Hebrew, it could be face to face. So I knew that God would make it very clear
that at the end of the summer, the weekend, I had to make the final decision. I had eight different
contacts from God, or eight different ways that He contacted me. And I list those in our article.
(03:38):
And I found His love was permeating me. So I wrote down all those ways. I wrote down a number of
other ways, and I came up with 21 of them. So love speaks came out of my desire that people who are
going through any kind of a test, any kind of a trial, any kind of a fire, because we're all in
something right now, right? I mean, it's like the Lord is allowing us to, as an army, be tested and
(04:02):
be trained and, you know, be able to fight these battles which are happening now and the battles to
come. So that's where the desire for me was that I could help train the army just in a very small way
and how to hear His voice on a continual basis. And that's where it all came from. And then from
that, one day God gave me the calling as a media missionary. So whereas I had been doing missions
(04:26):
work, evangelistic work, living by faith, now He wanted me to live by faith, but take media as a
tool. So actually, prior to that moment during the cancer battle where God spoke that, I have been
creating love stories for couples for many, many years in wedding films. And so I was very, very
(04:47):
attuned to storytelling. I had a love for salvation history, a desire to bring out stories that are
unique in the past and the present and build our hope for the future. That's where Love Speaks,
the documentary series came from. And finally, after publishing the book and creating a number
of episodes of that series, then the Lord called me to create the Love Speaks Masterclass.
(05:12):
Tell me about this call to be a media missionary. Does that mean that you are no longer an
equipping evangelist like you were before? How did your life change?
Great question. Well, everything changed up until that point of the battle. We had a strong income
from our wedding film company that just went away. We couldn't, I couldn't work. We couldn't
(05:33):
function as a company anymore. And my missions work, you know, was going to continue. But for
that battle, that five years that I walked in these treatments, and by the way, they were very
difficult. Some of them included a week long fever and I had to endure 69 weeks of fevers in the
(05:54):
battle. So you can imagine I couldn't travel. I couldn't do evangelistic equipping work during
that time. But everything changed when in that moment, the Lord called me as a media missionary.
He also said to me at the same time, you're going to keep exhorting my word. You're going to keep
preaching and teaching the Word of God around the world, you know, in different churches and so
(06:15):
forth. But now also, you're going to become this media missionary. And I saw in the spirit of really
nice film camera, just materialize. Now, I didn't know where to start with the calling. But I
started to get a little bit better from the treatments and they were working. And I was in
London and the Lord said, okay, take one chapter of your book. There are 21 chapters, 21 ways to
(06:41):
hear the voice of God, very common ways, common ways and uncommon. He said to me, take one chapter
and make a film per chapter. And I was thinking, I can do that. I'll make a five minute film. Sure,
Lord, I'll make a five minute film and I'll put them on YouTube. And he said to me the next day,
no, no, I want you to make 21 episodes. So literally my whole life changed because I raised
(07:04):
support and went out there and started creating, producing, writing, filming. And to date, John,
I've just wrapped episode 21 of 21. And by the way, the first 14 have been seen on TBN, which is
the world's largest network for Christian. Also, they have appeared on Daystar Television, one of
(07:24):
the also the world's largest networks, also God TV. So it's been amazing to see how the episodes
have gone forth and been blessing and calling new soldiers to come forth in new ways to hear the
voice of God. And just now, as of this recording, I'm wrapping episode 21 of 21. So there's 21
(07:46):
different episodes, 21 different ways to hear God. You said very common, common and uncommon.
What are some of the ways that surprised you as you were putting this together? Excellent question.
