“You crack dry jokes. You know that right?” Janet asked as she bit into her sandwich.
“Do I look like a joke to you?” Phoebe frowned.
“More like a dry one.” Janet said and let out a dry laugh.
“Take me serious at least, just this once, please.” Phoebe pleaded.
“I'm trying to but then… I can’t seem to fathom it. I still choose to believe you’re joking.”
“No, I’m being sincere with you. I believe it’s for a selected few; those He deliberately handpicked. Not until I heard in at the service this morning that I had a rethink that it won’t be a bad idea after all if He at least speaks, I wouldn’t mind if He said just a syllable to me. I just wanna be sure He knows I'm one of His children…” Phoebe lamented.
“First off, your though process needs to be cleansed before we move on to solve the real issue here. Second, God doesn’t handpick those He speaks to, most especially if they’re His sons and daughters; as in believers. I mean, He speaks to unbelievers when it’s necessary that He does that. He spoke to Cain in the old testament. He also spoke to Saul and Cornelius in the New Testament. He didn’t speak to all unbelievers, and He could handpick those ones because they do not have the privilege we have. Second, your understanding of hearing God speak is on a totally different template.” Janet elucidated.
“One way or the other, God handpicks those He speaks to.” Phoebe concluded.
“No, you’re missing the point. You agree that you received the holy spirit at salvation, right?”
“Right.”
“You also agree that the Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit, yeah?”
“Of course.”
“God doesn’t put His Spirit in a born again man as an interior décor. He puts His Spirit in a renewed man to, in the words of jesus… guide us into all truth. John 14:25-26 says, ‘these things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you…. But The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom The Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you.’ Now, I have a question for you, questions actually. Jesus is the one speaking here. Therefore, what are the things Jesus said to us that is being referred to here?”
“It is difficult and definitely impossible to recollect all of what Jesus said.” Phoebe replied.
“Good answer. Nevertheless, there’s a place we go to to check and read Jesus’ words. Where is that place?”
Phoebe blinked severally, trying to think about the answer to the question.
“church?” she asked after a couple of minutes.
“Nope. Try again.”
“Maybe the question was not properly articulated. Let me rephrase. Where are Jesus’ words documented?” Janet added.
“Oh, The Bible!” Phoebe replied enthusiastically.
“Brilliant! You do also understand that not all the words written in The Bible are directly from the the mouth of God…”
“Yes… The bible was written by men inspired by God to do so.” Phoebe cut in eagerly.
“I'm glad you’re following… that translates that it’s safe to say The Bible is literally God’s Word, right?”
“Definitely!”
“Excellent. Remember we got here from Jesus’ words to His disciples that the Comforter He is going to send, which is the Holy Spirit will teach and bring to their remembrance, including us the things He has said.”
Phoebe nodded.
“Now, based on that foundation, I'll like to ask. If the Holy Spirit wants to speak to you, where do you think He’ll speak to you from or on what basis would He lay the foundation of speaking to you?”
“From the bible…” Phoebe replied slowly.
Janet said nothing again for the next five minutes. Phoebe was deep in thought. She was trying to digest what she heard.
“That means I would have to read the bible in order to hear Him speak?” she finally asked.
“That’s in simple and short terms!” Janet declared.
“But some people claim they heard a voice or something. Some people even claim it’s a loud voice…”
“My dear, read the bible out loud if you want to hear a loud voice! It’s as basic as that! Now, don’t stop there. Study, ruminate on that which you’ve read and memorize some Scriptures as well. Don’t do it occasionally. That’s where some miss it. Do it perpetually, not necessarily as a ritual, but as a matter of necessity. Dust your Bible, read, study your bible daily. d-a-i-l-y! that way, I tell you you’ll hear from God more than he who doesn’t study his bible and always comes with one God-says or the other.”
“There’s the answer to literally everything and anything in The Bible. All you have to do is open it and read, asking the Holy Spirit to open up your understanding as you do so. You know, someone said, ‘The Bible is the only book available whose author follows it about’. You know the implication of that? it’s that the Holy Spirit being the author of the book will also by Himself explain the contents of the book to you! No confusion at all! There’s no case of misinterpretation. Everything is made plain and simple to you by the Author himself, that’s if you ask Him to teach you.” Janet explained.
“The issue with people falling victim of those who supposedly heard from God is that they have little to zero knowledge of the bible. When someone comes vibrating like a cold chicken in the harmattan season claiming ‘God' said you have to… let’s say wash your head with a particular soap at a particular time of the night. You’d be able to judge that supposed word if you’re a regular student of the Scriptures that such an instruction do not and can never stem from the spirit of God. Rather, as a result of the way the supposed word was delivered, people blindly follow and even augment their problems in addition to their already bulky load of troubles.”
