Are you sensitive in your heart to the promptings and the urges of the Spirit of God? Are you hearing  Him? Are you easily moved by His gentle manner? Developing sensitivity of heart opens you to the life of God found in Jesus. For, the Spirit of God will lead you and guide you into all the truth about Him.

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Ephesians 4:19 (NIV)
19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

Deep Relationships Demand Sensitivity

• Husbands and wives have to be sensitive to one another’s needs.
• Marriage is something you work on. Sensitivity in marriage is something you develop.
• Sensitivity requires development.
• Being sensitive leads to good communication where both sides are sharing and both sides are listening.
• Good communication leads to intimacy.
• Since sensitivity requires development than so does intimacy.
• If you want to hear God’s voice, you have to develop a sensitivity to His voice.
• “You haven’t learned to listen” was the first words the Lord ever spoke in my heart.

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Hearing God is a Learning Process

Listening Requires Spiritual Development

• In the arena of hearing God, if you want to hear God’s voice, take care of your spirit.

Proverbs 4:20–23 (ESV)
20 My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21 Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. 22 For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. 23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

• Verse states: Keep your heart with all vigilance.
• To develop sensitivity you must be aware of your insides at all times.

Man Is Like God an Eternal Spirit

• God Is a Spirit, the Bible says

John 4:24 (KJV)
24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

• You are also a spirit being.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NKJV)
²³ Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

• You are a chip off the old block so to speak.
• The law of Genesis informs us things produce after their own kind (Gen. 1:11).
• If God is a spirit, man must of necessity be spirit because you are made in His image.

When God Deals with Man, He Deals with His Inner Man

• There is more to you than meets the eye.
• The real you is not the man in the mirror.
• The real man is the hidden man of the heart.

1 Peter 3:4 (KJV)
4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

• Your spirit, your inner man, the hidden man of the heart is God’s light bulb.
• It’s how God directs you.

Proverbs 20:27 (KJV)
27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, Searching all the inward parts of the belly.

• A candle or a lamp is either on or off.
• Many of God’s leading’s in your heart are just like that candle, on or off.
• You can have a positive ‘yes’ or a negative ‘no’ in your spirit.
• Tune into your conscience.
  • By doing so, you’ll tune into your spirit.

To Develop Sensitivity of Heart, Become God Inside Minded

1 John 4:4 (NKJV)
4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

• To become ‘God inside minded’ means you are conscious of God in you are heart.
  • Where is God anyway? What is His address?
  • We have this mentality that God is far away.
  • God the Father sits on His Throne in heaven.
  • The Lord Jesus Christ is sitting at His right hand, right?
  • Where is the Holy Spirit?
  • He is in your heart.
• Be aware of the Spirit within.
• God inside minded means “become aware of the Holy Spirit in you.“
• Get to know Him.
• Get to know and understand what He will do for you, in you and through you.
• A plain simple thought is mentally record, a leading you have.
  • Remember how that is sensed.
  • As you continue to respond to His nudges within your heart, sensitivity to His promptings develop.

To Develop Sensitivity of Heart, Understand What The Spirit Will Do In You and Look for It

John 14:16–17 (KJV)
16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

John 14:26 (KJV)
26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

John 16:13 (KJV)
13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Romans 8:26 (KJV)
26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

• According to these verses in John’s gospel, note what the Spirit will do.

