Can you please give me an example of like what that means like a thought like are you conscious? Are you dreaming?… you’re taking a walk and then you have a thought that comes in your head ….like please I’m trying to figure this out
Absolutely Brother.
Let me first give you an example of a time I heard from the Spirit. And then I'll describe the experience.
As a young believer I was not disobedient to my Father. I understood His will imperfectly of course, but to the degree of my understanding at the time, I obeyed it. Until the time He told me to open my mouth to Him in prayer. At that time I thought I had a pretty good prayer life, but it was silent and my thoughts would often trouble me greatly. Then one day I just heard Him, The Holy Spirit very clearly communicated to my Spirit, that I should open my mouth to Him in prayer. Not audibly, but a very understandable and complete thought, and this was a thought that had never crossed my mind before, and one I greatly resisted, but that is another story.
I eventually submitted to His command, and the blessing I received cannot be adequately or believably described.
So how does this work?
We communicate with God in our Spirits. We use our minds to meditate upon Him and His ways, to share His gospel, and to make our way in this world. The soul, in my understanding, is the mind, the will, and our emotions. To submit the three to our Father and be transformed into the image of Christ is our objective while in this flesh. Our Spirit, renewed by the Holy Spirit, is now linked with and informed by that same Holy Spirit.
There is a reason the scripture tells us that the carnal man cannot understand the things of God, because he can't. But the spiritual man has the mind of Christ.
The problem is, we hold this treasure in a fallen earthly vessel. So while we now have Christ within us, we still have that old man and the old mans way of thinking and seeing the world. That is why we must be continually renewing our minds and conforming them to Christ through prayer, the word and obedience to it. I have found in my life, that the single greatest way to grow in the knowledge of Christ is through obedience. The scripture teaches us that if we do His word, we will know His will.
So first, if you want to hear God, set your heart to do His will. The slightest thread of disobedience woven into the heart of a believer will hinder his prayers and quiet the voice of God. I'm not talking about indwelling sin, but indwelling disobedience, and there's a big difference. We must purify ourselves, as He is pure, we are His, we are His body, His temple. I also might add, that fasting burns fat, and that burning fat is a sweet savor to our Father. Look into the sacrificial rituals to get a better understanding of this.
But I digress.
A man who is walking in faith and repentance will hear from the Lord, its a promise with a guarantee. And yet still, there is the area of our motivations to be considered. How can I know my own heart and motivations? I would say, only through divine revelation. So we must make our ways straight before the Lord, and in that confidence, we can trust His grace to reveal to us and deal accordingly with our motivations. And then we can know that we hear Him, and He hears us.
So when a man, by Gods grace and Gods power has become victorious over his flesh, not indwelling sin, but indwelling disobedience, the voice of God becomes more clear. And clearer still with each new interaction with the Spirit. We train ourselves through the practice of obedience to hear His voice. When God has spoken to you many times, when you have heard and obeyed and seen the wisdom of your obedience, and the wisdom of His will, and when the words you heard were proven by your experience to be of God, you are learning to hear His voice. And His voice will become ever more clear as this process unfolds. This process continues as long as we are in the flesh.
So what's it like? This is tougher to describe. Its a knowing based upon practical experience. "My sheep know my voice." I don't know any other way to describe it.
Ive shared this before elsewhere, but at a time in my life when I was living in complete disobedience to God, He spoke to me that I should pray for my son. I can't tell you how I knew it was God, I guess I had heard from Him so many times before that I just knew. Turned out that in that same hour, my son had a ruptured spleen and was on the edge of death and hell. I had no way of knowing this, and didn't find out till two or three days later. He lived by the way.
How did I know this was God? Well, my flesh hates prayer for one. Satan would never ask me to pray for my son. And the word clearly tells me that God desires to have fellowship with me. A random thought to engage in a spiritual exercise on behalf of another, while its possible it came from inside or something darker, is most likely God. And if it wasn't God, well then I prayed for my son, never a bad thing whether he's in the hospital or not.
But what if its something less serious? What if I think God is telling me to do some specific thing, like be a financial blessing to a brother or sister? The same principles apply. I once heard the Lord tell me to give twenty dollars to a particular ministry. I did, my wife wasn't thrilled as it was 20 of our last 30 dollars. But I gave it, and within 30 minutes, another brother gave me the twenty back and ten more besides. Before I gave the money I had just enough for rent, now I had enough for rent and groceries. So what if it wasn't God, and I was just feeling generous? Was I following scriptural principles, was I giving from a good place in my heart? Then ultimately it was good, maybe even if I didn't hear directly from God. But either way, I will now hear Him more clearly in the future. We learn through obedience and experience.
We are moral free agents, while we should seek Gods express will for our lives at all times, we are also guided by His implied will which comes from the word. No direct revelation is required to do what is right or be a blessing to others, share the gospel etc. The Spirit is our guide even if we are not being given specific divine revelation. We know His will through His word.
I hope this helped. I'm afraid after reading your post again that I did a lot of talking without answering your question.
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