I talk to Jesus, and He talks back!

“Let her go.”

I was ironing in the basement, complaining out loud to God in frustration when I heard those words.  It wasn’t an audible voice, like the sounds of a voice I would hear from someone in the room or a telephone’s earpiece.  Still, I know I heard something because it interrupted my lament, and I answered back (out loud) as if I was in conversation with someone.  “I can’t just let her go, what if I…”

I stopped.

What just happened?

I was quite honestly scared for a minute.  It was late, I thought, better finish up.  Back to ironing, within minutes I began thinking about her again.  My girlfriend of a year and a half had left me two months ago.  I was trying to win her back, and I’d been rather unsuccessful.  She was my entire world, how could I not want her back?  I know I could get her back if I could just…

“Let her go.”

I stopped again.

Now I knew it wasn’t a fluke.  This wasn’t me I was hearing.  Everything about me was about her.  These new words were not my own.  It was internal, but it wasn’t me!  I was hearing God.  I stared down at my hand and saw a ring she gave me, still there on my finger.

“It’s time.”

That ring was hard to take off that night.  It’s not that the ring had any power over me, it’s what it stood for.  I was still holding on to her, and to take it off meant never getting her back, ever.  A kind of death.  It wasn’t going to be easy.

But off it came.  And the peace that came over me the next day was more than I ever expected.

I never looked back again.

In this post I will attempt to describe how I communicate with God, and how He communicates with me.  This will be long…

Let me be clear about something first: the story above is, as far as I can remember, the first of only two times that God spoke to me in this manner (using actual sentences, short as they were).  To this day I still have a hard time explaining what exactly happened.  I’ve tried to capture it as best as I could with the description above, but it still doesn’t do it any real justice.  How can I describe hearing a voice inside me that doesn’t come from an external sound?  I’ve been called crazy before, and in describing this experience, I may have just reinforced that claim.  But allow me to delve further into the entire realm of my communication with Jesus before making any judgements about me.

The way I personally talk to God is how I talk to anyone else.  I don’t use flowery language or thee’s and thou’s, because that’s not who I am.  I’m a very laid-back individual (that’s how God made me) and He wouldn’t want me to come to him and be someone I’m not, especially when I’m talking to Him.  At the same time, although Jesus is my friend in many ways, He is first and foremost my Lord.  That means He is entitled to my thanks for all I believe He has done for me; He is entitled to my adoration for who He is; and He is not someone I can manipulate or command to give me things.  But like any good father with his child, while an authority over me, He loves me and is approachable with anything on my mind.  “Who am I that you are mindful of me?” I think to myself constantly; it’s very humbling that the God of the universe wants to be in relationship with all of us on an individual basis.

So, communication means He talks back, right?  What does that mean? Well, for me, it’s a lot of different things.

Most of the time I “feel” an impression of something.  That’s vague, I know.  It’s also potentially dangerous if I just left it at that.  Feelings can lie to you, indirectly.  As someone who plans on being a psychotherapist (and also as someone who has been in psychotherapy), I can tell you that while emotions themselves are not wrong or bad, they can cause you to start down the path of thinking something that is wrong or bad, causing you to do something wrong or bad.  So with that public service announcement, let me clarify this feeling I’m talking about with an example I hope many can relate to.

Imagine you are watching a movie for the first time, when suddenly you know how it’s going to end. Think of that first twinge of feeling something.  Now, with a movie you have a lot to go on to come to the conclusion that you know how it’s going to end.  You have other movies similar to this one as a frame of reference or foundation.  Maybe the screenwriter or directer has a predictable pattern once you’ve seen enough of their work.  Or maybe you caught all the story clues and deduced it.  Either way, you think you’ve got it, and there’s a feeling there.  This feeling is very similar to the feeling/impression I get when I talk to God.  It’s very different from a movie when you’re in real life, though.  You don’t have a lot to go on; sometimes, you have nothing to go on.  HOWEVER, as a Christian grows, they learn more and more who God is, His character.  And through the Bible, we have a clear picture of who He is from His very Word.  Just like knowing a lot about any person, it’s not that they become predictable, but you get to know how they usually go about doing things.  So in that same way, I’ve come to find over time that the answers to my prayers usually come as a feeling/impression.  I might be asking whether or not to take a job offer, whether I should make a purchase (big and small), how to proceed in a conversation with a person.  Something akin to “tunnel vision,” I can see a few or even many paths I could take, but I’ve learned that the feeling/impression tells me which is the right one to go down – I’m convinced this is God’s Holy Spirit talking to me, guiding me.

