I am very grateful to several brothers in Christ who, despite their busy schedules, not only read my last article but also gave me valuable opinions! So I wrote this short postscript. This is also a gift I want to leave behind and give to my family and beloved relatives. I hope that one day, you can find the God who saved me from death to life in the footprints I left. , what kind of God is He. I can’t explain it to you in detail nowadays, but I do want to write down my God’s kindness to you. I leave it to you who I love deeply in my soul.
In the last article, I shared how the Lord taught me to learn to listen to the way He spoke to me. I just wanted readers to know that God will talk to the world, so I wrote it down. My readers, if you have just accepted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, or if your mind goes blank after reading my previous article, please forget what I shared in the previous article. My experiences may be too complicated for you and they may not be suitable for you. This is valuable advice given to me by a brother in Christ, and it is also the same idea given to me by my Lord during meditation. My Lord does not have many requirements for the young believers. As long as we reject evil and choose good, He will have glory, and that’s it. Forget about the dialogues I shared about talking to God. This may be better for you now. Until one day in the future, the Holy Spirit reminds you of the experience I shared. Perhaps then, it will be the Holy Spirit’s call to you. If you forget it all your life and the Holy Spirit does not remind you, then what I share will not be the medium used by the Holy Spirit to call you.
The footprints I leave behind in the last article are in the hope that someone will start out on their own and be willing to look for patterns in God’s conversation with them. It is not intended to sell readers a “quick lunch set” for talking to God. In this world, there is no such crash course in emotional cultivation. Once you know it, you can graduate without putting any effort into the relationship. Everyone must start by themselves to search for God and find ways for the Lord to communicate with him so that he will not eat other people’s recipes and feel uncomfortable and out of place because they are not the recipes he found by himself and are not suitable for his own taste. Or if the Lord is willing, some readers can learn from my experience. On the journey to find God, they encounter the doubts I have experienced, and the Holy Spirit reminds him/her of my sharing. I hope the Lord can use them to teach others, leading others through the doubts and difficulties in the process of searching for God and walking with God throughout their lives. Readers, please do not misunderstand, this is not a question of whether a Christian is saved or not, it is a question of whether the soul has peace in the Lord. I believed in the Lord for more than thirty years. Before I repented, I only confessed Jesus as Lord in front of others, but in my heart, I had no reliance and was afraid of death. In my daily life, I did not think about where I would go after death. But when encountering difficulties or dangers, I find that deep down in my heart, I don’t know where I will go after leaving this world. Later, when I read 1 Corinthians 15:19, I discovered that at that time, I only had hope in this life. Just as the Holy Spirit said to believers through the apostle Paul in Hebrews 2:14-15, I am still a slave to the fear of death all my life. At that time, many Christians around me said to me, “You must have faith, you have passed from death to life.” But deep in my soul, I still longed to ask the Lord, why, and I was still afraid to die? This is the Lord’s way in my heart calling me to seek Him. The way the Lord calls me is not necessarily the way the Lord calls others to seek Him through the Holy Spirit. How does the true God who created heaven and earth call you and how does he get along with you? I discovered that whether I have hope or not to meet the Creator in person, it may not necessarily be able to measure how long I have served in the church, how many years of fellowship I have attended, how many years of Bible studies you have completed, or how many years the other God’s people appreciate your “faithfulness” as a measure. Only I, after experiencing certain things, will truly know what I think deep inside. Only when I found the Lord Jesus who died on the cross for me (actually after the Lord came to find me personally) did I truly know that He is the living and true God. He is not just heard in the church and not only belongs to others. God is then my Lord and my God.
I hope that readers will find the God who loves them and that their lives will never be like mine in the past. May the Lord allow readers to find Him, and He delights in His people seeking Him. To this end, I am called, to share this good news, in the hope that some will set out to find their own Lord, their own God. I’m not talking about finding an idol who does everything according to our own pleasant will, but the true and living God who created the heavens and the earth and all things. The prophet Isaiah called our Creator “The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth” I hope One day, I will be able to call God “My Master” without any shame, but His own noble, loving and fearful name is “Lord God, the Almighty”!
This article will require 25 minutes of reading time. The readers do not need to read it all at once. The table of contents above has a pointer to each major section. I also wrote this article sharing with my niece and my son. They prefer to read English.
