God has never said that he would just give you wealth, poof, if appears in your bank account. But he did say he has given you the power to create wealth.

Hey, everybody, it's Steve K, from Cast Your Nets. Welcome to the Cast Your Nets broadcast. We got a special guest on today. If you're not familiar with who we are and what we do, Cast Your Nets was created, we're on a mission from God, actually, to show people how to make, well, what I say is boatloads of money and how to shape the world history with that tool called money, cultural change. We're not interested in trinkets and toys. For us, true prosperity is defined about our influence and the impact, the direct impact we have on culture, on families, cities, nations, and atmosphere. This isn't about selfishness and greed. It's about what Jim Baker says. It's never having to ask for money or permission from God to do what's in your heart. It's about funding your life mission and making your greatest impact right now about leaving your inheritance to your children's children. It's about provision for your vision and what God has called you to do. I've said many times and my guests and I were just talking how God has never said that he would just give you wealth, poof, appears in your bank account. But he did say he has given you the power to create wealth.

We're going to cover that today, by the way. Now there are a lot of folks who are telling you what God wants, that God wants you to prosper. But not many people are teaching you how to do it. Here at CYN, we're teaching you how to do it. And that is what I personally love most about our guests today, is that he's a how-to-do-it type of guy. Practical instruction, not theory.

This is what I love about our guest. His name is Dr. Mark Virkler. He is a trailblazer. Like I said, a how-to-guide, practical, Biblical, spiritual. He's also hilarious. So if you know me, I'm a comedian. He's a comedian. This ought to be a blast. Everybody really enjoys his training approach. He's very interactive. He's very proactive, and it's amazing an experience of communing with God. He's written more than 50 books in the area of spiritual intimacy, and his best-selling series on How to Hear God's Voice has sold a whopping 250,000 plus copies. I can tell you, having written three books, not 50, but three, 250,000 copies is a ton of books. He's the founder of Communion with God Ministries and Christian Leadership University. The university is an online university where the voice of God is at the center of every learning experience. And again, that's what we do here. The voice of God is at the center of every investment, every move we're making to create wealth. His message has been translated to 40 languages, and he's helped to establish more than 250 Church-centered Bible schools around the world. Welcome, Dr. Mark Virkler. How are you, sir?

Dr. Mark Virkler

I'm very good. Thank you. Good to be with you.

Steve K.

I want to get right into it. What is... First of all, can everybody hear from God?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Jesus guaranteed they could. Well, every sheep, he said, my sheep hear my voice. That's a guarantee given from his lips. So if you're a Christian, if you're a believer, for sure, he has said, look, he didn't say, You might hear my voice. He said, My sheep, hear my voice. That question's already been answered by Jesus. It's a guarantee.

Steve K.

I would say you've been specializing in this realm of hearing or how to hear God's voice. What led you to explore this theme?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Ten years of total frustration. Because I read in the Bible, people could hear the voice of God starting in Genesis, ending with Revelation. Then, of course, Jesus has promised my sheep get to hear my voice, so I tried it and I couldn't identify a voice inside of it because I was listening for an audible, booming-based voice, and that's not normally the way he speaks. Since I couldn't identify that, I was very, very frustrated that the Bible didn't work for me because I really believed it should work for me and for everybody. After 10 years of trying and failing, I had this thought come to me. Why don't you spend a year of your life learning to hear God's voice? I thought, Are you kidding? A year? I went to college. We had 15 courses in one year. We didn't take a year on any one thing. But second thought came to me was, of course, these thoughts are coming from God because they were spontaneous, flowing thoughts. But at that point, I couldn't say the sentence that God's voice sounds like spontaneous, flowing thoughts that light up on your mind. So But even though I didn't know they were coming from God, I thought they were good.

And the second thought was, you know what? You've spent 10 years in diffuse effort. You didn't get through. If you spent one year in focused effort and got through, it would be the best year of your life. So 10 years into my Christian life, I took a year focused on nothing other than learning to hear God's voice and see vision. He taught me four very simple keys to doing that, which we've been able to teach worldwide and pass on Jesus as a guarantee. Look, if you do these four things, you will hear God's voice. We actually guarantee it because Jesus did.

Steve K.

So you brought it, you brought it down to four keys. Is it having an iPhone or an Android? Do I need to speak Aramaic or something? Like Hebrew? Is that how this works?