Now, I must again stress the possible dangers of this if taken at face value.  I’m trying to describe something supernatural using natural terms, so I have to be careful that no one misconstrues my words.  This communication with God has been honed very graduly over the last nine years.  It began with baby steps as God helped me put my life back together.  Initially, there were lots of little problems, with lots of little answers.  When I thought I was hearing but wasn’t, this led to only little mistakes or more little problems.  As time went on, He entrusted me with speaking to me this way for larger problems, since I was becoming used to this kind of communication. Then there were the times where I wasn’t hearing anything!  These times are always difficult, but I believe God does this (for me anyway) when He wants me to come closer to Him (as in, He IS speaking, I’m just not close enough to hear Him – being closer means spending more time with him.)  Nine years later, He still helps me with the small things, but it’s the big things that are currently being prayed about over long periods of time. These include: when it’s time to go get that first mortgage, and when to start having children.  These are not snap decisions; my wife and I must be careful that we listen carefully – not because having either of them now would be wrong, but because we want it to be the best time.  I’ll trust His omniscience over our impulsiveness anytime.

I guess I can’t reiterate this enough: feelings can deceive.  I may think I’m listening to God when I’m really listening to myself.  One example was when I approached a girl at work and asked her out on a date.  It was only a month after my encounter at the ironing board, 3 months after the breakup.  I was pretty sure God was telling me to ask her out as another sign that I had moved on.  Wrong! (She already had a boyfriend.)  It was really awkward around her after that day.  The only thing I can stress is that open and honest talking/prayer with God, combined with earnestly seeking (and patiently waiting) of His answers are key elements.  A lack of prayer time is almost always the culprit to my miscommunication with God.  Like an old long-lost friend’s voice, that voice is familiar yet foreign, and time is needed to re-connect.

Alright, so that’s just ONE of the ways God talks to me!

Another way is through particularly unique circumstances, or what other people would call coincidences. (Now I’m not saying that there are no such thing as coincidences.  What I am saying is that there are some coincidences that actually are God speaking to me.)  For example, seven months after the breakup, I was working in an office and a Christian guy I worked with named Ted drops a packet of info on my desk.  It was his last day.  He said, “Think about it.”  It was info for Elim Bible Institute, a Bible school 40 minutes from my home.  I’d never heard of it before.  But then for the next month I heard the name Elim (no exaggeration) TEN TIMES from ten different places.  God was telling me to go to Elim!  This would be a leap of faith, since this type of communication was new to me. Then, the day I show up, Aug 26, 1999, I realized that the date was one year to the day of the breakup.  I saw that God was telling me I’d come such a long way in just one year.  Finally, my Elim roommate “just happened to be” the guy my ex-girlfriend (same one) had a huge crush on in middle school.  This “coincidence” was God telling me my being there at Elim (as well as my roommate himself who would one day be one of my best men at my wedding) was no accident.  These “coincidences” happen often with me.  God has taught me over the years to recognize what are actually just coincidences, and which are Him talking to me.  I get it wrong now and then, but usually without any harm done.  I find these fun!

Sometimes it’s a combination of things. The best example I have is the only other time God spoke words to me like he did by the ironing board.  He combined it with a “coincidence.”  I was about to propose to Bethany, and my mind was racing.  I began to have a twinge of doubt about myself, whether I was worthy of anything so amazing as having Bethany as my wife, whether the timing was right (her w/ 2 years of college left, me with 3 1/2!)… all that kind of stuff.  We were sitting in the Gazebo at her college when suddenly out of the bushes in front of us came a duck.  Then another.  And another!  They were walking down the concrete steps to the creek, one by one in a row.  Bethany said, “Look how cute, how they walk together in a row!  Then GOD said, “All your ducks are in row, Rob.”  I actually laughed out loud, it was so funny how God eased my doubts and told me to go for it!

