Category: Podcast

Dr David Petts – Seven reasons for praising the Lord – sermon audio

How God speaks to us   Talk 22 Responding to God’s Voice (Part 2)

Receiving and using spiritual gifts

1 Corinthians 12:11 tells us that it’s the Holy Spirit himself who determines what gifts he should give us. But that does not mean that we cannot put ourselves in a position where we are most likely to receive them. As we draw this series to a conclusion, let me share with you five keys to receiving and using them. They are relevant, not only to spiritual gifts, but also to the whole question of letting God speak to us and through us.

Desire them eagerly

In 1 Corinthians 14:1 we are told to eagerly desire spiritual gifts. The Greek verb here is zeloō. Paul uses it three times in connection with spiritual gifts. Here, and in 1 Corinthians 12:31 where he encourages the Corinthians to eagerly desire the greater gifts by which he probably means those that are of the greatest value in building up the church. See 14:12 where he uses it again.

The verb is a really strong word – the KJV translates it covet earnestly – and is the origin of our English word zeal. You may remember that one of Jesus’ disciples was called Simon the Zealot (Matthew 10:4). The Zealots were a fanatical political group who were determined to overthrow the power of the Romans, no matter the cost. I mention this simply to emphasise the strength of the word that Paul uses to indicate what should be our attitude to spiritual gifts.

So, our starting point, if we want to be used in spiritual gifts, is to ask ourselves how eagerly we desire them. Then, the next step will be to stop making excuses.

Stop making excuses

I’m mentioning this because it’s amazing how easy it seems to be to make excuses for not doing the things we know we ought to do. Now I’m not suggesting that every listener will be making all these excuses, and it may be that you’re making none of them. But I know from experience that the things I’m going to mention are common causes of Christians not entering into some of the wonderful blessings God has in store for them.

Excuse Number 1   I’m not worthy

The first excuse is quite understandable. In fact, it sounds very spiritual. We know it’s wrong to boast, and surely, to say I’m not worthy is showing humility? But God doesn’t give us these gifts because we deserve them. They come from his grace. That’s why Paul calls them charismata (1 Corinthians 12:4) which comes from the word charis meaning grace.

In fact, everything God gives us comes from his grace. Even the gift of eternal life is a charisma. In Romans 6:23 Paul says that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And the word for gift here is charisma. We don’t receive eternal life because we deserve it, but because of God’s grace.

And the same is true of spiritual gifts. We receive them despite our unworthiness, or to put it another way, because we have already been made worthy in Christ. The Corinthians are a clear example of this principle. They were not lacking in spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 1:7), but this was certainly not because they were particularly good Christians[1]. So we should not hold back from seeking spiritual gifts for ourselves because we are conscious of our own shortcomings.

Excuse Number 2   I’m not suitable

This covers a range of excuses – I’m not talented enough, old enough, clever enough, and so on. It’s here that another word Paul uses can help us. In 1 Corinthians 12:1 he refers to the gifts he’s about to talk about as pneumatika. The basic meaning of this word is spiritual, but in the context it’s probably better understood to mean supernatural.

As we’ve said, all God’s gifts come from his grace, so they’re all charismata.  There are natural gifts and supernatural gifts[2].  Paul refers to the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 as pneumatika because these particular gifts are supernatural. That means that there’s no limit as to the persons God may give them to. They have nothing to do with our natural talents. And they’re available to all God’s people, irrespective of age, gender, or social status (Acts 2:17ff).

Excuse Number 3   They’re beyond my reach

Sometimes we’re tempted to think that the wonderful gifts we’re talking about are somehow beyond our reach. We’re conscious of our own humanity and spiritual gifts are manifestations of the supernatural power that comes from God himself.  God is in heaven and we are on earth. Surely they’re beyond our reach? But no, they are not. Spiritual gifts do not come from God in outer space!  They come from God who lives inside you.

This is where another word Paul uses to describe these gifts will help us. In 1 Corinthians 12:7 he refers to them as a manifestation. The Greek word is phaner­osis (v7). It comes from a verb meaning to shine and has been defined as a clear display, an outward evidencing of a latent principle.  

To understand this better, please think about a lightbulb. Electricity is the power at work inside it. The light that shines from it is the evidence that the electricity is there. It’s a manifestation of the power within. Now think of yourself as the lightbulb, and the Holy Spirit as the power at work inside you, and spiritual gifts as the outward evidence of that power.

It’s the Holy Spirit who gives these gifts and he lives inside you. He can manifest through you any gift he chooses. In verse 6 Paul also  calls them energemata, which literally means things worked inside. This means that potentially any of the gifts could be at work in you, because the Giver is already there! But, following our analogy of the lightbulb, it’s our responsibility to keep the electricity flowing if the light is to shine. We need to keep filled with the Spirit and the gifts will come. 

 

 

Keep filled with the Spirit

In Ephesians 5:18 we’re told to be filled with the Spirit. As we saw in an earlier talk, we can best understand what Paul means by this by looking in Acts at the descriptions given there of people being filled with the Spirit. These examples paint a clear picture for us of what Paul means when he tells us to be filled with the Spirit.

We learn from Acts that it’s a supernatural experience that is received suddenly rather than gradually and is accompanied by miraculous gifts that greatly empower our witness for Christ. Jesus’ first disciples began to exercise the gifts of the Spirit when they were first filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost and began to speak in tongues (Acts 2:4)[3].  And if we want to be used in spiritual gifts it’s clear that we too need to be filled with the Spirit.

Now the fact that Paul tells us to be filled with the Spirit implies that there is something we can do about it. God’s Spirit is always available to us, but it’s our responsibility to be filled. In 2 Timothy 1:6-8 Paul says to Timothy:

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord…

There can be no doubt that the ‘spirit’ referred to in these verses is the Holy Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit who gives us power and produces in us fruit like love and self-discipline. He also enables us to testify about the Lord (cf. Acts 1:8). So the gift of God that Timothy received through the laying on of Paul’s hands was the gift of the Holy Spirit[4].

But what does Paul mean when he tells Timothy to fan this gift into flame? The Greek word here is anazopureo. It literally mean give life again to the fire. We have the fire of God’s Spirit within us, but it’s our responsibility to keep it burning. Or, following the analogy we gave earlier, to keep the electricity flowing. And to do that, we need to pray, not only with our mind but also with our spirit, but that’s a subject for our next section.

Pray

Talking about spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 14:12-15, Paul says this:

12 So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church.

13 For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says.

14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.

15 So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.

In verse 12 Paul acknowledges that the Corinthians are eager to have spiritual gifts, but he wants them to concentrate on gifts that build up the church. He is emphasising something he’s already said in verses 1-5 where he makes it clear that prophecy is more valuable for the church than speaking in tongues. Tongues are useful for personal edification (v4), but prophecy will edify the church. However, tongues can be a means of edifying the church, but only if it’s accompanied by the gift of interpretation (v5).

So, in verse 13 he says that anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that they may interpret what they are saying. That way the church will be edified as well as the person speaking in tongues. And, apart from anything else, this verse shows us that, if we’re eagerly desiring a spiritual gift (v12), we should pray for it.

Paul then goes on in verses 14-15 to tell us something very important about speaking in tongues. Although, as we’ve seen, it’s of no value to the church unless it’s interpreted, it’s of great value to the individual Christian. He says that when he pray in tongues we are praying with the spirit. This is different from praying with the mind which is what we do when we pray in English (or any other language we have learned).

So if we pray in tongues we are praying with our spirit. This is not a reference to the Holy Spirit, although of course it’s the Holy Spirit who enables us to speak in tongues. When I pray in English, I understand what I’m saying, but when I pray I tongues I do not. But, even so, Paul says it edifies me (v4).

So, Paul says in verse 15:

What shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, I will also pray with my mind.

This clearly shows his determination to do both. And if we are to fan into flame the gift of the Spirit, we need to too. Like Jackie Pullinger, who testifies that speaking in tongues for fifteen minutes a day has resulted in her seeing amazing miracles among drug addicts in Hong Kong, spiritual gifts will happen in our lives as we fan into flame the gift of the Spirit within us. We need to keep filled with the Spirit by praying with our spirit (in tongues) and praying with our understanding (in English) specifically asking for spiritual gifts, as Paul encourages the Corinthians in verse 13, for example.

But how do I know what to pray for? Aren’t the gifts distributed as the Holy Spirit determines? And what if I start asking for a gift that it’s not his will for me to have? These are the kind of questions my students often asked me, and I quite understand why. But the problem is, if we don’t know what to pray for, we probably won’t pray for any of them.

As I was thinking and praying about the best way to answer these questions, I felt the Lord say to me,

Tell them to pray for whatever gift they like. I’m delighted they’re praying for any of the gifts. I will direct them as they continue to pray.

I quickly saw the Lord’s wisdom in giving that advice. All God’s gifts are good, and it’s good to pray for any of them. But if the gift we’re asking for is not for us, the Lord will move us towards the ones that are. As we said in an earlier talk, God usually guides us when we’re on the move. Remember the illustration of the SATNAV?

It’s also helpful to remember that, when we don’t know what to pray for as we pray with our mind (in English), if we pray with our spirit (in tongues), not understanding what we are saying, the words we speak in tongues may well be voicing a request for the very gifts God is planning to give us.

Act in faith

So, if we’re eagerly desiring for God not only to speak to us, but also to speak through us, if we’ve stopped making excuses, if we’re keeping filled with the Spirit, and if we’re praying that God will give us these wonderful gifts, all we need to do now is act in faith.

Jesus himself said that gifts like tongues, healings and miracles would accompany those who believe (Mark 16:17-18), and the apostle Paul tells us that those who prophesy should do so in accordance with their faith (Romans 12:6). And James tells us that faith without works is dead (James 2:17). We have to do something. If we want God to speak through us, we have to speak.

An example of this is how I began to exercise the gift of interpreting tongues, which I’ve already told you about in an earlier talk. I acted in faith, despite my doubts. Nelson Mandela once said:

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not the one who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Similarly, faith is not the absence of doubt. It’s overcoming your doubts by trusting the Lord. He doesn’t give stones or scorpions or snakes when we ask for the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:11-13) or when we ask for his gifts (Matthew 7:9-11). Trusting in these promises, we can act in faith, knowing that God will not let us down.

 

If you’ve enjoyed this series, you’ll want to get a copy of my new book,

The Voice of God – how he speaks to us today

 

Available from my website: www.davidpetts.org

 

228 pages containing all the teaching in the podcasts, and more.

 

£12.00 per copy (including postage)

How God speaks to us   Talk 21 Responding to God’s Voice (Part 1)

This series has been about how God speaks to us. In our last talk we were considering how to hear him. In this talk and the next – apologies for saying last time that this would be the last talk – we’ll be talking about how we should respond. It’s a wonderful privilege to know that the Creator of the universe has spoken to you, and our initial response may well be a mixture of surprise, disbelief, awe, excitement, gratitude, and worship. But after this initial reaction, two other things are absolutely vital. We must believe what God has said and do what he has said.

I mentioned disbelief as part of what might well be our initial reaction, because this was certainly the experience of many of the Bible characters God spoke to – Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example. So, an initial reaction of disbelief, often caused by a very real sense of unworthiness or inadequacy, is quite understandable. But, if we are to do what God says, we must put disbelief behind us and trust that God knows what he’s doing! We really have no excuse. Faith comes by hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17) and if God has spoken to us, it’s our responsibility to believe it.

But, of course, believing is only the starting point.  We must not only believe what God has said to us, we must do it. Four times in the Bible we read:

Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts[1]

which in the context relates to disobedience. If God has spoken to us we should not postpone our obedience to his voice. We should believe it and obey it today.

