The Voice of the Spirit Within

I usually only KNOW it is The Sacred (Holy) Spirit when, after doing all I can to avoid moving on a certain path, the path simply opens in front of me, with someone taking my hand and insisting they need ME to help them find the way. The "little child" that leads me is often of advanced age, but with a child's trust in my ability to assist him/her on his/her journey.

 

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The question asked was:  "How do you know it's the Voice of the Holy Spirit and not your own voice speaking to you?"  The answer above was one of many that could be given, I think.  Jesus said, "My sheep know My voice, and they will not follow another."  I think that sweet assurance that we will  not be misled, either by our own voice or the voice of another is one of the best promises given to us by the Lord.  Of course, the basic premise is (1) that we  are open to and want to be led by the Lord, and (2) that we are willing to follow the path He shows us, once we are convinced that it is the Lord's and not another's voice leading us on.

 

I think that answer given by Y, above, indicates one sign of the Spirit's leading -- that is, His gentle insistence despite our resistance to a certain direction.  Whether we listen to the inner voice and ponder it in our hearts, as Mary did, or whether we dismiss the gentle nudge as something coming from us, He continues to return again and again with the same message.  This gentle nudging is far from the obsessive-compulsive re-runs that sometimes occur with us as a result of mental illness, or of just being stuck somewhere as a result of fear, childhood trauma, or inability to let go of a wound. 

 

In fact, one of the most certain signs of the Spirit speaking to us is that the Voice is so opposite of the voice of our own personality re-hashing the fears and wounds of the past or of the present.  Here is an example of what I am talking about:

 

When my youngest child was born, she had a birth defect that occurs only in every 1000 births.  My pediatrician did not notice it at first, but the nurses in the new-born nursery pointed it out to him.  He knew what it was, but did not know much else about it-- Turner's syndrome.  In order to confirm his suspicions, he took a blood sample and sent it to Tulane Medical Center for analysis.  In the meantime, he could not --or would not-- give me any information at all about Turner's.  That was before the internet, where I could have found the information I was looking for, so I was worried:  Did this mean mental retardation? Chronic illness?  or something I coud not even guess at? 

 

The test was supposed to take six weeks for results, but as a result of summer vacations among the staff, it took 3 months.  All that time, I wondered and worried until the tapes of fear and anxiety and uncertainty took over their re-runs in my heart and mind on a daily basis.  One morning, as I sat on the sofa nursing the baby, the tapes started running over and over in my mind.  Suddenly, with a great deal of amazing peace, a thought settled into my spirit like a warm blanket -- a "comfy:"  She will be a blessing to many.  I had not had many "messages from the Spirit" up until that time; in fact, this was one of the first -- but I knew this voice was not mine, and it was not coming from within me.  It was a voice to be believed and trusted in, and it immediately drove out every fear, worry, and concern that had occupied my heart for so long. 

 

What I believed then more than anything else was those words:  She will be a blessing to many.  Now, 38 years later, those words are more true than anything I could have imagined on my own.  They have over-ridden any problems associated with her initial diagnosis of Turner's Syndrome, or of anything the doctors wanted to tell me about the syndrome.  God is greater than any problem we have, and His 'diagnosis,' HIs word on a situation is beyond anything we can ask or imagaine (I Cor. 3:10).  I did not know at the time to pray about or to listen for God's pronouncement in my difficulty, but He was gracious enough to send His word into my heart anyway. I will be eternally grateful, for what I believed about her birth defect would probably shape what she believed about it too.

 

How did I "know" it was the Voice of the Holy Spirit and not my own?  (1) I could not have made that up; (2) I could not have manufactured for myself the peace it brought to me, permanently; (3) it dramatically cut across my own worrying thoughts on the matter; and (4) it proved absolutely true in the long run. 

 

More tomorrow on the same subject, if God wills.