I think that what surprised me the most was hearing God's speaking to me, his voice about
(08:06):
the Trinity, first of all, the Trinity is a mystery. So don't look to me to have all the answers. I'm
just a just one of many. But I learned from the Lord that the Father, the Son and the Spirit
all have sort of a unique way of communicating with each of us. Now, if you're watching this,
you've got certain ways of the 21 that already you're flowing in. Everybody's wired a little
(08:31):
bit differently. So some of us are wired with visual, some are wired to hear audibly, or, you
know, just externally. So different people can hear different ways. But what surprised me was,
first of all, learning how the Father speaks, which I like to say, he speaks externally and
indirectly. And there's a reason for that. The Holy Spirit from within speaks from within your
(08:54):
redeemed human spirit and flows out your mind and also through your spirit. And then Jesus speaks
primarily, I like to say, through his word and through other believers. So that was the biggest
thing that I learned was really looking at, okay, if that's true, then how does that work itself out
in very common, common and uncommon? Well, pretty much I've tucked away different ways that Jesus
(09:20):
speaks first. So he's like in the first seven, the established word and the living word. Then we have
the Holy Spirit speaking from within his inner witness, inner voice and desires of the heart.
Then we have the Father speaking through nature and creation and providence. So things like that
really challenged me. Also, I would say I learned a lot of looking at the use, God's use of metaphors
(09:45):
and symbolism. And so way number 12 is actually symbolic speech. When people reach that way in
the book, a chapter 12 or wherever they're looking and learning, they always are surprised. And
that one surprised me maybe the most. It's that there's metaphors like Jesus taught in metaphors
and parables. God has always spoken indirectly through parables and through object lessons.
(10:08):
So you come to find out that in your life, there are all of these ways that Lord is speaking to you,
but it's symbolic, especially in nature. I'll give you one example. This is a rock that I was asked
to pick up one day. I was walking by a lake and I was praying about one of the major operations
that I had to undergo for the cancer battle. It was a very difficult operation. And I said to the
(10:32):
Lord, Father, will you be with me in the middle of this? I just feel so alone. And he said to me in
the inner voice of the spirit, Carl, pick up that rock. So I picked up this actual rock right here.
And I held it in my hand like this. And as I held it in my hand, I was reminded instantly of Psalm 18,
(10:53):
which is the living word of scripture for me in that moment. I will love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock. The Lord is my stronghold. And as I began to think about a rock, I symbolically
looked at it and looked at its features. So what is a rock? A rock is firm. It's solid.
(11:15):
It's long lasting. It's been here a lot longer than I've ever been here. And it'll be here a
lot longer after I'm gone. And it was like God was saying, I am your rock. I will be faithful.
I will be strong. I will be with you. I'm eternal. You see? So symbolism, symbolic speech, very,
very powerful way. And that's how I'd answer that question. So I know that God's also spoke to you
(11:36):
about a sword. So tell me about that example. I have one here. Great question. You know,
people often ask me what's one of the more powerful ways that you could just equip us in
hearing God's voice. And it's very simply this, that way number two of the 21 is called the living
word. So this is your Bible. And your Bible is what I like to call the only infallible source
(12:02):
of hearing God's voice. All the other 20 ways can be fallible because we're humans, but the Bible
stands forever. So the word of God is infallible. But from that established word comes way number
two, the living word. It is very simply, let's just pick a time in your life where you were going
through the Bible and suddenly it was like the Holy Spirit breathed upon a verse and that particular
(12:26):
verse became applicable for your situation. That's the living word, plain and simple. Now
in Ephesians six, when Paul gives us the list of armor, he uses the word rama. Very interesting.
That's the word we use for the living word. So it's not that he could have used logos. We think
the sword is the logos. It's the written word. Well, it's the written word, but as the Holy
(12:51):
Spirit breathes upon it, it becomes life to us. So I like to say the sword, since it is the rama
or living, it must be spoken in agreement with the Holy Spirit. So our scriptural example for that is
when Jesus fought the enemy in the wilderness. If you remember, John, he used those three words
(13:13):
before he quoted a verse from Deuteronomy or the Psalms. Do you remember what those words were?