Next we’ll come to prophecy.  This part is actually contentious among other Christians, but I believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit as demonstrated in the book of Acts never stopped happening.  Rather than get into all the ins and outs of the theology behind prophecy, I’ll simply say that it is the belief that the one speaking is speaking for God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Could the person speaking be wrong?  Absolutely!  We’re talking about fallible human beings here!  That’s why the Bible says to judge prophecy.  My church is very careful in how prophecies are given, for this very reason.  When it comes to me actually receiving prophecies from someone else, the handful given to me over the years have always been confirmations of what God has already personally told me, I was just hearing it now in a different way.  One prophecy 8 years ago told me that I would be a “healer.”  Kind of vague, but I have now come to believe this to be referring to be my goal of being a psychotherapist.

Now, I myself have actually given prophecies based on what I believed God was telling me to say.  This also has only happened a handful of times.  This is another one of those things that’s going to be hard to explain, but I will try.  What has happened is that I see some kind of picture, scene or vision suddenly pop into my mind.  That happens to a lot of us throughout the day when something jogs our memory.  This is different.  This comes out of seemingly nowhere.  It’s also followed by a very unsettling feeling, as if if I don’t say what I’m seeing out loud I may burst.  The more recent times this has happened I didn’t get to the point of bursting, I recognized what was happening and just said it.  (I’m learning how God speaks to me this way.)  The images sometimes don’t mean anything to me, they mean something to someone else.  In one case, I saw fire on a girl’s back (in my head, not actually on her). We were praying for people to be healed and I told her what I saw – her back was hurting her, so we prayed for her.  Other times, the image is metaphorical for the words I am supposed to speak.  One time I saw a scene with a girl pushing her Bible to the side while picking up and reading some other book.  Somehow I knew that it wasn’t that she was supposed to be reading her Bible more, what it really meant was that she was not taking her Christianity seriously, that she was “playing Christian” to fit in.  I didn’t say this to her exactly, especially since I had only met her that night.  Kindly, I said that God sees her heart and wants it all, not part of it. Later, I elaborated to her friends who knew her better (I knew them better), and they said I was “dead on.”  Well, no, God was dead on.  I hope she took the words seriously, I never saw her again.

So as you can see, prophecy, though amazingingly cool and supernatural, is rare for me.

God also speaks to me through others, whether they know it or not!  The wisdom of my Christian elders is precious to me, and they help steer me away from things I haven’t thought through enough about.  I even hear God through movies and books!  Granted, this is more insight than anything else, like seeing my faith in another “form,” but I give God the credit for giving me the chance to see it.

Finally, I’ll end with the most important way God speaks to me: the Bible.  The Bible is referred to as the Word of God.  It is His letter to humanity.  It is HIS-story, the story of God’s interaction with us.  Whenever I read it, I know that the exact words were not written specifically for me – but He did know I’d be reading it when He told the author what to write!  Sometimes a Psalm has comforted me, and I know it was for me to read at that moment. But what the Bible really is for me is God saying to me, “This is who I AM; I AM unchanging, constant; I AM Love; I AM Life; learn who I AM from My Word.”  The Bible is the standard by which I must measure all I think I am hearing from my personal relationship with God.  If God is telling me to do something that is against His character as shown in the Bible, then I’m not hearing God!  Being involved in a church whose leadership can help me understand the Bible is also essential.  Too many Christians have gone off the deep end because they thought they were hearing God, misinterpreted a Scripture verse (usually out of context), and went off on their own, usually to their downfall or into sin.  The wise Christian seeks the counsel of others to make sure they’re not doing anything unbiblical.

I hope this (long) explanation gives readers of my site insight into how I personally talk to God, and how He talks back.  Bear in mind that this is not the blueprint for everyone!  My wife would have written things differently from me, because God talks to her differently!  But maybe you’ve read this because you’ve been unsure if you’ve been hearing God.  If so, I say first seek the Bible, and then a local Bible-believing church who can confirm it.  You probably are hearing God, but you should always seek those elders who have been hearing longer than you!

I know that as the years go on, the infinite God will reveal more of Himself to me and will show me new things that I never thought of before.  He may do this in new ways.  It will be exciting.