#31: How to Make Room for God's Voice When Everything Else Is Louder

You've been asking God for direction — but you've also given twelve other voices permission to be louder than His. In this episode, April Nova Scipio gets honest about what happens when fear, other people's opinions, and comparison drown out the voice of God. Anchored in Proverbs 3:5-6 and Jeremiah 33:3, this episode is about getting quiet enough to hear, flexible enough to follow, and bold enough to move when God says go. Paralysis dressed up as discernment is still disobedience — and today we talk about that. Part 2 of the Write the Vision series. Get the free See It Clearly Vision Guide at thenovacompany.org.

• Series: Write the Vision (Part 2 of 5)
• Anchor Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT
• Key Scriptures: Jeremiah 33:3 NLT · 1 Corinthians 6:12 NLT · Philippians 3:13-14 NLT · Joel 2:28-29 NLT
• The One Thing: Identify one voice louder than God's and fast from it for one day this week.
• Free Resource: See It Clearly Vision Guide → Click Here
• novaCircle: Weekly mentoring → https://www.thenovacompany.org/novacircle

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🎸 Intro music produced by Cory Valjien. https://spotify.link/Ot87eEITRDb

Transcript

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We let people into the driver's seat of our decisions because we love them, or because they love us, or because their opinion hasn't mattered to us in the past. And those aren't bad reasons. But if God hasn't authorized that voice to speak to the direction of your specific calling, then that voice, no matter how well meaning it is, it's competing with His. You've been praying, you've been seeking, you've been doing all the things you know to do. But here's the thing: while you've been asking God, you've also been letting a lot of other things answer. Fear answers, other people's opinions answer, past disappointments answer, the well-meaning voices of people who love you answer. And somewhere in the middle of all of that noise, God's voice, the one you actually need, has gotten harder to hear. Today we're talking about that. Today we're talking about what it actually takes to make room for God's voice when everything else in your life is louder. Welcome back to the NovaCo podcast. I'm April Nova Sipio, and we are in week two of the Write the Vision series. If you missed last week's episode, go back and listen. We laid the foundation that everything we're covering this month is built on. And God, He wants you to know that He already has a specific vision for your life. So go back and listen. Your job is not to create that vision, but just to receive that vision. And this week we're going one layer deeper because you can believe the vision exists and still not be able to see it clearly because the noise in your life is drowning it out. Let me anchor us in Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. It says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take. He will show you the path. That is a promise, not a maybe, not a if the conditions are right. He will show you. But there's a condition on our end. We have to be trusting Him with all of our hearts, not depending on our own understanding. And let me just say this. We also we don't want to, we don't want to depend on everyone else's understanding either. Okay? I want you to think about that. We're gonna come back to that. But first, I want to share a story with you. So way back in the day, way, way, way back, over, I don't know, a lot of years ago, probably like 2004, y'all. Oh, I'm aging myself here. But way back in the day, my husband and I, we made a decision that everyone in our lives they didn't understand, right? We decided to move from Georgia to Oklahoma. We really believed that is what God was calling us to do. Now, I want you to understand the weight of this decision because we were not moving away from a bad situation. We weren't leaving something broken. We had community, we had relationships that deeply matter to us. We loved our church family. We had people in our lives who loved us, you know, real friendships, not the surface level acquaintances. Like we had friends who had been in our corner for years, people who knew our story, knew our family, knew what God had been building in our lives. And when we told them we were moving to Oklahoma, some of those people, people who loved us so much, they told us that they thought we were missing it. Now, it wasn't to hurt us, it wasn't out of malice, it was out of love, out of genuine concern. They questioned whether this was really God. They wondered, you know, if we had heard clearly. They weren't out to do anything bad. They genuinely cared about us and they were worried. And if you've ever had someone who loves you tell you that they think you're making a mistake, you know how heavy that is. You know that you can't just dismiss it, right? These people were not strangers. These were people whose voices matter in our lives. And my husband and I had to do something that was one of the harder things that we've had to do. We had to cut those voices off, not cut the people off. Let me say that. Not walk away from friendships permanently, but we had to cut those voices as sources of direction for our lives. We had to resolve in our hearts that we were not going to let people we loved, even people with the best intentions, become louder than God. And sometimes that's hard. You know, I want to be 100% honest with you about that. It is hard to say to someone you love, I hear you, I know you care. And also say, I cannot let what you're saying determine what I do. It costs something, right? In some cases, it may cost you a closeness in your friendship, at least for a season, right? There are things that it can cost and that can hurt. So I'm not going to stand here and tell you that obedience is always painless because sometimes it isn't. But we knew that we heard from God and we knew what he said, and we made a decision together that we were going to be obedient to God, even if it meant losing friends, even if people we loved thought we we were wrong. And so we ended up moving to Oklahoma. And, you know, what God had for us in that season, what he was building, what he was positioning us for, none of that would have been accessible to us if we had stayed in Georgia because someone else was afraid. And here's what I learned through all of that: that love and authority are not the