Of course, the specifics of what God says will be different for every one of us, but the things that God has said in his word he says to us all. And one of the great principles I see in Scripture is that God not only speaks TO us, but he also wants to speak THROUGH us. In earlier talks we showed how God can speak to us through spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and interpretation.  And, of course, we could have also mentioned other gifts like words of wisdom and words of knowledge. But God can also speak through us by these miraculous gifts.

We said earlier that there’s a sense in which all God’s people are ‘prophets’. This doesn’t mean that we’re all prophets in the Ephesiams 4:11 sense (i.e. like Agabus), or that we all have the spiritual gift of prophecy, but we are all called to speak for God in one way or another. The Old Testament prophets spoke to God’s people, Israel. They also spoke to the heathen nations around them. In a similar way, as God’s people today, we Christians are called to speak on behalf of God, not only to our fellow Christians, but also to those around us who do not yet know Jesus. And through the infilling of the Holy Spirit we can receive gifts that will empower us to do that. In fact, without the Holy Spirit’s help, we are powerless. And that’s why I’m going to conclude this series by explaining:

• The value of spiritual gifts in encouraging other Christians
• The value of spiritual gifts in evangelism
• How to receive spiritual gifts (Talk 22)

The value of spiritual gifts in encouraging other Christians

In 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 Paul lists nine supernatural gifts that are given to Christians as the Holy Spirit determines (v11). In the following verses, using the human body as an illustration of the church and the parts of the body as its members, Paul makes it clear that, though we all have different gifts, we’re all needed if the body, the church, is to function properly.

Within the context of the church, the value of these gifts is determined by the extent to which they edify and encourage the members. They are given for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7). And in 1 Corinthians 14:5 Paul says that the person who prophesies is greater than the person who speaks in tongues, unless they interpret, so that the church may be edified. Similarly, in Romans 1:11 we read that Paul longed to see the Romans so that he might impart some spiritual gift to make them strong (Romans 1:11).

Now in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul makes it clear that, whatever gifts God may give us, they are useless unless our motive is love. He goes on in chapter 14 to emphasise that everything we do as we gather together in church must be for the edification of our fellow Christians (v26). Quite simply, if we really love people, we will want to bless them, and perhaps the best way to do that is to prophesy – to let God speak to them through us. That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:1:

Follow the way of love and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.

How glad I am for the people who allowed God to speak through them in this way that have proved such a blessing to me over the years. This has usually happened during the course of a service at church, but sometimes it happens privately. In June 2016, totally unexpectedly, Eileen suffered a severe stroke which totally paralysed the right-hand side of her body. Although she made some improvement over the first few months, despite much prayer, six years later she is still unable to walk, and, after the many miracles of healing we have seen, we naturally were asking, Where is God in all this? Why has she not been healed?

The answer came through our good friend Barrie Taylor. Barrie and Sandra are the parents of Richard, our daughter Sarah’s husband. We only see them about twice a year as they live at quite some distance from us. On one occasion, after a pleasant lunch in a restaurant near our home, Barrie said, Today I asked the Lord to give me a word for you, and he gave me this:

My Father is at work in your lives and situation, which he is using as a platform to display his sustaining grace.

It was just what we needed. Despite appearances, God was and is at work in our lives, and although we would love the Lord to heal Eileen – and I still pray that he will – we see regular evidence of his hand at work in ways that would not have been possible if she were fit and well. Each week we have some twenty different carers come into our home and with many of them we have had great opportunities to share the gospel.

But that leads us to the next reason why we should ask the Lord to speak through us prophetically. When we do so, it is not only of great value in encouraging our fellow Christians. It is also a vital component of our telling others about Jesus. And, as we shall see, the message of the gospel is best proclaimed, not only with words given to us by the Spirit, but also by miraculous deeds performed by his power.

The value of spiritual gifts in evangelism

Once we have heard and received the good news about Jesus, it’s both our privilege and our responsibility to share that good news with others. In John 3:36 Jesus himself gives this warning:

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.

It’s our privilege to spread the good news that by believing in Jesus we can have eternal life, but it’s our serious responsibility to warn people of the dangers of rejecting him. Paul took this responsibility so seriously that he could say in Acts 20:26-27 that he was innocent of the blood of all men because he had not hesitated to proclaim… the whole will of God.

To use words like these, Paul must have felt his responsibility very strongly. No doubt he had in mind what God had said to Ezekiel when he told him that if he did not warn people of the danger they were in he would hold him accountable for their blood (i.e. their lives)[2]. And it’s surely right that we should take our responsibility just as seriously. If someone is lost, don’t we need to show them the way? If someone is in danger, don’t we need to warn them?

If we genuinely feel that sense of moral responsibility, we will surely want all the help we can get from God to enable us fulfil it. And once we realise that powerful spiritual gifts are available to assist us in this vital task of evangelism, we will surely want to know how to receive them and use them.

The value of spiritual gifts in evangelism is demonstrated very clearly in the Book of Acts. In Acts 2:41 we’re told that about 3000 people became Christians in a single day. This was in response to Peter’s preaching, but what had brought such a great crowd under the sound of the gospel was the miraculous gift of tongues (vv4-6).

In Acts 4:4 the number had grown to about 5000, which was the result of the healing of the man who had been lame from birth (Acts 3). In Acts 8:6 we’re told that crowds of people in Samaria paid close attention to what Philip said when they saw the miracles he performed, and as a result believed the gospel message and were baptised (v12).

Events like these were a direct fulfilment of Jesus’ promise in Mark 16:15-20 where we read:

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up Iinto heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

Here Jesus promises that we can expect spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, healing, and miracles to accompany the preaching of the gospel. The Christians in the early church recognised this when they prayed in Acts 4:29-31 that God would stretch out his hand to heal and that signs and wonders might be done in the name of Jesus so that God’s servants might speak his word with boldness.

And in Romans 15:18-19 Paul could speak of what Christ had accomplished through him in leading the Gentiles to obey God, by what he had said and done

by the power of signs and miracles through the power of  the Spirit,,, So from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ

which suggests that the gospel is not ‘fully proclaimed’ unless it is attested by signs from heaven.

Illustrations from WFP Burton, Reinhard Bonnke, Aimé Cizeron.

And although the New Testament largely records miracles that were performed by apostles like Peter and Paul, we should not assume that it’s only apostles who can expect to see miracles confirming the word. In the passage we’ve already quoted, Jesus said,

These signs will accompany those who believe (Mark 16:17).

As believers we are all expected to spread the gospel and we can all expect the Lord to work with us in some way, backing up what we say. As we allow the Lord to speak through us as we tell others about Jesus, we can expect him to work with us confirming the word through whatever spiritual gifts he chooses to give us.

Next time: How to receive spiritual gifts

 

IF YOU’VE BEEN ENJOYING THIS SERIES, PLEASE LOOK OUT FOR MY NEW BOOK ON THE SUBJECT: The Voice of God – How he speaks to us today

I hope to make it available before Christmas. Check my website for details:

www.davidpetts.org

How God speaks to us       Talk 20 How to hear his voice

Throughout this series we’ve been looking at the many different ways in which God may speak to us. But now it’s important that we consider two final things:

• How to hear his voice
• How to respond (which we’ll talk about next time)

Before we do so, however, it will be helpful to remind ourselves of what we’ve said about the various ways he speaks to us.

How God speaks – a reminder

In Talk 1 we saw that God speaks to all humankind by his creation. We said that the world we live in, and the heavens above, are clear evidence that a wonderful designer has been at work. We referred to passages like Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 to show that, as far as the Bible is concerned, we have no excuse for not believing in God. And the creation speaks eloquently, not only of God’s existence, but of his great and glorious power, his wisdom, his faithfulness, his beauty and his love.

In Talks 2-3 we saw that these divine qualities are seen much more clearly in the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom God has finally spoken to us in the person of his Son (Hebrews 1:1-2). God speaks to us:

through the person of Jesus revealing what God is like

in the words of Jesus teaching us what to believe

and in the actions of Jesus showing us how to behave.

In Talk 4-9 we examined how God speaks to us through the Bible.

In Talk 4 we gave reasons why we should believe that God speaks in this way.

In Talks 5-6 we gave important guidelines on how to understand the Bible correctly.

In Talks 7-9 we discussed different ways in which God speaks through the Bible, including how to identify, understand, and receive God’s promises. But there’s more to the Bible than promises. God gives us instructions, showing us what to believe and how to behave. He does this through the person, the words and the actions of Jesus, the direct teaching found in the New Testament, and by examples from the lives of God’s people. Finally, we discussed how God sometimes directs us by bringing key verses to our attention.

In Talks 10-14 we considered how God often uses other people to speak to us, including parents, other Christians, preachers and pastors, prophets and prophecy.

In Talks 15-18 we looked at ways in which God speaks to us directly without using other people. We gave examples from the Bible and, where possible, from personal experience, of God speaking with an audible voice, through angels, by dreams and visions, supernatural signs, and by promptings, the voice of his Spirit within us.

Finally, in Talk 19, we thought about some of the ways God guides us silently. We saw that he may do so through the trend of circumstances, by opening and closing doors, and through the gifts and talents God has given us. But ultimately, if we really want to discover God’s perfect will for our lives, we must make sure that our minds are constantly being renewed so that we think like God thinks and are willing to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to him (Romans 12:1-2),

How to hear God’s voice

Although the main purpose of these talks has been to answer the question, How does God speak to us today? an equally important question is, How can we hear his voice? The answer lies in much of what we have said so far, so my purpose now is to draw together some of those things and add a few further thoughts that I hope will be helpful. We’ll begin by outlining some basic facts that we should recognise, using the Bible as our basis.

Recognising the facts

First of all, it’s clear from the examples we’ve looked at in the Bible that God has a variety of ways of speaking to different people. Some heard his audible voice, others were visited by angels, while still others had dreams and visions, and so on. God deals with each of us differently.

Why is it, for example, that African Christians seem to hear God speak through a dream or vision more often than British people do? Perhaps it has something to do with our level of expectation. We’re all different and I believe that God usually speaks to us in ways that he knows we will recognise as his voice. This may very well mean that he won’t speak to you in exactly the same ways that he has spoken to me.

Secondly, the biblical examples we have considered show that the revelations people received were often totally unexpected and in some cases were, initially at least, unwanted! Many like Moses and Gideon and Zechariah were just going about their daily business when the Lord appeared to them. God may speak to you when you’re least expecting it!

And thirdly, it’s clear that most of the cases of God speaking to people in the Bible came at a time when God was calling them to some important task for him, or at key turning points in their life or even in history. Obvious examples are:

Zechariah in Luke 1 before the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner to the Messiah

Mary in Luke 2 before the birth of Jesus, the Saviour of the world

Paul in Acts 9 at his conversion and commissioning for service and in Acts 16 preceding the expansion of the gospel into Europe

Peter in Acts 10 opening the door of salvation to the Gentiles.

Even for great servants of God like these, such events were not the sort of things that happened every day. So perhaps we should not be too surprised or disappointed if God never speaks to us in such dramatic ways, or if the times he does so are relatively infrequent.

But, of course, there are ways in which we can expect him to speak to us on a regular basis. For example:

as we read the Bible at home

through the preaching or prophetic gifts at church

by the promptings from that voice of the Spirit inside us.

So, recognising these facts, how can we hear God’s voice?

Asking, expecting, and listening

Although, as we have seen, God sometimes takes the initiative in speaking to us, there are times when he expects us to begin the conversation with him. James tells us that if we lack wisdom – if we don’t know what to do – we should ask God and he will gladly give it (James 1:5).

