It is very well with you, Emily. Your question is worthwhile. When it comes to hearing God's voice, um, there are many ways, many methods, many. We're going to talk about a lot of this in the coming weeks, but I'll say one thing. Before talking about speaking in tongues to hear his voice, watching someone to hear his voice, reading the Bible to hear his voice, or meditating on a picture to hear his voice, there must be a willingness for us to sacrifice whatever it is that is the object of our attention at that moment.

God is someone who, if we're to grow closer to him, we have to be willing to sacrifice something. And that's the truth. When we talk about God, God is someone that you will always sacrifice to. If a person has a God, their God is defined by who they sacrifice to or for the most. And if you find a person who is ready to lose his marriage for pride, who is ready to lose a friendship because of greed, it tells you that pride and greed are the gods of these people because that's who they give the most offering.

So in a very simple sense, you may come to a church gathering or something, or maybe you're in your room in the evening, and that day your co-worker insulted you greatly; as a matter of fact, your co-worker said something that hurts your self-esteem, and in that moment you are filled with a lot of pain and bitterness towards what this person said. If you are going to hear God's voice, that pain you are feeling, you are going to have to be willing to lay it down on the altar.

You're going to have to be willing to sacrifice it. Every time that thought wants to come into your heart to collect your soul that evening, you have to be willing to say, I am going to lay this down. I'm looking for my God, and so long as I have these other thoughts as a governor in my soul, I will not be able to hear from my God. So I have to be willing.

Sometimes it might not even be pain, sometimes it can be jollof rice. You understand? We say we want to pray; we say we want to read the Bible, but ah, that jollof rice in the fridge is, oh my God, oh my God, and in that jollof rice, actually, ah, they cut small small pieces of meat inside, oh my, and there's a salad that was made by angels, oh my God, and I just remembered, hey, there's a juice that I imported that is in that fridge, eh. My dear, you're going to have to be willing to sacrifice that if you're going to hear the voice of God.

Do you understand me? So the first thing in hearing God's voice is that you have to be willing to lay a lot of things down. Lay down your desires, lay down your anxieties, lay down your wants, your wishes, and say, God, I want you to speak to me. Yes, easier said than done, but this is how it begins: a willingness to let every other thing go.

So in a sense, we can talk about emptying the mind, but it's a bit beyond that. Again, I'm going to teach a lot of these things because it's not a five-minute, you know, conversation, right? It's a willingness to lay something down on the altar to pick up what God will have us pick up.

So that's how it is in hearing God's voice. There will always be contrary voices; there will always be contrary opinions, but the willingness to pick that one in the multitude at the expense of everything else. That's how our prophetic ability starts to increase. The willingness to abandon and reject every other voice for the voice of God, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, no matter how untimely it sounds, I choose this voice.

And little by little, when we begin to operate like that, that voice will become sharper and sharper in your heart. It is well with you. I said, I'll talk a lot more about this because it's still within the environs of what we call meditation. It is well with you, Emily. God bless you.