God Speaks

God speaks to us in the way we are listening: He throws the ball that we are prepared to catch. If I expect God to chasten me with misadventure then I will hear through disasters. If I expect God to speak through His Word graphe and rhema, then I will hear through them. If I don’t expect God to speak then I will not hear anything at all.

I am working through how I expect God to speak to me.

In the past I have heard Him speak in a quiet, internal voice, and in a gripping in my chest while I pray. Sometimes things do ‘pop’ out at me when I am reading my Bible, but just as often it happens with other books, or even films that I am watching. Events on the television, (especially the news), will sometimes grip my chest as well: then I begin to pray and the answer is unfolded in our dialogue. All of these are valid, but now I want to know if there are other ways in which God can speak: ways in which He would prefer to speak to me.

• Will He speak to me through my own writing? He has in the past, so perhaps he shall again.
• Will He speak to me through directing my reading, rather than awakening my interest when I come across a pertinent section of text, will I now be directed to entire books which will minster to my needs and purposes? Why not; I have a few books beside me now which I would like to read in the hope that God will reveal stuff to me.
• Will He speak to me through my new and developing friendships? I have always been a solitary person, but now I see the need to get more involved with community, to make friends I can trust to speak into my life as well as to just spend time with. I’d love for that to be the case too, I need to develop godly and trustworthy relationships if I am ever to communicate with the world at large, and get married.

Whatever His means, or His message, I know God will continue to speak to me as a son of His. Regardless of my being a writer I am first a Christian and I know God will speak to me for me and then, (and oftentimes quite separately) speak to me to speak through me, but first will be my sonship. The quote is true: Don’t read for writing Damien, read for learning. Read to impact your own life and not only to teach others. I have not been reading recently, too busy with work and other things, although I have been watching films. Now I want to return to books, and to do so properly: not just something before bedtime but research as an investment in my own future.

I shall make the time to read and to write professionally.