Tag Archives: Sin

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Either Way, We Die for Christ

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Either Way, We Die for Christ

 James R. Aist

“For to me, to continue living is Christ, and to die is gain.” – Philippians 1:21

There has been an apparent uptick recently in the persecution of Christians for their faith in Jesus Christ. This persecution has taken many forms, including loss of property and/or livelihood, jail time and fines. Many have even lost their lives for refusing to renounce Jesus. These martyred believers have clearly died for Christ. But, what about the rest of us? Are we, too, called to die for Christ, even though we live?

Indeed, we are all called to die for Christ. While we live, we are to be dead to sin, so that we might live for Christ (Romans 6:11, 1 Peter 2:24). We may also have to suffer loss of property and/or livelihood, serve jail time or pay fines for our Christian faith. Jesus put it this way: “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever will save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24).

For our further instruction, the Apostle Paul elaborated considerably on these points:

2 Corinthians 4:8-11. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; and always carrying around in the body the death of the Lord Jesus, that also the life of Jesus might be expressed in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that also the life of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal flesh;”

Colossians 3:3-4; 8-9. “For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death the parts of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. But now you must also put away all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie one to another, since you have put off the old nature with its deeds.”

So, you see, believers who are executed (martyred) because of their Christian faith die physically for Jesus and go immediately to be with Him (2 Corinthians 5:8). And, those who live on become dead to sin, make tangible sacrifices, live righteously and eventually go to be with Jesus as well. Either way, if you are a born-again Christian, you will die because of your faith in Christ and receive your reward in heaven when the time comes.

In the eyes of God, you and I are “to die for”, and Jesus did just that: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). Our fitting response, then, is to die for Christ, one way or another.

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Spiritual Encounters with God: A Witness, Two Prophecies and a Parable

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Spiritual Encounters with God: A Witness, Two Prophecies and a Parable

 James R. Aist

“‘In the last days it shall be,’ says God, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” – Acts 2:17

Introduction

This is the final article in a three-part series on “Spiritual Encounters with God.” You can read the first two articles HERE and HERE. They describe visions, voices, and dreams that I have experienced and understand to be direct communications from God to me. In this article, I describe three other personal encounters with God: the witness of the Holy Spirit, as mentioned in the Bible, two words of prophecy I received concerning my children and a renter, and a parable illustrating the sanctification process. Such spiritual encounters with God are not uncommon among contemporary, born-again Christians, and they are certainly not unique to me by any means. In fact, I believe that, because the Holy Spirit is present in all true believers, all of us have spiritual encounters with God of one sort or another. We just don’t always perceive them as such. Among Pentecostal and Charismatic believers, such personal, revelational encounters with God are commonly referred to as “Rhema.” As you are reading, please keep in mind that God interacts with each of His born-again children however He chooses, and one’s lack of a corresponding spiritual encounter with God does not lessen the validity of another’s.

That said, let’s jump right into the remaining four of my spiritual encounters with God: a witness, two prophecies and a parable.

A Promised Witness

This encounter happened in the mid-1980s, when my first wife and I were struggling with an impending divorce. For me, these were times of incredible stress, anxiety and depression. I could see my most cherished dreams – dreams of a lifelong marriage, a stable and lasting family life, and three children brought up to know and love God – I could see all of that disintegrating before my very eyes. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had already tried everything I could think of, to no avail.

It was when I was at my lowest point, crying out for relief from the stress and confusion, that Satan literally spoke into my mind one day, as if he were sitting on my left shoulder. He said “Jesus isn’t the son of God. You don’t really believe that he is, do you? Look at how much stress that’s causing you. Why don’t you give up on that and just go along with the flow? That will make things a lot easier for you.” And he kept repeating the same message, over and over. But, whenever he would say this to me, something interesting would happen inside of me. The Holy Spirit would simply speak into my mind saying “You believe that Jesus is the son of God. Don’t ever let go of that; it’s the most important thing you have left.” When this spiritual battle between Satan and the Holy Spirit was over, I was still holding on to my faith in Jesus: Satan was defeated!

I found out later that this internal witness of the Holy Spirit was a direct fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy in John 15:26, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about me…” And Romans 8:16 says “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” That witness of the Holy Spirit was the only thing that got me through that dark and sinister time of testing. What’s more, that witness of the Holy Spirit helped me hold on to the only real friend I had at that time, Jesus Christ. I believe that Proverbs 18:24 is speaking of Jesus when it says “… there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

The lessons I learned from this encounter with God are these: When everything and everyone else has failed you, remember that you still have Jesus. He is all you need to see you through! And, the Holy Spirit in you will ensure that Jesus will remain your friend no matter what, or who, attacks your faith.