Dr. Mark Virkler

No. If you do it 80-day fast and then read through your Bible ten times and then stay on your knees for five weeks. That usually does it.

Steve K.

All right. So that's what I'm getting at. Because you brought it down to four steps because I think. We as humans process things better that way. But the truth is, for at least for me, it's relational, isn't it? Isn't having a relationship with God, isn't that the basis of the soul?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Well, that's what you get once you learn to hear His voice, is to get a relationship. But until you know how to hear his voice, what his voice sound like, you can't have a relationship. I was living out of a book called the Bible. When I got married to my wife, we have a relationship. It's not because she gave me a book to read when I got married and said, read it, we'll have a great relationship. She offered me her voice every morning. But since no one had ever suggested to me that God's voice sounds like flowing thoughts that light upon your mind, that if you use the eyes, your heart, fix your eyes on Jesus, picture him there with you like King David did. I've set the Lord at my right-hand. See, I wasn't using the eyes of my heart at all to do what King David did. Jesus, of course, said, I only do what I see my father doing. He's using the eyes of his heart, the ability to see pictures continuously, and so is King David, and I'm not. There's no such thing as a faculty not being used. Because I wasn't fixing my eyes on Jesus, Satan said, I got pictures for you to look at.

You could look at fear, doubt, lust, the antichrist, any of those would be great. They'll drive you into darkness and gloom. I was doing a lot of visualizing. It was just all crud. The Lord said, Now you take the eyes of your heart. You pray Paul's prayer. I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened. You asked for the Holy Spirit to enlighten them. You picture Jesus next to you, tuned to flow because there's a flow, a river within you that flows. I had no teaching on flow, even though I knew there's a verse that said, Not every inner most being shall flow. Nobody told me flow was worth anything at all. They said, Reason and logic. What's worth everything? But all the great inventors, they all tuned to flow. Einstein said, I want to know God's thoughts and rest our details. He said, I think and think and think and I get nothing, but then I swim in silence and the answer comes to me. That's flow. He was tuning to flow, and flow was giving the answer. I didn't know to use the eyes of my heart, didn't know to tune to flow.

If you don't know those things, you can't have a relationship because you can't even connect with him other than through a book. You connecting with me through one of my books is okay, but it's sure not the same as having a personal relationship with me.

Steve K.

Got it. I guess you're diving into some of the four steps, four keys. I want to start with you start up by saying it wasn't a large, booming voice. You've repeated a sentence, a statement describing what hearing God's voice is like. Can you say that again slowly so everyone can hear it?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yeah, hearing God's voice. Well, God's voice sounds like flowing thoughts that light up on your mind while your eyes are fixed on Jesus. And a couple of principles there. One is there is a river that flows from the throne of God into your heart as a believer when you invite Jesus in, and it'll flow out through any faculty you give to the river, present to the river. If I yield my vocal cords, I get to speak in tongues. If I yield my lips, I get to speak the oracles of God. If I yield my mind, I get to have the mind of Christ. Every one of your listeners has had a thought light upon their mind, a flowing thought come and light upon their mind, which was a brilliant idea. They look and look back at that and say that was good. That was from God. We've all experienced flowing thoughts, but I went to college and high school and no one ever said to me, Honor flow. Even of the Bible, it's pretty clear that the river that flows is in your inner most being now, and it flows out through you, your inner most being shall flow.

I live in a culture that scorns flow, and I scorn flow because I'm an academic thinker. I had to repent of my scorn, choose to honor that there really is a river that really does flow, and it really is flowing within me. When I get these flowing thoughts, they're coming from the river. If I want to purify them, they're purified by where my eyes are fixed. The sentence once more is, God's flow sounds like, God's voice sounds like, thoughts that light upon your mind while your eyes are fixed on Jesus. Hebrews 12:1-2, fixing your eyes on Jesus. I didn't fix the eyes in my heart on anything specific, which is why Satan said, I got an idea. Look at the anti-price. It'll scare you spitless. Yeah, I had my eyes fixed on something, but just wasn't what the Bible said. I'm not using the eyes of my heart properly. I'm not visualizing the right stuff. The word meditative, my word day and night includes imagine. I'm not imagining, picturing, visualizing the right stuff. If I do picture Jesus at my right-hand like King David at Acts 2:35, I've set the Lord at my right-hand. He's quoting Psalm 16:8, I set the Lord at my right-hand.

