Communication with the Holy Spirit 2014-48

This is not an easy subject to speak about or ever give advice to others wishing to have a communication with the Holy Spirit (God). Why!?

The children of God are led by the Holy Spirit as stated in Romans 8:14. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. “  I guess that if I think we are led by the Holy Spirit then somehow we should be able to hear from God and how we are to be led by the Spirit. I don’t think we as people of faith were really taught about this subject for various reasons. It could be that there is the fear that we would be open to the Spiritual realm of life and we could possibly be open to contact with another spirit such as a demonic one that would try to look and hear like the Holy Spirit or even God Himself. Don’t know, just a thought. My Spiritual Director guided many of us through the book “Naked Spirituality, by Brian McLaren and this has some stuff about hearing from God, but this is not done on a regular basis for all to hear.

I believe in the Holy Spirit and also know we can hear from Him if we listen.  I also think that we must be aware to be careful about who is talking to us and try to discern when we are hearing from God and not something else coming from a demon or the evil one.  Not an easy thing to do, I admit, but still is something to consider. I do NOT think that we should ignore those areas of communication with God based on the fear of the evil one. God still would like to communicate with us in some way and loves to hear us pray to Him and ask for his blessing of discussion.

Look or read about God talking to those in the Old Testament. He did so, on a regular basis. If God is the same God of then (which I think He is), then he still wants to communicate to every one of us in the ways He did then and more so. If you could call it “supernaturally communicating” back then, go ahead and call it that today if you wish.

Now the thing to do is learn how to hear from the Holy Spirit (or God if you wish), which may take a while to learn the process by trial and error. We hopefully will learn the way of doing so and know that it is the Lord, when it is demons or the evil one, and when it is us making it up as an imagination of thought. I said it was not easy!

How do we think God can talk to us?  There are a number of ways God will use to communicate to us or more if you think of any that work for you.   Let me begin by mentioning what I have said before; using key Scripture verses about the Holy Spirit.

Some of the major key verses might help us to receive direct communication from Him at times. Perhaps we should learn these from the people that teach us at church, but regardless, make up your own mind if you wish to get into a discussion with the Lord if you want. God wants to talk to us and have us hear Him and what he has to say.  So, we can try to hear, try to have Him answer us or let us know something, but we do have to listen for Him.

I have previously mentioned that the Holy Spirit (God) is our personal guide and teacher in daily living. The verses in the Bible to refer to are John 14:26 and John 16:13 for reference. Also, to obtain a personal relationship with Him is found in Corinthians 13:14 and Philippians 2:1 to recap what I said before in another letter.

So, another thought: Do not resist, rebel, grieve or quench the Holy Spirit (another time to say— GOD). Let me go one more stepping stone forward. The following texts might be read for info sake.

Isaiah 63:10 “But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit: so He turned Himself against them as an enemy, and He fought against them.” I don’t think I want to do that myself or have God turn away from me and you would have to read the text to put it in perspective.

Thessalonians 5:19-22 “Do NOT quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.”  These are heavy words to think about, but again do the research of the text to find what it pertains to.

Acts 7:51  “You stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.” Wow, sort of a statement to learn by, even though you may not feel like it means you or I.

Ephesians 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”  This is another “Do Not” statement in the Bible saying to get with the program of learning.

I think the above tells us that God, the Father, is  somewhat yelling at us that once the Holy Spirit starts to move in on us and our lives that He will want us to work with Him in the process. If we rebel, quench resist or grieve the Holy  Spirit, we are somewhat doing the same with God Himself, and His son Jesus Christ and that is not where we want to be.

I think that these verses somewhat show that the Holy Spirit does have a specific ministry with all of us and can become part of our lives.  IF this is not so, then why does the Bible use the words that were used? If the Holy Spirit was not trying to become very active in our daily lives in the first place, there would be nothing to resist, grieve, or rebel against in the first place. If the Holy Spirit (God) is teaching us in daily life and is trying to communicate to us, our job in life is to learn how He is going to do so.  How do we do that? (I will use Holy Spirit from now on without the (God) following.)

We have to jump right in and try. We have to make a choice to hear and tread water to a degree into being with God and hearing Him. It may be scary because you may not hear Him right away. I find that He will give me insight to what He is thinking and what He wants to say, when He wants to and I cannot force the issue or plead to hear or demand to hear from Him.  Plus, many times it goes beyond the vocal word of God and becomes a part of the mystical way of hearing from Him.

I have listed below some ways to communicate with God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and though you might not have been taught to do so in the past, it is your decision as to whether or not you want this supernatural realm opened up for you by God the Father. These thoughts came from Mike Bradley of Bible Ministries, from an online source.

