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He is risen.
Tag Archive | Significant Encounter
Can You Hear It?
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Hear what?
The voice of god.
This topic comes up so frequently in conversation.
I’m no expert,
but I have made some observations and asked some questions.
I’ve gotten some great answers,
and been quite bewildered by the answers of others.
Here’s what I think.
I believe God is always speaking.
Always.
I am just not always listening.
Sometimes I think I am listening,
only to find later how much I missed.
OR
I do not understand the manner in which He is speaking.
These two observations made me want to find a better way of hearing.
It’s been a long, long study,
but I’m learning more and more every day.
Questions…
How does God speak?
How do we know we are not just making it up?
What about all those coincidences?
If I connect the dots, will they lead back to Him?
What that one scripture that I simply cannot get out of my mind?
Can I HEAR His voice with my ears?
What about those “gut” feelings?
I am positive that you can add more questions to this list.
As many people as there are,
there are AT LEAST that many questions.
As stated earlier, I believe God is ALWAYS speaking.
Consider this thought –
What if –
Babies were born with the ability to hear and communicate with God,
and they lost that ability through neglect or lack of knowledge or just plain unbelief?
Perhaps the big people around them didn’t know this language,
or they chose not to believe it if they did know.
Could be?
If we spend time each day getting to know God and His Word,
then our minds will become renewed.
Slowly, over time,
our thoughts will become more like His.
We will learn through His Word about His character.
We will learn through His Word His expectations.
We will learn through His Word that He LONGS to communicate with us.
We will learn through His Word the “sound” of His voice.
My sheep hear my voice and they know me.
The voice of another they will not follow.
John 10:26 -28
(That’s another couple of posts all by itself!)
When we spend the time,
We can be fairly certain that we are not making it up.
He is Faithful to watch over his Word to do it
Jeremiah 1:12
Do your thoughts align with God’s Word?
Do your thoughts align with the promises He has already written for you in His Word?
If so,
you can be pretty sure He’s been speaking to you.
Somehow.
In the late 80’s there was a program called “Perfect Strangers”.
In it, the character Balki was always saying “What a co-in-o-dink!”
He meant coincidence of course.
Well, I do not believe in them.
I choose to believe that it is God’s way of connecting the dots for our lives.
Look back on some things in your life.
Things that in no way go together,
but in the end,
the dots connect to the next big thing that God had for you.
He’s talking to you.
Are you listening?
Is there a verse that you have read that just will not let you go?
One of my biggest ones; Psalm 139 of course.
but especially verses 13-16-
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Oh yeah!
I’m NOT a mistake!
God’s voice,
God speaking to me,
will always make me know that I have worth and value.
I HAVE heard the audible voice of God.
This is not so common,
but I believe that God uses whatever it will take to get us to listen.
In the circumstance I was in,
I am so glad He spoke,
no,
He yelled!
People tell me that God wouldn’t yell.
In my case He yelled “SHUT UP!”
(He would never say that!)
Well He did.
It WAS the only way I would listen.
It made all the difference in the outcome.
My husband has heard His voice audibly as well.
If he hadn’t listened,
we could have been burying our daughter due to a strangers foolish mistake.
I’ve had experiences where my insides just didn’t settle well in a given circumstance.
Some of those unsettled times I have not paid attention,
and later paid the price for “not listening”.
By the same token,
Some I have taken to heart,
listened,
and in the end seen exactly the pit fall Holy Spirit was trying to keep me from.
God was speaking to me.
In my gut.
I choose to believe that He uses all these ways and more
to communicate to a world that He so longs to interact with.
To SPEAK to us.
To build relationship with us.
To love and to bless us.
I have a little story I’s like to share with you on this subject
I have permission to do so.
My friend and I were talking a while back about this very topic.
We were talking about the fact that we want to teach our children and grand-children
how to hear God in whatever way He chooses to speak.
Recently she was sitting on her front porch,
She was enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the beautiful fall here in the mid-west.
She spends her quiet time there.
Encountering God and listening for His voice.
On one day,
her not quite pre-school age daughter came to join her.