In more than thirty years of my Christian life, I have often heard Christians praying during worship services, asking the Holy Spirit to give wisdom to the speaker, so that the church members can feel the same spirit, and benefit the speaker and the audience. So after I believed in the Lord, I was often curious to know, are people who pray just asking? Or do they really know that the Holy Spirit is truly giving wisdom to the speaker? So that God’s words come out of the speaker’s mouth are known to everyone and benefit the audience. Yes, if we know a good friend or a loved one, and have a relationship with each other, we should know how my friend refers to himself, the way he speaks to me, his tone and attitude, etc. For example, a wife may call her husband “Honey” when no one else is around, but if suddenly a voice calls you “Babe” or “Sweetheart”, you should know the source of that voice is not from your wife. When that strange voice comes, you won’t continue talking to or picking up anything from that voice. The same is true for those who walk with God. As Hebrews 13:8 says: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The name that God uses to talk to His people in the Bible will not be one day calling Himself “I AM” or “I am the Lord”, and the other day He calls Himself “It’s me”, “Yes, that’s right”, or “Here am I”. However, if I feel doubtful in my heart, ask who said in me by the name of the Lord? The voice that spoke in my heart does not dare to call itself “I AM” or “I am the Lord”. It can only say: “It’s me”, “Yes, that’s right”, or “Here am I”, or it is silent and does not answer. Then I would advise you not to believe that the voice is from God. Although such an indicator is simple, when I am hesitating in my heart and wondering whether God is speaking to me, it is one of the best indicators that can identify the source of the sound, giving me something to rely on in my heart.
The Holy Spirit’s dialogues with people are not a mysterious thing. He can speak to righteous or bad people. Don’t think that the Holy Spirit only speaks to righteous people. This is a wrong concept. God told Eli that because of the evil deeds of his two sons and he honors his sons more than the Lord, his descendants would be removed from the priesthood. God also wrote words on the wall, declaring the throne of King Belshazzar, King Nebuchadnezzar’s son, had ended. At that point, it also indirectly indicated that he was also destined to die. In the New Testament, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended and spoke through the disciples to the Jews who did not know the Lord Jesus as the Messiah. The Holy Spirit also speaks to sinners like me. Who can say that the Lord is only speaking to the righteous people?
The following is a sharing of my past experiences in learning to listen to God’s voice. In prayers, I asked my Lord to help me sort it out, so I was able to write it down. I hope readers can get inspiration from it and start seeking for God to speak to them personally. The way God speaks to me through the Holy Spirit is not limited to speaking directly to me in my heart. This is actually as the Lord Jesus said in John 14:26, the Holy Spirit can “remind me” of what the Lord has said to me. This is a method that I often ignored before I repented a few years ago. “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.“ And there are three ways the Holy Spirit reminds me of everything the Bible says.
Direct Dialogues from the Scriptures
Hidden Dialogues without using Scripture
Direct-Hidden Mixed Dialogues Interaction
Direct Dialogue from the Scriptures
The first is a direct way. It can be that the Scriptures come to my mind when I am doing something during the day, or it can be that the Holy Spirit reminds me of or comes to mind of certain people or what someone said or did while reading a certain passage in the Bible. Apostle Peter once recorded in Acts 1:20-22: “MAY ANOTHER TAKE HIS (Judas) OFFICE.” This is what Psalm 109:8 says. If readers believe that the Bible is inspired by God and believe what the Lord Jesus promised in Matthew 10:20 before He suffered, “For it is not you who are speaking, but it is the Spirit of your Father who is speaking in you.“ Then what Peter said is the Spirit of our Heavenly Father spoke directly into Peter’s heart using the Scriptures. For example, I recorded in “The Lord’s Anointing is in My Heart” that the driving incident directly reflected the direct dialogue using Ecclesiastes 7:22.
Directly while reading a certain passage from the Bible, the Holy Spirit can also remind me or emerge in my mind of certain people, or what someone said or did. For example, it is recorded in “One Thought Sinking into Hell (Part 1 of 2)” that when reading Jude verse 23, and 1 Samuel 2:33-34 and 3:12-13, the image of my younger biological brother came to mind. It was also a direct dialogue from the Scriptures. It’s just that when reading the Scriptures, the image of others comes to mind, so it is another way of expressing direct dialogue using the Scriptures. Just because of this way of direct dialogue doesn’t follow the method of studying God’s words that I learned in church, which is to understand God’s words based on context. So, I used to filter out the direct dialogues using the excuse of not following context. When trying to discern whether God was speaking to me, the truth is that I did not understand the righteousness of God. So, I accepted the method I had heard as righteous and did not obey the righteousness of God. After I repented and reflected on my past experiences, the Lord opened my eyes and saw my past foolishness. It turns out that not only can God’s words be understood based on context, but my Sovereign God can also speak to me without following context. For example, in Jude 23, and 1 Samuel 2:33-34 and 3:12-13, I can’t know my brother’s intention. This is a direct dialogue that does not follow the context, and it is even less likely to be a life application from the Scriptures. (Could anyone tell me how it can be explained as an application from the Scriptures?) Just because God wants me, a fool, to know some things that He wants me to understand that would touch His bottom line, but I still don’t have the spiritual life that can communicate with the Lord without any barriers and be able to understand what God is trying to tell me. To put it bluntly, because I am stupid, God mainly uses some revelations that can attract even stupid people’s attention to remind me. This is the reason that the Lord reviewed to me why He used direct reading of Scripture on me to bring certain people, certain things, or certain words to my mind. As 1 Corinthians 1:21 records: “For since the wisdom of God the world (I) through its (my) wisdom did not come to know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those (me) who believe.” This way of directly reading the Bible and revealing other people, things, etc. is also hidden. It was easily ignored by me in the past, and it can also be regarded as a way of hidden dialogue.