I have already given specific examples from my own experience of how God spoke to me when I asked him to because I urgently needed to know what to do, and I’ve told you how he wonderfully answered those prayers. On occasions like those we may well need to make time for God to speak to us, but at others a quick prayer may be all that’s needed. Although prayer is important, hearing from God does not depend on how much time we spend in prayer. What matters most is how we are developing our relationship with the Lord.

I once heard of a young man whose pastor asked him if he thought God might want him to become a missionary. Oh no, he replied, God hasn’t called me. But then the pastor asked another question:

Are you sure you’re within calling distance?

If we’ve really given our lives wholeheartedly to God, and if we’re living in close relationship to him, it will not be difficult for us to hear his voice. We’ll always be within earshot. In fact we’ll be expecting to hear him speak.

Of course, as we’ve already said, God may very well speak to us when we’re least expecting it, as he did very often in the Bible, particularly when he spoke through an angel. But does that mean that we should not expect God to speak to us, but just wait until it happens? Not at all. I believe that every time we read the Bible, or meet together with God’s people, we should both ask and expect God to speak to us in one way or another. Sometimes we can miss God’s voice because we’re not expecting to hear it. And if we’re expecting God to speak to us, we’ll certainly be listening.

Have you ever been in the middle of an important phone call when it’s been difficult to hear what the other person is saying because something or someone is distracting you? Maybe you hear a ‘ping’ alerting you to some notification you’ve received. Or someone is ringing the doorbell, or someone else has turned on the television. It happens all the time. We’re all aware of distractions that prevent us from paying attention to the person who’s speaking to us. What do we do in situations like this? Well, if you’re like me, you go into another room where it’s quiet and free from distractions and where you can listen carefully to what’s being said.

I wonder if that’s why God so often speaks to us in the night. It’s the only time he can get our attention! He wants us to listen, and to do so without distraction. And, if we want him to speak to us, we must make time and find a place when we can pay God the attention he deserves.

Checking we’re hearing his voice correctly

Throughout this series we have seen many different ways in which the Lord may speak to us, but whichever way it may be, we need to check that we’re really hearing him correctly. This is because we’re fallible human beings and, although everything God says is right, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re hearing it right. Let me remind you of some of the things we’ve said in earlier talks.

When we’re reading the Bible, which is God’s word, we need to make sure that we’re understanding it correctly. We need to examine the context to be absolutely sure that the words we are reading directly apply to us. We’ve also talked about the importance of getting confirmation. In fact, no matter how God speaks to us, we should always look for confirmation that it’s really God. In 2 Corinthians 11:14 were told that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light and in Galatians 1:8 Paul says:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!

These scriptures remind us that Satan is a deceiver and the only way to avoid being led astray is to test everything against the truth of the gospel as it’s revealed in the New Testament. God never contradicts himself, and nothing he says today will contradict what he’s already said in his word.

And that’s why what we’ve said already about understanding the Bible correctly is so important. It’s not enough to take a single Bible verse as confirmation that it’s God who is speaking. We must test it against the whole of Scripture. For example, let’s suppose that someone attacks you in the street and as a result you lose the sight of an eye. You’re understandably angry about this and a Bible verse comes to mind – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth[1]. Does that mean that God is telling you that you should do the same thing to them? Of course not.

There are two good reasons why you should not. First, because even under the law of Moses it is unlikely that these regulations were intended to tell people that they must take revenge. It’s far more likely that the intention was to teach proportionate vengeance. If you’ve lost an eye, don’t take more than an eye.

And secondly, and much more importantly, the Lord Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5:38-42).

This is a good example of how the whole Bible is to be understood through the lens of the New Testament and in particular in the light of the teaching and character of Jesus. So, if what we’re hearing is in keeping with this, then it may well be from the Lord. However, if it’s a very specific word of guidance, we need to be sure that it’s definitely for us. And, as we saw in earlier talks, further confirmation can come in various ways, including a strong inner conviction, and testing by other Christians, and by time.

So, to summarise, in seeking to hear from God, we need to:

Recognise certain facts

God may speak to you in a different way than he speaks to me.

Sometimes God speaks to us when we’re least expecting it.

He will speak most clearly at key turning points in our lives.

But we can expect him to speak to us on a regular basis

as we read the Bible at home

through the preaching or prophetic gifts at church

by the promptings from that voice of the Spirit inside us.

Ask, expect and listen

Sometimes God takes the initiative in speaking to us, but sometimes he expects us to ask him to.

If we’re living in right relationship with him, we can expect him to speak to us, especially as we read the Bible etc.

And if we’re expecting him to speak, we’ll put ourselves in a position to listen.

Check that we’re hearing his voice correctly

Satan can masquerade as an angel of light. We need to check that what we’re hearing really is the voice of God. We need to make sure that what we’re hearing is in line with Scripture and especially with the teaching and character of Jesus.

Next time, which will be the last talk in this series, we’ll talk about how we should respond when God speaks to us. He not only wants to speak TO us. He wants to speak THROUGH us.

 

How God speaks to us   Talk 19        Other ways God guides us 

In recent talks we have identified five ways in which God may speak to us directly without involving other people: 

• By his audible voice 
• By angels 
• By dreams and visions 

• By supernatural signs 
• By promptings, the inner voice of his Spirit 

Today we’re going to consider other ways in which God may guide us. Throughout this series we’ve been discussing ways in which God may speak to us. But he sometimes guides us without speaking at all. If we have learned to live by the principles taught in Scripture, we will be guided by them into the right paths. In fact, the more we live by those principles the less we will need the promptings we were talking about in the last talk.  

But, of course, we need both. The principles of Scripture are the general guidelines by which we should live. The promptings of the Spirit are more specific, giving us direction as to what to do in any given situation, but of course they will never conflict with the principles taught in the Bible. 

One of the questions that is often asked by young Christians is, How can I know the will of God? It’s a good question, because as Christians we should certainly want to do his will. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Paul reminds us that we are not our own, we were bought at a price. We belong to God, and we are followers of Jesus who always did God’s will1, even when it meant dying on the cross to save us from our sins 

So how can we find the will of God for our lives? Much of the answer to this question is to be found in some of the things we’ve already said. God’s will for our life is that we live in obedience to his word, which is a lamp for our feet and a light on our path (Psalm 119:105). And when we’re living in obedience to its teaching, we can expect God to guide us with regard to the specific details. This guidance may come through any of the ways we’ve already talked about, but the Lord may also be guiding us silently by: 

• The trend of circumstances 
• Open and closed doors 
• The gifts and talents he has given us. 

The trend of circumstances 

God has a plan for our lives and is constantly working everything out in conformity with the purpose of his will (Ephesians 1:11). He is in complete control of all the circumstances that surround us, even when things appear to be going terribly wrong.  

After Stephen was stoned in Acts 7 there was a great persecution of Christians, most of whom fled from Jerusalem and were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Some even travelled as far as Antioch and Cyprus. But as a result there was a revival in Samaria (Acts 8) and a very large church was planted in Antioch (Acts 11:20). 

Acts 16:6-10 might well be another example:  

6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 

7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 

8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 

9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 

10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. 

In obedience to the great commission and God’s call upon his life (Acts 9:15, 26:17-18) Paul is on his second missionary journey.  So he is already doing the will of God, but he’s unsure of where he should go next. Verse 6 tells us that he was kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.  We’re not told how, but it might well have been through the trend of circumstances.  

Next, Paul tries to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit will not allow him to (v7). Then, in the night, he has a vision of a man from Macedonia saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us and Paul finally knows what he has to do. It seems that guidance possibly came in three different ways – the trend of circumstances (v6), a word from the Spirit (v7), and a vision in the night (v9).  

But although it’s not entirely clear how the Holy Spirit told Paul not to go to Bithynia, what’s particularly significant in this passage is that Paul gets the guidance he needs while he’s already doing what he knows God has called him to do.  

This reminds me of Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, who in Genesis 24 is sent to look for a wife for Isaac. He makes his way to the town of Nahor and comes to a well just outside the town. He gets his ten camels to kneel down and decides to ask the Lord for a sign. He will ask one of the young women who comes to draw water from the well to give him a drink. But if she’s the woman he’s looking for, she’s to offer to draw water for the camels as well! And, of course, that’s what happens!  

The story is well-known. But notice what Eliezer says in verse 27. The Lord has led me on the journey. Undoubtedly the Lord was leading him throughout his journey, but the specific guidance he needed came well after Eliezer had set out on his journey. In the same way, it’s as we get on with the job that God has already given us to do, that we get the guidance we need. 

Open and closed doors 

Another thing that results from the fact that God is in complete control of circumstances is that he sometimes directs our steps by opening and closing doors. In Revelation 3:7-8 we read: 

What he opens no-one can shut, and what he shuts no-one can open… See I have placed before you an open door. 

In my final year at Oxford I was praying about what my next step should be. I had been studying for a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and my plan was now to go to a Bible College to prepare for the ministry God had called me to. So I applied to London Bible College, fully anticipating that they would accept me for their course leading to the London University Bachelor of Divinity Degree. 

On the application form, which required me to include a testimony of my Christian experience, I made reference to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. This led to a number of questions at the interview, and it became clear to me that they were suspicious of Pentecostals. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when, a few days later, I received a letter saying that they thought I would be happier at a Pentecostal Bible College2 

Although I felt that their decision was unjust, I reminded myself of the injustice that Joseph had experienced at the hands of his brothers and his recognition later that God had intended it for good (Genesis 37 and 45). God, not the college faculty, had shut the door on LBC. So I considered applying to Kenley, the Assemblies of God Bible College, where Donald Gee, a world-renowned Bible teacher, was then the Principal. So I sent off for the application forms. 

However, people were telling me that I didn’t need to go to Bible College. I had been preaching since I was fourteen years old, and the Holy Spirit was already using me in teaching and leading others into the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In those days Assemblies of God did not require any formal training or qualifications for a person to be recognised as a minister. The evidence of one’s calling and gifting was fruit from one’s ministry.  So what should I do? 

I decided that I would go to Kenley unless the Lord opened a door for me to minister in a Pentecostal church. But this seemed highly unlikely because, having grown up in a Baptist church, I was relatively unknown among the Pentecostals and the few churches I had preached in were mostly well provided for with regard to ministry. I told no-one about this decision and yet, a week after making it, I received a letter from the small Assemblies of God Church in Colchester, inviting me to take on the pastorate. And, as if to confirm it, the application form for Kenley that I had asked for never arrived. 

Much more recently, my granddaughter Emily asked me to pray for her as she was considering applying to work for Youth for Christ in Birmingham. At the time she was living in London working full time for Alpha and she was uncertain what to do. I assured her that I would pray for her and reminded her of Revelation 3:7-8. I suggested that it might be a good idea to apply for the job and trust the Lord to close or open the door according to his will. 

The next day, as Emily was walking in one of the London parks and praying about this, she looked up and saw something she had never seen before – AN OPEN DOOR! It was a piece of modern art, a sculpture of a doorframe with the door within it wide open. The Lord had literally placed before her an open door. Needless to say, she is now working for Youth for Christ in Birmingham. 

The gifts and talents God has given us 

Another thing that will help us discern the will of God for our lives is having a realistic understanding of the gifts and talents God has given us. In a passage where Paul mentions some of the gifts God has given to his people, he begins by saying: 

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you (Romans 12:3). 

Here the emphasis is on not having an exaggerated sense of our own importance, but it’s just as important to recognise the gifts and abilities God has given us. Humility does not mean pretending that we’re no good at things which in fact we are good at! It means gratefully acknowledging that whatever gifts we do have come from the grace of God.  