He's picturing God next to him. I never did that. But once I've learned now to picture Jesus next to me because he is Emmanuel God with me, and then I tune to flow, the principle is flow comes from the picture being held before your eyes. So if I'm picturing Jesus, got a smile on my face, asking for his input and wisdom, tuned to flow, the flowing thoughts, I can assume 95 % going to be pure, going to be his voice leading me and guiding me. And that's all pretty priceless information.

Steve K.

Okay. So a couple of things. One is there still is a deciphering of the flow because it's not 100 % because we are on Earth. The first thing that really jumps out at me and that people should pay attention to is that there is an intentionality on your end to intentionally focus your thoughts, like take captive your thoughts and focus on Jesus. What do you do focus? That's the first thing you do? Or are you constantly in this state? How do you keep up this state? That's the first question. And then what are you picturing? Are you picturing his face, his arms? Are you picturing something that you're reading? What are you focusing on?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Okay, all great questions. Habakkuk 1:2 is where God took me to learn these four keys because all four keys are in Habakkuk 2. Habakkuk said, I'm going to go to a quiet place. I'm going to quiet myself. That's key number one, is you quiet your own thoughts down, and I'm going to keep watch to see. Now you're going to take the eyes, your heart, and look for Jesus. I'm just going to picture what the Bible tells me to picture. The Bible says fix your eyes on Jesus. I'm going to picture him right next to me because he is Emmanuel God. Next to me, the first day I did that, well, I went to John 4, Samaritan woman to well. I pictured Jesus and I sitting there on a well because I grew up in the dairy farm. We had these round wells and that's a comfortable scene. The key is get into a comfortable scene with Jesus. I went to a comfortable Bible scene, which again, is a Bible commandment. When the Bible says, Meditate my word, if you look up Joshua 1:8 and look up the Greek meaning, it's going to include the word imagine.

You're supposed to be imagining the word. I did. I pictured Jesus there sitting well. I'm sitting next to him. I saw him with long-flowing white robes. This is a godly imagination now. Long-flowing white robes, sandals on his feet, gentle, loving, countenance, didn't see his face for the first two weeks. But after two weeks of practice, I saw his face and he was laughing hilariously all the time. He would say, Mark, lighten up. I got it all under control. You're way too serious. Because I'm a workaholic. I have a second German background and type A behavior. I'm always pushing, pushing, pushing. He said, Mark, I got it. Just have a good time and everything give, thanks, celebrate. He's laughing all the time and he's relaxed. That's the picture that I see. First time I used vision, when I prayed the prayer, Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1:17, I prayed that the eyes of my heart would be enlightened. I'm picturing Jesus sitting there next to me. I said, Holy Spirit, would you take the scene over? And as I smiled and tuned to flow, the scene came alive. Jesus gestured like a person would gesture when they're speaking.

And as a gesture, a spontaneous, flowing thought came to me. So now I got three keys down. I'm still my own mind. They're treating Jesus next to me, doing the flow, getting flowing thoughts, which then I do what Habakkuk was told to do and ascribe the vision. So Habakkuk 2:1-2. I began to write out the flow of thoughts that are coming to me. That's how David got the Psalms, that's how John got the Book of Revelation. We got hundreds of chapters of people doing this in scripture, but I'd never heard a sermon saying do it. When I began to write, I got a paragraph from Flo. I stayed in Flo for a whole paragraph and wrote it, took it to my wife, Patty, and said, Hey, what is this? She said, It's God talking to you, which raised my level of faith because no one taught me to have faith in Flo. I went back and did it for another half hour, got another half page. She said, It's still God. I did that for five hours the first day and I wrote for five hours God talking to me. That's the four key: stillness, vision, spontaneous and in journaling.

Then you submit it to two or three people that you respect and the Lord is knowing God's voice. You ask them, does your heart bear witnesses came from God? If they do, the Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses every Ramah, which is a Greek word for spoken word, every Ramah is confirmed. That's how you confirm it so you don't go jumping off half-cocked. I said a lot. I'll stop for a moment.

Steve K.

