Dharius Daniels - 3 Steps to CONFIRM That a WORD is Really from God

Hey, I have a question for you. Do you or have you ever felt like you’ve received a word, a prompting, or a nudge from God? Many people respond to that prompting, nudge, or word with action. I want to share with you that there are three things you need to do before you move on any word you think you’ve received from God. Stay tuned and listen. It is a Christian social norm, I think, for people to articulate promptings, nudges, and hunches that they feel like they’ve received from God. I obviously believe in the reality of God speaking; I see it scripturally. I did a video earlier that is somewhere on this page where I talk about biblically the number of different ways we see God speaking in scripture. Inaudibly, we see Him speaking through the scriptures, obviously; He speaks through the scriptures, through the saints, and by His Spirit—inaudibly, that is, through our intuition, hunches, nudges, and promptings that we shouldn’t quench. God can also use experiences, like when He used the whale to speak to Jonah. When Jonah was swallowed by the whale, the whale didn’t verbally say, «You need to turn around and go in the other direction,» but it was as if the whale was saying, «You need to turn around and go in the other direction.» I believe in that; my life bears the fruit of that. The reason I ended up not going to law school and going to seminary was because of one of those promptings. The reason I planted a church was because of one of those promptings, and our planted churches have been in response to those promptings. However, before I leap out on a word, there are three steps I’ve learned to take, and I want to share those steps with you because I think they are key steps that will help us ensure we’re not stepping into foolishness in the name of walking by faith. This is important because I think it’s necessary to trust that God can and does speak to us like that. It’s important to believe that, but we also shouldn’t have the same level of trust in our ability to hear. I have way more confidence in His ability to speak than in my ability to always hear. Here are the three steps that I think everyone should walk through when it comes to stepping out on a word from God.

Number one is a step called Revelation, and that is simply coming to a degree of awareness regarding what God is saying. Whether that is a prompting, an inaudible voice, or intuition, it is my hearing, discerning, and sensing God leading me to some course of action. That’s Revelation. I believe God’s talking to me about something right now: I believe God said, «Start this,» «Say that,» «Go there,» «Write this.» That is Revelation. Revelation is simply disclosure; it’s like, «Okay, I’ve become clear that God is speaking.» Now, here’s where it often happens: people take Revelation and go right into action, but there are two more steps that you need to go through. After you move from Revelation—having a sense of what God is saying—the second step is Interpretation. Revelation answers the question, «What did He say?» Interpretation asks the question, «What did He mean?» Just because I heard what He said doesn’t mean I’m accurately interpreting what He means. I want to give you an example of this. Jeremiah 1 records God speaking to Jeremiah, and one of the ways He speaks to him is through prophetic visions and dreams. He puts these dreams in Jeremiah’s heart and then asks him, «What do you see?» Jeremiah articulates what he has seen, and God responds by saying, «You’ve seen well.» Does that make sense? It’s one thing for Jeremiah to say he sees what God is showing him; it’s another thing for him to accurately interpret what he sees. So, Jeremiah’s articulation back to God regarding what he saw was God’s way of vetting how well Jeremiah was doing in interpreting the message. This is a step that is easy to skip if I’m being pushed by pride. There’s a term—it’s not a spiritual term at all—but it applies to our spiritual lives. It’s called epistemological humility. Epistemology deals with knowledge, so you put those together. It’s really this concept that the more knowledgeable a person actually becomes, the more humble they should be. The more you know, the more you discover what you don’t know. There should be a degree of humility in how we hold our knowledge because, as much as I know, there might be something about this that I don’t know. So, I can hold firm to it and have a deep conviction about a certain thing, yet at the same time, I shouldn’t operate with an aura of arrogance about it because it’s possible that I misunderstood something. It’s possible that I misinterpreted something. It’s also possible that the information I got is inaccurate, and I can hear what God is saying and not know what He means.