Hidden Dialogue without using Scripture
The second way is the hidden dialogue, which means that God is speaking to me directly but not using Scripture. Therefore, before I repented, I often ignored this way. This method can be words that we humans can hear, dreams, thoughts, visions, images of others, or words spoken by other people (the other people do not necessarily need to be Christians). This method was easily overlooked by me in the past. The reason is that the Holy Spirit does not speak directly using Scripture, but uses various expressions mentioned above. However, because I cannot see God, it is not easy to detect that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks to me using the hidden dialogue. In particular, if the words of the Holy Spirit come from the mouth of others, if they could pass through my filter of analytical thinking in the brain, it would be possible to accept them, but they would also be easily missed coming from God because they were just what the other people said. The object is focused on the other people and does not know it is the Lord, just like the child Samuel mistakenly thought Eli was calling him several times. And if I don’t like what others say, I will feel that others are attacking me, and I will not look into whether the Holy Spirit is speaking to me.
To testify whether it is the hidden dialogue from the Holy Spirit, the Lord taught me to keep in mind the words, dreams, thoughts, visions, images of others, or words spoken by others that touched the depth of my heart. During the waiting and continuing of my normal Scripture reading, the Holy Spirit will remind me of His previous dialogues with me, as recorded in John 14:26. For example, the Apostle Paul recorded in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that he begged the Lord to take away the thorn on him, but the Lord directly said to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” These are directly speaking from God, and it is a hidden dialogue that does not directly use Scripture. Also in my experience, as recorded in “One Thought Repent Longing to Heaven (1)“, the Holy Spirit said to me: “Forgive your father, and also forgive yourself.” This is also a direct conversation without using Scripture. Although it is not in prayer or Scripture reading, after knowing the Lord, the Creator calls me the sinner to repent. It is the hidden dialogue. It can also be through dreams, as recorded in Joel 2:28-29, Job 33:15-18, and Matthew 1:20-21:
“It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and your daughters will prophesy, Your old men will have dreams, Your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”
“In a dream, a vision of the night, When deep sleep falls on people, While they slumber in their beds, Then He opens the ears of people, And horrifies them with warnings, So that He may turn a person away from bad conduct, And keep a man from pride; He keeps his soul back from the pit, And his life from perishing by the spear.“
“But when he had thought this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Just remember,
First, those people, things, words, dreams, or visions that emerge do not contradict God’s words in the Bible or God’s attributes.
Second, the attributes revealed in revelation that lead me to God. Bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit but not self-righteousness; secretly, I am still willing to kneel down and pray and read Scripture every day.
Those people, things, words, dreams, or visions that emerge are God speaking to me through hidden dialogues. However, there is a problem with this hidden method that I have not been able to resolve before, that is, I am not 100% sure that they really come from God because they are not references to Scripture. Even if they are references to Scripture like the direct dialogue, I cannot be sure that I won’t be self-righteous afterwards. Therefore, the Lord taught me that like Mary, the earthly mother of the Lord Jesus, I must keep it in my heart and wait for when I read Scripture in the future. The Holy Spirit will remind me of the previous hidden dialogue conversation, and the reminder needs to naturally emerge in my heart. Only in this way can it be accepted. (The kind of thinking that I am very eager for God to speak certain words to me cannot be counted.) Even if I accept it, I still need to be examined through God, but the reason and method of examination are not what this article is going to talk about. I will share them in the next short article. Never forget that the focus we kneel down to worship is the living and true God. He sees all our thoughts and desires, both openly and secretly. Just because He sees, and hears. When we are willing to kneel down and draw close to God, He will one day respond to us. We must wait patiently for that day to come because our focus is the living and true God.