When Jeremiah protested that he was unsuited for the task God was calling to, God replied that before Jeremiah was born, he had formed him in his mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5). Generally speaking, God’s will for our lives will be very much in line with the talents he has given us. Those who have heard me sing know very well why I have concluded that it’s not God’s will for me to be a gospel singer! 

Having said that, we know that God can equip a person with supernatural gifts beyond any natural talents they may possess. So, in seeking God’s will it’s good to ask ourselves what natural talents we have along with any spiritual gifts in which he is using us. 

But finally, the great key to finding the will of God in our lives is found in Romans 12:1-2, where Paul says: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. 

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

In these verses Paul shows us how to test what God’s perfect will for our lives is. He reminds us of God’s love in sending Jesus to die for us and, bearing that in mind, encourages us to live holy, sacrificial lives. We are not to behave as the world behaves or think as the world thinks. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We’re to learn to think like God thinks! We’re to find out what pleases the Lord (Ephesians 5:10). 

If we are seeking to do this, we won’t have to worry about finding the will of God. God is perfectly capable of taking care of his own will! The only person or thing that can prevent God’s will being done in my life is me! God is all powerful and, by definition, he wants his will to be done.  

So as long as I want it to be done, God will make sure that it happens. In short, if we’re determined to live all out for Jesus, God will take care of the rest. Sometimes we don’t need to know what God’s will is, but if we do, he will make it plain. And very often it’s as we look back over our lives that we see how God has been guiding us all the time, even at times when his voice is silent. 

Talk 18 Promptings – the voice within

In recent talks we’ve been looking at ways in which God speaks to us directly rather than through other people. We’ve considered how he may speak with an audible voice, or through angels, or by dreams and visions, or by supernatural signs. We now turn our attention to what are often called promptings, by which I mean the voice of God’s Spirit inside us.

In John 14-16 Jesus told his disciples that he was going away, but that he would not leave them without help. He would send them another helper, the Holy Spirit, who would live within them (14:17) and would teach them, remind them of what he had said (14:26), guide them, and reveal to them things about the future (16:13). 

And the same is true for us as his disciples today. Romans 8:11 tells us that God’s Spirit lives within us and Galatians 4:6 says that, because we are his sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. So we too can expect to hear the voice of God’s Spirit inside us, teaching us, reminding us, guiding us, and even revealing things to us about the future.

Let me tell you about Hilda and Edna. They were both members of our church in Basingstoke. Edna had been saved as a teenager but had backslidden and married a man who was not a believer. Although she had come back to the Lord, she often struggled because of the problems caused by being ‘unequally yoked’ to an unbeliever (2 Corinthians 6:14). 

Hilda was a widow who had come to Christ in her sixties during a mission I was conducting in our church. She lived in a council house which was only a few minutes’ walk from a chip shop. One day, as she was walking across to the shop to get some fish and chips, a random thought came into her mind. Go and see Edna. She thought this might be from the Lord, but Edna lived over a mile away and if she went to see her the chip shop would be closed by the time she got back as the only means of getting to Edna was on foot. And anyway, she wasn’t completely sure that the thought was from God, so she thought she might go and see Edna later. 

But before Hilda had reached the chip shop the thought came again. Go and see Edna NOW. So she went. If the thought had come from God, she didn’t want to disobey him. And when she arrived she knew, as soon as she saw Edna, that the thought had indeed come from God. Edna opened the door and burst into tears. She had been overwhelmed with the thought that nobody loved her, not even God. In desperation she had prayed, Lord, if you really love me, please send someone to see me NOW. Hilda went without lunch that day, but what did that matter? She had been obedient to God and as a result had been a blessing to a fellow Christian who was struggling with her faith.

There’s no doubt that Hilda’s random thought was a prompting of the Holy Spirit. That’s often how he speaks to us – by putting thoughts into our mind. But, of course, not every thought is a prompting of the Spirit and we need to learn how to distinguish the thoughts that come from him from those that don’t. I’ll be saying more about this at the end of the talk, but first let me give you a few examples from my own experience.

In the early 1970s, while I was pastoring at Basingstoke, I began to receive invitations to minister in other countries as well as in other churches up and down the UK. I was also teaching once a fortnight in our Bible College which was then at Kenley in Surrey. But there surely had to be a limit to how many invitations I could accept? I was expected to preach three times a week in the church I was pastoring.

One day, as I was praying about this, as if from nowhere the word Antioch came into my mind. Now I knew that Antioch was a place mentioned in the Book of Acts and that that was where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). I also knew that Paul had set out from there on his first missionary journey, but I wasn’t quite sure how this might be relevant to what I was praying about, so I decided to open my Bible and see what else I could discover about Antioch, and I very quickly came to Acts 13:1-3 where I read:

In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

 

Now Barnabas had been the first leader of the church at Antioch and he had brought Saul (or Paul) alongside him to help with the ministry (Acts 11:22-25). But now the Holy Spirit was telling them both to leave Antioch for a while and start on the church planting mission to which he had called them. But how could they leave Antioch? Who would look after the church in their absence? The answer was simple. There were other prophets and teachers in the church (v1).

 

In giving me the word Antioch God was not only answering my question, but also showing me what was to become a key principle in the churches I have led, in the college at Mattersey Hall, and what I have since taught to church leaders around the world – the importance of team leadership. 

 

It may be difficult to understand today, when team leadership is normal in many churches, but, in my experience, back in the seventies churches in most denominations were led by one man, who did all the preaching and led all the meetings. In giving me the word Antioch God was clearly telling me to look for other ministries in our church which would complement my own, give others an opportunity to exercise the gifts he had given them, and free me to accept invitations to minister elsewhere as he was leading me to an increasingly international ministry.

 

One example of this is how I came to visit several countries in Asia in 1986. It was on a Sunday in 1985. For no apparent reason the word India came into my mind. The impression was so strong that I said to Eileen, I think the Lord is going to send me to India. But I told no one else about it. 

 

The following Wednesday evening Pastor Ray Belfield came to Mattersey to speak to the students about missions. After the meeting I invited him back to our house for a cup of tea before he made the journey back home to Wigan. As we prayed together before he left, I prayed that the Lord would show us more clearly how as a college we could do more about mission. As soon as I had finished speaking, Ray said to me, I’ll tell you what you can do. You can go to India. 

 

This resulted in a month’s trip the following January, not only to India, but also to Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Ray’s word was prophetic and came as a confirmation of what God had already begun to tell me the previous Sunday. It would have been a big decision to leave the college for a month if I had not had an excellent team of workers at Mattersey, plus the double assurance of what God wanted me to do – the inner voice of God’s Spirit confirmed by a prophetic word.

 

And finally, let me tell you about Ruby. It was while I was leading the church in Basingstoke. We had invited an evangelist to come and conduct a series of special meetings. I encouraged the people to pray that God would give us one outstanding miracle of healing before the evangelist came and that this would attract people to the meetings.

So we began to pray months ahead of the evangelist’s visit, which was to be in June. Then, on the Sunday after Easter, it happened! It was the evening service and I was preaching about Thomas. He was the disciple who had been absent when Jesus, three days after he was crucified, appeared to his disciples on Easter Sunday. When the other disciples told Thomas that Jesus was alive, he simply refused to believe it. It was impossible! But a week later Jesus appeared to him too and showed him the wounds in his hands and feet. I remember saying something to the effect that the same Jesus whom Thomas had been able to see and touch was present with us right now even though we could not see him.

After the sermon, as we sang a closing song, a middle-aged woman walked – I should say hobbled – to the front of the church. This was a complete surprise to me as she had never been to our church before and I had not invited people to come forward for prayer, as we sometimes do. Neither had I mentioned healing. So I went to her and asked:

Can I help you? 

She responded by saying:

If Jesus is present as you say He is, can He heal me now?

Immediately I knew that this was the miracle we had been praying for. It was as if God was saying, This is it!

He can, and he does! I said. Be healed in the name of Jesus! 

And she RAN back down the aisle, instantaneously and completely healed. Ruby and her husband both became Christians and as a result of that miracle, a number of other people came to believe in Christ and became members of our church. 

Now some people teach that we should always command healing in this way, but even Jesus only did what he saw his Father do (John 5:19). I will only command healing when I believe that’s what God is telling me to do on that occasion. Otherwise, I believe we should pray for healing rather than command it.

So how do we know that that ‘inner voice’ is in fact the voice of God? If I’ve made it sound easy, I must admit that I haven’t always found it so. Some people talk as though they’re hearing words from the Lord all the time and I’ve sometimes thought, I wish he’d talk to me like that! I’ve also wondered if those people really are hearing the voice of the Lord as much as they think they are. 

To help us get a better understanding about this we need to consider what the Bible has to say about where our thoughts come from, and as we do so we realise that some of our thoughts are not from God at all. They are temptations. The Bible shows us that in our Christian lives we are constantly fighting a battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Our thoughts are prompted by what we see, what we hear, and by the company we keep. So it’s possible that a thought that we imagine has come from God could in fact be prompted by any of these things. So how can we be sure?

Bearing in mind what we’ve said in previous talks about how God speaks to us by Jesus, the word of God made flesh, and through the Bible, the written word, it goes without saying that any word he speaks by his Spirit in our hearts will always be in line with the character of Jesus and the principles of Scripture. If we are spending time with Jesus and meditating on his word, the thoughts that we have are more likely to come from God than if we spend most of our time watching television for example.

Another thing to consider is the kind of ‘word’ we feel the Lord might have given us. Is it a word of encouragement or is it giving us direction, or even telling us about the future? We’ll consider each of these possibilities in turn, also taking into consideration whether we feel the word is for ourselves or someone else.

First, then, let’s suppose an encouraging thought or verse of Scripture comes to your mind. We know from verses like 1 Corinthians 14:3 that part of the Spirit’s role is to encourage us, so it would seem likely that the thought you’ve had has come from God. It might just be a line from a song that comes into your mind – something like, The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, for example. Well, that’s an easy one! It’s totally in line with the teaching of the Bible, so, whether it’s a prophetic word from the Spirit or not, it’s true! So you can believe it and receive it, and pass it on to anyone who might need it.

But what about a thought or word where it seems that God is giving you direction, where he’s telling you to do something? That’s not quite so simple. Again, the first question to ask is, Is it in line with Scripture? The better you know your Bible, the better you’ll be able to answer this question. Obviously, if it’s contrary to Scripture, it isn’t from the Lord. But what if it is in line with Scripture, but you’re not sure if it’s for you? 

For example, let’s suppose you get a feeling or thought that the Lord wants you to go to China and preach the gospel. That’s certainly in line with Scripture, as Jesus has told us to make disciples of all nations. But we’re not all called to China, and you’d need to be very sure that your thought or feeling really was from the Lord. In this case a single thought or feeling would not be enough. It needs to be confirmed. But how?

It seems that God has an infinite variety of ways of confirming his word to us. Much of what we’ve said in this series has been about the many ways God spoke and confirmed his word to his people in the past and how he continues to do so today. These have included angelic visitations, dreams and visions, supernatural signs, and prophetic words. We have also mentioned persistent repetition and apparent coincidence, when a thought or word comes repeatedly from a variety of different sources and we become convinced that it can only be God. To this we should add that, if the word you’ve received is as serious as being called to China, it would be wise to discuss it with your church leaders and see if they have any witness about it. 

And the same guidelines hold good for a situation where you feel that God has revealed to you something about the future. It’s important not to act upon it unless it’s been confirmed in the sort of ways we’ve just mentioned. And if it involves someone else, it’s vital that we have confirmation before we share it with them – and even then, it’s always best to begin by saying something like this:

I feel that God has given me a word for you. If it’s really from hm, I believe you will know in your heart that it’s for you.