It is written. So when we have a living word and we speak it out, it becomes a weapon against the
enemy because the battle is here. The enemy hits us with thoughts that are not from God. So we have
(13:38):
to fight those thoughts by agreeing with the living word. And so a quick example of this in my cancer
testimony was that again, those summers ago I was battling through and I was in Psalm 27 one morning
and I had read verses one and two, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord
(14:00):
is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Well, our kids started fighting and my
wife went off to make sure that they stayed alive that day. And I went out to my prayer swing and I
sat there and I brought two things. I brought my Bible, which was open to Psalm 27, and I brought
a little book of Bible promises. So I'm sitting on the swing and I decided to ask the Lord a question
(14:26):
I had not asked him yet, but a very serious question. I said, Lord, am I going to live or am I going to die
from this disease? I'd like to know right now. Now, when you ask the Lord a question like that,
he will answer you 100% of the time. It's up to him which of the 21 ways he'll do that with.
(14:47):
Most often it's going to be in the form of the inner voice, which is beautifully a voice that
originates from your human spirit. That's the Holy Spirit flowing out your mind as a thought or
flood of thoughts. That's how I define it. It's chapter four, way four. And so I heard the Lord say,
(15:07):
the answer is on page 83 of your Bible promise book. So again, I had Psalm 27 open. Now I had
been meditating on verses one through 12 and I hadn't even read verses 13 and 14 of that
Psalm. It was just sitting there open, but I hadn't read it. So I turned to page 83 in my
Bible promise book and there it's two verses only. It's the end of a section of verses,
(15:31):
only two left. And believe it or not, John, they are verses 13 and 14 of Psalm 27.
So talk about the Lord just showing off his great love for me. And I read them and they say,
I would have despaired unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living. So here I am yet to this day being able to share this. And so whenever the enemy would
(15:55):
attack me in my mind, I would say to him, it is written. And then I would quote Psalm 27, 13.
And as I quoted it, it became a life and his barrage of thoughts that I wasn't going to make
it the next week, all of it would stop and I would speak it out and I would praise him and go forth
in victory. That's a little bit of how the living word works for you and I. Amen. Amen. I love that,
(16:20):
that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. That's a very personal verse
for me as well. So, but Carl, how would you encourage somebody to hear the voice of the
Lord for themselves? If they've never heard the voice of the Lord or were aware that the Lord is
speaking to them, how would you encourage them to start that journey? That's another great question.
(16:42):
Well, you're hitting me with some good ones here. So first of all, I think the key word is expectation.
I believe my article might even end with that application to it in Charisma. The idea is we
wake up every day and when I wake up in the morning, I set my heart to hear the voice of God. I actually
pray out a simple prayer and then at the end of that prayer, before I go into praying for others
(17:06):
or interceding, or sometimes even before I go just into worship, I will pray a prayer of
expectation where I set that forward. And we actually have a prayer of expectation in the book
Love Speaks, which is available everywhere. And it's a beautiful way to kind of train yourself
in learning the 21 ways, because there are 21 of them and there are actually many more than that.
(17:30):
I've only written down 21 of them in the book, but the more ways you can learn about and train
yourself to understand, the more often you're going to be expecting and therefore the more often you
can hear. I like to sort of liken it unto the Bourne identity. If you've seen that film or those
series of films with Jason Bourne, in the first one, he is trying to determine his identity. Who
(17:52):
am I? He can't remember. He wakes up on a boat, doesn't know he's a super spy, a super agent and
all that. There's this one scene in that film where he's talking to his girlfriend and they're in a
truck stop and he says to her, I don't know who I am. He says, I can tell you the numbers of the
six license plates on the six vehicles out front. I can tell you the man behind the restaurant area
(18:17):
up there knows how to handle himself. I can tell you the best place to hide a gun is in the cab of
a truck and I can tell you how far I can run at altitudes of this altitude and this speed before
I have to catch my breath. How can I tell you all of that but not tell you who I am? And the idea
is he's automatically taken in all that information because he's been trained as a super agent to be
(18:43):
on the lookout, to expect, to notice things other people don't notice. That's the simplicity of
hearing God's voice. Love is speaking everywhere. At all times he's crying out, even the creation
cries out. The rocks themselves will cry out if we don't. So the idea is that the more often we're
training ourselves to learn the ways and we're expecting them, the more we'll hear. Also get into
(19:08):
times of worship and be in your Bible ready to meditate on that word and you'll be surprised
as you're sort of closing in on that intimacy with Jesus Christ. It's all about intimacy
with Jesus Christ. The more close you are to him, the more you hear his heartbeat like John used to
lie on his chest and hear his heartbeat. I think of that and I think of Lord I want to be that John.
