Hey friends, I hope you are well. Before I begin I should first acknowledge that I owe you the other half of my love piece. Please bear with me, it will come. Trying to juggle a few things but also give this the kind of attention it requires. 🙏🏾

I have recently been working towards intentionality and not religion in my prayer life. I have been trying to reconnect with God on a deeper level because I have been seeking to hear directly from Him in a way I had experienced before but lost along the way. I felt like His presence had left me and that He was not speaking to me directly like He did before or that I was no longer sensitive to His sound and voice. I did not hear Him and felt His absence in my life.

There are many things I am learning in this journey, it is still an ongoing journey as I continue to seek more closeness and yearn for more intimacy with God.  Today I am just compelled to share how I have gone about it and what I have picked up along the way that could be useful to you too if this is what you yearn for. 

  • Find a teacher –  You know sometimes your personal journey with the Lord is requiring a need your church is not addressing at  a particular time. There are seasons when your pastor or teacher is preaching about something valuable but you can be left behind because your foundation is wobbly or wonky for whatever reason. The important thing is to recognize your need in season personally while you receive daily from the generosity of your pastor.  Because you cannot always ask a pastor to go back to a teaching or revisit a sermon because you suddenly have a need. God has allowed technology to be used positively for the glory of His kingdom. These days it is easy to find a sermon or sermons online that speak to your needs and what you want God to help you with.  In the book of Genesis 12:3 God tells Abram “in him all the families of the earth will be blessed”, how?, you ask. In Isaiah 49: he says “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” This is the how. Do not be afraid to find a Bible based teacher who resonates with you in your season of need. God has created this opportunity for us like He had promised. Don’t short change yourself of what has been laid at your table.
  • Reading the word – Reading the word is truly the only way we can hear from God every day. “His word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” This is what the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 119: 105. There is no shortcut to it, this is the one thing we must do . Read the word to know and hear God’s language. Think of it this way, you cannot say you want to learn French but never want to read or listen to a French speaker.  This is the same when you have a desire to hear from God, you have to read His word and learn His language. 
  • Travelling light –  By this I mean, remove and declutter what weighs you down and distracts you from doing the things that will bring you closer to God. There are many things that can be  a distraction for us as individuals. It could be things of the world that have consumed your life and taken priority of your time, unforgiveness, negativity, lack of peace.  For many people this will apply differently and as a person you are the only one who truly knows what distracts you and messes with your core. You are the only one who really knows what that is for you.  1 Peter 5, says let us “be sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Anything that distracts you from what you consider your core is your adversary, its intention is to move you from your rail so you do not function optimally.  That to me is a devil prowling around seeking to devour you. If the feeling and experience does not resonate with your spirit, that is a sign to act the way you would when an enemy enters into your home.  Eliminate the enemy so you can continue on your journey traveling lighter.  Jesus Christ said when He ascended He is not leaving us to travel alone, He leaves us with the helper, who is the holy spirit. The holy spirit is there to help us travel light in spirit as He helps us. If  we have unresolved distractions we suppress the presence of the helper. How can we then hear from Him?
  • Silence – Silence is the most powerful tool to hear from God. The voice of God is not aggressive and not forceful. The bible tells us, it is God’s way and nature to give us choice. Even hearing from God is a decision we are free to make. We have a choice to hear from God or not hear from Him. A minister I listened to recently while seeking this desire of mine explained it so beautifully to me. She says, “how can you say you want to hear from someone but all you do is walk in the room, greet, talk and talk and talk and then close the door and leave?” Is this not what we do when we pray? Walk into God’s presence, greet Him with praise and say Our Father, who art in heaven.  Then proceed to talk about everything that we want Him to help us with,  dump all our worries and concerns, ask for everything we think we need and then end the conversation at Amen (mzalwane drops the mic) then close that prayer door and carry on with life. Where is the opportunity for God to respond in this moment? How do we hear back from Him?  In this moment I learnt a simple thing, to be silent and listen to the voice of God within me regarding matters I am praying about.  Simple right?  The bible says the Lord uses times of silence and solitude to rejuvenate his people. David wrote in his Psalm, “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul” (Psalm 23). God’s people are repeatedly called to get away and quiet their souls before Him. You know I once went on a retreat in my early 20’s as a leader in a Christian student organization at university. On the last day of the retreat we were encouraged to take a vow of silence for the day and spend it in solitude with God.  The moment came early in my life when I was still very religious but empty, as a grown adult who seeks to hear from God with more depth, I now recognize the benefit of that moment for a person, leader, parent and child of God. We have to create opportunities for God to speak to us. Do not be afraid of the silence, embrace it for what it brings to your consciousness.
