The final way the New Testament says God speaks to us is through trances. Peter experienced a trance in Acts 10. A trance is when your senses are suspended. This is different from a vision, because in a vision, your senses are still intact—you can move around. When Paul and John went up to heaven, they moved around. In a trance, you see something and you hear the voice of God. All your other senses are suspended.

Now somebody might say, “But what about a fleece?” A fleece is an Old Testament method of hearing God. You have to take everything in the Old Testament run it through the cross. The cross will leave it alone, revise it, or delete it. I take fleeces and run them through the cross, and I see that the cross deletes them. The Bible says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God,” not, “as many as are led by fleeces” (see Romans 8:14). People in the Old Testament didn’t have the Spirit of God abiding inside them, so God talked to them through things like fleeces. I personally don’t encourage fleeces to New Testament believers. I believe they’re okay, but make sure you’re ultimately being led by the Word and the inward witness. A fleece is in the physical realm, and you don’t want to get messed up by operating in that realm. We are called to live in the Spirit and to walk by the Spirit.

Lisa: I want to add to what you said. All those answers were according to the spiritual realm. We also have a very clear mandate that if you see your brother in need, don’t shut your heart (see 1 John 3:16-18). Sometimes you don’t need a voice from heaven. Sometimes you just need to see or hear about a need. When we heard what was happening with our books—that people were tearing apart the pages and passing them around—we said, “How can we shut up our hearts?” We had never seen it, but when we heard it, we said, “We are going to respond.”

John: When I heard about girls being trafficked, God didn’t speak to me, but I said, “Lisa, we’ve got to help.”

Lisa: I read it in a magazine. I saw it when I was overseas. Sometimes people are looking for a sign or a trance or a vision or a dream when the Bible says, “If you see.”

John: “If you see your brother in need.”