A Prophecy of Promise

In mid-June of 1992, I was at the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International Men’s Advance at Lake George in upstate New York. One day when they were baptizing some of the participants, in the lake, I stepped forward to be immersed by Pastor Don Yarborough. We had never met, and he knew nothing about me. As I approached him in the water, he just stared at me straight in the eye with a blank look, and kept staring. I thought to myself, “That’s strange; he doesn’t seem to even see me coming.” Finally, as I drew near to him, he reached out his hand to me, we shook hands and I introduced myself. Then he said that something very unusual had just happened; it had happened only once before in his ~20 years of baptizing people.

He said that as I was approaching him in the water, he received a prophecy for me, in the form of several Bible passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. They all had to do with the head of the household being saved and all of his family with him. He then proceeded to share with me all five of those Bible verses. When he had finished with that, he gave me the interpretation: God wants me to stand on and hold fast to these promises, which he is confirming to me and my children. Wow! Through this prophecy, God had just told me that all of my children will be saved! Needless to say, I was a “happy camper” the rest of that meeting.

Now, as it turns out, my daughter, Liesel, was visiting with me later that month. She knew nothing of the prophecy I had received just a few days earlier. The day before she left to go home, we were having a discussion about the things of God, and, to my utter amazement, she asked me if I had ever received any indication from God as to whether or not she would someday become a Christian! I was, for a moment, speechless. How in the world did she even know to ask me that? When I regained my composure, I told her about this prophecy. She was visibly pleased and very encouraged to find this out. God had arranged a “divine appointment” for sure!

About five years later, Liesel was, tragically, struck and killed by an automobile while crossing an intersection. In the days just before and after her death, I learned – from two, independent, reliable witnesses – that during the two weeks prior to the accident, she had given testimony of her faith in Jesus! God is good, and He is faithful (Hebrews 10:23).

A Prophecy of Provision

I received and gave this prophecy in the late 1990s when my wife, Janet, and I were renting our basement apartment to a veterinary student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Her name is Penny. She had developed a pattern of not having enough money to fully cover the next month’s rent, and we always worked with her to pay the balance in a couple of weeks, and she always did. But, Penny was embarrassed to always have to ask us to extend this grace to her. One morning, when the rent was due in full the next day, she came upstairs and knocked on the basement door. When I opened the door, I saw that she had been crying. She came into our living room and, tearfully, explained that this time she didn’t have any rent money, and asked us to let her pay the full amount, $300, in two weeks. So we comforted her and agreed to let her be two weeks late for the full amount. She was relieved and very grateful as she returned to the apartment. After seeing her to the door, I turned and walked back into the living room. My wife and I looked at each other, said something to the effect that we are, after all, able to carry her debt for two weeks, and were about to get on with our daily routine, satisfied that the matter had been settled. Then, suddenly, something stopped me dead in my tracks. God spoke into my mind saying, very clearly, “No, she is going to have the money and will NOT be late with the rent payment!” While I was processing that message in my mind, God spoke again very clearly and with urgency, “Say it out loud, speak it out, now!” So, I made sure my wife was listening and boldly spoke the message out loud, “No, she is going to have the money and will NOT be late with the rent payment!” Then I had the sense that it was this prophecy that really settled the matter.

And, sure enough, that same afternoon, when Penny walked to the mailbox to get the mail, there was an envelope in the mailbox with her name on it. Inside was $300 in cash and a note saying something like , “I just felt that you might need this at this time.” Bam, prophecy fulfilled!

A Parable of the Wood Chips

This encounter with God happened in the early 2000s, and is told in a bit more detail HERE. I had, for many, many years, stacked into two neat and straight rows, the pile of cut and split firewood left in my yard by the dump truck. Then I cleaned up the mess of firewood “trash” that remained on the lawn where the pile of wood had been, and nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. True to form, I had developed a routine for the tedious, but necessary, task of cleaning up the “trash” after the firewood was stacked. I would begin with the largest pieces, those that were too small to stack with the normal firewood but very easy to spot and gather into a box to use as kindling whenever I needed to build a fire in my wood stove. With those larger pieces removed, I could then more easily spot fragments of a smaller size and gather them into the box. And so on and so forth, until there was nothing left but tiny bits and slivers that I was not even aware of until all of the larger pieces had been removed. I would then rake together as many of these minuscule remnants as possible and deposit them into the trash. Finally — applying the concept of “good enough” — I would declare the project finished, even though, if I looked closely enough, there were still left even tinier fragments that I had not noticed before. Oh well.