(19:32):
I want to be the one that hears your heart. So I spend time in worship. I spend time listening.
But also I can say this John, it's an active listening because remember the Holy Spirit is
like a river within us. So he's never pictured as like this, you know, a spirit of inactivity.
(19:52):
A river is always moving. So because of that when we kind of enter into that understanding
that in any situation we can stop, look around and have a little dialogue. That's where on that
swing when I asked the Lord that question, I waited and he spoke. It's like how often do we ask the
(20:12):
Lord a yes or no question for example and then expect an answer. Can it be that simple? Yes,
he stands by. He is the great God of all the universe but he's a personal savior. And if
you've been born again, born from above, then you share that intimate relationship with the Holy
Spirit 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Amen, amen. God wants to speak to us. He is speaking
(20:39):
and we need to be expecting to hear from him. Carl, would you pray for our viewers, our listeners
right now that they would be attuned, that they would be expecting, that they would hear the voice
of God in their own lives? Amen. If you're out there just close your eyes. You can reach out
(21:01):
your hands toward the screen. I'm going to pray a prayer of impartation for each of you watching now.
So Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I release fresh favor, divine favor and expectation
and I release the active voice of the Father and the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of
the Holy Spirit for you. I activate within each of you the activity and action of the Holy Spirit
(21:27):
that you would sense the voice of God in all 21 or more ways for your own life, that this very week
you would bump into somebody, have a moment of providence and expectation and you'll realize
the Father's love was there. This very week you'll open your Bibles and you'll receive a living word.
I call forth those living words of scripture to come forth and this very week you'll have a moment
(21:49):
where you sense the Spirit is speaking from within. I speak in activation for each of you now
in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen, amen. Carl Wesley
Anderson, thank you so much for writing this article and joining us here on Charisma Magazine.
So I'm sitting on the swing and I decided to ask the Lord a question I had not asked him yet,
(00:05):
but a very serious question. I said, Lord,
am I going to live or am I going to die from this disease? I'd like to know right now.
Carl Wesley Anderson, it's great to have you here on Charisma to share your story of how God
has spoken to you and you hearing his voice has changed the direction of your life in dramatic
(00:25):
ways. And God actually gave you 21 keys. We're going to talk about some of those here, but
welcome to Charisma. Thank you, John. And hello to our Charisma audience. I'm super excited to be
here and yeah, share some testimonies of how God has been faithful to me and how he can be faithful
to you. Amen. Amen. Carl, the last time that you and I talked was in preparation for an interview
(00:50):
that you did with Stephen Strang on the Strang Report talking about the short documentary that
you did about the life of St. Patrick. That was around St. Patrick's Day, so it was very appropriate,
but that was just part of this series that you have with Love Speaks. Tell me about how God took
you from being a missionary to being a producer, documentarian, filmmaker with this Love Speaks
(01:18):
program. Great. Yeah, John. So the story goes back. My initial calling was to equipping evangelism,
which is kind of unique. I equip the church and in this case to hear the voice of God more clearly
and more often. So I'd been traveling, I'd been to 24 nations for the Lord, sharing in many churches
and Bible schools and settings like that. And really being a missionary of touching many,
(01:42):
many denominations and backgrounds. I love that part of my calling that I get to sort of dance
with many groups that all hold different theological views, but all love Jesus Christ.