1. Be Your Reminder of Jesus Sayings – Jn. 14:26
   • What do you need to remember?
   • DEFINITION: remember – to cause one to remember, bring to remembrance, recall to mind: to put one in remembrance, admonish, of something to be reminded, to remember
   • This word ‘remember’ is a verb. It is an active action by the Holy Spirit.
2. Be Your Teacher – Jn. 14:26
   • DEFINITION: teacher – to teach, to hold discourse with others in order to instruct them, deliver didactic discourses, to impart instruction, to explain or expound a thing.
   • The word ‘teach’ is the same word used of Jesus when He taught His disciples (Matt. 5:1-2).
   • You can have an audience with the greatest teacher of all time. The Holy Spirit will teach you just like Jesus taught His disciples.
   • Have you ever asked Him a question about the Bible and did not receive an immediate answer?
   • Why is that?
     • Sometimes your asking a question beyond your development. See Isaiah 28:13 (KJV).
     • The Word of God is always built into your understanding line upon line. Or one line at a time.
     • Sometimes your question is several lines away from your current understanding.
     • You are missing some lines and those lines have to be filled in before you can see the answer.
     • Which means, in order to get the answer to some things you have to grow into the answer.
3. Be Your Comforter or Helper – Jn 14:26
   • DEFINITION: ‘Comforter’ – paraclete – Summoned or called alongside to help. Especially called to one’s aid. In the widest sense, a helper, succourer, aider, assistant ¹.
   • The Spirit is within you to aid you and help you.
   • You will develop sensitivity to Him and His aid if you look within you for answers when you need help rather than looking to outside sources.
   • Remember the Holy Spirit is God and as God, He knows the answer.
   • When you misplace your keys, instead of ‘tearing up the house’ ask the Holy Spirit to show you where they are.
     • The answer will float up inside you. You will need to quite your head. Shut down the mental noise of your mind and calmly wait for Him.
     • ‘Floating up in you’ is the best way to describe how this works.
     • Remember how this is sensed for the next time.
4. Be In You Forever – Jn. 14:17
   • The Holy Spirit does not come and go.
   • He won’t leave you if you sin.
   • In fact, your conscience bothering you is the Holy Spirit trying to get your attention through your spirit.
5. Be Active In You – Jn 14:17
   • His home is in your heart.
   • The answers to your questions are within because He is within.
   • God is not only far off in heaven, He is as close to you as the breath of your mouth.
   • I Have heard some pray a prayer along this line: “Jesus please come by here and bless us…”
     • This is a prayer of unbelief as God is already within you.
6. Reveal the Future – Jn. 16:13
   • Do you want to know your future?
   • DEFINITION: reveal – to announce, make known, to report, bring back tidings, rehearse
   • The Holy Spirit will show you things to come.
   • He will warn you in advance of things to come so you can adjust and get ready.
   • Sometimes He will instruct you to stop spending and save because an economic downturn is coming in your life. Being sensitive to that can save your life.
7. Lead You in Prayer – Rom. 8:26
   • Are you effective praying on your own?
   • DEFINITION: helpeth – to lay hold along with, to strive to obtain with others, help in obtaining, to take hold with another. Strong’s has it as ‘to take hold of opposite together, that is, co-operate (assist):—help.’
   • It’s like two people carrying a table. One has to be on each end.  The Holy Spirit comes opposite your end to help carry your ‘table’ or you will end up “dragging” your table and making little progress.
   • He helps you because you have an infirmity, a lack or a weakness.
   • That weakness is not knowing what to pray for.

To Develop Sensitivity of Heart Guard Your Mouth

[Tweet “To develop sensitivity of heart, you have to guard your mouth.”]

• Read, meditate, believe, and act like these verses above are true.

Don’t cut off the work of the Holy Spirit with your mouth by saying:

• “I’m just slow, or dumb, I never can learn anything, I don’t know.”
  • This cuts off the work of the Spirit as your teacher.
• I can’t or don’t remember. My mind is not working right, you know how it is when you get older.”
  • This cuts off the work of the Spirit of bringing things to your remembrance.
• “The Holy Spirit only shows me a thing a certain way.”
  • This cuts off possible avenues of the work of the Spirit as reveal-er.

Look to Him

• If you have a situation, where you need some wisdom, or your making a decision, say to Him  “Alright Holy Spirit what do I do here?”
• Then listen and wait on Him.

Call to Action:

In the days of the electric trolley cars, it was a common occurrence for the small wheel to jump off the power-charged wire overhead.  When that happened, the power was gone  (2. [“Choice Illustrations”  W.W. Clay  pg. 41]. You have to make contact in order to be propelled forward. You have to be sensitive to that contact. You have to become God inside minded if you want to know the voice of the Lord.

Episode Resources

You can find more information on Hearing God by visiting the following posts:

1. Secrets to Hearing God: Are You Listening? [Podcast]
2. Secrets to Hearing God: Are You Waiting? [Podcast]
3. What It Means to Wait on God

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Question: What additional ways have you learned to develop sensitivity to the Holy Spirit? Please leave your comments in the comments section below.