ABSOLUTELY dependent are Christians
on prayer — that mode of communication between them and their God. But prayer
isn’t just something that a Christian does in praying aloud to their God.
Prayer is something that God speaks through his Spirit to the Christian. Or, at
least that’s the most powerful prayer there is. And when God speaks he speaks
consistent with his character.
Whenever God reveals his will he
does so in alignment with his Word.
Never can it be that God
communicates contrary to his Word. According to Martyn Lloyd-Jones the Word
does not replace revelation, but it is there to correct abuses. We can never
say God told us to leave our wife for another woman! We’ll never find anything
like that in the Bible.
It’s ridiculous for any Christian
to say that God doesn’t speak to them. Okay, he doesn’t quite speak in an
audible voice, but surely we can discern the movement of God’s Spirit in the
flow of life. Then, we also have the devil’s talk to contend with. He likes to
speak through our pride, envy, anger and so forth. So if God speaks through the
whispers of our genteel experience, surely also we’re vulnerable to the wiles
of Satan. And so begins the spiritual warfare within each of us — between the
ears and between mind and heart, as much as through the ebb and flow of life.
Read God’s Word often enough and we
find God is speaking to us all the time.
The Importance of the Eye
Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:22-23
how important the eye is in seeing — spiritually. To see things as they are, in
reality of fact. Our hearts are easily deceived. We see things through our
hurt. Our hearts prove filters through which our eyes see, but our minds need
to be engaged through the power of God’s Word to repel what our hurt hearts
bring.
If we watch what we allow our eyes
to see we’ll guard our hearts and minds.
Is it any coincidence that a “bad
eye” relates to the evil of ponerous
(Greek from which is derived the word “pornography”)? It’s also related to a “loyalty
divided” where we become unstable (James 1:8). The eye is susceptible to seeing
bad things.
Our human default is to slide
toward the bad eye, when it can only be through the good eye that we can see
God is speaking to us in order to hear what he’s saying.
The Secret to Hearing God Speak
We can safely say that the secret
to hearing God speak through the silent rushes of the Spirit, which are
discerned inwardly, is to keep our eye pure. We don’t watch unedifying
television, and much less corrosive or racy material. We don’t spend time with
people who are leading us in the wrong direction. We take care to spend time in
real relationships with people as opposed to playing games on the internet.
Spend time with God in prayer and
God will certainly speak to us.
Spend time with God in prayer — which
doesn’t need to be us speaking all the time — and God will ‘show up’ and speak.
God speaks most powerful prayers,
but we only discern them when we view life through eyes that allow his light in.
When we fill our lives with light
for life, God fills our lives with hope and grace.
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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