One cool, crisp, spring day I was busy cleaning up the trash after stacking the firewood for the next winter. First the larger pieces, those that were easiest to see, then the next-largest pieces that were now, themselves, the easiest to see, and then the still-smaller pieces which had seemingly appeared out of nowhere when all of the just-larger pieces had been removed. Then, I paused briefly to rest and catch my breath. I was standing there, looking out over the “debris field” and thinking about how I could see the next-smaller pieces only after the just-larger pieces had been removed, when God spoke into my mind: “This is exactly how I clean the sins out of your life after you are born again! I begin by showing you the most conspicuous sins. These are the ones you are probably already painfully aware of, but have not yet dealt with for some reason. When these sins have been taken care of, it’s easier for Me to show you the less conspicuous sins, and we set about, together, to deal with those. And with those sins now out of the way too, it’s possible for you to see sins that you didn’t even know were there, and so on.” Wow! I thought I was just was cleaning up the trash in my lawn, but God was showing me how He was cleaning up the trash in my life! We commonly refer to that process as “sanctification”, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of it.

With this article, my three-part account of spiritual encounters with God is complete. I hope you have found them interesting, edifying and encouraging. Perhaps you are eager to discover how God has arranged spiritual encounters with you as well. If you do, you will be blessed. I’m sure of it.

(For more of my articles with biblical themes, click HERE)

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Spiritual Encounters with God: Dreams

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Spiritual Encounters with God: Dreams

James R. Aist

“‘In the last days it shall be,’ says God, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” – Acts 2:17

Introduction

This article is the second in a short series on “Spiritual Encounters with God.” The first article in the series is about visions and voices (click HERE). This time, we will focus on dreams that God uses to illustrate spiritual lessons. I’m usually not one to read a lot either into or out of dreams, as some are want to do, but there are two of my dreams that stand apart from all the rest. They made a deep and lasting impression on me, and, at the time, I knew almost immediately that they were illustrated lessons that God wanted me to learn. So, I paid special attention to them and wrote them down right away.  Among Pentecostal and Charismatic believers, such personal, revelational encounters with God are commonly referred to as “Rhema.” As you are reading, please keep in mind that God interacts with each of His born-again children however He chooses, and one’s lack of a corresponding spiritual encounter with God does not rule out the validity of another’s.

The first dream came to me in 1991. In the dream, I was at a party, celebrating a great research accomplishment of mine that had gained considerable notoriety in the media. The partygoers were all abuzz about it, and I enjoyed listening to their excitement and their lavish praise for the “one” (me) who had done this great thing.

At first, no one recognized me as the one who had achieved this outstanding accomplishment. Then, someone identified me and shouted out, “There he is; he’s the one who did it!” Everyone was very impressed, and they all turned to gaze at me. Suddenly, someone across the room shouted, ”Quiet, I’m getting a message.” After a brief pause, people began to ask him, “What was it?” He turned, pointed straight at me and said, dramatically, “He is powerful!” Then they all “ahhhh-ed” in unison and turned to gaze at me, again.

At that moment, something welled up inside of me as if to take me over, to reveal itself, and I was as if transformed, no longer in control. I was surprised at what was happening to me and at what happened next. I rose up (levitated) high above the crowd, stretched out my arms and, with a fierce look on my face, let out a mighty roar that caused the whole place to shudder. The purpose of this performance was to display my awesome power, frighten them and gain control over them. It seemed to work, and I was feeling evil, haughty and superior. And, I was enjoying it.

Before long, however, I began to regain control of myself. Almost instantly I became very upset with what I had done, and I was condemning this show of power for self-exaltation and desiring fervently to, instead, proclaim the power of God, not of me. So, I started declaring, over and over, “God is powerful, God is powerful…” to somehow counteract the evil thing I had just done.

Then I woke up, still repeating “God is powerful”, until I sensed that whatever it was within me that took control of me had been defeated, and it was clear to me where I really stood with respect to God. I was very fearful of that hideous “thing”, the thing that had manifested itself through me and wanted to control other people through a sinister display of supernatural power.

