Don’t Let Hollywood Lead You: How God Actually Speaks
Can your feelings be trusted to tell you what God is saying?
You’ve felt fear in a movie theater watching a fictional shark. You’ve cried over characters you’ve known for 90 minutes. You’ve been startled, thrilled, and moved to tears — all by a screenwriter and a soundtrack. If Hollywood can manipulate your emotions that easily, do you really want to build your walk with God on what you feel? Today I want to help you understand how God actually speaks — and what to watch out for.
God can speak audibly — but don’t build your life on it.
We’ve been building toward this for three weeks. You know you’re supposed to hear from God. You know you need to want it, get sensitive, shift to neutral, and operate in integrity. Now it’s time to talk about how He actually speaks.
Let’s start with the dramatic one. In John 12, Jesus is facing the cross and He prays:
“Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
John 12:28 NKJV
An audible voice from heaven. Some people heard thunder. Others thought it was an angel. But it was God — out loud.
Does God speak audibly? Yes. I’m not discounting it. But I’ve known the Lord since 1989, and I have never once heard His audible voice. There have been times He spoke so loudly on the inside of me that I thought it was audible — but it wasn’t.
Here’s my concern. The more carnal you are, the more carnal you want your leadings. You want to hear a booming voice. You want the heavens to open. You want a sign you can see, feel, and touch. And that’s exactly where the enemy can get you — because the devil is the god of this world, and he can manufacture things in the sense realm.
Your feelings are the most easily manipulated part of you.
Think about it. You walk into a movie theater. The music starts. A shark appears on screen. Your heart is pounding, your palms are sweating — and you live in Colorado. You’ve never even seen an ocean.
What happened? Hollywood manipulated your emotions with music, lighting, and story. In the space of 90 minutes, you laughed, cried, screamed, and cheered — for fictional people you’ve known for an hour.
Do you really want to base your walk with God on something that fickle?
If a movie soundtrack can make you cry, the devil can make you feel something too. The only biblical record of a man being led by what he felt was Isaac reaching out to touch Jacob — and he was completely deceived. Don’t go by what you feel. Your feelings can be manipulated. Put a thermostat on them and follow the Spirit instead.
God can speak through angels — but it’s not tea every Wednesday.
In Acts 27, Paul is on a ship heading into disaster. He’d already warned them not to sail. They didn’t listen. Now they’re in the middle of a catastrophic storm.
Then Paul stands up and says:
For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, saying, “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.”
Acts 27:23–24 NKJV
Does God speak through angels? Absolutely. It happened to Paul. It happened throughout Scripture. It could happen to you — the Bible says you might entertain angels unaware.
But here’s the thing. When you look at Paul’s entire ministry — decades of serving God — there are maybe ten recorded angelic encounters spread across 60 years. That’s not Mondays at 8 a.m. That’s not weekly visitations over tea and crumpets.
When someone tells me they’re having regular angelic visitations every week, I get cautious. Not because God can’t do it — but because the enemy can imitate it. And I’ve watched people follow what they thought was an angelic leading straight into a ditch because the first three or four words were accurate and the fifth one was a nosedive.
Both audible voices and angels can be imitated.
This is the critical point. Anything that happens in the external, sense realm — something you can see, hear with your physical ears, or feel with your body — can be counterfeited by the enemy.
I know people who have heard audible voices telling them to pursue another man’s wife. I’ve had a man stand in a prayer line and ask me to pray that he could marry a woman — who was already married to someone else. He said God told them both audibly.
No, He didn’t. That violates the Word of God. It doesn’t matter if you heard a voice, saw an angel, or had a vision — if it contradicts Scripture, it’s not God. Period. Paul himself said even if an angel from heaven were to preach any other gospel, let him be accursed. If the angel doesn’t line up with the Word, tell him to take a hike.
God will teach you anything — if you can hear Him.
Before I close, let me remind you why this matters beyond just spiritual things.
A brain surgeon I heard about was spiritfilled. He was about to make a routine incision he’d done hundreds of times before. Just before the cut, the Lord spoke up on the inside of him: “Don’t cut that deep. Just shave it.”
He listened. Turned out the imaging was wrong. If he’d cut at his normal depth, the patient would have bled out on the table faster than he could have fixed it.
God will teach a plumber how to plumb. He’ll teach a business owner when to buy and when to sell. Your ability to hear from God isn’t just for church — it’s for every area of your life.
Hearing from God saved me from false doctrine my first year in ministry.
Early in my ministry, a well-known pastor started teaching me something that sounded scriptural. He’d read the middle of a verse here, the middle of a verse there, and string them together into a doctrine. I was young. I was buying it.
But something on the inside of me was unsettled. The Lord said, “Get up and read the whole passages.” When I did, the context on either side of what he’d quoted proved he was wrong.
My ability to hear from God — as immature as I was — saved me from going off into false doctrine that day. That’s how important this is.
Follow the Spirit, not the spectacular.
God can speak audibly. God can send angels. But those aren’t your primary channels — and they shouldn’t be. Both can be imitated by the enemy. Both operate in the sense realm where your feelings can be manipulated.
Quit chasing the spectacular and start trusting the still, small leading on the inside of you.
Follow the Spirit, not the spectacular. Fight To Win.