And where Love Speaks came out of both the book and the documentary film series and the master
class, kind of the whole training equipping platform, is that about 10 years ago, I got a
(02:07):
very serious form of cancer. It was melanoma, stage 3B, began right here on my leg, spread into my
lymph nodes. And before I caught it, it had become very, very deadly. And I remember that summer
deciding that I would seek the Lord no matter what, that He is faithful even though we have
(02:28):
to battle through things that we cannot understand. I looked at this battle as a battle for my life,
because the Lord said the enemy is trying to kill you before your time. So I take that seriously,
like, okay, I'm under attack, and this cancer is a disease that's trying to take me out.
So when I went to seek the Lord, it was that I wanted to know from Him initially which treatment
(02:51):
to take. Because with melanoma, it's a very particular kind of cancer that basically hides
itself in your body. So my body couldn't detect it as a threat, my immune system. So they give you
very powerful drugs in treating it that, you know, that I talk about this in the article, they heighten
your immune system, but they give you a fever. So I knew I had to take one of those. I sought the Lord.
(03:15):
And the first thing He gave me was Psalm 32, 8, which says, I will speak to you eye to eye,
or in the Hebrew, it could be face to face. So I knew that God would make it very clear
that at the end of the summer, the weekend, I had to make the final decision. I had eight different
contacts from God, or eight different ways that He contacted me. And I list those in our article.
(03:38):
And I found His love was permeating me. So I wrote down all those ways. I wrote down a number of
other ways, and I came up with 21 of them. So love speaks came out of my desire that people who are
going through any kind of a test, any kind of a trial, any kind of a fire, because we're all in
something right now, right? I mean, it's like the Lord is allowing us to, as an army, be tested and
(04:02):
be trained and, you know, be able to fight these battles which are happening now and the battles to
come. So that's where the desire for me was that I could help train the army just in a very small way
and how to hear His voice on a continual basis. And that's where it all came from. And then from
that, one day God gave me the calling as a media missionary. So whereas I had been doing missions
(04:26):
work, evangelistic work, living by faith, now He wanted me to live by faith, but take media as a
tool. So actually, prior to that moment during the cancer battle where God spoke that, I have been
creating love stories for couples for many, many years in wedding films. And so I was very, very
(04:47):
attuned to storytelling. I had a love for salvation history, a desire to bring out stories that are
unique in the past and the present and build our hope for the future. That's where Love Speaks,
the documentary series came from. And finally, after publishing the book and creating a number
of episodes of that series, then the Lord called me to create the Love Speaks Masterclass.
(05:12):
Tell me about this call to be a media missionary. Does that mean that you are no longer an
equipping evangelist like you were before? How did your life change?
Great question. Well, everything changed up until that point of the battle. We had a strong income
from our wedding film company that just went away. We couldn't, I couldn't work. We couldn't
(05:33):
function as a company anymore. And my missions work, you know, was going to continue. But for
that battle, that five years that I walked in these treatments, and by the way, they were very
difficult. Some of them included a week long fever and I had to endure 69 weeks of fevers in the
(05:54):
battle. So you can imagine I couldn't travel. I couldn't do evangelistic equipping work during
that time. But everything changed when in that moment, the Lord called me as a media missionary.