Well, you brought in journaling, and so you encourage others to journal and write down what God's speaking to you.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Absolutely. Because if the Bible commands people to do it, which he did, I mean, he commanded Habakkuk to do it, and he did it. He wrote out three chapters of God talking to him. King David, he wrote out 150 Psalms. He didn't write all of them, but most of them. John wrote out 22 chapters. Paul wrote out a third of the New Testament. Yeah, you got hundreds of chapters in the Bible demonstrating these four steps. When God spends several hundred chapters demonstrating something, you do it because it's not there for no reason. It's there because it's a pattern to follow after. So, yes.

Steve K.

A pattern to follow after. And you walk around with a notebook and pen and every five minutes you're writing something down. How does this work?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Or you could have... You could have one of these things too, the little iPhone.

Steve K.

I knew we needed an iPhone. I knew that was part of hearing God's voice. Do you speak directly into it?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yeah, if I'm on the road driving and I really don't want to be writing, and I do get a lot of creative ideas there. I can hold my iPhone up and I can talk and it'll type the whole thing out for me. We're actually creating an app, which we'll have eventually sometime where you can do journaling and we'll have the four steps there. You can do apps and then have a button to push to send it out to your three spiritual advisors and let them confirm it for you. We'll have a prayer app eventually. But yeah, writing is great. In the morning, my morning devotions, my hands on the keyboard, I'm typing, okay? And God's talking to me. The benefit is if you're writing or talking, you can stay in faith for five minutes or 10 minutes and not have to doubt it because doubt is going to kill it all. Because you've got to come to God, you must believe that he is and he's a rewarder. Because if you come, if you're double minded, you're going to receive nothing. I can't come saying, Well, I'm hoping God is talking to me. You're getting nothing.

If I'm going to write, I can write in absolute childlike faith for five minutes and I can be a believer for five whole minutes without having to say, Is this God? Because if this is God, it is not faith, it's doubt. You're not going to get anything from God saying, You're going to have to be in faith for five minutes, get something, then you go back and test it, but you can't test it while you're receiving it. So journaling lets you stay in faith for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and let God actually talk to you and build a relationship and have a two way dialog, which you capture on paper. And yet now you're into a relationship with the King of Kings because you're doing the things you need to hear his voice, stay in faith, continue to hear his voice for five or ten minutes and respond and interact with him.

Steve K.

So the weighting, W-E-I-G-H-T, the weighting of the word, whether it's this word from the Lord comes after the writing, after you're out of flow, you come in and then you're like, well... And here's where I'm curious is what if he tells you something? I've got plenty of stories. He'll tell me something like there's no way. Like getting involved in cryptocurrency, I'm like, what am I doing? What's the next assignment? I had to double, triple check like, This doesn't make any sense. I guess that's where you bring it to somebody. I brought it to my wife who I thought for sure would say, You're nuts, Steve. She said, I think this is God. Okay. So do you still have that process? Like, no, it's too good. Or do you find yourself limiting or you just really like a kid? I want to be a fireman.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Everything God asks us to do is way beyond our ability. I mean, you look in the Bible, isn't everything God asks everybody to do way beyond their ability? Moses said, I'm sorry, I can't talk. I can't lead two million people. God said, Guess what? I can talk. Moses said, You don't understand. I can't. God said, You don't understand. I can. Now someone's going to win this debate. In that particular case, Moses won it, and God was angry with him and said, Fine, I'll give you Aaron to talk, but if you would have just believed I could do the supernatural with you, I couldn't. So yeah, everything God asks us to do is way beyond our natural ability. But God's not asking us to do it through our natural ability. He's asking us to listen to his voice, follow his anointing, follow his leading and become world changers. And you can't do that unless you're listening to his voice and obeying it and honoring it and saying, Yes, Lord. And so, yeah, it's all supernatural. I mean, hey, I built a university. I'm the guy who hates school, hates college, said it was totally irrelevant. I'm never going back.

And now I got a university with students in 129 nations. I was going to be a dairy farmer. I'm a guy who hates to write. I taught remedial English in college. I've written 50 books. Am I functioning way beyond my ability? Yeah. How and why? Because I'm listening to God's voice and saying, Yes, Lord. Rather than saying, "I can't do that." Well, of course you can't do it. But God didn't ask you to do it through your natural ability. He asked you to do it through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which means I can do all things through Christ, through the anointing, through flow, because flow takes you way beyond reasons and logic.

Steve K.