But even before we do that, it would be wise to search our own hearts by asking if the word is really for others, or if it’s something that God is saying personally to us. This holds good not only when we feel the word we have is for a particular individual, but also when it comes during a meeting at church or in a home group. 

The exercise of spiritual gifts like prophecy or interpretation of tongues is a separate subject, but learning how God speaks to us and discerning whether what he’s saying is something for others or just for ourselves is clearly important if we believe that the Lord wants to use us in these gifts. In fact, I think that most of what I have learnt about recognising the inner voice of God’s Spirit has been by using these gifts.

A good example is how I started to exercise the gift of interpretation of tongues. I first spoke in tongues when I was baptised in the Holy Spirit on September 8th, 1959, just four weeks before starting my studies at Brasenose College, Oxford. I enjoyed the meetings at the church I attended and soon began to invite some of my friends from the college Christian Union to come and experience Pentecostal worship.

But there was just one problem. Although there was usually an interpretation after someone spoke in tongues, there were just one or two occasions when there was not. I was concerned that the friends I invited might get an unfavourable impression and conclude that Pentecostal worship was unscriptural. So I asked a friend, who was a Pentecostal evangelist, what I should do.

That’s easy, he said. You interpret.

But I don’t have the gift of interpretation, I replied.

Then ask for it, he said.

But how do I know God wants me to have it? I asked.

He then reminded me that we know from Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12-14 that it’s God’s will for tongues in church to be interpreted, and he suggested that the very fact that I was concerned about it could be an indication that it was a gift God wanted me to have and that I should pray for it.

So that’s what I did. I began to pray for it, and a few weeks later after someone had spoken in tongues in the Sunday morning meeting and no one else had interpreted it, I spoke out in faith, trusting that the words that had come into my mind were from God.

For months I wondered if the gift I had received was genuine, or whether it was ‘just me’. Then, one day, at the close of a meeting in which I had interpreted, another Christian came up to me and told me that he had received word for word the interpretation which I had given.  I had exercised the gift in faith for months, but finally I had some confirmation that it was real.  

 

About seventeen years later, in November 1977 I was serving as Acting Principal of Mattersey Hall prior to becoming Principal in 1978. One Saturday evening we took a bus-load of about 45 students to Bethshan Tabernacle in Manchester. There were several hundred people in the meeting during which the students sang and testified, and I preached. As soon as I had finished preaching, a woman near to the back of the meeting began to speak in tongues. As I was still at the microphone, it seemed appropriate for me to interpret so that everyone present would hear and be edified. As usual I spoke out in faith what I felt the Lord had put on my heart. When I had finished, we sang a hymn and the pastor closed the meeting in prayer.

 

As soon as the meeting was over, one of our students, Guetawende Roamba from Burkina Faso, rushed up to me. He was clearly very excited, and when I asked him what was the matter, he told me that the woman who had spoken in tongues had been speaking his native language. Now in Burkina Faso they speak French, and because I also speak French fairly fluently, I knew that she had not been speaking French. So I wondered what language it might be. 

 

What language? I asked. Moré, he replied. Frankly, at that time I had never heard of it – and we found out later that the Irish lady who had spoken in tongues had never heard of it either! But I was excited that I had been present when speaking in tongues had been recognised as a real language. At the same time I was not a little concerned because I was the one who had given the interpretation! 

 

I had been interpreting tongues since I was a student at Oxford in 1960, but it had always been (as it always must be) ‘by faith’, and yet I still had some intellectual doubts that the gift was genuine. I had simply trusted the promise of Jesus that God gives good gifts to those who ask him (Matthew 7:11). Of course, I had no need to fear, but it’s easy to imagine how embarrassed I would have been if I had ‘got it wrong’ in the presence of one of my Bible College students!

 

I hardly dared ask the question, but I knew I had to. 

And what about the interpretation, Gueta? Was it accurate?

Of course, you know the answer because I wouldn’t be telling this story if the interpretation had been wrong! What an amazing thing! The Holy Spirit inspired an Irish woman to speak an African language which she had never heard, or even heard of, and then gave the interpretation to an English man who had never heard of it either! God is faithful. His word is true. And his Spirit is still at work distributing his gifts as he himself determines. The atheists – and for that matter those Christians who say that the gifts are not for today – have no answer to experiences like these!

 

So it’s not surprising that the devil tries to cast doubt on the genuineness of words that we receive from God. He is constantly challenging with words like, Has God said? God is more than willing to speak to us, but, if he can, Satan will distract us from listening, or cast doubt on what God has said. But as we step out in faith in what we believe he has said, we will receive confirmation that it is real and learn from experience to recognise that inner voice of God.

 

How God speaks to us            Talk 17 Supernatural signs

Another way God speaks to us is by supernatural signs.  In Acts 2:22 Peter refers to Jesus as a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs. And in Hebrews 2:4 we read that God testifies to our salvation by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

 

These three words, miracles, signs, and wonders, reveal three different aspects of the miraculous power of God. The word that is often translated as miracle literally means power. Miracles demonstrate how powerful God is, and they make us wonder. They cause amazement. They are also signs. They point the way. 

 

As we look at both the Old and New Testaments, we see that through signs and wonders God is speaking to us, demonstrating his power, revealing his love, confirming his promises, and giving us direction. Perhaps the best OT example of God giving direction through supernatural signs is found in the story of Gideon (Judges 6-7). In these chapters God speaks to Gideon in several different ways:

• through a prophet (v8)
• by an angel (v12)
• by supernatural signs (vv17-21, 36-40)
• by speaking to him (possibly in a dream or vision) in the night (v25, 7:2, 4, 5, 7, 9)
• through another person’s dream and its interpretation (7:7-14)

So supernatural signs are just one of several ways in which God speaks to Gideon, and, as we shall see, the signs God gives him are not so much a case of God speaking to him as a confirmation of what God has already said to him. But let’s remind ourselves of the story.

 

The Israelites had done evil in the sight of the Lord and as a result were being oppressed by the Midianites. But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help, he sent a prophet who reminded them of how the Lord had delivered them in the past and told them the reason for their problem – they had not listened to the Lord. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said: The Lord is with you, mighty warrior (6:12). 

When Gideon protests (v.13), the Lord says to him:

Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” (14) …I will be with you (16).

Then Gideon says: 

If now I have found favour in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me (17).

Gideon then brings an offering to the Lord and the Lord responds by touching it with the tip of his staff. Immediately fire flares up and consumes the offering and the angel disappears (21). Gideon, realising who he’s been speaking to, fears for his life and says:

Ah, Sovereign LORD! I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face!” (22).

But the Lord says to him:

Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die (23).

 

 What’s particularly noteworthy in this passage is the fact that Gideon seems to understand clearly the message he is receiving. God is with him and will use him to deliver Israel from the Midianites. But he needs reassurance because he finds it hard to believe that God would use someone like him and so he wonders if it really is God who is speaking to him (v17). So he asks for a sign. 

 

Later in the chapter we read that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and that he blew a trumpet, summoning an army to follow him (34-35). But, despite the promise and all the signs the Lord has already given him, Gideon still seeks reassurance and asks for further confirmation. In verses 36-40 we read:

 

36. Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised, 37. look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” 38. And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew – a bowlful of water. 39. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew.” 40. That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.

 

Now it’s important to understand this correctly, especially as some Christians today expect God to guide them by ‘putting out a fleece’. They’re not sure what God wants them to do, and so they say something like this:

 

Lord, if you want me to do A, let B happen. 

Which is fine, if we understand that Gideon was asking God to do something that was supernatural, something which couldn’t possibly happen unless God did it – like how God moved the shadow backwards for Hezekiah as a sign that he was extending his life for fifteen more years (2 Kings 20:1-11).

 

What’s more, by asking God to make the fleece wet, and then dry, Gideon was not asking God to do something that might possibly be contrary to God’s will. As an example of what I mean, consider the following. Let’s suppose I want to know if God wants me to go to London tomorrow; so I say:

 

Lord, if you want me to go to London tomorrow, let my cousin John come and see me today.

 

I hope it’s obvious that, although this fits the formula, Lord, if you want me to do A, let B happen, it’s by no means an exact parallel with what Gideon did. Why do I say this? Because, although it might be unlikely that my cousin would come and see me today, and even if I might think that it would be a miracle if he did, it might just be God’s will that my cousin does something completely different! So if God does want me to go to London tomorrow, but he doesn’t want my cousin to come and see me today, how can he possibly answer the foolish prayer I’ve just prayed?!

 

So please be very careful about asking God to make something happen as a sign that he wants you to do something, especially as after the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, there’s no NT example of anyone ‘putting out a fleece’. 

 

Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that Gideon shouldn’t have needed this sign. God had already spoken very clearly to him in several ways and God’s word should have been enough. Despite this, God graciously did what Gideon asked, as he does for us when, like Gideon, we need reassurance.

 

When we turn to the New Testament, we find that the main purpose of signs is to point people to Jesus. The star the wise men followed led them to Jesus (Matthew 2). Jesus himself performed signs and wonders because he knew that without them some people would not believe in him (John 4:48). The miracles he performed were signs that with the coming of Jesus the kingdom of God had come (Matthew 12:28, Luke 11:20). And Peter tells us that the miracles Jesus performed were signs that were given by God to testify who Jesus was (Acts 2:22). 

 

As John is nearing the end of his Gospel, having recorded amazing miracles like Jesus turning water into wine, healing a man who was born blind, feeding five thousand people, and raising Lazarus from the dead, he writes:

 

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. 

(John 20:30-31).

 

And God still works miracles to confirm the word of those who are preaching the good news about Jesus (Mark 16:15-20). This was the main purpose of the miracles recorded in the Book of Acts. Thousands came to faith in Jesus through the miracle of tongues at Pentecost (Acts 2:4) and the healing of the lame beggar in Acts 3 led to thousands more (Acts 4:4). In Acts 5 more and more men and women believed in the Lord as a result of the signs and wonders performed by the apostles (vv12-14). And when Philip the evangelist went to Samaria, crowds of people saw the signs he performed, believed in Jesus and were baptised (Acts 8:6-7, 12). 

 

So the main purpose of signs in the New Testament was to point people to Jesus. But how does this help us if we’re already Christians. How does God speak to us through signs? Part of the answer is simply that miraculous signs encourage our faith. The passage in John that we just referred to can also be translated that you may continue to believe. 

 

And who can deny that testimonies of miracles today encourage the faith of believers? Since the publication of my book, Signs from Heaven – why I believe, in which I record some of the miracles I have seen in my own life and ministry, people have told me how much it has encouraged their faith. But that leads me to an experience which I shared in that book and how it radically altered the direction of my life.

 

You may remember that in an earlier talk I told you of the impact Laurie Dixon had made on my life. Remember the story of the falling rock that just missed me on the mountainside in Switzerland and how that led to Laurie telling me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit?   That was in 1958. Now fast forward to July 1959.

Eileen, who was then my girlfriend, and I were sitting in the youth meeting at church singing from a well-known chorus book, when I happened to notice a list of books advertised on the back cover, one of which was entitled, The full blessing of Pentecost, by Dr Andrew Murray. Immediately I concluded that this book must be dealing with the subject Laurie had been talking about last year in Switzerland, and I suggested that it might be good to get it. In a few days, Eileen received a reply from the advertisers saying that the book was no longer available.

