By Kerry Hasenbalg
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
-John 10:27
The great cry of so many believers is to hear the voice of God. We desire for God to speak to our hearts directly. Does God even speak to us in this present age through His Holy Spirit? In scripture, we read over and over again the great plea of God to His people, "He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to His Church.”
I believe that God speaks to us continually in this present age: directly to our hearts through the Holy Spirit, through His Word, through other members of His body, and through His creation. The issue is whether or not we are ready, willing and attuned to hearing His voice. The word reveals that it is critically important to God that we hear what He is saying to us, particularly as it relates to his instructions on how we are to love and meet the needs of His other children and to trust Him to meet our own needs.
Is it that in our pride we take credit for those great and profound things we do and say, altogether missing the fact that it was the Holy Spirit who led us to do and say them in the first place? People often ask me how I know it is God speaking these things to me, and my simple answer is that I am acutely aware that I could not have come up with such wonderful things on my own. The more and more we come to terms with the weakness of our own flesh, the more we are able to distinguish the author of those things that flow through us.
On a trip from London, England to Dallas Texas in the USA, I sat next to a young lady in her early twenties. She was from Sacramento, California and we began to exchange a few words. I asked her what she was doing in London and she explained that she was a student. She had spent three months there and was going home to visit her family.
I also discovered that she had had a roommate in London that had got on her nerves more and more while she was living there. She was leaving London and she was glad to see the end of her. She asked me whether I was married, whether I had children, where I lived. There was polite conversation for a while, until after a while, we lapsed into silence for the ten hour flight ahead.
About three hours into the flight I was sitting quietly, reading my Bible, when God impressed the name Gillian on my mind and I felt that He wanted me to ask her about Gillian.
“I can’t do that”, I thought.
“Ask her”, said the Lord more firmly this time (you see God is patient).
“I can’t do that - she will think that I’m crazy”, I responded.
“Ask her”, said the Lord more firmly this time.
I gritted my teeth and turned to her: “Tell me about Gillian”, I said.
She replied, “Which Gillian?”
She probed further, “Gillian in London or Gillian in Florida?”
“I don’t know - you tell me”, I responded.
She then proceeded to tell me that her friend Gillian in Florida came to live with her in London and was her roommate for three months. God had given me the name of her roommate that had got on her nerves!
Then she caught herself: “Tell me how you knew about Gillian?”
For the rest of the flight I had a captive audience as I shared with her the power of the Holy Spirit and what it means to know this Jesus Christ.
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Posted by: Mark | October 01, 2008 at 06:32 PM