You get this. God gives you direction, gives you an assignment. Let's say an assignment to write a book about a subject you don't want to write about, but you do it anyway, which I'm sure is happening. Where is I going with this? During that walk, there must have been a time you're like, What am I doing? It must have been a roadblock. How do you get back to that place of faith as a child and say, I'm going to keep going? Even though this doesn't make any sense, I'm going to keep going. What's that process like for you?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yep, I have that process, and yes, it takes months and years sometimes to do things. For Abraham, it was 25 years to get his first kid by his wife. Yeah, he went through some blocks. He sold her into slavery a couple of times into harems. Finally God said, You could trust me. He said, Walk before me and be blameless. Because he wasn't being blameless, he was full of fear. That's why I let his wife go to him. Do I have those kinds of experiences? Yes. Does it take 25 years to do some things? Yes. Do I like that? No. Do I get upset and backslide like Abraham did? Yes. Is that okay? Is that part of the process? Yes. We pick ourselves up. We let God brush us off and say, Well, God, I don't fully understand. I sure don't understand why it's taking so long. I don't understand a lot of things, but guess what? I'm going to trust you and I have faith in you and I'm going to believe anyway. These guys died in faith, believing. Yes, I did complain to God about that. I said, God, what if I confess these things you're telling me that doesn't happen in my lifetime?

I'll look like a moron at my funeral. God said, No, you will be... I'll put you in Hebrews 11. You'll be a child of faith. Because they all died in faith. Believe me, it was going to happen. Didn't happen in their lifetimes. They died in faith, not moaning and groaning. He said, You'll be a hero, not a moron. I said, It's a better picture because if I'm going to picture myself as a moron, I'm not going to do anything. But if I picture myself as a hero who died in faith, I'm going to press right on. And if I die in faith, fine, I die in faith.

You know what? I do exactly what you're saying. And if I'm honest, I feel guilty about feeling like a hero sometimes. I feel like I shouldn't be feeling this way. But at the same time, if I don't put myself, if I don't envision myself as Superman, breaking through a wall, I'm not breaking through that wall. It's not going to happen. It's this weird dichotomy that's going on. It's not just me, there's plenty of Christians out there. Why do we go through that struggle?

Steve K.

Well, the question is, who do I think is doing this stuff? If I accomplish these things, if Abraham accomplishes a child and he's 100 years of age, it sure isn't Abraham who did it. It's God in Abraham who did it. It sure isn't me who built this university with the students at 129 nations. It's God who built it. I'm dead, all right? I die daily. I come alive to Christ. Christ is my life. When I look at these hands, I don't see my hands, I see Christ. When I look at this mind, it's not mine, Mark's mind, it's a mind of Christ. If I'm dead to self-consciousness and alive to Christ consciousness within me, then when I say I'm going to be a hero, I'm saying Christ in me is going to be a hero. And I know I've redefined I as Christ in me. I'm dead and Christ is alive. And if I don't say that, don't see that, don't believe that, don't live in that vision that it's Christ living through me, well, then yeah, I'll feel a little guilty because I'm thinking of talking about myself. I'm not talking about Mark Virkler.

Dr. Mark Virkler

He died a long time ago. I was really crystal clear on that Galatians 2:20. So get the filthy picture out of your mind that you're still alive and picture reality, which is Christ is living a supernatural life out through you.

Steve K.

Right. So if you're dead, you don't really care what people think of you because you're already dead. Yup. A lot easier to move forward on that. You said you took a year. Did it take you a year to learn how to hear God's voice? Is it take every Christian a year to hear God's voice? Can some hear them right away? I know there's a bit maturing and a process, but my testimony is I realized God was speaking to me almost all the time. I just wasn't listening to him. I just wasn't. I wanted to do my own thing and it got, whoa, it was it bad? Go ahead.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Well, had God ever told you that God's voice sounds like spontaneous, flowing thoughts, or had you ever been taught that by any pulpit at any place?

Steve K.