He also said to me at the same time, you're going to keep exhorting my word. You're going to keep
preaching and teaching the Word of God around the world, you know, in different churches and so
(06:15):
forth. But now also, you're going to become this media missionary. And I saw in the spirit of really
nice film camera, just materialize. Now, I didn't know where to start with the calling. But I
started to get a little bit better from the treatments and they were working. And I was in
London and the Lord said, okay, take one chapter of your book. There are 21 chapters, 21 ways to
(06:41):
hear the voice of God, very common ways, common ways and uncommon. He said to me, take one chapter
and make a film per chapter. And I was thinking, I can do that. I'll make a five minute film. Sure,
Lord, I'll make a five minute film and I'll put them on YouTube. And he said to me the next day,
no, no, I want you to make 21 episodes. So literally my whole life changed because I raised
(07:04):
support and went out there and started creating, producing, writing, filming. And to date, John,
I've just wrapped episode 21 of 21. And by the way, the first 14 have been seen on TBN, which is
the world's largest network for Christian. Also, they have appeared on Daystar Television, one of
(07:24):
the also the world's largest networks, also God TV. So it's been amazing to see how the episodes
have gone forth and been blessing and calling new soldiers to come forth in new ways to hear the
voice of God. And just now, as of this recording, I'm wrapping episode 21 of 21. So there's 21
(07:46):
different episodes, 21 different ways to hear God. You said very common, common and uncommon.
What are some of the ways that surprised you as you were putting this together? Excellent question.
I think that what surprised me the most was hearing God's speaking to me, his voice about
(08:06):
the Trinity, first of all, the Trinity is a mystery. So don't look to me to have all the answers. I'm
just a just one of many. But I learned from the Lord that the Father, the Son and the Spirit
all have sort of a unique way of communicating with each of us. Now, if you're watching this,
you've got certain ways of the 21 that already you're flowing in. Everybody's wired a little
(08:31):
bit differently. So some of us are wired with visual, some are wired to hear audibly, or, you
know, just externally. So different people can hear different ways. But what surprised me was,
first of all, learning how the Father speaks, which I like to say, he speaks externally and
indirectly. And there's a reason for that. The Holy Spirit from within speaks from within your
(08:54):
redeemed human spirit and flows out your mind and also through your spirit. And then Jesus speaks
primarily, I like to say, through his word and through other believers. So that was the biggest
thing that I learned was really looking at, okay, if that's true, then how does that work itself out
in very common, common and uncommon? Well, pretty much I've tucked away different ways that Jesus
(09:20):
speaks first. So he's like in the first seven, the established word and the living word. Then we have
the Holy Spirit speaking from within his inner witness, inner voice and desires of the heart.
Then we have the Father speaking through nature and creation and providence. So things like that
really challenged me. Also, I would say I learned a lot of looking at the use, God's use of metaphors
(09:45):
and symbolism. And so way number 12 is actually symbolic speech. When people reach that way in
the book, a chapter 12 or wherever they're looking and learning, they always are surprised. And
that one surprised me maybe the most. It's that there's metaphors like Jesus taught in metaphors
and parables. God has always spoken indirectly through parables and through object lessons.
(10:08):
So you come to find out that in your life, there are all of these ways that Lord is speaking to you,
but it's symbolic, especially in nature. I'll give you one example. This is a rock that I was asked
to pick up one day. I was walking by a lake and I was praying about one of the major operations
that I had to undergo for the cancer battle. It was a very difficult operation. And I said to the
(10:32):
Lord, Father, will you be with me in the middle of this? I just feel so alone. And he said to me in
the inner voice of the spirit, Carl, pick up that rock. So I picked up this actual rock right here.
And I held it in my hand like this. And as I held it in my hand, I was reminded instantly of Psalm 18,
(10:53):
which is the living word of scripture for me in that moment. I will love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock. The Lord is my stronghold. And as I began to think about a rock, I symbolically
looked at it and looked at its features. So what is a rock? A rock is firm. It's solid.
(11:15):
It's long lasting. It's been here a lot longer than I've ever been here. And it'll be here a
lot longer after I'm gone. And it was like God was saying, I am your rock. I will be faithful.