1. The Inner Witness or Inner Knowing
2. The Word of God
3. Leadings
4. Check in your Spirit
5. Quickening’s
6. Visions
7. Dreams
8. Prophecies
9. One More – Praying

If after reading the above, you decide you would like God to open up with these ways of communicating with Him, then I suggest you go directly to God in prayer and ask Him to allow the Holy Spirit to become very active in any of these ways in which He uses to communicate with us. Tell Him or ask Him you WANT Him to open up this realm of communicating and it will be His perfect will to do so at your present level of spiritual development with Him. Praying is a start and it helps to keep doing it to hear from Him.

If you DO put that request before God, then He will take you seriously and He will very gradually lead you into this realm and from there, the Holy Spirit will start to move in some of these areas for you. The Holy Spirit will show you how to discern when it really is Him communicating to you, versus when it is your emotions or imagination talking to you. I was hesitant to start because I DID think it would be my imagination doing the talking and not God. I do NOT exactly know how to say HOW I KNOW when it is God talking, but suffice to say, it is obvious when it happens.

Inner knowing and inner witness  

1. The Inner Witness or Inner Knowing- What exactly does this mean? Let me first list two versus from the Bible.

1. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”( Romans 8:16)
2. “I tell you the truth in Christ; I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 9:1)

OK, the first verse (A) is telling us that the Holy Spirit Himself bears witness in our human spirit that we are children of God.  If He can do that then He can also bear witness in our spirits with other things as well. Then the next verse (B) will prove that to us. The apostle Paul gives us additional revelation when he says that his conscience was also bearing witness in the Holy Spirit. Could then, this mean the Holy Spirit was bearing a good witness for Paul in his conscience, which is part of OUR human spirit.

The key word here in both versus, is of course, “witness” The Holy Spirit is bearing witness to something in our human spirits. Then what is a good “witness” when we do receive one of these from the Holy Spirit? I would think that the Holy Spirit is confirming in our spirits that we are saved and that we are now children of God.  We have read and heard this many times in church.

What then is “inner knowing” in relation to the Holy Spirit?

This is getting closer to the hearing from Him. The Holy Spirit will transmit the knowledge He wants you to have on something as strong— the inner knowing. If you think that a Pastor/Priest had a good witness via preaching you could say that the inner witness is a “knowing without any shadow of a doubt” You know, that  you know, that you know, without a shadow of a doubt. Some people could call this inner knowing an enlightenment or illumination or even supernatural on what a Scripture verse may mean that you heard. I could use the term “inner knowing” to best describe how the Holly Spirit supernaturally communicates to us in this life.

So, therefore, when the Holy Spirit communicates something directly to us through this “inner witness”, it will be a knowing moment without any shadow of a doubt. If it is received for the first time it will be taken as coming from the Holy Spirit due to the strength and conviction of it. And, once you start to receive these kinds of inner knowing’s from the Holy Spirit you will be able to discern when one is REALLY coming from Him, or when it is made up in your mind and imagination. Actually when it happened to me I was awed and somewhat scared and amazed that the Holy Spirit would communicate to me the way He did. It was NOT a thunderous voice blasting out toward me; it was a firm, collected voice that had compassion and love for me in what He was trying to say to me.

Again, it will not come out of your head or your imagination, or emotions at the moment, but if like I experienced it, it will be from around you with you as the centerpiece of the heard word. You will “just know” it is not your mind throwing words at you, but His words that have particular meaning to what is being said for you. Quite an experience! And it CAN happen to you! The words will be clear, concise and with a definite inner knowing on the message being transmitted to you.

What do you think the Holy Spirit will communicate to you and why?  There are so, so many things that will give the Holy Spirit reasons for doing so. Actually, an infinite number of things that will help you through life in one piece and give you the ability to cope with problems that may be thrown your way.

I related in the past that the Holy Spirit is a called a helper in the Bible and will repeat below what I wrote.

• “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”  

 

1. (John14:26)
2. “However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth …” (John 16:13)

BUT, though this might be true He cannot help or do for you unless He can communicate with you directly and tell exactly what He wants you to hear and do. So, the inner witnesses and knowing from the Holy Spirit will come to you through trial and error in a process that may take time to learn and do. When it is truly from the Holy Spirit then you can totally depend of it and from there, take action that needs to be taken.

Another way for the Holy Spirit to communicate with us is by giving us a direct verse from Scripture.