 

A bit disappointed, I returned home from Eileen’s to my parents’ house for lunch. As the meal was not quite ready, I went into the sitting room to wait. On entering, I happened to notice a book lying on the piano and casually picked it up – The full blessing of Pentecost by Dr Andrew Murray! But how did it get there? No one, except Eileen, knew anything of my interest in the subject. My parents did not know where the book had come from. It is true that my father had always had a large collection of books, but if it was his, he certainly had never read it, and didn’t even know that he possessed it. Anyway, why wasn’t it in the bookcase and how did it get on the piano? 

No one to this day has any idea how that book came to be there on the very day that I had thought it to be unobtainable. The answer must surely lie in the realm of the supernatural – maybe an angel? But even if you think up a natural explanation – and that’s always possible for those who don’t want to believe – how likely is it that this was just a coincidence? No, God was confirming to us that we needed to be baptised in the Spirit, and when we had read the book, and were persuaded that the experience was biblical, we were both baptised in the Spirit and began to speak in tongues.

Of course, as I just mentioned, those who are sceptical try to explain away such things as the appearance of the book as coincidences. Indeed, all answers to prayer tend to be dismissed in that way. But, as a former archbishop of Canterbury once said, I find that when I pray, coincidences happen. When I don’t pray, they don’t!

In fact, what at first sight might appear to be a coincidence may very well turn out to be a sign. When one ‘coincidence’ happens after another, we may very well conclude that what is happening is actually the activity of God. This is how God spoke to me when I desperately needed to be sure that the pathway we had embarked upon was really in the will of God.

It was at the beginning of the 1980s while I was Principal of Mattersey Hall Bible College. As the facilities at the time were, to say the least, outdated, and as the number of students was increasing rapidly, we urgently needed to provide new accommodation for them. It was estimated that we would need £600,000 to do this (which in today’s terms would be more like £6 million). But we had nothing in the bank. 

 

The matter was so serious that the Board of Governors referred it to the Executive Council, and the Executive Council referred it to the General Council of Assemblies of God meeting in its Annual General Conference in Minehead. 

 

The matter was discussed at length and, during the course of the debate, one of the pastors went to the microphone and asked me a direct question: David, have you heard from the Lord? In all honesty I had to answer, No, I just know that we need this new building. The debate drew to a close and the matter was put to the vote. To my delight, the proposition to go ahead received the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. Now all we needed was the money!

 

After the vote had been carried by so large a majority, I fully expected the money to come pouring in. But very little came! Everyone seemed to be leaving it to everyone else! As the time for the signing of the contract drew near, we still had very little money, and I began to be anxious. Who has to sign the contract? What happens if the money doesn’t come in? Who goes to prison if the money doesn’t come in?! These were serious questions that were troubling my mind, and I kept remembering the question that pastor had asked me in Minehead: David, have you heard from the Lord?

 

Eventually, in desperation I said to Eileen: 

I need to hear from God about this. I’m going to pray all night, and if he doesn’t speak to me, I’m going to phone the Board of Governors and cancel the whole thing. 

 

So I began my night of prayer. After several hours, at around 2am, I began to feel like giving up. God wasn’t speaking and I really didn’t know what to do. I decided to take a break, so I sat down on the settee and picked up a copy of Redemption Tidings magazine.

As I opened it the title on the editorial page struck me forcibly: FAITH. So I began to read. Now if you have ever been in desperate need to hear from God and have been in a meeting where someone has brought a prophetic word which you have known was just for you, you will understand just how I felt as I read that editorial. Every single word of it came as Thus says the Lord to David Petts. I knew that God had spoken. I knew that we were to go ahead. I knelt down by the settee and sobbed into the cushion and asked God to forgive me for my lack of faith. Then I went to bed. From that moment I never doubted that God was behind our building project after all.

 

But that is not the end of the story. The next morning I went down to the College and walked into the office. Ernest Anderson, who was then a resident member of faculty, was standing there and I excitedly told him what had happened. 

 

That’s wonderful, David, he said, I was praying all night too. 

I thought it was strange that we had both decided independently to pray all night and I could not imagine why he had decided to do so. 

 

Oh, I said, What were you praying for? 

To which he replied:

I was praying for the same thing. I knew that unless you, as the Principal of the College, heard from God, the thing would never happen. 

Oh, thank you Ernest, I said, but you could have gone to bed at 2 o’clock!

 

I immediately telephoned Colin Whittaker, the editor of the magazine. Colin, I said, you have written the greatest editorial you will ever write, and I told him what had happened. Then he told me that he had known when he was writing the editorial that he was writing it for the College, but he had not felt able to be that explicit in print. 

 

Some coincidence! I knew beyond doubt that this was far more. That series of events could not possibly be coincidence and through it I received confirmation that what I had read really was a word from God, a word that gave me faith for something bigger than myself. And, of course, because it was from God, it came to pass.

 

But faith does not always see immediate results. It is sometimes tested, and in fact it was a few years before the building was finally complete. There was an initial response as I told the story of how the Lord has spoken to me, and we were soon able to provide new accommodation for 32 of our students, but then the flow of funds dried up and building had to be delayed. Sure that we had received a word from the Lord, the Board of Governors, of which I was a member, decided to spend a day together in prayer and fasting.

 

Towards the end of the day, Paul Newberry shared with us two verses that he felt the Holy Spirit had impressed upon him from Micah 7:

Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light (v8).

The day for building your walls will come, the day for extending your boundaries (v11).

It seemed to us that the Lord was saying that the enemy would have no reason to gloat over the present delay in our building project. Now was not God’s time for more building development, but that the time for building would surely come.

 

Encouraged by this I went home. Our daughter Sarah was home from college and I called to her as I entered the house. I’m up here, she said, calling from her bedroom. I went up to see her and, to my surprise, she was sitting in the dark. When I asked her why, she replied in the words of Micah 7:8. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light! What a confirmation! The same verse from two different people in two different places in the space of less than one hour. 

 

And, of course, the time for building did come, and at the time of preparing this talk, I’ll be back there teaching this week and I think I’ll be staying in that very building.

 

But now it’s time to summarise what we have learned in this talk.

 

• Signs are not so much God speaking to us, but God confirming what he has said. 
• Be careful if you’re thinking of putting out a fleece. 
• In the New Testament the main purpose of signs is to point people to Jesus. They also encourage the faith of those who are already Christians. 
• With God there’s no such thing as coincidence. He is working all things together for the good of those he has called according to his purpose. Remarkable coincidences are very often God’s way of confirming what he’s already said.

 

Next time: Promptings

Talk 16 God speaks to us directly     Part 2       Dreams and visions

I guess most Christians know that the Bible contains many references to God speaking to people through a dream or vision. The book of Genesis alone contains some 40 references to the word dream, and at least seven people are mentioned as having been spoken to in a dream or vision. These include:

• Abimelech (20: 3, 6)
• Abraham (15:1)
• Jacob (31: 10, 11)
• Laban (31: 24)
• Joseph (37: 5, 6, 9, 10)
• Pharaoh’s Butler and Baker (40: 5, 8, 9, 16)
• Pharaoh (41: 7,  8, 15, 17, 22, 25, 26, 32).

And in the rest of the Old Testament there are many other references too, far too many to mention here. The most significant of these is Joel’s prophecy:

And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions… (Joel 2:28),

We’ll return to this when we come to look at dreams and visions in the New Testament, but first let’s consider three other OT passages. The first is in the book of Job which is considered to be the oldest of all the books of the Bible and in it we find Elihu saying to Job:

Why do you complain to God that he responds to no one’s words? For God does speak – now one way, now another – though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears…(Job 33:13-16).

Now it’s important when reading Job to be aware that not everything Job’s friends said to him was correct, but in this case Elihu’s words are in line with what God himself says in Numbers 12:6-8: 

When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.

Here God confirms that he does speak through dreams and visions, but also makes it clear that they are ‘riddles’ and can be open to misinterpretation. They are not as reliable as the level of revelation that God granted to Moses. They need to be interpreted, as we know from the well-known stories of Joseph and Daniel who were gifted by God in interpreting dreams. 

Finally, in Jeremiah 23 we are warned against the danger of false visions:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they will fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord (v.16. Compare 14:14).

Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully for what has straw to do with grain? declares the Lord (v.28).

The context here is that God had told Jeremiah that judgment was coming on the nation, but this, of course, was an unpopular message that nobody wanted to believe. The false prophets, who were politically motivated, were only saying what they knew the king wanted to hear. Through Jeremiah God is warning these prophets to make sure that they are speaking God’s word faithfully and not prophesying visions from their own minds. And he is warning those who are listening to them not to believe them.

So the OT passages we have been looking at teach us that:

1. We sometimes think that God does not respond to us, but he does in one way or another, sometimes by a dream or vision (Job 33:13-16). 
2. Even when God does speak through a dream or vision, it often needs to be interpreted (Numbers 12:6-8). 
3. Visions and dreams need to be evaluated. What is the motivation of the person relating their dream? Are they faithful to God’s word? (Jeremiah 23:16, 28).
4. As we see from the example of faithful Moses, there is a higher level of revelation than dreams and visions. For us, that is the teaching of Scripture. This is in harmony with what we have already seen with regard to different levels of prophecy.  

As we come now to look at the New Testament, we see that here too there are frequent references to God speaking through dreams and visions. In the Gospels we read about Joseph and the wise men in the Christmas story, and Pilate’s wife having dreams, and of Zechariah, Peter, James, and John having visions. In Acts, God (or an angel sent by God) speaks in visions to Cornelius, Peter, and Paul.

The references in Acts are particularly important for us, because, as we have explained before, we are living after Pentecost which was a turning point in human history. The gift of God’s Holy Spirit was then made available to all his people. When the crowd, composed of many different nationalities, are amazed to hear the disciples speaking their languages, they ask, What does this mean? To which Peter replies:

…this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy… 

(Acts 2:16-18).

 

This seems to suggest that, far from any idea that dreams and visions might become redundant after Pentecost, there should in fact be an increase in these manifestations. They are a direct result of the Spirit being made available to all. What’s more, if God spoke to Cornelius, Peter, and Paul through visions, there is no reason to suppose that he will not speak in the same way to people today, And indeed, there are increasing numbers of testimonies of Muslims around the world who have come to Christ as a result of God speaking to them through a dream or vision.

Finally, before I share a personal testimony of how God spoke to me in a dream, it’s worth noting that in Acts 2 Peter identifies the manifestation of speaking in tongues as the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy that when the Spirit was poured out in the last days all kinds of people would see dreams and visions and that they would prophesy. This may well suggest that, just as dreams and visions are a means of prophetic revelation, speaking in tongues fulfils a similar role.  It certainly did so on the Day of Pentecost and, as we have seen, when accompanied by the gift of interpretation of tongues, it can be a means of building up believers in the local church. God has spoken to me many times through these gifts, but only once has he spoken to me through a dream.   

Some years ago, my daughter, Sarah, recommended a book by Jack Deere entitled, Surprised by the Voice of God. On reading it, I was challenged by the reminder that in the Bible God often spoke through dreams, and I wondered why God had never spoken to me in a dream. So I said, almost casually, Lord, you have never spoken to me in a dream, and I would really like you to. 

I must admit that I didn’t expect an immediate answer, but a few days later I had a dream. But before I tell you what it was, I need to tell you about our family. Debbie, our oldest daughter was living in Rugby. Sarah, our second daughter, was living in Portsmouth. And Jonathan, our son, was living near Liverpool. 

About a year before I had the dream, Sarah had asked me if I knew anyone who needed a car. She had tried to sell her old one, but was offered only £300 for it and felt that she’d rather give it away than sell it for such a low price. I told her that I thought Jonathan would be grateful for it, and so she gave the car to him.

