Hearing from God

I warn you in advance that this post may well be long and convoluted.

I’m truly feeling as though God is taking me through a refining process at the moment. There is so much going on in terms of me hearing from Him and subsequently my life being transformed by Him. Its hard to explain it all, but I will try and perhaps you will be able to understand a bit more of where I am coming from.

I posted a very cryptic blog a while back about a journey I was taking; little knowing where that would take me and what route that would take. God has been challenging me to speak out more. In speaking out more he has been dealing with some old hurts in my life in a very gentle and loving way. For someone who doesn’t much like talking about themselves it has been a real challenge to even get a far as asking for some time from my friends to talk through and pray through some “stuff”. Wanting to be obedient I did what I heard God tell me to do, I spoke out just a little bit about where I am at and what has been happening in my life and I know that God desires to see me whole, to see me healed from my past hurts and to see me transformed.

Anyway, that was a bit of an explanation as to the background of this post. One thing I’ve been struggling with the last few weeks since being so honest, was the worry that I would sink into depression or that I would start to feel sorry for myself and that I would therefore no longer be focusing solely on God. It was a genuine concern based on paths that I’ve walked down before. I have been praying about it and trying to fill my time with good things; praying more, listening to God more, listening to some sermon tapes, worshipping, being with my children more. All of which have been great. It has stopped me from focusing on me and my hurts and raised my eyes higher and towards heaven.

But God, being our loving Father wants more for me. He yearns to talk to me and to teach me and to guide me. As I discovered this weekend He loves me so much and is so concerned with my wellbeing, with my life, with encouraging me that He will often use other people to speak his wisdom to me.

So, I was at SPACE training on Saturday. The training itself was excellent and the day was great. During the worship time I really felt that God had given me something to share with the group, which I did (altogether unusual for me to do that in a large group of people!!). After which, the team that had come to do the training for us said they had been listening to God all day and have some words to share, both for us as a team and also for some individuals. You can picture the scene; here I was in a worshipful attitude, hearing from God and my immediate reaction was great….I’m going to hear from God through these ladies. Anyway, they shared their words for the group as a whole and then shared words for individuals…as they shared with each person, I kept thinking…ok, God, I know you want to talk to me….I must be next! But they kept going and in the end every person there had a word or a picture from God…except me!! I wasn’t impressed and I was just about to start telling God how unreasonable He was when just before we disbanded one of the ladies stopped and pointed to me saying that she had a picture. It was a picture of me wearing a belt and that belt was the belt of truth and she felt that God had given me an amazing ability to speak truth. To speak truth to other people and in different situations, to speak out what is true. Fantastic I thought: a word from God. I was almost more excited that I had been given a word like everyone else than being concerned with what that word meant. A few seconds later I was given another word by another of the ladies. It went along the lines of telling me that I had a deep wisdom with regards to what is right and wrong for the children (it came across as being not just for my children but for children in general), that it was such a deep and abiding wisdom that it ran through the very core of my being and was what God had placed in me for a reason. Wow God. Thank you so much for speaking to me. As if that wasn’t enough I was then given a 3rd word. I was walking down a path and it was such an incredibly narrow path, there was no veering off, nothing stopping me from walking in such a determined and deliberate way to reach my destination.

As I got home I was so excited to have been given such clear and encouraging words and went out in the evening, not thinking too much more of it at that time. On Sunday evening I went to church and went up for ministry, the pastor’s wife was praying for me and she said that she had an impression that she thought was from God. Here we go again I thought! The impression was that God had given me an amazing ability to speak truth to people. I couldn’t believe it! To have been given 2 words exactly the same within 24 hours was almost unbelievable. Ok God you definitely have my attention now. What is it you are trying to say to me?

Yesterday I was listening to some teaching on prophesy and the gist of it was that there are different types, a prophetic word, an impression, a picture etc. and that there were different reasons for prophecy, some things were to encourage, some to convict of sin and some to give direction (I think there were more things as well but these are the ones that stuck in my mind). But, the important thing was to take the words you have been given and go away and pray about them, to weigh them up and to see what God further reveals to you. So that’s where I’m at. I am going to weigh them up, see what God reveals to me. I have an idea about the speaking the truth already…I was pretty much certain immediately what that was about but the more I pray about it, the more God shows me that it is more than what I originally thought.

And there you have it…my blog for today. God speaks to us!! He longs to talk to us and to reveal more of Himself to us. What an awesome God we have.