No, but when I became a Christian, I realized that there was a voice that I heard, like there was a thought, like you said, and it was always a specific voice. I had a character to it, right? There was a whole character to his voice. And I recognized that as someone I could trust. I didn't say it was God, but once I got saved, I'm like, This was God speaking to you the whole time.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Well, it was, it was. But you didn't have faith and confidence to fully embrace that because you'd never been taught that by any spiritual leaders, which is criminal on every level. And what we do is we teach it with confidence, with tons of scripture. I got 10 hours of teaching. I got a 300 page book. I got a full college course. It's not going to take any of my students a year because they're going to be able to look... Because I plowed the path. I've laid the thing out and I've told them what to do and what not to do. If they'll do it together in a group, one can put a thousand, the flight two can put 10,000. If you get together with two or three spiritual advisors or a group of half a dozen or a dozen, you can learn in three months what it took me a year to learn. You can learn that a quarter of the time. Three months of intentional, focused effort on these four key, stillness, vision, flow and journaling. You're doing it intentionally every day. You share it with your spiritual advisors. You're getting positive feedback or corrective feedback.

You can master the skill in three months and then go on and master the next skill that God wants you to do in another three months. If you have a good coach ahead of you and people around you who are seeking to master the same skill at the same time. So that's what we recommend.

Steve K.

So your environment plays a critical role in. How far, whether you do this or not. Got it.

Dr. Mark Virkler

And you need some teachers ahead of you who are... Someone should have been building your faith saying, look, these flowing thoughts within you that just light up on your mind, they're actually the voice of the Holy Spirit. Someone should have been saying that, teaching that, declaring that and nurturing that and encouraging that, and nobody was. And yes, do right brainers get this naturally from day one? Absolutely. Because right brainers are intuitive. They're tuned to flow by nature. That's the way God built them, flowing thoughts and flowing pictures. Left brainers aren't. They're tuned to analytical thinking. I'm a left brainer. I had learned to scorn all flowing thoughts. They had no place. Because reading, writing, and arithmetic. The three hours had a place. Music and drama were electives. There was no place for flow. Since it was not part of my natural DNA and it was scorned by my church and by my school and by my college, I scorned it, which means I was stuck. The left brainers are really, really stuck. The right brainers have it naturally, but they tend to not focus on it because they're never taught to focus on it and honor it.

We're going to help both the right brainers and the left brainers move on within life.

Steve K.

You actually have success in teaching left brainers like yourself, how to hear the voice of God.

Dr. Mark Virkler

We give them money back guarantee. If they take our course in college, our college course was Christian Leadership University, and they can't hear God's voice, we tell them you can request your money back.

Steve K.

I love that. That's phenomenal. Should people be afraid that they're going to... Is God going to rip them up? Should they be afraid of, I don't want God to speak to me. I don't even want to know what he's thinking of. Should they be afraid?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Maybe he's beating on you for all your miserable sins.

Steve K.

But some people would be... I know, like I first told my kids many years ago that God speaks to them. My youngest was like, Oh, boy. He was like, nervous. Oh, no. He knows I took the cookie two weeks ago. Should people be afraid?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Well, when I lived in self-consciousness, I was beating on myself all the time because I could never keep the law, which the Bible clearly says you can't keep the law. It's one of the reasons it was given to prove you can't keep it. Therefore, since I couldn't keep it, I just beat myself. When I began the journal, God was never hitting me. I asked him about it. I said, don't you want to hit me? He said, not really. I said, if you hit me, I'll feel better. He said, Mark, stop it. He said, that's sick. It's wrong. He said, look, what you just did was a learning curve mistake. I told you everything to give thanks. When you're making mistakes, learning curve mistakes, you're supposed to be giving thanks and say, Yippee, look at that. That was a bomb out right there. What can I learn from that? He said, If you can't celebrate your mistakes and learn from them, you're going to be depressed half your life. He said, I'm not beating you up for your mistakes. I'm just glad you're not trying to walk in the water. I didn't beat Peter up when he almost drowned.

I just picked him up and said, Hey, that was a great learning curve mistake. We'll do better next time. The religious God is beating you up. The true God loves you unconditionally and is speaking edification and exaltation and comfort to you. That's what he's speaking prophetically to you, to your journaling.

Steve K.

So in this journey on people hearing the voice of God, we have permission to make mistakes, and it's expected.

Dr. Mark Virkler

You're encouraged to make mistakes. You're not going to master any new skill. You're not going to learn to play basketball if you can't miss the hoop.

Steve K.

Yeah, we say that all the time here Cast Your Nets. You're going to just say, I've got to get through a bunch of these mistakes. Eventually, you're going to get it right. We just say, Keep moving. Is there any place... Let's talk about finances.

Some people think it's heresy to ask God for wisdom and discernment on how to invest your money. Again, this idea that God's just going to poof, magically drop in a million dollars into your account. What are your thoughts on this? Can we ask God? Hey, what do you want me to do with my money?