This has helped me a few times and is sort of amazing to have it occur. I did not open the Bible and point to a verse and expect it to jump out at me with an answer to a problem. But the Bible is loaded with many ways to learn and is pertinent to many things that relate to us. The Bible contains the Word given to us from the writers of each Book and each Chapter and Verse.  I believe the Bible is a book that is inspired by God (Holy Spirit included) and as such it is full of words that have meaning to all of us.

I believe that it is up to us to take quality time so we can load our minds with morsels of teachings that are in it. Then, the Holy Spirit can take us back to remember certain Scripture verses when we might need them and He can do so, because we have already done our part by getting the Bible verses in us.

Now, I will admit that I have a terrible memory, at least a horrible one. So, I cannot do a total or partial recall of a Bible verse that I can bring up.  To be honest I have read the Bible, but it does not stick in my mind very well. I got a “How to remember verses in the Bible” book and I did not do well in learning the how, like I expected.

So, it may take a while or have us do something different.  The NIV Bible has a great section at the rear that has key words listed that tells you where to find the word in the Bible under the Book name and the verse number. I use this as a reference to look up something. I did so with one word and found the exact message I hoped to find that pertained to my problem at the time.  Really great! Try this as one way and see what it does. Did the Holy Spirit help me? Perhaps: but the Word gave me my answer and I appreciated it.

Leadings!

What does leadings mean to us. Well, the Holy Spirit can help us by telling or leading us to do or not to do something.  I listed below a verse that tells us that the Holy Spirit will lead us in our lives. Also, Jesus was also willing to be led by the Holy Spirit when He was here on Earth in the flesh.

1. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” (Romans 8:14)
2. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

(Matthew 4:1)

If God is telling us that we are to be led by the Spirit, and we hear that Jesus was also led by the Holy Spirit, then I would think God wants us to learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit in this life also.

The Holy Spirit could be thought of as “leading” us or we could say He is communicating by prompting us at times.  It could be He is “nudging” us to do a certain thing. Maybe it will be like we are being pushed somehow or I can say there was a wind at my back to do a certain thing or go a certain direction. Or, maybe God did not want me to go somewhere or in a certain direction and hopefully we will fill no “leading” by the Holy Spirit to do so and it is a way of communicating to us in a different way.

This is something that we will learn through a process of again, trial and error. After we have had a bunch of them, we can get adept at being able to tell when one is coming from the Holy Spirit and not from our own desires and emotions. Takes time, like a lot of things.

Check in Your Spirit

I mentioned before that we can sometimes get the “feel” that we should NOT do something and that this may be coming from the Holy Spirit. When He does NOT want to move in a certain way or direction, many of the times what you will pick up from Him is a “check in your spirit”.

I have had this happen to me, where I did not feel right about doing something. It is like a barrier to your thinking and you just KNOW that you should not go forward.  This can be big or little things in life. The biggee would be where you are being told not to board a plane because of a “feeling” of not doing so. This is where the plane may crash. A little thing would be so many things where we know not to do something that we are about to do in life. The problem is where this always happens and we begin to think it is our own natural emotions and fear and is not really coming from the Holy Spirit.

If you get this feeling for a “little thing” and you start to realize the Holy Spirit is working with you, then perhaps you will start to trust where it is coming from for you. This is not an easy communications to learn from, but I throw it in to give you thought. I can’t remember a “biggee” where I was saved by the Holy Spirit, but have heard of things happening to people who listened to Him, instead of moving forward towards a dangerous situation.

This is hearing from the Holy Spirit, but in a different way. When we are uneasy or queasy about doing something, maybe we should heed what we feel and are in fact hearing from Him. Just a thought!

The apostles had this feeling and “they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia…. They tried to go into Bithynia (near the Black Sea), but the Spirit did not permit them.” (Acts 16:6-7)

Quickening’s

The act of the Holy Spirit will jump at you in a quickening.   A verse from the Scriptures hits you like a bang, where you can snatch it and see what the message is for you.  Maybe a Pastor/Priest  gave you words during a sermon that just makes sense to you in a way that is unusual but meaningful to you. You are reading a book and “BAM” you see information that the Holy Spirit brought to you that was “for you” and only you at the moment.  If that is the case, listen to Him speaking at that moment. If you are “quickened” by something like this, in most cases the message was something you needed to hear and the Holy Spirit may have been involved.

If this happens to you, move on with it and take the reading or the message under advisement. It may be for you alone, even though others heard the same thing at the same time. Do not yearn to hear these things, but discern when it is really the Holy Spirit doing this for you. Let them come naturally, but when they do happen, listen. Occasionally, these have happened to me and I try to accept them when they do so.  They are quite amazing when they happen, so accept them when they do.

