Building a Prayer Life Series
January 5- The Listening Prayer
John 16:13: But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come.
Many times, we may think God is speaking to us but there are other sources which may speak to us, and so how do we discern between all of these? I am sharing a few things from my own personal experience, walk and from the Bible on how I learned to distinguish between the other sources and the Holy Spirit. 1. The first realm is ourselves. We could hear our own thoughts, and we can dream from our subconscious minds a lot. The things submerged in our subconscious and unconscious mind comes to surface because as the Holy Spirit starts to do a cleaning work in us, a lot of old thoughts come to the surface. Our flesh can never guide us, our human thought and opinions, highly opinionated can be hasty and judgmental or very emotional and lead us astray. We have to submit our thoughts to Christ to hear His voice and not ours. 2. Word of God: While the Word of God is our guide, sometimes we flip through the Word without prayer and get random verses and then wrongly decide God is telling us something. What we read has to be confirmed by supernatural peace within and also God will start to open a door in that direction to confirm this is the right way. Read the Word prayerfully. If God speaks through the Word, He will confirm that Word through sermons, messages we hear, and other people who are close to God. Things will start to open and fall into place. Sometimes, even if something is from God, the devil will send obstructions to oppose it, so we have to hear from God what is His will, pray and break down strongholds to release situations. We must not give up so easily in the face of opposition and obstruction, once we know His will for that situation. 3. Signs from Outside: Sometimes we may make a big decision by seeing a huge signboard and keep seeing the same thing over and over and think God is speaking to us. Satan can plant external signs to mislead us and external signs or numbers or anything external can be sent by Satan to disturb and derail us. We have to be very internally attuned with ourselves and God to discern from fake misleading outward signs. 4. Satan, atmosphere: Satan is the prince of the air so he speaks a lot to us through atmosphere. Satan speaks a lot through an external voices and impression, voices in the head, even visions and dreams that bring confusion. The Holy Spirit also gives us visions and dreams but we need to learn to recognize the difference. Often, we find a lot of confusion and chaos and disturbance after the dreams and visions of Satan.
The best way to hear God is to read the Word, meditate and then “listen deep into your belly,” to hear the powerful but silent Voice of the Holy Spirit. Time and experience will train you and the more you ask Him; He will show and train you how to hear His voice. Communion with God brings the greatest peace and listening and obeying Him releases the springs of joy of living waters.
Rita
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