same thing. A person can love you deeply and still not have the authority to speak into the direction of your life. God is the one with the authority. The question is whether He is the voice you are building from. Some of you need to hear that today. Some of you have been holding back from a step God has clearly told you to take because someone who loves you expressed doubt. And I need you to hear me. Their love for you is real, right? But I also need you to know it's not the final word, that God's word 100% of the time has to be the final word. Now, I'm gonna give you three truths today, three thoughts that are gonna help you do exactly what I had to learn to do. Make room for God's voice above every other. So, thought number one, truth number one, not every voice with access to your life has been authorized by God to shape your vision. Hear me. Not every voice with access to your life has been authorized by God to shape your vision. First Corinthians 6 12, it says, You say, I am allowed to do anything, but not everything is good for you. And even though I'm allowed to do anything, I'm not going to let anything make me its slave. Paul is talking about freedom here, but I want to apply this principle to the voices in our lives. Just because a voice has access to you doesn't mean it's good for you. Just because someone can speak into your life doesn't mean they should be shaping your decisions. Accessibility is not the same as authority. So think about your life right now. Think about the voices that are most consistently in your ear, the people whose opinions matter most to you, the things you check before you make a move, the comments, the feedback, the reactions of specific people. Now ask yourself: did God put those voices in that position of authority in your life? Or did you? Because here's what happens: we give permission based on relationship, not revelation. We let people into the driver's seat of our decisions because we love them or because they love us or because their opinion hasn't mattered to us in the past. And those aren't bad reasons. But if God hasn't authorized that voice to speak to the direction of your specific calling, then that voice, no matter how well-meaning it is, it's competing with His. And no voice should be allowed to compete with God's voice. The filter is not, does this person love me? The filter is, is this voice aligned with what God has said? Those are two very different questions. The second thought, truth number two, God wants to show you things directly, but you have to ask him and you have to be quiet enough to hear. God wants to show you things directly, but you have to ask him and you have to be quiet enough to hear. Jeremiah 33, 3, it says, Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come. Remarkable secrets, things you do not know. God is saying, Come to me directly, ask me. I will tell you things that no one around you could possibly tell you, because no one around you has the perspective that I have. Joel chapter 2, verses 28 and 29, it says, Then after doing all these things, I will pour out my spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days I will pour out my spirit even on servants, men and women alike. God pours out his spirit on all people. That means you. That means you have direct access to the voice of God, not just through other people, not filtered through someone else's interpretation of your calling. You personally, you personally can hear God's voice. God speaks to his people. So why are we outsourcing our discernment to everyone else? That's the question I want you to sit with. Just recently, I had to make a decision in my life. That was a huge decision. And I was, you know, I wasn't clear, but I couldn't rely on the discernment of other people. I could share with other people, I can talk to other people, I could let them know what I was thinking, I could ask them to pray for me. But at the end of the day, I had to discern God's voice from me so I could confidently walk in what the Lord was leading me to walk into. And I want that for you. So how can you apply this in your life today? When you need direction in your life, right? Before you call the friend, before you post the question in the group chat, before you ask what anyone thinks, go to God first. Sit down with him, open his word, ask him directly, give him space to answer before you invite anyone else into the conversation. Then as you invite people into the conversation, you're not swayed by their opinion. You're seeing, you know, you're weighing what they're saying and you're taking that to God because at the end of the day, it all has to align with what God is telling you. How you move, how you make decisions, how you walk, what you do. It has to go back to what did God say? I promise you, I promise you, if you take that time to go quietly before the Lord, what He shows you in that quiet place is gonna be more accurate than anything anyone else can offer. Even the people who love you most, even the people with the best intentions, they see in part, you see in part, but God sees the whole picture. Okay, thought number three, truth number three paralysis is not faithfulness. Paralysis is not faithfulness. Hear me, right? Because staying still because of other people's doubts is not the same as waiting on God. Staying still because of other people's doubts is not the same thing as waiting on God. Philippians 3, 13 and 14. It says, No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing, forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Paul says he's focused, he focuses on one thing, not the opinions of everyone around him, not the doubts of people who question his calling, and there were definitely plenty of those. He focuses on one thing. What lies ahead? The prize that God has called him toward. There is a counterfeit of discernment that I want to name today because I've seen too many women stuck in it. It's when we dress up our paralysis as spiritual sensitivity. We're telling ourselves, okay, I'm gonna wait on God. But what we're actually waiting on is permission from other people. Why can't I tell you this? Because I've been there. You guys, I'm not telling you things that I haven't had to wrestle with and walk out, right? We're waiting for the doubters to come around, we're waiting for everyone to agree, we're waiting until we can move without anyone losing. And that is not waiting on God. That is waiting on people. And people will never 100% agree on your calling. That's not how this works. You have to take steps as God leads. God can't redirect a parked car. At some point, you're gonna have to move. At some point, the obedience he's asking for is the step, not the certainty. And when you take that step, he shows up, he directs, he confirms, he opens doors. But he doesn't do that while you're standing still waiting for everyone else's blessing. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. I want to read that again. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Y'all hear me? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. What does it say? Lean not on your own understanding. This is so important, right? This this doesn't say trust in the Lord plus the approval of other people around you with all your heart. Right? That when we when we when we lean to that, that's a complete devotion to God's direction over everyone else's direction. When we moved to Oklahoma, some people thought we were missing it. God knew exactly what he was doing. And the same is true for the step he's asking you to take. I want us to think about this. How can we apply this in our lives? I want you to think about how, you know, there is a voice in your life right now. I want you to identify it. Maybe it's a person, maybe it's a platform, maybe it's a fear, maybe it's a past failure, but I want you to identify that one voice in your life right now that has been louder than God's voice. Not a bad person. Maybe it's someone who loves you, but it's a voice that has been doing more to shape your decisions than God's word has. And I want you to cut that voice out for one day this week, whatever that looks like. Take a break from the conversation, step back from the platform, give yourself space from that influence. And I want you to replace that with time spent with God. Just get silent and get quiet before the Lord. Even if it's 15 minutes, sit with him and ask him, God, what do you say? God, what do you see? God, what are you asking me to do? And I want you to write down what he shows you. I promise you, I'm telling you what I know from experience. The clarity you find in 15 minutes of intentional silence before God is gonna be worth more than a hundred conversations with well-meaning people. So I want you to write yourself a note. Make sure you do that this week. One day this week, one voice, identify it. One day of silence before the Lord. That's it. All right, I want to pray over you today. Heavenly Father, I pray over every single person who is listening to this podcast. And I know, Lord, that some of them are in the middle of exactly what I described. They are surrounded by people who love them and maybe God, they're questioning the direction they sent you calling them in. God, maybe some are being pulled between the voice of someone they respect and the voice of the Holy Spirit inside of them. And God, I understand that is a hard place to be. So I lift them up to you today. God, I pray right now that you would give every person listening the gift of clarity, that your voice, the voice of the good shepherd, the one your word says your sheep know. God, I pray that voice will become so unmistakable, so distinct, so clear in their lives that never again will they confuse it with another voice. God, I pray for the courage to release what doesn't belong in the driver's seat, the courage to honor relationships while also honoring your direction and the courage, God, to say, I love you. And this is what God said. And God, I pray for the grace to hold both of those things at the same time. God, I pray specifically against the paralysis that comes from waiting on everyone's blessing before taking the step that you've already authorized. And God, whoever is listening and wherever wherever they are right now, God, if they're standing still because they're waiting on permission from people, God, I pray that that permission comes from you and you alone. And I pray that today they courageously and boldly take that step. God, you tell us that we are to seek your will in everything that we do, and you're gonna show us which path to take. So, God, we are seeking you today and believing that you are now showing. God, show us, make the path clear. God, give us courage like never before today, as we walk in all what you have for us. We love you, we honor you, and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen, guys. Thank you so much for being here this week as we are in week two of Bright the Vision. If this episode inspired you in any way, I want you to share it with someone who needs it. Share out on your socials, tag me at AprilNovicipio. Share it with someone you know is standing still because of the voices around them. Send it to them. They need to hear this. And if you haven't grabbed the free See It Clearly vision guide yet, I want you to go get that. It's in the show notes of this episode or on my website. And this guide is basically a resource for this entire series. There's scripture and reflection questions and a vision statement template so that you can make this vision official. So make sure to grab that. And those of you who are in my mentorship community, Nova Circle, there is an exclusive gift waiting for you right now in our private community. It is the Voices Audit Worksheet. It's three steps to identify the voices in your life, evaluate them honestly, and decide what to do about them. It is by far one of the most practical things I can give you to go along with this episode. So make sure to go grab that. If you are not already in my mentorship community and you want to be a part of Nova Circle, there is definitely room for you. You can click on the link in the show notes of this episode and join today and grab your exclusive resource. Now, next week, we are in week three of the series, and we're gonna talk about what you do when you believe the vision, but the timing isn't making sense. Oh boy, you guys, it is so important for us to unpack this. You know, what do we do when it feels like it's taking too long or we're wondering if we missed it? This one is gonna bring you a lot of peace, I am believing. So make sure to come back. Make sure to subscribe to this episode so you don't miss it. And I can't wait to keep hanging out with you. I love you all so much with the love of Christ. This is April Nova Sipio, and I'll see you next time. Always remember this is how we live faith first rhythm always. Be blessed. Love you guys.