Dr. Mark Virkler

I suppose it depends if money is evil and secular or if money is part of the kingdom. Does God have much money? Is he very rich? Does he own all the gold and all the silver and all the cattle? Yes. Is he a multi-millionaire? Yes. Was Abraham a multi-millionaire? Yes. Was David? Was Solomon? Yes. Did God give these guys wisdom to create this wealth? And does God give us wisdom to create wealth? Deuteronomy 8:18, I have to tell you the power to create wealth in order that I might confirm the covenant, that I'm in a covenant with you. I said, wow, really? You care about money? Yeah, there's more verses on money than there are on prayer or faith. So how would God want to give me money? He gives me creative ideas. First Chronicles 28:19, The revelation that God gave to David as to how to create the temple, which was the most magnificent structure ever. Okay, all that creativity.

Steve K.

He said write it down, by the way. He told him to write it down.

Dr. Mark Virkler

He told him write it down.

Steve K.

You're talking about journaling. Write it down again.

Dr. Mark Virkler

It's journaling, which he gave to Solomon to then fulfill. So there's a guy getting creative from God, journaling it out. And it's magnificent. And the people who were going to create the tavernacle, they were giving creativity by God also. And if you look today, people like Larry Page, who came up with the Google algorithm, he got it from God in a dream. As a college student in Stanford, there's an audio clip of him telling the story online. If you just type in Larry Page, Vivid Dream, he'll tell you the whole story. He went to sleep. I mean, does God give revelation through dreams? Yes. He went to sleep at night. The Bible says he does. I will bless the Lord, his counsel me and deep my heart instructs me the night. So God is giving us creative ideas through our journaling during the day and through our dreams at night, which if we enact them, they will serve humanity well. And if we serve humanity well, the result is we get paid back. Whatever you paid is now worth 100 billion. Okay, I just checked it out on Forbes on June 26th, because I was teaching a seminar on this, and it said he's worth over 100 billion.

This is from a dream, and God is the author of the creativity we get in our dreams. The Church could do this, especially if we believed in dreams, especially if we believe God gave revelation through dreams, especially if we taught people how to interpret the symbolism in them, how to act on it, encourage that, ran courses on that. We do all those things at Christian Leadership University because we think this is all part of that relationship and part of the creative flow within us. It's day and night, 24 hours a day it's there within us.

Steve K.

So we have access 24/7 to unlimited creativity, unlimited knowledge, unlimited understanding,

Dr. Mark Virkler

Healing, comfort, peace.

Steve K.

But there still is intentionality in our part to enter into that place. There's still our... It doesn't just, hey, I'm Christian. It's going to happen to me. There's intentionality here 

Dr. Mark Virkler

When I go to sleep at night, I say, God, would you give me some creative ideas for the project I'm working on? I know if I do that, my heart and spirit will work all night. An hour and a half of dream time. I'm giving me ideas and I will wake up in the morning with flow coming out of me. I put my hands on the keyboard. The Lord said, When you wake up, you do not check the news. You do not do emails. You tune to flow. Put your hands on the keyboard and I'm going to give you a download from flow, and I get it every morning on whatever project I'm working on. The next morning I get some more and the next morning I get some more and the next morning I get some more and that's where I live my life.

Steve K.

Was it difficult to create that habit for you?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yeah, because I had to break the false God of rationalism, which is I live out of reason and logic and theology. I said, No, you don't. He said, I never told you to reason. I said, Come, let us reason together. You reason with me. You don't reason on your own ever. I never suggested that. I said, well, in college and high school and Church, and they all said, You're supposed to use your brain. I said, no, Jesus didn't use his brain. Jesus said, I do nothing on my own initiative. It's only what I hear and see my father doing. He said, You let me use every faculty within you, including your brain. I had to break the false God of rationalism because I worshiped it. I smooched, I kissed, all sorts of demons of rationalism and humanism. The breaking was to break free of that filthy, filthy, demonic philosophy, which I'd embraced and all the demons who were connected with it and decide I'm not a flow. I trust the river within me more than I trust Mark Virkler's little brilliant brain. That took a little bit of work. Yes.

Steve K.