The next day I recorded this dream in my journal and set about to understand the meaning and purpose of it. The dream indicated and confirmed to me that something despicable in me was seeking dominion over others for evil purposes. It was seeking to substitute itself for God, through me. Clearly, it was an evil spirit, a spirit of pride. The dream was a warning to me to not succumb to pride, and to doggedly resist the temptation to pride until it was overcome and no longer had any control over me. It was a sobering and frightful experience, and a good lesson for all of us.

The second dream came during the winter of 2006-2007, and I believe it was also from God and of spiritual significance. I was an onlooker in the dream and right there on the scene, as the events unfolded.

The scene was an open field among rolling hills, with patches of trees lining the perimeter. A heavy set, scruffy looking, bearded man was in charge of the proceedings. He ordered his henchmen to strap an alligator to the underbelly of a nearby gigantic, scaly, rotund, dinosaur-like beast, using two thick, heavy, elastic bands, and they did. When I inquired what was going on, he explained to me that the alligator has to learn to obey.

At that he commanded the beast, “Go!”, and the beast began to run swiftly through the countryside in great and powerful leaps, with the alligator strapped tightly to his underbelly. As he ran, the back of the alligator rubbed back-and-forth against the hard, sharp scales of the beast’s underbelly with each leap, because of the elasticity of the bands. After just a few leaps forward, the beast’s scales had torn through the tough hide of the alligator and were ripping away at his flesh. The alligator was in such horrific pain and terror that he cried out repeatedly in a loud voice, as if to plead for mercy, but the beast would not stop until he had completed a wide circle through the countryside, as prescribed. I was terrified, watching helplessly as the poor alligator could do nothing to prevent the process from being carried to its gruesome, painful and bloody conclusion. The henchmen then freed the alligator and sent him on his way, writhing in pain. As for me, I was aghast at what I had just witnessed and too afraid to say anything.

Then I woke up and began to ponder in my heart what the meaning of the dream might be. After a brief period of pondering, I conceded the obvious: the dream was a stern warning to me, to turn away from my besetting sins and obey God. If I don’t, I will be the alligator, and I will learn to obey…the hard way. So, I resolved, right then and there, not to become the alligator!

Now let’s compare this dream and its interpretation to 1 Corinthians 5:5, “…deliver him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.” Sobering, isn’t it? God is so serious about our sins that he sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die for them. So, let’s learn from the alligator and get serious with God about obedience, OK?

(You can find more of my biblically oriented articles if you click HERE)

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Spiritual Encounters with God: Visions and Voices

Spiritual Encounters with God: Visions and Voices

James R. Aist

“‘In the last days it shall be,’ says God, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” – Acts 2:17

Introduction

Everyone who has been “born again” has the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, living in them (click HERE). I am convinced, therefore, that all true Christians have had, and continue to have, spiritual encounters with God, even if they are not accustomed to recognizing them as such. Here are some examples. When, at your “conversion”, God replaces your spiritually dead human spirit with a new spirit from God – one that is spiritually alive – you have just had a miraculous spiritual encounter with God! When you are reading the Bible and a verse of Scripture seems to leap off the page and drop a new insight or revelation into your spirit, you have just had a spiritual encounter with God. And, when you sense a “leading” to pray for a specific need, you do so, and you see the answer to your prayer materialize “against all odds”, you have had a spiritual encounter with God.  Among Pentecostal and Charismatic believers, such personal, revelational encounters with God are commonly referred to as “Rhema.”

In John 5:24, Jesus says, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death into life.” This series is an important part of my life testimony. It consists of a number of uncommon encounters with God, comprising different spiritual experiences I have had over a time span of 63 years, so far. I will describe and interpret each encounter as best I can, but feel free to take issue with any of them as you like. However, as you are reading, please keep in mind that God interacts with each of His born-again children however He chooses, and one’s lack of a corresponding spiritual encounter with God does not rule out the validity of another’s. Acts 2:17 says,” ‘In the last days it shall be,’ says God, ‘that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” We are still in the “Last Days”, my friends, and many of us believe that we are in the last of the Last Days..

Visions

For some reason, my spiritual encounters with God have usually taken the form of visions. Before I get into the specific visions, let me clarify how I experience them. The closest thing I can compare them to is what we commonly refer to as a “daydream.” With a daydream, one does not fall asleep as with a common night “dream.” Rather, while awake, one’s conscious awareness shifts away from the present situation to another situation that occupies one’s mind temporarily. In this context, then, the visions to which I refer here were experienced as if they were “daydreams from God.”

