It's been a long while since I updated this. And a lot has happened in my journey of training and improving in practicing God's presence so that one day I'll be able to effortlessly be aware of God's presence every minute of my awake hours, whether it be eating meals with friends, reading textbooks, giving a speech in front of others, at a wedding, reading books, or writing a paper.
By God's grace, I have been improving more and more every month overall. I seriously cannot remember the last time that I forgot to commune with God's presence for an hour. Perhaps it has been over a year since I had an hour that was free of God's presence. God is good.
*edit, upon more extended reflection, I recognize that it would probably be more accurate to say that around 95% of my awake hours I am aware of God's presence at least once. Although I do find it very hard to recall a specific awake hour where I forgot about God's presence, they probably do happen from time to time.*
God's presence is actually becoming more and more desirable too. Because frankly speaking, there were moments at the beginning of this journey where I honestly didn't desire God's presence and that it would "get in the way" of whatever I was doing (watching TV, socializing, reading etc.). But now God's presence is becoming more and more desirable, not only so that I am aware of his presence more often throughout the day, but that I feel like something's missing when I don't remember. It feels like I'm "spiritually naked" without the clothing of God's presence in my consciousness.
But there has been one major surprise throughout this whole journey in addition to my improvement in the percentage of minutes throughout the day that I remember to practice God's presence. I have actually started to develop a level of intimacy with God where I am actually receiving very specific messages from God about things, myself, others, the future etc. It is insane. I can say that 8 months ago, I would have never dreamed of experiencing this with God. I realize that it is a gift, and that I have to cultivate it and sharpen it. So the process of sharpening it has given me the feeling of X-men first-class training music.
I say once again, that before, I never would have dreamed of experiencing this at least on a regular basis with God. I mean, I didn't doubt that there were some very privileged few individuals who for some reason heard God say to them very specific things regularly. But I thought that those were a select privileged few, and that "that was just how God spoke to them", but not to me. I grew up Baptist. I thought that God would only speak to me through letter of the Scriptures or through wise advice from wise counsel from wise friends. And if I felt some vague desire to do something for God and it didn't contradict the Scriptures, then that emotional impression may have been from God. But that was pretty much it. And since it was very seldom where I received specific messages from God, I thought that this was pretty much going to be how I were to interact with God for the majority of the rest of my life on earth with some rare exceptional moments once every few years or so.
Now, things have changed. Starting spring of this year, God has started to speak to me through my dreams. And starting early September of this year, God has been telling me very specific messages about myself and others during my awake hours! And I'm not talking about me just reminding myself of Orthodox Christian doctrine in my mind. That stuff is general. True, but general. I'm talking about specific specific. Unbelievable for a Baptist!
I'll give some examples of some cool stories that have happened within the past few months. I can't share all the stories for reasons of confidentiality for others' personal stuff. But I can share some. Also, the reason why I think God is giving me these messages about others is because he wants me to encourage others specifically and pray for them specifically as well. My reasoning for this is that the stuff that I (and others) have gotten has been really specific many times, and many (not all, but most) of the times the message was accurate and true about the person's life. So it definitely isn't just my "own reasoning" based off of the subconscious reading of the recipient of the messages. So it has to be from some spiritual being/source. And I think that if it is in line with teachings/principles of Scripture, and others feel encouraged/edified, then I see no reason why the devil would want to give me those messages so that I could encourage and pray for them in Christ in a specific manner. If others are encouraged and prayed for with regards to pursuing intimacy with God and spiritual fruit comes out from it and the message is in line with Scriptures, then I think that it's a message from God.
Also, some of these examples are incidences where I was the recipient of these specific messages.
So without further adieu, here are some random examples of God giving a friend or myself some specific messages this semester:
1) During the middle of the semester, for a couple of days I was really, I mean REALLY identifying with Abraham of the Old Testament. Specifically how he got specific promises from God that were huge, but for a long time he didn't see any evidence of them being fulfilled and just had to continue believing in faith. I felt the same way with God giving me specific huge promises in the past through multiple prophets who didn't know each other but who nevertheless independently prophesied consistent/matching things about the same promises of God to me.