I will be strong. I will be with you. I'm eternal. You see? So symbolism, symbolic speech, very,
very powerful way. And that's how I'd answer that question. So I know that God's also spoke to you
(11:36):
about a sword. So tell me about that example. I have one here. Great question. You know,
people often ask me what's one of the more powerful ways that you could just equip us in
hearing God's voice. And it's very simply this, that way number two of the 21 is called the living
word. So this is your Bible. And your Bible is what I like to call the only infallible source
(12:02):
of hearing God's voice. All the other 20 ways can be fallible because we're humans, but the Bible
stands forever. So the word of God is infallible. But from that established word comes way number
two, the living word. It is very simply, let's just pick a time in your life where you were going
through the Bible and suddenly it was like the Holy Spirit breathed upon a verse and that particular
(12:26):
verse became applicable for your situation. That's the living word, plain and simple. Now
in Ephesians six, when Paul gives us the list of armor, he uses the word rama. Very interesting.
That's the word we use for the living word. So it's not that he could have used logos. We think
the sword is the logos. It's the written word. Well, it's the written word, but as the Holy
(12:51):
Spirit breathes upon it, it becomes life to us. So I like to say the sword, since it is the rama
or living, it must be spoken in agreement with the Holy Spirit. So our scriptural example for that is
when Jesus fought the enemy in the wilderness. If you remember, John, he used those three words
(13:13):
before he quoted a verse from Deuteronomy or the Psalms. Do you remember what those words were?
It is written. So when we have a living word and we speak it out, it becomes a weapon against the
enemy because the battle is here. The enemy hits us with thoughts that are not from God. So we have
(13:38):
to fight those thoughts by agreeing with the living word. And so a quick example of this in my cancer
testimony was that again, those summers ago I was battling through and I was in Psalm 27 one morning
and I had read verses one and two, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord
(14:00):
is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Well, our kids started fighting and my
wife went off to make sure that they stayed alive that day. And I went out to my prayer swing and I
sat there and I brought two things. I brought my Bible, which was open to Psalm 27, and I brought
a little book of Bible promises. So I'm sitting on the swing and I decided to ask the Lord a question
(14:26):
I had not asked him yet, but a very serious question. I said, Lord, am I going to live or am I going to die
from this disease? I'd like to know right now. Now, when you ask the Lord a question like that,
he will answer you 100% of the time. It's up to him which of the 21 ways he'll do that with.
(14:47):
Most often it's going to be in the form of the inner voice, which is beautifully a voice that
originates from your human spirit. That's the Holy Spirit flowing out your mind as a thought or
flood of thoughts. That's how I define it. It's chapter four, way four. And so I heard the Lord say,
(15:07):
the answer is on page 83 of your Bible promise book. So again, I had Psalm 27 open. Now I had
been meditating on verses one through 12 and I hadn't even read verses 13 and 14 of that
Psalm. It was just sitting there open, but I hadn't read it. So I turned to page 83 in my
Bible promise book and there it's two verses only. It's the end of a section of verses,
(15:31):
only two left. And believe it or not, John, they are verses 13 and 14 of Psalm 27.
So talk about the Lord just showing off his great love for me. And I read them and they say,
I would have despaired unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the
living. So here I am yet to this day being able to share this. And so whenever the enemy would
(15:55):
attack me in my mind, I would say to him, it is written. And then I would quote Psalm 27, 13.
And as I quoted it, it became a life and his barrage of thoughts that I wasn't going to make
it the next week, all of it would stop and I would speak it out and I would praise him and go forth
in victory. That's a little bit of how the living word works for you and I. Amen. Amen. I love that,
(16:20):
that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. That's a very personal verse
for me as well. So, but Carl, how would you encourage somebody to hear the voice of the
Lord for themselves? If they've never heard the voice of the Lord or were aware that the Lord is
speaking to them, how would you encourage them to start that journey? That's another great question.
(16:42):
Well, you're hitting me with some good ones here. So first of all, I think the key word is expectation.