A Conversion Vision. I passed from spiritual death into eternal life in Christ in 1953, when I was eight years old. My new birth was accompanied by my first spiritual encounter with God, during a revival meeting (click HERE for the full account). On the second night, when the evangelist began to preach, I found myself listening intently to what he was saying; it was as if he was talking to me, personally. He didn’t deliver a “hell fire and brimstone” message at all that night. Instead, he focused on how God loves me so much that he sent His only Son, Jesus, to sacrifice his life for my sins by dying on the cross for me. As he was explaining just how amazing such a love is, I had a vision. I first saw something like a dense fog or cloud that parted in the middle, then a soft and diffuse light appeared, and then God spoke into my mind saying something like, “What he is saying is true. You can depend on it. Believe it and do not depart from it, no matter what.” Then the vision faded away, and I was so excited that I could hardly wait for the invitation to come forward and confirm what had just happened: God had saved me through a glorious vision and message from heaven that validated to me, beyond any doubt, the evangelist’s message of God’s love for me that night!

The Handwriting on the Wall. I was forty years of age when this vision came to me. It was springtime,1985. One Sunday morning I began to pray earnestly, asking God what He wanted me to do with the rest of my life. Just four days later, in the middle of the night, I was awakened suddenly and sat straight up in bed, aware of the presence in the room of a “spirit being.” By this time I had enough Bible knowledge (e.g., 1 John 4:1) to say to it, “Who are you?” There was no verbal answer, but something bright appeared on the wall to the left. So, I looked in that direction and saw, in large, bright, bold lettering, a Scripture reference: “DANIEL 9: 22…” Then the writing slowly faded away. Having made note of the writing on the wall, I lay back down and went back to sleep. Now, up until then, I had virtually no idea what was in the book of Daniel, except for the story of “Daniel in the Lions’ Den.” So, the next morning, with the aid of a study guide, I studied the book of Daniel through twice, and I found out that Chapter 9 is often referred to as the “backbone of Bible prophecy”, because it predicted to the day when Jesus would make His triumphal entry into Jerusalem! As a result of that vision, I became a student of the Bible then and there, no longer just a casual and occasional reader of it. And, I have a sense that from that encounter onward, I have had a heightened insight into the meaning and understanding of the Scriptures, perhaps similar to the impartation given on the road to Emmaeus, as recorded in Luke 24:45, “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

The Homeless Man. Next, I would like to share with you a vision God gave me in the late 1980s that reveals His heart toward people who are among the “down and out” of our society. I was sitting in my car one day, waiting for my wife to finish having her hair “done.” Along came what appeared to be a homeless man. His clothing was dirty and tattered, his head was down and he had a slow, plodding gait, as one defeated by life. As I watched him pass in front of me, suddenly his form became somewhat transparent and another man’s form was superimposed upon his. This other man was clean, well-dressed and walked with his head held high. After they had taken a few steps in unison, the image of the second man disappeared, and then I saw just the homeless man as he walked out of sight. For just a few moments, God had given me a glimpse of who He saw walking in front of me: not a disheveled, defeated and hopeless man, but a happy, successful man full of hope, the kind of man God wanted him to be! Then I received the interpretation of the vision: There, but for the grace of God, go I!

The Love of God. It was a Saturday morning in the late 1980s, and I lay in bed for a few minutes before getting up for the day. Because of a praise song that was playing in my mind, my thoughts turned to the amazing love that God has for us. Then I saw a vision representing, in crystal-clear graphic form, the love of God. It was like a rainbow, but perfectly straight. I was impressed by how pure and absolutely unchanging and constant was this beautiful, “Technicolor” beam of light. After what seemed like 5-10 seconds, the vision vanished. Then I realized that God had just shown me what His love is like, in a vision!

Christ in Us. In May, 2007, I was listening to a really good teaching on how God sees Christ in us, and the question occurred to me, “What does that actually look like?” Then, in a vision, I saw a group of about 6-8 people standing in a dimly lit space. I didn’t see their physical, exterior bodies, but each had a kind of spiritual body in human form, translucent and grayish, with defined eyes, kind of ghost-like, but not scary. Then I noticed that a couple of them had taken on a soft glow, which radiated gently from their entire body and set them apart, visually, from the others. When the vision was over, I realized that this vision was the answer to my question: God sees a glow in the believers, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in them, and that glow is, in effect, a manifestation of Christ in them.