Direct-Hidden Mixed Dialogues Interaction
The third way is the direct-hidden mixed dialogues interaction. It is recorded in Acts 10:11-17 that in Apostle Peter’s vision, the Lord asked him to eat those four-footed animals and crawling creatures from the sheet coming down from the sky. Peter was unwilling, and the Lord told him, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This is not directly saying using Scripture, it is a hidden dialogue without using Scripture. Later, Peter saw the Holy Spirit descending on all the Gentiles who heard the message. Those people spoke in tongues and praised God for His greatness. When Peter stood among the apostles, he defended his testimony of preaching to the Gentiles, saying that he remembered the words of the Lord, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” This was the Lord directly using His words to confirm in Peter’s heart that it was His will for Peter to preach to the Gentiles. For another example, I recorded in “By the Name of the Lord Jesus (Part 1)” that the Holy Spirit said to me in a hidden way, “You don’t necessarily have to be tempted passively by the evil one and then ask me to have mercy on you. You can rely on me to resist those temptations.” This is not from Scripture; it is what the Lord said to me with the hidden dialogue without using Scripture. Until in “By the Name of the Lord Jesus (Part 2)“, I directly read 1 John 4:1-6 and then commanded the negative and proud thoughts in my heart to answer by the name of the Lord, “Do you believe that the Lord Jesus has become flesh?” At that time, I had a commotion in my heart, and then I drove away that thought by the name of the Lord. This is the hidden and direct mixed dialogues interactive method, and it is also the result of believing and acting. For another example, it is recorded in “Struck down, but not destroyed (Part 2)” that I lied to a friend, and the Holy Spirit said to me softly in my heart: “Do you know that you are lying?” It was a hidden dialogue without using Scripture. Until that night, while reading the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit used Proverbs 19:5 and 9 to directly let me know that bearing false witness is hated by God. Then, I was afraid. When I got up, I saw in my heart that I was telling the lie to my friend so that I could return to God and confess my sins and repent. This is the direct-hidden mixed dialogues interactive method using hidden -> direct -> and hidden dialogue again.
When the repeated dialogues occur, whether it is repeated direct dialogues, repeated hidden dialogues, or direct-hidden mixed dialogues interactive method, I must carefully pay attention to why our Lord speaks to me repeatedly and in various ways. This is similar to why I must pay attention to Scripture when God repeats the same verses or the same principles, which are very important instructions to me. Lord, what exactly do you want to express? Why do you say it so urgently and repeatedly? Before I understand why, I will pray to the Lord in my heart and asking Him showing mercy to me, a fool. If my heart is heavy and unable to settle down, I will enter a room and close the door. Kneeling down and praying to the Lord in heaven, to open my eyes and enlighten me. So that I can understand His will. When there is no clear revelation in prayer, I will read the Bible as usual and pray in my heart that the Lord will be gracious to me one day and enable me to understand His will. Please don’t be discouraged. The Lord will answer our prayers at the appropriate time in His plan, in daily Scripture reading or in daily life, and remind us of all the words He has said. Because of His own promise, those who seek will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock. This is what I say from the bottom of my heart and experience.
But be careful in the hidden dialogues or the direct-hidden mixed dialogues. It is because I can understand wrongly, or be self-righteous, and more importantly, I can be deceived by voices or thoughts pretending to be angels of light. So, in the future days of reading Scripture, it is very important to seek the Lord repeating what I understand from the Scriptures is truly coming from the Lord. Also, because of my limited brain power, sometimes when God’s will is reviewing to me, I cannot accept the understanding at that particular time. I must keep those words in my heart and wait for my heart to calm down with the understanding. I am not sure how the other believers’ submission to God’s will. The process of calm down my heart with the understanding is usually taking a minimum of one year or two back and forth many times during the period of struggling with it. Once again, when I am willing to submit to God’s will and act accordingly, my heart will naturally remember in my mind of everything the Lord said to me in the past every time I acted. This is then a very clear evidence that God is speaking to me using the direct-hidden mixed interactive method. Just as the meaning and method are recorded in John 2:22:
“So when He (Jesus) was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.”
