Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
9 11 2024
Does the Holy Spirit talk to us in our experiences?
Are we Listening?
The Lord gave me a prophecy Sunday, that I thought I would share with you to encourage you.
“Walk with me. Walk in my peace. Exit the merry-go-round of fear and anxiety. Walk in me and you will know my peace. It isn’t about the storm. It’s about laying your anxieties down and giving up your burdens to me and my sovereignty. Become so saturated in me that you see nothing else.
You know, I am your refuge, but you must turn over the control of your emotions – your anxiety of needing to know and be in control of the outcome.
I am your fortress, give me the rest of the ground you have promised me. Surrender what you think, for my peace and assurance. I will not and cannot fail you. Whatever is to come, put me on the throne of your heart, mind and emotions, and my promise is to see you through.
Stop and spend some time and let more of me sink in!”
How easy is it to become saturated with our lack of control? With things not going the way we planned. And yes…we become saturated with the venom of doubt, frustration, and anxiety. It is all the basis of fear and wanting things my way, right before we throw this emotional tantrum that is going to bite someone near us AND distance us from our faith and relationship with God. Why?
Because we walk out from under his blessing.
We want what we want and we think we deserve so much that we become blind to almost everything else. And yes, typically in a day or two we will settle down and start to accept a different reality and try and figure out what to do now. But even that is a slippery slope.
We are so quick to turn it over to our ingenuity of how to fix it. Instead of…
Lord what are you trying to say in the circumstance and series of events?
What is the message for me to learn?
You do know God speaks to us in our circumstances and daily encounters, right? Sure we still need to test them with his unchanging word but the Holy Spirit has much to say in the events of our lives but we are not listening. We are too busy reacting…not responding,,, not asking God some hard questions…and walking in the peace of trusting him beyond what we see…
You know, that thing called faith and assurance. ,,,,,,
Do you realize there is more to releasing the power of the Bible than even our constant meditation and desire to obey it.
The key that unlocks this is A Person. Ps 119:18 “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.” How many times does the psalmist cry out to teach me your word and to give him understanding? He knew that there is NO Way to understand what God has to say without the indwelling and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God himself. Look at Paul in 2 Tim 2:7 “Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this”. There are conditions.
He says to reflect, consider, and meditate on his word. That means leaving the stress and panic of the moment and get away, like Jesus used to do and escape the onslaught of confusion and drama.
The 2nd condition is to come to God in humility, acknowledging our foolishness (Ouch)
and ask for wisdom to understand and apply God’s word.
Prov 2:1-19 and James 1: 5-8 tells us that those who ask for wisdom in this way
will never be turned away empty-handed.
Look even the disciples who were with him for 3 ½ years, they heard the crowds call him King of Israel, showering messianic scriptures John 12:13 14. But even they did not understand. It was only after Jesus was risen, and glorified that the things that had been written were revealed by the Holy Spirit. Even though they had first hand knowledge of the bible it was not sufficient for their understanding.
They needed “A Person” to explain the word to them. They trusted the Person… the “Spirit of Truth” to do that…to interpret the word and the way he spoke to them in their experiences.
So don’t be nervous about God speaking to you in your daily events if the Spirit of Truth lives and operates in you. (He does) God spoke to them in both his word and the circumstances of the new believing church.
So, what has been happening in your world…your life? What is it you don’t understand? You may be trying hard to walk with God…or you may struggling to get over the hump and make it to a higher level in your relationship with God. STOP
What are your experiences saying to you? Some of your experiences are screaming at you!
What are you hearing in them? What is God saying to you? What is it he wants you to learn…they are not for nothing. You have a counselor that was given to you to guide you, show you the way…He is committed to using both scripture and your experiences to talk to you, guide you, and give you wisdom. I think too many of us are not filtering our life experiences this way. Look at Acts 15:28 “ It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and TO US not to burden you”. I am not saying that your experiences trump the word of God because the spirit will never contradict God’s word. But the Holy Spirit is no less near to us today than he was to them back then! People who say that the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak through their experiences are not seeing what he did in the early church, again and again and again.
I believe there is a discipline of awareness that we need to hear God’s voice in what may appear to be mundane things. What did he say in his prophecy today? “Surrender what you think, for my peace and assurance. I will not and cannot fail you. Whatever is to come, put me on the throne of your heart, mind, and emotions, and my promise is to see you through”. He is talking to us, we just need to pray that he opens our eyes of awareness to see his messages in the little things of our every day.
This Thursday night we have a special Following Jesus Class this is our last important week.
Come and join us from 7pm to 8:30 online via Google Meets https://meet.google.com/pbr-jvhx-ykm
Casting Crowns One more song for you