Shortly before I had the dream, we had arranged to visit Debbie on a particular weekend because we knew that Jonathan would be there too. Now I had the dream about a week before the visit to Debbie. In my dream Eileen and I went to Debbie in separate cars because we would need to give Eileen’s car to Jonathan. That was it. And even though I had asked the Lord to speak to me through a dream, I didn’t seriously think that the dream was a message from God. And so we both went to Debbie’s in my car.

Imagine my surprise when we arrived at Debbie’s and saw what looked like a brand-new car standing outside Debbie’s house. Whose is the car? I said. Oh, it belongs to the insurance company, said Jonathan. Mine is a write-off. Someone smashed into the back of it while it was parked on the road.

And it was then that I was reminded of my dream. Could God be saying that we should give Eileen’s car to Jonathan? I told her about the dream, and she readily agreed that that is what we should do. So we told Jonathan and simply asked that he would give us the insurance money when it came through, to put towards replacing the car we were giving him. We didn’t expect very much as the most Sarah had been offered for it a year before was £300.

Eileen and I agreed together that we’d leave it a few weeks and then start to look for a replacement car for her. The car she had given Jonathan was a Toyota Corolla 1600, five door executive automatic, and Eileen loved it! So I promised her that we’d look for a newer version of exactly the same model. Shortly afterwards we heard from Jonathan. The insurance company had given him £1200 for the car, for which, if you remember, a year before Sarah had been offered a mere £300.

Grateful to God that we were getting far more than we had expected, Eileen and I set off one Saturday visiting car sales companies in several nearby towns, looking for a Toyota Corolla with the same specification. It was pouring with rain all day long, and after several hours of unsuccessful searching we returned home, tired, wet, and rather discouraged. 

Then, quite suddenly, on the following Tuesday, a thought came into my mind. A few years earlier the College had bought a Toyota minibus from a Christian brother in Nottingham who had a garage with a Toyota franchise. Maybe I should try him? So I phoned him and told him what I was looking for. If he had one come in, would he please let us know? To which he replied, Will silver do? 

Now the colour of the car was about the only detail I hadn’t specified when I told him what we were looking for, but silver was just the sort of colour we wanted! Yes, that’s fine, I said. Does that mean you’ve got one? And to cut a long story short, one had come in that very day, There was just one previous owner and they had only covered 3000 miles a year from new. The price was right, and when he said, When do you want to come over and look at it? my reply was, I don’t need to. This is so obviously God, I’ll come and get it on Saturday. That’s the only time I’ve ever bought a car without looking at it, and it was just what Eileen wanted. 

Now you may think that I’ve wandered a long way from the dream I was telling you about, but if it had not been for that dream, that whole series of amazing events would never have happened. And the story is not just about a dream about a car. It’s a testimony of how God is at work in the little details of our lives, constantly working all things together for our good because he loves us and because we are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

Talk 15      God speaks to us directly (Part 1)

The Bible is full of examples of God speaking very directly, often without any human involvement. Some of the ways he speaks like this include: 

• an audible voice
• angels
• dreams and visions
• supernatural signs
• promptings.

We’ll look at each of these in turn, starting with some biblical examples and then illustrating wherever possible from my own experience. I say ‘wherever possible’ because I can’t honestly say that God has spoken to me in all of these ways.

An audible voice

There are many examples in the Bible where we read that the Lord spoke to someone, but it’s not always clear how he spoke. Consider the example we looked at earlier in the series. We looked at Acts 13:1-3 where we read that the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” The Holy Spirit may well have spoken with an audible voice on this occasion, but it’s just as likely that the spoke through one of the prophets who were present (v.1). 

On other occasions, however, it’s perfectly clear that God’s voice was audible. To mention just a few examples:

Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ (Isaiah 6:8). 

When Ezekiel had a vision of the glory of the Lord, he fell face down and heard the voice of one speaking (Ezekiel 1:28).

At Jesus’ baptism a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17).

On the road to Damascus, Paul had a vision of Jesus, fell to the ground, and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4).

Peter heard his voice while praying on the rooftop in Joppa (Acts 10:13-16).

And on the isle of Patmos John heard a loud voice, the voice of the Lord, telling him to write (Revelation 1:10-12).

All these examples seem to make it perfectly clear that God sometimes speaks with an audible voice. But to be absolutely sure about this, let’s turn to the well-known story of Samuel (1 Samuel 3).

Hannah, Samuel’s mother, had been unable to have children, which, in the culture in which she lived, caused other women to despise her. But she prayed fervently to the Lord and promised that if he would give her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service. So, when Samuel was born in answer to Hannah’s prayer, she took him to the temple where the boy ministered before the Lord under Eli the priest (2:11). 

In chapter 3 we read how one night, while Samuel was lying down, the Lord called him by name. Samuel, not knowing that it was the Lord, ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. But Eli replied, I did not call; go back and lie down. This happened three times, and by then Eli realised that it was God who was calling Samuel. He told him that, when the Lord called again, he should reply, Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.

This was the beginning of Samuel’s ministry as a prophet and it’s very clear that God’s voice was audible. The fact that Samuel thought that it was Eli who was speaking shows that Samuel heard what was being said. From this it seems reasonable to assume that this may well have been the way that God spoke to Samuel on a regular basis.

And I have no doubt that if God could do it then, he can do it today. Having said that, although God has spoken to me in many wonderful ways, I have never heard his audible voice and I know very few people who would claim to have done so. However, rather more frequently we hear of God speaking through the ministry of angels.

Angels

As far as I know, I have never seen an angel and have never heard an angel speak to me – although we need to remember that some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2). But both Old and New Testaments show that God sometimes speaks to his people through the ministry of angels.

The word angel comes directly from the Greek word aggelos (pronounced angelos) and simply means messenger. Angels are God’s messengers. They are ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation (Hebrews 1:14). A good example of this is when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist and told him that his prayer had been heard and that his wife, Elizabeth, who was barren, would bear him a son. Humanly speaking, this was totally impossible because both Zechariah and Elizabeth were now far too old. I think Zechariah’s question was quite understandable:

How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years (Luke 1:18).

Gabriel’s reply in the next verse illustrates perfectly the ministry of angels: 

I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news (Luke 1:19).

Angels are God’s messengers. They stand in God’s presence and are sent to speak to us. The Gospels and Acts give us plenty of examples. About six months after his visit to Zechariah, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, to a virgin whose name was Mary (Luke 1:26-27). It was angels who brought the good news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds and told them where they would find him (Luke 2:8-14). 

It was an angel that came from heaven and appeared to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, strengthening him (Luke 22:43). And it was the angel of the Lord who descended from heaven and rolled away the stone from the mouth of Jesus’ tomb and told the women who had come to anoint the body of Jesus that he was risen (Matthew 28:1:7).

In the Book of Acts, as the disciples were looking intently up into the sky, two men dressed in white stood beside them (Acts 1:10). They told them:

This same Jesus who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way as you have seen him go into Heaven (v,11)

These men dressed in white were undoubtedly angels sent by God to remind them of Jesus’ promise that he would come again (John 14:28).

In Acts 5:19 the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and released Peter and John. In Acts 8:26 an angel told Philip the evangelist to go south to the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza. This led to the conversion of a key national leader from the land of Ethiopia.

In Acts 10 it was an angel who spoke to both the apostle Peter and the Roman centurion Cornelius (verses 3, 7, 22) resulting in the conversion of Cornelius and his entire household. In Acts 12 it was the angel of the Lord who once again released Peter from prison (verses 7-11). And in Acts 27:23-24 it was an angel who stood beside Paul before the ship on which he was travelling was wrecked on the island of Malta and said:

Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you,

Now the Book of Acts was not written simply as a historical account of the beginnings of the early church. Most scholars are agreed that Luke’s intentions in writing it were not merely historical. They are theological and missional. Luke is not just teaching us how it was, but how it can and should be. And in recording the frequent activity of angels, he is surely telling us that we can at times expect angelic intervention too.

There have certainly been many anecdotal reports recently of people claiming to have experienced the presence of angels in one way or another and I see no good reason to doubt this, particularly when the testimony comes from a reliable source. As far as Eileen and I are concerned, although God has never spoken to us through an angelic messenger, I am confident that we have experienced angelic help on at least one occasion.

In 1977 I served as Acting Principal of Mattersey Hall for six months before being appointed Principal in 1978. During that time we were still living in Basingstoke although I was at Mattersey much of the time about 200 miles away from home. 

One weekend I went with about 50 of our students from Mattersey to Newport in South Wales. There was a big inter-church meeting on the Saturday night and on the Sunday the students went to different churches to sing, testify, and preach. I stayed in Newport to preach in the church there.

After Sunday lunch the pastor, Eric Dando, asked me if I would like to phone Eileen, which of course I was grateful to do. After telling her that the weekend was going well, I asked her how she was and was shocked to hear her reply.

    I’m O.K., she said, but I very nearly wasn’t!

    Oh! What’s happened? I replied.

And she told me what had happened to her on the Saturday night while I had been away preaching in Newport.

There had been a women’s missionary meeting in London and Eileen and several of the ladies from the church in Basingstoke had gone to it. They had travelled in two cars and on the way home, on the road between Reading and Basingstoke, several horses ran into the road in front of the cars. It seems that they had escaped from a nearby field.

One of the horses collided with the car in which Eileen was travelling in the front passenger seat. The impact was so great that the front of the car roof caved in to within an inch of Eileen’s head. The car was a complete write-off and, as the people from the car in front walked back to see exactly what had happened, they feared the worst. 

At this point it is important to explain that at that time the wearing of seat-belts was not compulsory in the U.K. and the car in which Eileen was travelling didn’t have any. Bearing in mind the speed at which the car had been travelling when it collided with the horse, both Eileen and the driver should have been thrown forward through the windscreen. Indeed, the woman seated behind Eileen was thrown forward so violently into the back of Eileen’s seat that it was twisted out of position.

Yet Eileen was not thrown forward, and none of those travelling in that car was seriously injured. They all walked away relatively unharmed. As she related the story afterwards Eileen told me that throughout the whole incident she was strangely conscious of something – or someone? – holding her to the back of her seat, preventing her from being thrown forward. Was it a coincidence that on that very evening I had been preaching in Newport on a subject I have rarely preached on before or since? My subject was ANGELS.

Of course, I cannot categorically state that Eileen was saved by an angel. But I am certain that Eileen’s life was spared by divine intervention of some kind – and, as we have seen, the Bible does say that angels are messengers God sometimes sends to be of help to his people.

More recently I had an experience of answered prayer which several of my friends have suggested might have been brought about by angels. It was Sunday May 9th 2021 at around 10.45am. I was travelling from Brixham, where we live, to Newton Abbot for a COVID test. This was required because I was due to go into hospital on the Tuesday for an exploratory procedure on my larynx. 

Shortly after I started my journey I noticed a gentle banging sound coming from the rear of the car. At first I wasn’t too concerned and anyway I didn’t want to stop as I didn’t want to miss the appointment for the COVID test which was at 11am. If I had missed the appointment the procedure would have had to be postponed. So I continued my journey hoping that the banging was nothing serious,

Within a few miles, however, the banging had become much louder and I was getting scared. Finally, in desperation I called out, Lord Jesus, please take care of this! No sooner had I said this than I saw in the mirror a car behind me flashing its headlights. It drew along side me and indicated that I needed to pull over into the layby that was a few yards ahead.

