"Listening to the Holy Spirit"

Identifying Messages from the Holy Spirit

     This is one of the deeper areas of your Christian Walk. It is important to be able to identify or discern how the Holy Spirit speaks to you because at any given time you are constantly bombarded with thoughts and impressions from multiple sources. Your environment puts thoughts in your mind, satan or his evil spirits can put thoughts in your mind, sometimes your own mind can play tricks on you and show you its own selfish desires as coming from God.
      The Holy Spirit loves to communicate with you, there are many ways he uses to speak to you but he does not confuse you.
     It is essential to know and understand the Word of God (The Bible) as you read in the previous section as that blocks out most of the doubt and confusion.
     Most of the time He speaks to you very subtly, sometimes He does speak to you through open visions, dreams and other more direct ways. The Holy Spirit may speak to you in a direct audible voice but this is very rare.
   
     Here is a list of common ways that the Holy Spirit uses to communicate with you.
*The Word of God (The Bible)
*The Inner Witness or Knowledge with Inner Peace
*Leading or Promptings by the Spirit
*Checks in the Spirit or Stop Signals
*Quickening or Calls to Attention
*Prophecy
*Dreams and Visions

THE WORD OF GOD  (The Bible)

     The Bible that we have today, both the Old and New Testaments are inspired and compiled by the Holy Spirit. One of the first things the Holy Spirit will convince you of is that the Bible is the absolute truth and the undeniable Word of God. Every word in the Bible is from God himself and put there by design, it has a purpose and is capable of teaching you something valuable. It is one of the greatest gifts we have from God. The Holy Spirit will never contradict The Bible.
     The Holy Spirit himself teaches you the Bible and you begin to understand deep truths, contexts, instructions and hidden meanings in the passages. This means that with even one or two verses, The Holy Spirit can communicate quickly and effectively a lot of information to you. It is your job to read the Bible and keep the Word of God in you. Once you do your part, the Holy Spirit will then bring to your mind at the right time the answers you are looking for.
     The Holy Spirit will extensively use the Bible to speak to you. When you are in doubt or in trouble or need guidance for a specific situation, he will put in your mind a story, topic or verse that answers your questions and tells you what to do. The Bible has an ocean of spiritual truths and guidelines on how to succeed in life.

REAL LIFE INSPIRATION

     There was once a man who lived like a criminal for most of his life. God touched him and made him realize the error of his ways. He soon repented and accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. That’s when something strange happened, he was arrested for a petty crime he committed a while ago. This was a shock to him because as long as he was a crook nobody would interfere with his life, once he accepted Jesus and repented he landed up in jail. He was confused and was not sure about what to do.
     He did not give up on his new faith and used his time to preach the Gospel to the other inmates who were with him. He suddenly had a verse from the Book of Revelation repeatedly come up in his mind. He was not sure what it meant or how it applied to him. Exactly ten days later he was released as they could not charge sheet him.
     He went home and studied the verse carefully, he was then sure beyond doubt that it was for him. When sharing his testimony he says that its almost like the Lord Jesus knew exactly what will happen to him and nearly 2000 years ago put that verse there in the Bible for him.
     This is the verse that came up when he was in prison:
‘‘Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life’–Revelation 2:10
     It completely changed the way he looks at the Bible, he is a changed man now and many lives are touched because of him.