I accepted Jesus as the Son of God and my personal Savior for about thirty years. I made decisions from time to time according to my own will even as a believer. Therefore, I did not see the Grace from God and presence of my God with me every day. Even though it is the fact, what said in Isaiah 65:1 was truth.
“I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me; I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’ To a nation which did not call on My name.”
The Holy Spirit often used some methods to let me experience how God is calling to His children. But when I shared with other Christians that our God is alive and living among us, others did not have such experience and found it too unbelievable that they could not think through their logical thinking of their own heads, so they did not believe it. A close friend of mine honestly said to me: “These are just your experience. I am not saying that you are lying or that you have a problem with your head. It is okay to listen to it, but I am not there to see it with my own eyes, and there is no way for me to empathize.”
So, before I talked about the God’s love on me, I was moved to write this preface, telling how I saw God’s living deeds in the testimony of other Christians, and how I received what I saw in my heart. Knowing that this is really evidence of the presence of our God with the witnesses. Moreover, I have a question in my heart, I hope that readers can confirm with me that what the visualized testimony in my heart sees is only the personal grace of the Holy Spirit to me, or every child of God, or even for people who have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior can have the opportunity to experience themselves. I say or, is because the premise is that no matter what image appears in our heart, it is something that we do not want to remember anymore, or it is seeing our own shortcomings. Or seeing other people’s experiences. If we do not resist the feelings at that moment, do not use our own logical thinking to explain them, and do not mistakenly think that the pastor or witness is outstanding in eloquence, or feel that the other person is scolding me. Or feel that you have never had such an experience, the other party must be lying and so on. More importantly, please do not talk to others for the time being. Just keep the touched things or words in our heart and say to God in prayer: “Jesus, is it you? Are you moving me? Do you have anything you want to say to me?” Then, in the days and times God has set, especially for the children of God, the prayer will be answered when we read the Bible every day. I do not know why I have to do this to see God’s living glory, but in the past two years, this helped me see that God is a living God among us. Since I understand this from the Holy Spirit, I hope more people can see the glory of God every day, and I hope that all glory goes to our God who created the world and lives among us, forever and ever! Amen!
One Sunday morning worship service, I listened to the pastor’s sermon and I felt that the pastor spoke really well. I felt touched in my heart. But at that time, a very small message suddenly appeared in my heart, which said this: “When Samuel was called as a child, he mistakenly thought that Levi was calling him, but I was calling him.” At that time, suddenly a door of cognition was opened in my heart, and I thought, “Why am I so stupid before? I just think that the pastor I can see is preaching well, but I do not understand that Holy Spirit is calling me in my heart.” But I slowly realized that every time I heard the sermon, I was moved. It does not always mean that Holy Spirit is calling me, and I may not because of Holy Spirit calling me to respond to Him. So, every time I was moved, if I was humbled in my soul, I would ask in my heart: “My Lord, is it you? Did you move me?” Sometimes, a small voice appeared in my heart and said: “It is I (or I AM).” Up to now, every time I hear it internally, there is peace in my heart. It makes me feel very familiar, as if I have seen and believed in the Bible. It was the Lord who responded to me. At the time of writing this preface, I seriously searched in the Bible. Why is “It is I” or “I AM” so special, and why does it seem to be so powerful? As a result, I found the answer in John 6:20! In there, Jesus said to the disciples:
“It is I, do not be afraid.”
This is the response that the Lord Jesus made to the disciples’ questions, and it is also a method of response that the Son of God can bring to the believers through Holy Spirit and the words from God in the Bible. As the Lord Jesus said in John 14:26:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you.”
