Are you spiritually desperate?
"On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus
stood and said in a loud voice, 'Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and
drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water
will flow from within them.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those
who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not
been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."
John 7:37-39
About 20 years ago, I came to a point of desperation in
my life, a point where I desperately needed to hear from God. I used to listen
without question to my pastor, but during this time something happened
that changed everything.
I began to hear the voice of God for myself,
and what my pastor was telling me didn't match what God was saying.
I felt devastated.
Though it seems obvious, at that time I never considered that my
pastor may not being hearing from God on a given occasion, especially an
occasion that directly involveed my life and not his.
During this time in my life, hearing from God was a matter
of life and death for me, a matter of my identity and destiny as I knew it at that
time, because everything I'd hoped and dreamed and lived for had failed
me.
I had nothing but the voice of God.
I had no one by the Spirit of God.
That's how I became a Spirit listener.
Through many hardships, mistakes, trials and errors, I learned that I needed to know God's voice for myself, so
that I would know when my pastor (or any other believer for that matter) was
speaking from God or was simply speaking from their own opinion. This is true for me, you, and every believer.
Every believer in Christ can now hear the voice of
God. This is the privilege and birthright of every one who believes in
the Lord Jesus: young and old, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, full time
minister or home-school teacher.
But in order to Spirit listen, we must feel our desperate need to
listen.
As the Lord Jesus said, we have to be spiritually thirsty to receive His Spirit.
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