The House Rebuilt. It was the Summer of 2007, and I was listening to the pastor teach about how, when we are saved, God makes all things new. He began with an illustration of a construction site that he had observed over the course of several months, in which an old house was being rebuilt both inside, room by room, and out. His point was that that’s what God wants to do with our lives. Then a vision came to me. I saw a construction site, but, instead of leaving the skeletal framework of the house standing and rebuilding from there, the workers had demolished and removed everything, and had begun to rebuild on a brand new foundation. When the vision ended, I understood that this is a better illustration of how God wants to rebuild our lives: totally, from the ground up, beginning with a new foundation! “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Look, all things have become new.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17.

The Baby in Jesus’ Hands. This is a prophetic vision. In 2015, my daughter began chemotherapy for breast cancer, to be followed with surgery. I shared my belief with her that God was going to carry her through this ordeal and bring her out on the other side fully healed and restored, and she agreed with me. One morning, not long after the chemotherapy began, I was thinking about her situation, and I had a vision. I saw two outstretched hands holding a baby wrapped in a white cloth. At first, I was puzzled by this vision. Why did it come to me at such a time? Then, suddenly, I understood what it meant: We have nothing to worry about, because Jesus has my daughter safely in His hands, and He has since she was a newborn. The vision confirmed what we were believing; that she is going to beat the cancer! By the way, my daughter is now cancer-free, to the glory of God.

The Hand of Jesus. I received this vision May 3, 2017. I was reflecting on the great difficulty many Christians have in trusting God fully. Then I saw the hand of Jesus extended down from heaven. Here is my interpretation of this vision: “I don’t ask you to let go of your worldly attachments and then reach up and try to take My hand. No, first reach up and take My hand and hold on tight, and I will never let go. Put all of your trust in Me. Then you can let go of the things of this world that you have been clinging to instead of Me. I am your security and your destiny. There is no other.”

Voices

God spoke directly to many of the Old Testament saints, including Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel and David. He also spoke directly to Peter, Paul and John. I have heard reliable testimony of God speaking directly to many of our contemporaries. And, on four occasions that I can recall, I have heard the voice of God speaking into my mind.

Let me explain exactly what I mean when I say “I heard the voice of God speaking into my mind.” We all form our own thoughts inside our minds, and we register them in our minds and recognize them as just common, ordinary thoughts of internal origin. Thoughts that we hear spoken by someone else, however, are registered and recognized as “audible” words received through our ears and conveyed to our minds from outside of our own minds. Then there are the written thoughts of others that we read into our minds. When I say I heard God speak into my mind, I am referring to words that are spoken directly into my mind without being first received by my eyes or my ears. These words register in my mind as clearly as do words that are audible, but I don’t “hear” them in the common sense of the term, and I don’t mentally manufacture them as I do my own thoughts. They are just suddenly there, as if they came out of nowhere, and they are very clear and rather loud as they register in my mind. I strongly suspect that they originate with the Holy Spirit residing in me. Here are the four that I can recall:

1) “What he is saying is true. You can depend on it. Believe it and do not depart from it, no matter what.” As recorded above, under “Visions”, this is the spoken message I received during a vision that came to me when God saved me. It is self-explanatory.

2) “Without God, you are nothing.” God spoke this into my mind during a worship service. There was nothing going on in the service that would have triggered me to manufacture this thought on my own; it seemed to be unrelated to the immediate context. I took this to be a terse and sobering reminder of who God is in relation to who I am, and a warning against operating with a spirit of pride;

3) “Stop criticizing!” I received this message from God while I was driving my car and trying to drive also the cars of other motorists in my vicinity, if you know what I mean. I took it to be a direct command for me quit operating with a spirit of criticism; and

4) “You don’t have to live like that.” God told me this while I was at home one day, feeling bad about caving in to a temptation yet again. The devil had been telling me that, based on the recent past, I had no reason to expect to have victory over this sin going forward. But God spoke a word of encouragement into my mind: “Do not believe the devil, but go ahead and overcome this “besetting sin” in your life.” That’s the amplified, paraphrased, James version anyway.

If you ponder the nature of the messages in these four encounters for a moment, you will see that they are all the kind of message that the God of the Bible, through the Holy Spirit, would want to get across to one of His sons. To me, that is at least consistent with the conclusion that they were, in fact, words from God, and I received them as such.

I have recorded these encounters with God so that you will know that God is still interacting personally with His living elect and to encourage you to be alert and quick to recognize some of the ways that God initiates personal encounters with you, for your edification.

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