After that, I found that whenever I listened to some Christians telling their testimony, sometimes, in my heart, I seemed to be a personal witness, and I saw the Christian’s story about how Holy Spirit led him/her on the spot. Then, when I was particularly moved, I would shed tears uncontrollably. This was a surprise to me, why my own man’s heart was so weak that I often shed tears. Let me try to give an example to share with readers. When a Christian shared in my church how he was in North Korea because of evangelism, he was locked up in a concentration camp, not seeing the day. Every day in there, he would stand in the prison repeatedly and be interrogated the same questions again and again. When he was cross-examined again one day, he felt the Holy Spirit near him and said to him, “Don’t be afraid, I will increase your strength. They can’t harm you because here you have to testify for me.” When he said Holy Spirit was there giving him power through his right hand to his body, his heart was no longer afraid and had peace. While I listened, a vision appeared in my heart for some unknown reason, in the dim space that seemed to be reality. Everything is darkened. I was also in the prison with him and saw a light. My direct instinct told me that the light was the Holy Spirit. He surrounded the Christian’s right hand and gave power to him through his right hand. At that time in my heart, I was moved by the vision I saw in my heart, and the tears stayed uncontrollably, until I left the auditorium, the tears still could not stop. For this reason, I felt very embarrassed. So, after that, I wondered what the reason was, why the vision appeared in my heart when the Christian was telling his testimony, and why tears were left uncontrollably down? The eloquence of that Christian is not very outstanding, why did I have such a reaction? Why was I so sure in my heart that the light that I saw in my heart was the Holy Spirit? Why couldn’t the light seen in my heart be a lamp on the ceiling of the prison? Since then, I had been having a lot of these questions, and I really wanted to try to understand, what was the vision in my heart? Then, one day, a small voice suddenly appeared in my heart, and said to me softly:
“Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him?”
After these two sentences appeared in my heart, slowly, my heart seemed to understand something. What I understood was that the Holy Spirit was able to share what He had done with other children of God in others’ heart. Yes, there is only one Holy Spirit, not many. It was sent by the Heavenly Father to guide all His children. Therefore, the same Holy Spirit lives in the heart of all the children of God, consolidates all of them and link them all together. When one day, I was reading Romans 8:16:
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,”
Thinking of this in my heart, I realized that the Spirit of God can really testify for Himself in the hearts of other people. The most important prerequisite is that the children of God who tell their testimony must speak out the original, not adding other extra unnecessary ingredient to it, exaggeration or boasting themselves having the experience. It is because the God who created the heavens and the earth never needs others to exaggerate words that are false or self-exalted, to witness Him! Those witnesses who tell the truth about what God has done to them will return the focus of their testimony to the true God who created the heavens and the earth, and the Holy Spirit will go with them and witness His grace in the hearts of others. And we, the children of God in the audience, because the precious blood of the Lord Jesus flows in our souls, covering our sin of asking for our own way. If we do not activate our logical thinking to analyze and explain the content of the testimony, it will be possible not to be ignored and for us to visualize the testimony sharing by the Holy Spirit. So that we can see God’s deeds on those witnesses. As for those friends who have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, whether they can see in their hearts what the witnesses said about God’s deeds, I was not sure before, but one day in my heart, I once had the following message appeared:
“Every person on earth, their spirit is given by me.”
Then one day, when I read Isaiah 42:5, it said:
“This is what God the LORD says,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
Who gives breath to the people on it
And spirit to those who walk in it:”
My question came to my mind again, I then knew that Holy Spirit had guided me to understand the answer He gave me. Since the spirit of all people on earth all come from God, then, I believe that whether they accept the Lord Jesus or not, everyone in this world, the Holy Spirit can touch them in the depths of their souls.
Before writing this article, the author once saw a term called “Inattentional Blindness”, by definition in Wikipedia, which occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits. It is probably mean that when we, people, only focus on seeing something that we understand or familiar with, other things that are more obvious and can be seemed or felt will become invisible or invisible because of what we are focusing on. But the author himself has this problem. If it were not for the reminder of the Holy Spirit living within me, the author would not have known that I was so ignorant before. I did not know that God was calling me so that I could see God doing wonderful things on the witnesses. Instead, I used all the knowledge I could understand to explain the reason for the touch in my heart, thus ignoring the calling from the Holy Spirit in me. I sincerely hope that all readers of this article will be able to see in their hearts what the Holy Spirit does in the lives of other Christians. I pray that Holy Spirit reviewing to us the Father’s will in His time so that all of us will be able to see the truth of our God in the heart of all of us. HE is alive and has been living in the heart of all sinners including me who have been saved by His Grace and Mercy forever and ever, Amen!
Finally, before the end of this article, I want to share one thing with the readers, as the end of this article, and I also want to use this incident to try to cite with the readers, internal visualization of other testimony is possible. As long as any one of us is willing, will the visualization appear in anyone’s heart? If there is any image in the reader’s mind while reading it, please share it with me after reading this article, I will be very thankful of your sharing. (Until now, a reader responded that he also had the experience of visualization of other testimony in his heart, which proves that this is the power of the Holy Spirit given to the world to experience Him!)
