God Speaks To Us Spontaneously

Author: Mark Virkler

God does indeed speak to people today, just has He did in the past as we see in the Scriptures. However, in our society which is so wrapped up in rationalism, we have trained ourselves not to hear God's voice or even to think that we can hear God's voice.

We can hear God's voice and there are four keys to hearing His voice as found in Habakkuk 2:1-2:

"I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

The LORD's Answer

Then the LORD replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.' – Habakkuk 2:1-2

The four keys to hearing God's voice are:

1. God's voice in our hearts sounds like a flow of spontaneous thoughts. Therefore, when I tune to God, I tune to spontaneity.
2. I must learn to still my own thoughts and emotions, so that I can sense God's flow of thoughts and emotions within me.
3. As I pray, I fix the eyes of my heart upon Jesus, seeing in the Spirit the dreams and visions of Almighty God.
4. Journaling, the writing out of our prayers and God's answers, provides a great new freedom in hearing God's voice.

Let's explore the first key.

Key #1 – God's voice in our hearts sounds like a flow of spontaneous thoughts. Therefore, when I tune to God, I tune to spontaneity.

The Bible says that the Lord answered me and said...(Hab. 2:2). Habakkuk knew the sound of God's voice. Elijah described it as a still, small voice (I Kings 19:12). I had always listened for an inner audible voice, and surely God can and does speak that way at times. However, I have found that for most of us, most of the time, God's inner voice comes to us as spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings, or impressions. For example, haven't each of us had the experience of driving down the road and having a thought come to us to pray for a certain person? We generally acknowledge this to be the voice of God calling us to pray for that individual. My question to you is, "What did God's voice sound like as you drove in your car? Was it an inner, audible voice, or was it a spontaneous thought that lit upon your mind?" Most of you would say that God's voice came to you as a spontaneous thought.

The Bible confirms this in many ways. The definition of paga, the Hebrew word for intercession, is "a chance encounter or an accidental intersecting." When God lays people on our hearts for intercession, He does it through paga, a chance-encounter thought, accidentally intersecting our thought processes. Therefore, when I tune to God, I tune to chance-encounter thoughts or spontaneous thoughts. When I am poised quietly before God in prayer, I have found that the flow of spontaneous thoughts that comes is quite definitely from God.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/christianity-articles/god-speaks-to-us-spontaneously-5509236.html

About the Author

Mark Virkler is with Christian Leadership University. CLU is a Christian University and Online Bible College offering Christian education including Christian counseling and Christian theology seminaries and offers certificates, undergrad, Masters, and Doctorates in the various Christian colleges of CLU.