God wants to speak to You

 What is God saying to you now?

There is nothing wrong with seeking wise counsel and teaching but this must not be a substitute for growing up in faith yourself. A Christian who is spiritually healthy is able to receive direct personal communication from God Himself.

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; Jn 10:27 NASB95

Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” Mt 4:3–4 NKJV

Here Jesus shows His faith in the Written Word of God but also in the spoken word of God. God speaks today and He speaks every day.

The Spirit of God brings the written word of God alive, so you know when God is speaking to you personally through a particular Bible text. But the Holy Spirit also speaks to your spirit in many different ways and He does it much more than most of us realise.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. Rev 3:20 NKJV

In the New Testament, every believer is invited to hear the voice of God and to share with others what he hears.   

‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy. Acts 2:17–18 NKJV

Of course God also speaks to his children privately. Many of the things you hear from the Holy Spirit are for to keep to yourself.

 

Being Led by the Holy Spirit

 You love God. You experience his love in his presence. The Holy Spirit is not just a theological term for you. You know Him personally, but you are perhaps sometimes misunderstood in your congregation.

You may hear teachings in church that don't sit right with your intuitive spiritual mind.

Preachers and church leaders are flawed people, just like you. They study the Bible and theological teachings and they do their best. Even if they want to learn directly from the Holy Spirit, just like you, they can make mistakes, just like you.

It may be that you hear a teaching or a prophecy from God himself in the church, but you sense that God wants to lead you a different way. God has a unique plan for each believer.
 
Is your personal conviction wrong then? Maybe you have misunderstood God's guidance in your life, but maybe not.

A few years ago I was in a very good church where the leadership followed the leading of the Holy Spirit. I attended a very good meeting every Friday evening.

After the service, the pastor took to the streets in the nightclub neighbourhood. Many others also joined in. They spoke to many people on the street about Jesus. That was undoubtedly from God and I went along too.

But I was tired after my work and the next day I was tired too. I prayed about it. I was supposed to preach the gospel, but how and when?

I realised that I could communicate God's message best on the Internet. I needed peace and quiet and time to pray, read and write.

I continued to attend the wonderful Friday night service, but I stopped going out on the street.

I know Christian women who visit brothels to help prostitutes. I know a woman who came out of the brothels through her ministry and is now very faithful and active in God's service.

Are you called to do this? I also met a preacher who once visited a brothel because God sent him to save a woman. Not everyone can do that and not everyone should try.

What do you hear from God? How can you best follow Jesus?

‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’ Jer 33:3 NASB95

It is very good if you can find a good church where the leadership serves with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but it is even more important that you are familiar with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in your own life.

WHEN GOD SPEAKS TO YOU ...

Jesus was God when He walked on this earth as a man but He did not walk around as God in a human body. 

• He was God with a human soul in a human body. 

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 

• but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Philippians 2:5-7 (NIV) 

Jesus lived as a man who lived in an intimate personal friendship with His Heavenly Father. 

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. 

• For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 

• For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. John 5:19-20 (ESV)

Jesus loved His disciples and taught them by His love and His example how to have a close personal relationship with God.

No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; 

but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. John 15:15 (NKJV) 

The life that Jesus lived is our example, not just in humility, kindness and virtue but also in supernatural faith. 

• His disciples learned to live with the same kind of faith, hope and love. 

• Then they taught the early church to connect to God in the same personal way.

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: 2 Peter 1:1 (NASB) 

Peter called himself a bond servant (or slave) of Jesus, but he was also a close personal friend of Jesus. 

• It is this combination of humble devotion and personal friendship which produced the supernatural transforming power of Peter's faith.

God is inviting you and me now, to come close to Him as friends, not as equals but not as religious servants either. Religion leads us into customs and traditions, into binding duties and predictable pious habits.

The Pentecostal movement began over a hundred years ago with a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit, who released believers into amazing liberty, love and power. 

• Yet now we see so many Pentecostal churches leading believers into traditions and predictable patterns of behaviour, man following man rather than each sheep hearing the shepherd's voice.

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me..." John 10:27 (NASB) 

When you hear the voice of God and He hears your voice, there is a personal connection that sets you free in the Spirit and releases the power and love of God on this earth.

When Jesus resisted the temptations of Satan in the wilderness, He quoted the Hebrew Scriptures.

But He answered and said, "It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'" Matthew 4:4 (NASB) 

Jesus loved the Scriptures and we must too. The Bible for Him was not just the Book of God, although it was and is THE BOOK OF GOD.

• Jesus was also listening to THE VOICE OF GOD... to every word proceeding out of the mouth of God.

• Jesus was the greatest of all Bible teachers but He did not only teach Bible truth. He spoke what He heard from Heaven.

Jesus is inviting us to enter into the same kind of personal connection to God, where each one of us HEARS what God is saying NOW.

• When you hear what God is saying to YOU and act on what He says to you, HIS power and love is released in your life and flows through your life to others. 

• When God speaks, don’t be afraid to do what He says.

• When God speaks and gives you a message to share, don’t be afraid to speak to others.