Even as a believer, you can hear different things allegedly from the Spirit of the Lord but when judged by the Scriptures, it’s wrong on all levels. The devil is not inside you but he can whisper something to your ears and make it sound like it’s from the Lord. The Bible says “he (the devil) disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14-15). If you do not have the stance of The Bible on that matter, you might fall into error and claim it was the lord who spoke to you. Jesus did well to tell us that the Holy Spirit would teach us what He (Jesus) has aforetime said to us! So if what you think you’re hearing is the voice of the Holy Spirit but it doesn’t tally with what is written in the scriptures, you’re under an obligation to discard that information.
According to Jesus, the Holy Spirit will teach you what He-Jesus has said before. It is easier to decipher God speaking to you when you have an understanding of His written Word, which is documented in the Scriptures. Sometimes, you might not even hear the Holy Spirit speaking to you but if you’re in a straight betwixt two like Apostle Paul and you do not know what to do, a Scripture can come up in your heart that brings solution. Guess what, that’s God speaking to you as well! However, if you do not study His word to have an understanding of how He’s been previously speaking and what He has always been saying, when He does speak, you might not know, and when He’s not speaking to you, you might hear another voice and not know it’s another being actually communicating with you.
As for meditating on the Word of the Lord, Rick Warren said in his book ‘the purpose driven life’ that “when you think about God’s Word over and over in your mind, that’s meditation. If you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate. You just need to switch your attention from your problems to Bible verses! The more you meditate on the Word of God, the less you will have to worry about.”
Most of the things that generates headache for some is that when we don’t know what to do about stuff, instead of staying and relying on God’s word, we worry instead. Meanwhile, the answer is right there in the Scriptures. Some people are waiting and anticipating an angelic visitation when all they need is God’s word and the matter is resolved!
There’s an array of different verses in the Scripture that definitely speaks about your situation. Open the Scriptures and search them out!
There are Scriptures that deal with faith, wisdom etc. You want your spiritual sight sharpened; there are verses and prayer points in the Scriptures to that effect. Some Scriptures deal with protection. Others, provision. Another, the knowledge of God’s will. There are tons of Scriptures that’s a solution to a pending situation.
It is what you already have in you that the Spirit of God will elaborate to you. If you do not have the Bible in your head and heart, the Holy Spirit will not be opportune to communicate anything to you because the foundation on which He’s supposed to build on (God’s Word) is not there.
An interesting thing is that the Word of God can pop up in your heart at anytime. Let’s take something that happened to me recently as a scenario. I was sent a package from another state of the country and the person who was supposed to deliver it already gave me a call and we agreed on where to meet. I was busy somewhere else but I had to leave what I was doing to rush down to the agreed location. While I was in the public transport, the person called me that he had left the location because he didn’t find me there. Fun fact is the person does not recognize me, neither do I. We have never met. My blood pressure shot up immediately and I was beginning to raise my voice whie demanding why he didn’t call me at first when he got there.
Almost immediately, I got the caution sign in my spirit and I immediately hosed my rising blood pressure and I calmed down. Then this Scripture dropped in my heart, “a soft answer turneth away wrath but grievous words stir up anger.” Pro. 15:1-2.
I was like, “Holy Spirit, wow!” I immediately spoke to the man calmly and he responded with the same frequency because both our blood begun boiling almost at the same time. Then the Holy Spirit took my mind back to those times where the exact thing happened and my reaction had always been on the livid side. However, in this particular case, we spoke to each other calmly and reached a conclusion to meet again at the same location.
Funnily enough, when we finally met, I began apologizing for not being at the location earlier. Annoyingly, the man said nothing. I wasn’t so pained but I just wished he had acknowledged my apology.
Definitely, if I had no previous knowledge of that Scripture or I hadn’t memorized it, I'd have reacted as at other times and there’s every possibility that I’d have ended up spending extra transport fare to get my package. The Holy Spirit also explained to me that if I had raised my voice in anger in that public transport and I had to preach in that bus, no one would have listened because I had displayed a work of the flesh. Or if one of those persons there had met me outside preaching the gospel, he/she would have most definitely shunned me if I exhibited that work of the flesh.
So you see, the Holy Spirit had to bring to my knowledge that verse of the Scripture because it’s the Word of the Lord and I had also kept that Word in my heart ahead of now. I’m pretty sure that if the Holy Spirit had only cautioned me, I’d gave argued with him that I was right because in the real sense, I was right! The man should have called me when he got there but rather he expected me to stay put at the side of the road looking lost. Thing is, if he had called me earlier, I would have met him because I wasn’t so far away from the agreed location when he called that he had left.
You’ll get to hear more from God when you already have His Word engraved on the table of your heart. That way, when you need it, the Holy Spirit can easily pick one of the verses of that Scripture and hand it over to you for use.
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