Hearing from God!

Recently while my wife and I were on vacation we attended a church service, and at the end of the service, a lady we did not know who attended this church said: "I have a word for you". She spoke words that encouraged us, words that gave us direction, which confirmed to us regarding some things we had been praying about. After she had finished we thanked her for being obedient to the Holy Spirit.

The lady spoke to us through the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit found in 1 Corinthians 12:1-10. The sad thing is in many churches today the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not in operation. We no longer allow time for this to happen or we think it is something that only happened in the past. My prayer is, Holy Spirit please move in the church today with your gifts.

As I pointed out, we need the Holy Spirit to speak to us words from God. But we have another group within the body of Christ who are always looking for a “new” word. This can be a problem; and why is that? Continually looking for a new word causes us to ignore what God has already spoken to us in His written Word. What am I talking about? In the New Testament Jesus gave us a message to take to this lost world:

Mark 16:15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation."

Luke 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed."

John 20:21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

Jesus' top priority was to bring healing and deliverance, and this is something the church has ignored. While we’re looking for a “new” word countless people are going to hell and the mission of Christ is not being done.

Please understand I definitely believe we need a fresh word from the Lord; but, let us not get so caught up in looking for a new word that people perish.