For God to warn me about something through His Holy Spirit but me not recognize Him only to later find out that was God speaking and if I had listened and obeyed I would have been in a better place serves the purpose of spiritual growth. Not necessarily talking sin, for example I sleep with a pillow to hug, the Lord spoke to me to wash it and keep it clean, I didn’t listen, reasoning how dirty could it be but after months of it falling on the floor and the dog occasionally getting in bed I ended up with a sinus infection. This morning He spoke to me again and reminded me of what He originally said after I had gone to the doctor and had a test ran because of consistent headaches. In this way He is teaching me to listen more carefully. The question in situations like these is not whether I want to obey or not but how do I know God’s voice from my own thoughts, for things like this has happened to me a number of times. I feel led to do something but not recognize it as God’s leading and then later be reminded of what He first said.
Because of this I am more sensitive to His leading than I used to be and when I do recognize His voice I am usually quick to obey but I find He keeps leading me to be more in tune with who He is as I grow. God’s leading will never contradict the Bible and the beginning to knowing His voice is a daily relationship with Him through prayer, study, and worship. Deep calls to deep, the more you know of Him the more you want to know.
Deep calls to deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and Your billows have gone over me.
(Psa 42:7 MKJV)
Often the beginning of hearing God’s leading is Him reminding you of things you’ve already read in the Bible that pertains to certain circumstances in your life. At that point you are required to act upon that leading (obey). As the frequency of this increases God’s voice doesn’t become louder but quieter. Hearing God’s leading doesn’t become easier but more challenging, the same is typically true with obeying. The reason for this is that God is causing you to grow in spirit and to keep in tune with Him the prayer, study, and worship becomes more important not less. Many work on the physical appearance with makeup, hair styles, the clothes they wear, or diet and working out, even education and career path which are good but all along starve the spirit until it is too weak and is forced to do what the physical man wants. To feed your spirit by spending time with God and by practice recognizing His voice and then letting your spirit control your flesh by obeying God’s leading is to become the spiritual leader God means for you to be. Though many are called few will listen, even fewer will obey but God’s remnant He will honor; to those who learn to be led by the spirit and not the flesh those He will set apart for His work and the world will know they are different.