  • Expectancy – The things of God require faith. You cannot pray without expectation. Praying is conversing with God with an expectancy that he will answer, He will answer with a yes, no, maybe or ask you to do a bit more work.  Expectancy is different from expectation. Expectation is where most Christians are lost. They think when you ask for something you get what you asked for instead of what you need. This is why people leave the church, unmet expectations. We build a relationship with Christ from a foundation of “give and take”. When He is not giving, we get angry and say there is no God.(A conversation for another day). The expectancy I talk about, the bible refers to it as Apokaradokia in Greek.  Apokaradokia means to anxiously anticipate, to long for, to earnestly desire, or to be so focused on one thing, that all else fades away. We find this word in the book of Philippians 1: 20,  Paul uses this strong word to describe his feeling and he intensifies his language by using the word eagerly.  The word is also found in Romans 8:19 “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” Expectancy is a posture, this is what I have learned over the years.  The thing the world calls “preparation meeting opportunity” sometimes.  The biblical posture of expectation for me is being alert, strongly desiring and aware.  
  • Journaling – Record your experiences, no matter how small, following the pattern  and listening to the promptings.  This is very much aligned to the expectancy. You have to have the posture and be prepared for what you pray for. Because of the lightness of the move of the spirit and the voice of God, I truly believe if you do not journal you may miss some of the conversations and be unable to connect the dots. Honestly speaking from my experience, not everything comes at one go. It’s not a big answer, there is no bang. You will not hear a sound and a big voice. This is why you have to be attentive and write down every little bit of the information.  It’s the whispers of the Holy spirit. The bible in Romans 8:16 says “the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” The word testifies, means that God communicates from His Spirit to our spirit that we are His children. He confirms to us what is true on some deep and unspoken level. This intimate communication can be lost if not preserved.  The bible itself is exactly this. Scribes, testimonies, words of God. We too need to keep our own personal scribes to remember and testify.
  • Responsiveness – Listening to the promptings of the holy spirit and responding accordingly. Many ministers preach about hearing the voice of God being a normal experience for every Christian but many of us think it’s supposed to be a big experience that is marked by signs and wonders. Indeed it is true according to God’s word that we should all be able to hear from Him on our own. “My sheep hear My voice…” (John 10:27 NKJV). Jesus speaks to us hearing His voice and believing. We show belief by acting upon the voice. The challenge for many of us is hearing and identifying that small still voice and knowing that it is Him who is speaking to us. This is what He wants of us. There is no easier or miraculous way of identifying the Lord’s voice. We recognize it because it is familiar. It becomes familiar because we immerse in His word. For instance, you cannot pray to God to bless you with a husband and His response be to give you someone else’s husband. That is not a Godly response, there is no nature of God in that. We know what His word says about marriage.  This is one example of how you can connect the dots and see who’s still voice you are listening to. 

A Testimony in progress

I have many answered prayers, some I did not even know how the Lord would do based on what was in front of me. This is why I believe in the presence of God and a personal relationship with Him.  I have asked for Him to do things I knew were impossible for me in my human nature and I have seen Him perform miracles. These miracles are a reminder to me everyday of His goodness and His truthfulness. The bible does tell us He is not a man to lie (like us humans). He does what He promises. He is true to His word (found in the bible).  When we say “show yourself Lord,” we are not asking for something that is foreign.  Remember in the book of Jeremiah 33:3 He says “Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and wondrous things you do not know” This is not a pastoral privilege, it is a privilege of every believer.  Test God, He has given you permission to test Him on His word.

Blessed Thursday

#Quenchmythirst #thirstythursday