I believe my article might even end with that application to it in Charisma. The idea is we
wake up every day and when I wake up in the morning, I set my heart to hear the voice of God. I actually
pray out a simple prayer and then at the end of that prayer, before I go into praying for others
(17:06):
or interceding, or sometimes even before I go just into worship, I will pray a prayer of
expectation where I set that forward. And we actually have a prayer of expectation in the book
Love Speaks, which is available everywhere. And it's a beautiful way to kind of train yourself
in learning the 21 ways, because there are 21 of them and there are actually many more than that.
(17:30):
I've only written down 21 of them in the book, but the more ways you can learn about and train
yourself to understand, the more often you're going to be expecting and therefore the more often you
can hear. I like to sort of liken it unto the Bourne identity. If you've seen that film or those
series of films with Jason Bourne, in the first one, he is trying to determine his identity. Who
(17:52):
am I? He can't remember. He wakes up on a boat, doesn't know he's a super spy, a super agent and
all that. There's this one scene in that film where he's talking to his girlfriend and they're in a
truck stop and he says to her, I don't know who I am. He says, I can tell you the numbers of the
six license plates on the six vehicles out front. I can tell you the man behind the restaurant area
(18:17):
up there knows how to handle himself. I can tell you the best place to hide a gun is in the cab of
a truck and I can tell you how far I can run at altitudes of this altitude and this speed before
I have to catch my breath. How can I tell you all of that but not tell you who I am? And the idea
is he's automatically taken in all that information because he's been trained as a super agent to be
(18:43):
on the lookout, to expect, to notice things other people don't notice. That's the simplicity of
hearing God's voice. Love is speaking everywhere. At all times he's crying out, even the creation
cries out. The rocks themselves will cry out if we don't. So the idea is that the more often we're
training ourselves to learn the ways and we're expecting them, the more we'll hear. Also get into
(19:08):
times of worship and be in your Bible ready to meditate on that word and you'll be surprised
as you're sort of closing in on that intimacy with Jesus Christ. It's all about intimacy
with Jesus Christ. The more close you are to him, the more you hear his heartbeat like John used to
lie on his chest and hear his heartbeat. I think of that and I think of Lord I want to be that John.
(19:32):
I want to be the one that hears your heart. So I spend time in worship. I spend time listening.
But also I can say this John, it's an active listening because remember the Holy Spirit is
like a river within us. So he's never pictured as like this, you know, a spirit of inactivity.
(19:52):
A river is always moving. So because of that when we kind of enter into that understanding
that in any situation we can stop, look around and have a little dialogue. That's where on that
swing when I asked the Lord that question, I waited and he spoke. It's like how often do we ask the
(20:12):
Lord a yes or no question for example and then expect an answer. Can it be that simple? Yes,
he stands by. He is the great God of all the universe but he's a personal savior. And if
you've been born again, born from above, then you share that intimate relationship with the Holy
Spirit 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Amen, amen. God wants to speak to us. He is speaking
(20:39):
and we need to be expecting to hear from him. Carl, would you pray for our viewers, our listeners
right now that they would be attuned, that they would be expecting, that they would hear the voice
of God in their own lives? Amen. If you're out there just close your eyes. You can reach out
(21:01):
your hands toward the screen. I'm going to pray a prayer of impartation for each of you watching now.
So Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I release fresh favor, divine favor and expectation
and I release the active voice of the Father and the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of
the Holy Spirit for you. I activate within each of you the activity and action of the Holy Spirit
(21:27):
that you would sense the voice of God in all 21 or more ways for your own life, that this very week
you would bump into somebody, have a moment of providence and expectation and you'll realize
the Father's love was there. This very week you'll open your Bibles and you'll receive a living word.
I call forth those living words of scripture to come forth and this very week you'll have a moment
(21:49):
where you sense the Spirit is speaking from within. I speak in activation for each of you now
in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen, amen. Carl Wesley
Anderson, thank you so much for writing this article and joining us here on Charisma Magazine.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com