Please remember that you can do things with the Scriptures directly appeared in your mind. Then, in a later time when you read the Scriptures, Holy Spirit can let us remember naturally the people we met or the things we did as a reaffirming response. It is ok if the order is swapped. When I am not sure or doubt whether the Lord is speaking to me, I can ask the Lord again in my heart. This is very important. In the past few years, when I learned to get close to God and listen to God’s voice, the direct-hidden mixed dialogues interactive method was the most common method that the Lord used to teach me something that He wanted me to learn. Just because I can’t see God, He wants me to know His thoughts and He will speak to me again and again. As John 14:17 and 16:13-14 say:
“the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you.“
“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me (Jesus), for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you.“
The most important thing is to understand the state of my soul after listening to the hidden dialogues or direct-hidden mixed dialogues interaction. In layman terms, what your mentality is after listening to the dialogues. Therefore, the Lord taught me to kneel down in the secret room every day, return to His throne of judgment and grace, and have my state of mind examined by the Holy Spirit. My experience in the past few years tells me that this is a test of all things! As Psalm 33:13-15 and Job 36:8-10 say, it’s true!
“The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of mankind; From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth, He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who understands all their works.“
“And if they are bound in shackles, And are caught in the snares of misery, Then He declares to them their work And their wrongdoings, that they have been arrogant. He opens their ears to instruction, And commands that they return from injustice.“
Conclusion
If someone asks me, is it because God does not speak directly to all mankind anymore now a day, or because we cannot understand how God speaks to us, and thus we miss the dialogues from the Creator of the Universes? I will say without hesitation, “I didn’t understand in the past!” In the past, I would only insist on using the text from the Bible to explain God’s words. At most, I would only accept half of the direct dialogues using the Scriptures. Not to mention, I can understand what God is using the hidden dialogues method to speak to me. And don’t even think I will have a chance to understand that my God is using the direct-hidden mixed dialogues interactive method to speak to me. But I praise my Lord, as it is written in Isaiah 65:1:
“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.“
He didn’t give up on me just because I couldn’t understand it even after believing in the Lord for more than thirty years! Therefore, I have confident that the Lord will not give up on anyone who is willing to search for Him or desire to have a conversation with Him.
A friend of mine asked me once: “Is it because you read the Bible every day that those Bible verses naturally emerge in your heart? In fact, it is not any Holy Spirit you talked about speaking to you in your heart?” I thought for a while and an evident came to my mind through the hidden dialogue. So, I said to my friend: “After I first believed in the Lord Jesus, I fell asleep while praying. I felt guilty and asked God to rebuke me. As a result, the Holy Spirit said to me in my heart, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”” (The details are recorded in Struck down, but not destroyed (Part 1)) At that time, I didn’t even know that this sentence was a Bible verse. Therefore, it was impossible that time the Bible verse naturally appeared in my mind because I read too much of the Bible.” And when I have doubts, I ask God: “Lord, is it You?” When the Lord responds to me in my heart, “I AM.” I then know the truth. It was the Lord who spoke to me.
If you don’t understand the way God speaks, you still have the opportunity to learn to understand it. If you think that the Lord will no longer talk directly to His people in this era, you will miss that wonderful blessing. Brothers and sisters in Christ who tell people not to believe that God will directly communicate with His people today, I pray that the Lord will make you understand that your disbelief is your own choice. But don’t mock or discourage others from going in to find God to talk to them. Anyone who prevents other children of God from coming to the Lord will displease the Lord. As servants of the Lord, the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13:8 is truth for all of us.
“For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.”
Job 42:1-5 records that Job did not dare to boast that he knew everything. Why do we have the courage to make a conclusion that we do not understand, so it was impossible for others to understand what God was speaking to them?
“Then Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that You can do all things, And that no plan is impossible for You. ‘Who is this who conceals advice without knowledge?’ Therefore, I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I do not know. ‘Please listen, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You;”
Our Lord Jesus spoke on Revelation 1:17-19: “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Therefore, write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.“
Indeed, the Lord Jesus is alive and will live forever. He taught me that there is no need for me to say anything using my own knowledge about Him. As long as I truthfully tell what He has done on me, what He has said to me. How He has interacted with me, and what He has taught me about His will. That’s what He asked me to do. All Glory Be to Christ our King! He is worthy of our praise and worthy of our kneeling to Him every day forever and ever, as it is written: “Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually. Let the heavens be joyful, and the earth rejoice; And let them say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns! Bless be the LORD, the God of Israel (and us), from everlasting to everlasting! Then all the people said, “Amen,” and praised the LORD.“
If any reader has any questions that you want to reach out to me, please leave comment in this article. I am open to have a dialogue with you. A dialogue cannot be one way. It requires both parties in order to have a dialogue. Please be reminded that our Lord Jesus is also waiting for us to understand His calling to us so that a dialogue can be established with His children. May our Lord move His children in their heart!
In the next short article, I will share the reasons for testing whether God has spoken to me, and the method of discernment that the Lord taught me.
Christian Faith Discussion 