Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash
One of the
mysteries of faith in Jesus must be how God speaks to us through His Spirit.
Especially for new believers the ‘aliveness’ of God must be a conundrum. And
don’t many believers like to intellectualise how God speaks!
This
article is about how God speaks to everyone through the everyday issues of life.
My object
is to demystify the holy art of hearing God’s voice whilst showing the
relevance of this part of the prayer conversation we ought to be engaged in
constantly.
Prayer is not simply what we say to
God,
but more what God says to us.
but more what God says to us.
Do we
listen? Are we attuned? And here is how that’s to be so.
We hear
God’s voice primarily two ways, and this can be understood through the
congruence of a balanced message. Any sermon should have sufficient challenge and encouragement in it. In other words, anointed sermons rebuke and convict and comfort and strengthen.
And, I want to suggest that God talks to us all in these two ways.
We can
imagine God speaks to us through TAP
and its anagram PAT. Let me
elaborate.
God speaks
to us through the metaphors of tapping
us on the shoulder and patting us on
the back.
The Spirit
of God challenges us by tapping us
on the shoulder, to alert us to something to heed, like a warning, or to stop
something, or to lead us to do something. This can be a rebuke for sin or
equally God alerting us to the opportunity to glorify Him through a practical
love or care or concern we can show.
The Spirit
of God also encourages us via patting us on the back. All believers should know
those moments where the Holy Spirit might be heard to say, ‘Well done, good and
faithful servant,’ particularly when we’ve acted in obedience to His leading
and made nothing of it.
As
Christians, we must try to actively resist over-spiritualising our faith. It is
Christianese at best, and at worst it distances those who might be interested
in following Jesus.
God speaks
to all of us all the time if only we’ll hear Him within the issues of our lives.
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