She was very quiet,
and after a bit her mom was going to speak to her,
and she put her little finger to her lips and shushed her mom.
A bit shocked,
mom asked why?
To which the little replied,
“I think I hear God talking.”
So of course mom asked,
“So what do you think He’s saying?”
To which the little answered.
“Chirp, chirp.”
A heartwarming story to be sure.
A surprising answer from a babe.
Purity.
Sweetness.
A complete lack of guile.
A heart ready to HEAR what God has to say.
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Fearfully and wonderfully made
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The Last Day of April
The last week of April is “Big trash” pick up in our city.
What can be found curbside during this time runs the gamut from trash to treasure.
Some stuff is really trash, and other stuff is there because the owner doesn’t want to deal with selling it or hauling it away themselves. They just want it out of their space.
I have been known to partake in helping the folks to remove some of these things from their own personal space, and the land fill, since my youth.
The fact of the matter is that, as my Mom told me once, that I was a sheeny. That it was in my blood. That I came by it honestly and therefore could not help it.
The only definition I could find for the word was that it was a highly offensive term for a Jew. I assure you, that is not what it means to me or what she meant when she said it.
What she was referring to, was seeing something discarded, retrieving it, fixing it, and either keeping it for yourself, or selling it to another. In the most basic of terms, a trash picker.
A man rummaging through a skip at the back of an office building in Central London. See also: Dumpster diving. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Some of my earliest memories were not of purchases made in fancy stores, but of dumpster diving in the dumpster behind the school that we lived across the street from.
It could be smelly, to be sure, but what a coup to bypass the apple cores and banana peels from someone’s lunch to find half used pads of fat ruled paper with dotted lines for beginning writers and pencil stubs and broken crayons. Maybe even a partially used sheet of stickers tossed away by a teacher who had grown tired of using them.
This began my love affair with paper and pencils and crayons, but that is for another story.
The point of this story is twofold.
First, to announce to the world that I was a curb side entrepreneur before it was cool to be that. If it could not be used for it’s original purpose, I would find something else to do with it!
Second, and of so much more importance, is this;
The things that other people consider trash can be of use to someone else. They can be cleaned up and used for their original purpose, or they can be transformed into something totally different than what the eye can see.
I have seen this happen over and over.
An old mirror becomes a center piece for a dining room, complete with candles and cloches and flowers.
An old dresser, with a fresh coat of paint and a little new hardware can become a place to hide all of the things you use daily, but want to keep close, but out of sight.
An old pair of boots becomes a planter in the side yard for hens and chickens or strawberries.
The most striking transformations I have ever seen though have not been with goods “purchased” at the curb.
The most striking transformations I have ever seen have been lives “purchased” at the cross.
I have seen this happen over and over again.
When Jesus reached down through the yuck and the muck, the apple cores and the banana peels, with His palms stained with blood, He redeemed so much more than paper and crayons.
He redeemed a life. A life that others could only see as trash.
Jesus saw past the demolished life visible only to the eye. He saw past the uselessness of a life in ruin. He saw what a life could be.
Jesus sees what He paid for on that cross. He sees the one who is fearfully and wonderfully made.
Jesus sees the one who is made in the image of God, the one who has been led to believe that he is all alone.
Jesus is there reaching down with that blood stained hand, to pull that one up, and to give a new coat of paint, a different set of hardware. He wants to show the “New” purpose for that life, and discard the one that was old and decrepit.
The enemy of that soul has “sold” a bill of goods to almost the entire world.
Trash. Ruined. Damaged. No value. Fragmented. Un-fixable.
The death of Christ on the cross and His resurrection has paid the price for the reversal.
Trash to treasure. Ruination to pristine. Damaged to usefulness.
No value to priceless. Fragmented to whole. Un-fixable to show room new.
The very thing that holds us prisoner is probably the very thing that was given to us as a gift from our Heavenly Father.
Stolen from us by the one who hates our souls!
Won’t you reach up from the rubble and take His hand today?
Isaiah 61:3 (NIV)and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.
Psalm 40:2 (NKJV) He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Psalm 139:14 (NIV) I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Crayon Lineup (Photo credit: laffy4k)
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Significant Encounters 
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