Visions

OK, the next three ways the Holy Spirit will communicate to you are shown via a Scripture text from the book of Joel.

“And it will come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Holy Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also my menservants and my maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days” (Joel 2: 28-29)

I think the words “on all flesh” means everyone is capable of getting prophesies, the dreams and visions that the Holy Spirit will offer.  I know I have had a vision that I can contribute, somewhat, to the Holy Spirit, but it was unsolicited at the time, but was still an awesome experience.

I had an open vision whereas my eyes were wide open and I was part of the vision when God allowed me to be part of it. It was in 3-D and quite convincing, and a little scary to a degree.  I think we can also get closed visions that occur in our minds only or a picture in our mind’s eye, but I would believe they are not as dramatic as the open ones. The Holy Spirit could give us more information and He could communicate with us giving more info and knowledge this way.  Sort of like a snapshot in our mind, by Him.

If we get something “out of the blue” and not expected, perhaps the Holy Spirit is helping us in His way to show us what He wants us to know. If it is from Him, a good “inner witness” of knowing it IS from Him and not imaginary and formed in your mind by us, ourselves.  A trial and error process will let us know and we will have to discern what is happening. It is not cut and dried and easy and maybe a little confusing, I would think.

Dreams

I guess the thing about dreams is the fact that they might be called “visions of the night” or even daytime if that is the case. Regardless, I would imagine that they are not common, but still they are something to consider.  Like many dreams that sometimes fade away, the Holy Spirit ones will stay with us.  I would hope there is a personal message for us with the dream.  I think we should write the dream down on paper to remember it and interpret the dream to see if it is from Him and not in our sleep driven mind. It would be a shame if we ignored what is given to us and not consider where it might be coming from for us.

I believe I might have had 1 or 2 of these dreams that I feel came from the Holy Spirit, but maybe more that I got but did not attribute to Him.  I really believe that if we have an open mind about this area as well as the others that I mentioned, we might be able to communicate with God more often and regularly.  To feel that this is all hogwash and not possible is somewhat of a guarantee that we may not hear from God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is NOT a wispy, special entity of God, the Holy Spirit IS God in a different form for us to hear from on a constant basis. That is what I believe. Again, I really believe there is a Holy Spirit and that it communicates to us!

Prophecies

I can only state that the gift of prophecy is when we receive a direct word from the Lord and that every word we receive in the prophecy will be direct words from the Lord. Prophecy is where there is a foreknowledge of future events or a presentation of hidden things which cannot be known by the natural light of reason.  I cannot really explain this right now, so will hold off and keep this one to myself and if you want to hear more about it, ask me. The reason I include it here is because I do believe it is possible and comes from God, but it is unusual to have it happen. Usual skeptics think prophecies are no more than coincidences or are invented by a so called prophet, but I like to think of it as an intuitive knowing or type of perception by certain people with divine insight. In essence, I believe that prophecy is sometimes given to some as a Spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit that dwells within us.

Praying

More than anything you do, try praying to God, to hear from God.  I add this because He wants to hear from us and if we listen, we can hear from Him. Perhaps not right away, but in His time He will get back to you. Or, again, in His way and time He will talk to you and let you know what He is thinking, desiring, wants you to do, etc.  It again, is in His time and for His reasons, so I cannot say when it will happen or why or any other circumstance for it to occur. Not much help there, but that is the way it is.

Wrap up

I again, state that I believe the Holy Bible is inspired by God.  I feel that if Scripture is a way to hear from God and the Holy Spirit then we should believe what we read. The Holy Spirit is our personal guide and Teacher in life and he can only do so if we listen and by listening, we can hear from Him. I believe that we have to really want to hear. If we do not, then we will not hear and I don’t think He will go out of His way to push you in believing or hearing from Him, unless He has a reason. He did this in the OT and the NT and He is still the same God as then.

I would think that some think this discourse is wacky or unbelievable and they have the right to think that thought.   I think it takes belief, discernment, and a true desire to hear from Him and it takes time to do so. It is up to you to decide what you want to do, but if you decide to try and listen for Him, then, in time you will hear Him. That is what I believe.

Disclaimer:  I have researched various sources and have stated some facts and opinions from others.  I do not claim to be an expert   but have included personal experiences to allow others to know what has happened to me and to encourage others to strive to listen and to hear from the one and only true God of the Universe.   Some of the above is taken from an online site and the nine titled thoughts are mainly from Mike Bradley of Bible Ministries, who I believe, has passed and was entered online by his associates.

Thank you, and may the Peace of the Lord, be with you!

 

Den Betts