I guess what I want people to know is that it's a process. It doesn't happen instantly. It's like creating any other good habit, like going to the gym or eating right or praying, fasting. There's effort. There's some pain involved in getting out of your comfort zone.

Dr. Mark Virkler

And for me, it takes a year to master every new skill and I write a book about it and the steps that I took, and I figured it can take other people three months if they work on intentionally with a group, every three months they should be able to master a new skill. If they're working with a good coach in front of them and they're being intentional and they're in a group and they're sharing their experiences and growing together and celebrating their mistakes, you ought to be able to master four new skills a year. We said we've got 100 courses that track my life. You can take them all. But those are the things you need to do. I don't learn anything alone because that's ridiculous. If I want to be 100th the speed, I'll learn alone. You get in a group and you share and you're intentional and you're focused and you have a good coach.

Steve K.

Where do you find a good coach? Where do you find a good coach for this, really? If you go online, I want to find a coach to hear the voice of God. How does this work?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Well, you can come to either one of our two ministries. We have three different ministries set up, Communion of God, Christian Leadership University and CLU School of the Spirit. Christian Leadership University has 100 courses, which are good coaches. Communion of God Ministries has 50 of my books, which are good coaches. CLU School of the Spirit has 25 simplified courses from our university, and it's me on video teaching. I'm 71. I teach a Christian and a teacher since I was 15. I've had a lifetime of deposit of this stuff. When you find a person who thinks connected to reality and can say it clearly, you want to follow that guy and download anything you can out of his heart and mind. I'm a passionate teacher, so we have everything you need to be a good coach in a lot of areas. If it's an area that I haven't mastered yet, then you find somebody else who does know the Bible, can sense the Spirit, can communicate clearly, and is ahead of you in the area that you want to pursue, and then you let them be your mentor in those areas.

Steve K.

How much does trust come into this?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Trust in people or in God?

Steve K.

In the people, in your mentor. Is it anybody or... If God's telling me stuff about me and I want to make sure I'm hearing this correctly, I got to trust somebody, don't I? Because if I talk to everyone, I'm worried. At least my experience has been, I've told... I found out not everybody wants to hear what God's telling me, one. And two, not everybody is happy as I am, but what God's telling me. They're actually a little aggravated, irritated. Why is this guy getting this? I don't understand. So isn't there a trust involved?

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yeah, there is a trust. And first person you want to learn to trust is your wife, your spouse, because they are actually the opposite of you. And so they're the compliment to you. I had to learn to trust her. The Lord told me 50 times in the first year, I'm your wife. Because I didn't, because she was a right, brain, intuitive, visionary. I was taught to scorn intuition and to scorn vision. I was learning to trust them for myself. I had to learn to trust them in Patty. If Patty's gut said, I don't think we should do this, and my reason and logic said, I think we should, I have learned every time I went with my reason and logic and ignored her caution, it was ashes and I lost the money. Okay, because her intuition was more brilliant than my reason and logic. Trust in your wife is probably going to be number one. When I'm looking for a person ahead of me in finance, I would like somebody who's, in any area ... They need to be modeling the behavior successfully in their life that I am trying to master. Because if they can't model it and show me a track record of modeling it, then I don't trust them to be able to take me there. So there you go.

Steve K.

I love it. I love it. So click the links, friends, Communion with God Ministries, Christian Leadership University. That sounds cool.

I really appreciate you coming on and doing the interview. Again, slowly. What are the four keys? Now, pay attention, folks. Key number one.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Stillness.

Steve K.

Stillness. Be still. Know that he's God too.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Yep. Vision. Fix your eyes on Jesus. See him present with you.

Steve K.

Right. Focus on Jesus. Not everything else. Focus on Jesus. Three.

Dr. Mark Virkler

And three, recognize his voice as spontaneous, flowing thoughts, tuned to spontaneous. Wow.

Steve K.

Trust again. Trust. God's good. It's good, man. And this is the biggest one that I got out of this, number four.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Record, write out the flow that's lighting upon your mind. Write down the flow that's writing upon your mind because that lets you stay in a faith mode for 5, 10, 15 minutes and have a relationship with the King of Kings.

Steve K.

And when you start hearing the voice of God, that's when the true relationship begins.

Dr. Mark Virkler

Exactly, Exactly.

Steve K.

It's wonderful. It's the most amazing, amazing time. Really, really appreciate you coming on. Click the links below, friends, get into that online university. God bless you guys.