So my friend Bobby and I were trying to sit still and listen to the voice of God for any messages the Holy Spirit had for us to encourage/edify each other with. So we sat in silence. Then all of a sudden, Bobby says "gUmmI, you're like Abraham." And elaborates on how I relate to Abraham and the promises given to him by God! I didn't tell Bobby anything about how I was totally relating to Abraham the last few days! Crazy! Bobby said that since it came coming back to his heart/mind multiple times, he felt he just had to say it to me. wow.
2) So I was in one of my classes at Tyndale in the beginning where there were a few minutes before the professor started lecturing and people had time to just relax/unwind/chat etc. I sat beside a person who I've only talked to very briefly once before (I knew absolutely nothing about his personal life). I figured I might as well just listen to God and ask God if he had any message for this guy beside me. So I sit in silence and try to listen to the voice of God. Then, I hear in my inner hear "this guy's struggling". So I'm like, okay... everyone's struggling with something. Could you be a little more specific God? "This guy's feeling a lot of pressure from school." I'm like.. that's pretty specific. Is that really from you God?
So I figured I might as well ask him in a non-sketchy way to test it out. So I asked him seemingly out of the blue, "are you feeling a lot of pressure from school?". You should have seen his eyes light up in an instant, along with his his mouth give an emphatic "*pfff* Yea!". In my mind I was like holy crap! Then I told him that I thought God told me that, and then I offered to pray for him and he let me pray for him.
3) So one day I got my haircut and because the barber's tools weren't clean, the back of my head got a small infection/inflammation where the skin inflated just a little. It was very minor, but there nonetheless. But I was hoping that it didn't turn into something bigger, so I asked some brothers to lay hands on me and pray for me. They did. Then afterwards, I don't know how to fully describe it, I felt some sort of "holy presence"/metaphorical "light" at the back of my head in that area. It coincided with a gradual healing. Hard to describe, but I felt it there nonetheless.
So then a couple days later, I was with a friend of mine doing a listening to the voice of God experiment and after a few minutes of quietness, he says to me "I'm getting an image of a light at the back of your head". it was in the exact place where there was the infection/inflammation and the "holy light" after the healing prayer. I didn't tell him jack about this post-haircut infection! Crazy!
4) So one day several of my friends (maybe 8 or so) are in a prayer meeting where we're praying for each others' churches. The catch was that we didn't tell each other what the prayer requests for our churches were. I challenged each of us to spend 3-4 minutes in quietness/stillness and listen to the Holy Spirit and what He had to say to the church. So, I write what I think I got for each churches. Pretty much for almost all of them I knew absolutely nothing about their churches. Jack. So I get to one of my friend's churches, and when I listen to the voice of God, all of a sudden I hear "This church is being bread and light to the community. I am so pleased that they are making such a huge impact in their community and I want them to keep up the good work in their community." Although I didn't know anything about the church, since I thought I heard that from God I wrote it down.
At the end when some of us shared what was written down for our churches, the friend of that church that I got this message for said that their church was actually really involved in the community! She said that they were helping out with operation christmas child, helping out with renovating the foodbank building, and even helping blind people play tennis!
5) So me and 2 other sisters were listening to God together to see what he would say to us through each other. When it came to one of the girls, I thought God told me that "She has a passion for children, and she's going to shepherd the children and raise them up in the way of Christ". Now, I don't know this girl that well, and as far as I know, she's never told me that she had a passion for children. I had absolutely no idea. So I asked her in faith "do you have a passion for children?" She said "yes" (turns out that this passion only started about 2 years ago). And so I told her what I heard from God to encourage her.
It has been a thrilling journey. I never knew this would be possible at least to this degree a year ago. These examples listed have just been a sample of what now goes on on a weekly basis in my life now. Amazing.
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