On a Sunday afternoon, I drove to a company that sells timber. After buying dozens of eight-foot-long fences and several seven-foot-long 4″x2″, I found out that there was more than one foot of wood in the trunk cannot be fitted inside the car. Therefore, the tailgate door cannot be closed, and there is no rope to fix the wood in place. At that time, I was wondering whether I needed to rent a truck to send the wood home first. At that time, a small voice appeared in my heart and said to me, “Why don’t you ask me?” Then, I wonder whether this was the voice of the Holy Spirit, so I responded in my heart, “Lord, is it you?” When I asked, a small voice in my heart said to me, “I AM.” Although there was peace in my heart at that time, I still wondered if I was too eager to hear from God so that I were having an illusion deceiving myself. So, I asked in my heart again, “Lord, please forgive me for my lack of confidence. Did you speak to me just now?” Then, the phrase “I AM” appeared again naturally, and this time I recognized the voice of the Holy Spirit. I said to the Lord in my heart, “Lord, the timber at the rear of the car is not tied tightly. Can I go home like this?” Holy Spirit then said to me, “Go with peace.” I hesitated for a while because it did not pass through my mind that I would be safe going home like this. I did not know the reason why and I finally believed. So I closed the rear tailgate door gently on the wood. I slowly drove home from some small roads, and on some up-sloping roads, I prayed in my heart, “Lord please protect me to return home safely, because you told me to go home peacefaully, please don’t make me ashamed of trusting in You.” On the final journey, the biggest challenge was to drive the uphill road for about 10 minutes, and the road was about 30 degree upwards. When I was driving uphill, I turned my prayers into hymns, and sang some ugly songs repeatedly, “Because you told me to return home peacefully, please don’t make me ashamed of trusting in You, O Lord!” Because of this singing of hymns, I did not stop the car before the last 35-degree upwards slope and drove up directly. When I parked in front of the driveway of my house, I got out of the car and went to the back. At the rear of my car, I found that the wood was not thrown out of the rear of my car because of the uphill road. Every piece of the wood was still tightly attached to my car box! I thanked God very much in my heart and said to the Lord, “Lord, I thank you! Thank you for keeping me back home safely! You are worthy of my trust!” Then after this incident, a message appeared in my heart repeatedly. I then slowly and attentively paid attention to it only trying to understand the meaning of the message. The meaning of the message is like this: “If everything has to go through your head, to understand, to analyze before you believe. Then, what you believe is your own understanding, and you do not actually believe in me but believe in yourself. Then, repentance and confession, forgiveness of sins, and the assurance of eternal life will not take root in your heart.” Readers, will the same words be what the Holy Spirit wants to say to you? Does everything has to be analyzed and confirmed by our own brains before we can believe it? There is a phrase called “I believe so that I may understand”. I would rewrite the phrase a little bit to say “I believe so that I may experience.” Also, Hebrews 11:1 and 11:6 said the similar thing:
“Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen.”
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him.”
I hope you believe this, listen to the calling of the Holy Spirit in your heart, and truly know that the true God who created the heavens and the earth is alive among us. May all the glory be to the Lord Jesus Christ who loves us, forever and ever! Amen!
This article was originally completed by now, but for some reason, in my heart, I always feel that there are still some deficiencies. Until today, I have enlightenment in my heart to know that what I still lack in this article. So, I make up the lack and share it with the readers. The spiritual experience from the Holy Spirit is a two-edged sword. It can bring people closer to the God who created the heavens and the earth. It can also be used by the devil, so that we can slowly get away from God’s will, and we will not even know it. If the spiritual experience we have is used to judge what other people are telling, is it from God? Or is the other party boasting a lie? Then, we sit on the judgement chair where only God can sit on it and become judges ourselves. The secret of victory is to realize that judgement without love is sin. I had also gone through many unexplained lessons and I could not find the reason why I failed to get closer to my God. But one day, I was reading John 12:47-48, I discovered that my Lord Jesus came to the world not for judgement, but to save us from sin by the will of the Father. Only the words came from His mouth from the Father will judge the world in the last days. Then, judgment without love is a violation of the will of the Father and therefore it is sin. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we can drive away the complacency of becoming a judge, and pray for the witness at the same time, and also ask the Lord Jesus to have mercy on ourselves for not loving the witness but trying to judge. In this way, the evil one who can often disturb our minds when we read the Bible and pray, will not have the opportunity to disturb our encounter with our Lord. Because the author often made this mistake, I shared my experience and lessons with the readers here. I pray that the Holy Spirit will protect everyone to overcome such temptations.
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