When I did so the problem was obvious. My nearside back wheel was coming off! Two of the five nuts that hold the wheel on were missing and the other three were loose. If I had continued like that, the consequences could have been fatal. Relieved that the other driver had pulled me over in time, I asked if he could help me, explaining the urgency of getting to the COVID appointment. This he gladly did and, when he searched in the boot for the wheel brace, he discovered that there were two spare wheel nuts there!  It took less than a minute for him to fix the wheel and he was on his way. And I reached Newton Abbot just in time for my appointment. I think I have never known such a quick and dramatic answer to prayer.

Now, of course, I cannot be sure that the man who fixed my wheel was in fact an angel, but I’m open to that possibility. But in a way it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Lord answered my prayer, saved my life and brought me safely through the operation. Whether or not he used an angel to do so is unimportant. As we have seen, the Bible does tell us that angels are God’s messengers and that they are sent to minister to God’s people.  I believe it because the Bible says so, not because I’ve had an experience that may or may not have involved an angel.

How God speaks to us    Talk 14 Prophets and Prophecy (Part 2)

 

The ministry of a prophet

From what we’ve said so far, it should be clear that although all Christians are to ‘prophesy’ in the general sense of speaking on God’s behalf, not all will exercise the gift of prophecy. And not all who exercise this gift will be prophets in the Ephesians 4:11 sense. In short:

 

• All God’s people should prophesy (speak on his behalf)
• Some, but not all will receive the spiritual gift of prophecy (to edify the church)
• Some, but not all of these will exercise the ministry of a prophet.

So what can we learn about prophets as distinct from those who have the gift of prophecy? 

 

We saw earlier that prophets are people who hear from God and then pass on to others what he has said. They speak on behalf of God. Of course, because God knows the future, prophets may foretell the future (if that is what the Lord reveals to them), but most of the time they speak on God’s behalf to the people of their own generation. This was true of the prophets in the Old Testament and it’s true of prophets today. However, there’s a very important difference between prophets today and those of the Old Testament.

 

Differences between OT prophets and prophets today

Prophets today do not fulfil the same role as OT prophets and we should not expect them to do so. People like Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel etc. were people of great power and influence, proclaiming God’s word and manifesting his power to Israel and to the nations beyond. 

 

But we must be careful not to assume that prophets today will be the same. For a model of what we should expect of a prophet today we need to look at the New Testament and those who are described as prophets after the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2). Until then the Holy Spirit was given to relatively few people, but at Pentecost Moses’ prayer that all God’s people would be prophets (Numbers 11:29) was answered, and Joel’s prophecy that God would pour out his Spirit on all people began to be fulfilled (Joel 2:28, Acts 2:16-17). 

 

This meant that Acts 2 was in a very real sense a turning point in human history. The real dividing-line in God’s dealings with mankind is not the break between Old and New Testaments, but the seven weeks that started with Christ’s death and resurrection and that culminated with the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. From then on the Holy Spirit was available to all and, as we have seen, all God’s people are in a sense ‘prophets’ (Acts 2:16-18).

 

This means that people referred to as prophets in the New Testament before Pentecost should be considered in the same category as the Old Testament prophets. John the Baptist, for example, was the last in the line of Old Testament prophets. Jesus himself made this clear when he said:

For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John (Matthew 11:13).

In saying this Jesus revealed the continuity of the prophetic line from Moses right through to John for, until Jesus came, all prophetic ministry pointed forward to him. 

 

But what was the purpose of prophetic ministry after Jesus had come?  There clearly was to be a change of emphasis and we must not be surprised if certain differences appear in the role of the prophet after Pentecost. So, what is the ministry of a prophet today and how is it different from that of the Old Testament prophets?

 

To answer this question, we need to look at some of the people who are named as prophets in the Book of Acts. These are Agabus (Acts 11:27-28, 21:10), Judas and Silas (Acts 15:32), and some or all of those mentioned in Acts 13:1-2 (Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, Paul). The difficulty here is that it is not clear whether they were all ‘prophets and teachers’ or whether some were prophets and some were teachers.

 

Of all those mentioned in the previous paragraph, we know nothing more of Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, and Judas.  Barnabas and Paul were also apostles and so it is difficult to distinguish their apostolic ministry from their prophetic ministry.  Silas said much to encourage and strengthen the brothers (Acts 15:32) and preached that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God (2 Cor.1:19-20).  We know little else of his ministry except that he accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey. 

 

This leaves Agabus of whom we know rather more. He clearly spoke with great revelation from the Spirit (Acts 11:27-28, 21:10) including the accurate prediction of certain future events. His prophecy about a widespread famine is a well-known example of this (Acts 11:27-30) as is his prediction of Paul’s captivity in Jerusalem (Acts 21:11). 

 

From this it is clear that his ministry involved more than the simple gift of prophecy which need not contain any element of prediction. However, there is no suggestion that he fulfilled a role similar to that of OT prophets like Moses, Elijah etc. who spoke prophetically to national leaders. 

 

This leads me to the conclusion that though the prophets referred to in Ephesians 4:11 exercised a greater ministry than the simple gift of prophecy, they are by no means the same as the prophets of the Old Testament or as John the Baptist in the New. And that understanding must surely influence any conclusion we may wish to draw about the role of prophets today.

 

Prophets today

So far we have looked briefly at the role of prophets in both the Old and New Testaments. Our purpose in doing so was to establish precisely what kind of gift is referred to in Ephesians 4:11. Our findings may be summarised as follows:

 

The prophets referred to in Ephesians 4:11 are not the same as

• the prophets of the Old Testament
• NT prophets before Pentecost
• the simple gift of prophecy (1 Cor. 12:10).

 

So to discover the role of prophets today, we must examine any NT examples of the ministry of prophets after Pentecost – and we have noted that Agabus is the only clear example.

 

Agabus

We find references to the ministry of Agabus first in Acts 11 and then later in Acts 21. In Acts 11:27-28 we read that some prophets came to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus

stood up and predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world.

 

We are then told not only that this came to pass (v.28), but also what the disciples decided to do about it and how they did it. They decided that they would provide help for the brothers living in Judea (v.29) and they did so by sending a gift by Barnabas and Saul (v.30).

 

Two things are important here. First, Agabus’ prediction came to pass. If it had not done so it would have been a false prophecy according to the principles laid down in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. Clearly if a prophetic revelation comes from God it will come to pass. 

 

Secondly, it is noteworthy that the prophet did not tell the disciples what to do. Agabus simply gave them information as to what would happen. There is no suggestion here, therefore, that the prophet gives direction to the church or to individuals. But this is something which becomes even clearer when we consider the later passage in Acts 21 where we read:

 

… a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles’ (vv.10-11).

 

The disciples then pleaded with Paul not to go to Jerusalem (v.12), but Paul answered that if needs be he was ready to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus (v.13). Seeing that they could not persuade him, the disciples replied, The Lord’s will be done (v.14).

 

Again we see clearly that the prophet does not give direction to Paul. Agabus tells Paul that he will go to Jerusalem and that he will be captured by the Jews and handed over to the Gentiles. He does not tell him not to go. It is the disciples in the following verses who plead with Paul not to go. They put their own interpretation on the prophecy. But Paul knew that they were misunderstanding what God was saying, for he himself knew what God wanted him to do.

 

To help us understand this we need to go back to Acts 20. Paul is on his way to Jerusalem, hoping to get there in time for the feast of Pentecost (v.16). He reaches Miletus and sends to Ephesus for the elders of the church (v.17). In his farewell address to them he says

And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me… (Acts 20: 22-24) 

Three things are significant here. First, it is clear that prophetic ministry was common at that time. In every city Paul was receiving prophetic words. Secondly, these prophetic words were testifying to the same thing. Paul would be imprisoned in Jerusalem. Thirdly, despite all this Paul was convinced that God wanted him to go for he was compelled by the Spirit to do so. 

 

It is very important to understand this when we come to Acts 21:4 which says that through the Spirit the disciples at Tyre urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. This apparently completely contradicts Paul’s own statement that he was compelled by the Spirit to go (20:22). However, the passage about Agabus (vv. 10-14) sheds light on this. The disciples at Tyre made the same mistake as those at Caesarea. They received a revelation from the Spirit as to Paul’s future imprisonment, but they wrongly understood that this meant that Paul was not to go.

 

So the ministry of Agabus teaches us that prophets today may receive revelation from the Holy Spirit with regard to the future. However, it is not their role to tell the church or individual Christians what to do. They do not give direction. They impart to us information from the Spirit which helps us decide in advance what to do (Acts 11) or may encourage us that we are still in the will of God even when we are called to pass though hardship and difficulty (Acts 20-21).

 

One example of a present-day prophet is César Castellanos. When I met him he was the leader of a church in Columbia which was at the time almost certainly one of the fastest growing churches in the world, with over 200,000 members. In 1998 he visited Britain and was the guest preacher at a conference I attended. At the end of a special late-night meeting where César had been speaking to about a dozen national Christian leaders, he prayed for each one of us in turn. When he came to me, instead of praying, he prophesied. His prophecy included the following statement:

 

This is what the Holy Spirit says: I will greatly anoint your pen and your writing will be a blessing to thousands and thousands of people.

 

How was I to respond to such a wonderful prophecy? Let’s see what the New Testament has to say about this and then ask how it applies to César’s prophecy about me. It’s very important, when we hear prophetic words of this kind, that we consider very carefully what has been said and judge it in the light of what the New Testament teaches.

 

 

How to respond to the ministry of prophets today

In 1 Corinthians 14:29 we’re told to judge or weigh carefully what a prophet says. We must not automatically assume that everything a prophet says comes from the Lord. A prophet may well have received something from the Lord, but the way they express it may be influenced by their own interpretation of what the Lord has given them. 

 

Remember the people in Acts 21 who were telling Paul not to go to Jerusalem? They had heard rightly from the Lord that Paul would suffer when he went to Jerusalem, but they put their own construction on it and told him not to go! There’s a human element in every prophecy, even when it’s given by divine inspiration.

 

So how do we weigh or judge a prophecy? It will greatly help if we ask ourselves questions like these:

• Is the prophecy in line with the principles of Scripture?
• Is the person who brought the prophecy reliable?
• Do we have an inner witness that this is from the Lord? 
• Are there any other signs confirming the prophecy?

If the answers to these questions are positive, then it would be wise to ask the Lord what our next course of action might be, and perhaps to seek the advice of one or more of our church leaders. Do they have any conviction that this is what God is saying? Other important questions you might ask are:

• Is there any indication of the timing of the fulfilment of the prophecy? We shouldn’t automatically assume that it will happen immediately. 
• As time passes, can we see definite signs that the prophecy is coming to pass?

 

Now, just by way of example, if I apply these principles to César’s prophecy about myself, I can certainly see that:

• His prophecy was in line with the principles of Scripture
• The person who brought the prophecy was reliable
• I did have an inner witness that it was from the Lord. It was a confirmation of what I had already felt that God was saying to me. In the weeks leading up to that conference I had been feeling that God wanted me to give more time to writing. César’s prophecy came as a wonderful confirmation
• The fact that he did not know me was in itself a good sign of its genuineness. César had never met me. He knew that I was a Christian leader but he had no way of knowing that I was a writer. 
• There was an almost immediate fulfilment and it continues to be fulfilled over 20 years later. Since that time, I have written several books which have been translated into a variety of different languages. They have certainly reached thousands already and I continue to receive messages of thanks from grateful readers. 

 

In using this illustration, I have simply tried to highlight the fact that God does still speak through prophets today and to show how important it is to know how to evaluate what they say. In the final analysis, as the children of God it is our privilege to be led by God’s Spirit and, although he may choose to speak to us through prophetic ministry, we, and we alone, can determine God’s will for our lives. And it’s because we have the Spirit that God sometimes speaks to us directly, without any human intermediary, and that will be the subject of our next talk.