How He Speaks 3

How He speaks #3

Hi all,
This is the third and last installment covering ever so briefly the ways the Lord speaks to us, and I had promised to share today how angels speak to us. Because we've been launching off John 16:13, that the Holy Spirit (of Truth) will not speak of himself but as he hears, and he will lead and guide us into all truth, you may wonder what angels have to do with it.

The reason is that their communication to us is consistent with the Holy Spirit and how he speaks to people.

So far...
Up to this point I covered the various non-verbal ways the Holy Spirit communicates with us, the ways he guides us into truth and shows us things to come, like Simeon having a revelation he wouldn't die until he'd seen the Messiah, or Jesus perceiving power went from him but not knowing who did it, or Paul perceiving the faith in a lame man, but waiting until he knew that he knew and then told the man to stand up.

Perhaps the greatest blunder in missing the Lord's timing after a revelation that you've never heard about is Moses. Most of us have the idea the burning bush revelation at age 80 was the first time he learned he was the deliverer of Israel, but the Bible says otherwise.

Acts 7:25 says he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand "For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not."

Moses knew by age 40 he was the deliverer, and as Steven's message says in verse 22, he was educated in the ways of the Egyptians, and that would have included warfare. If the historian Josephus is to be trusted, Moses was a hero military commander. This would explain why once he received the revelation he was the deliverer, he naturally assumed it would be through the civil uprising of killing (more) Egyptians.

He spent the next 40 years, 1/3 of his life, being a shepherd until the burning bush meeting with Christ where the gift/working of miracles was revealed as the means of deliverance rather than civil war.

What I admire about Moses is that even though he missed the timing by trying to make the revelation come to pass (show of hands please of those who have done that, me included!), Hebrews 11:27 says he left Egypt not in fear, but still seeing the invisible - holding to the revelation he had, though his head surely was swimming with questions.

The example of Moses teaches us that just because we have a revelation, we can't assume others have it too. He supposed his brethren would have understood - he assume they had the same revelation. Many a person has eagerly assumed mom/dad/spouse/work/church/etc had the same revelation as they; NOT!

Often we have to keep a revelation to ourselves, much as Mary pondered in her heart the things said of her son, but it doesn't say she told the whole town that he was the Messiah. Sometimes we just have to keep quiet until that other person has the revelation we have, if they ever do get it.

Angels
I've shared how the non-verbal ways of communicating to us need further revelation because they are vague and/or their timing is vague as in the example of Moses, but when the Holy Spirit speaks it is always specific and clear.

This is the same way with angels. When they speak it is always clear and specific but with a major difference: When the Spirit speaks it is internal; when angels speak it comes from the outside.

In fact, if you become experienced in this or just think back to the times you've heard the Lord you can discern the difference. Angels are individuals, so their instruction is always external, often from behind or beside us, and they sound like a person anointed by the Holy Spirit. In the same way you can tell from which direction someone is talking when they are standing in a room, so it is with angels, though their voice will enter our spirit man's ears - but you can still tell the direction from which they are speaking if you just look down in your spirit and think through when you heard that direction.

In Acts 8:26 the angel said to Philip: "Arise, and go toward the south to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is desert."

In Acts 10:4-5 the angel told Cornelius that "Your prayers and your giving have come up as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa to look for a man named Simon Peter, who is staying with a man named Simon the Tanner who lives by the sea, and he will tell you what you need to do."

I could go on - the angel in Acts 27:24 told Paul about their soon to be shipwreck and saved lives, the angels at the empty tomb gave specific directions, and so on - and that doesn't even cover the Old Testament.

Inside/outside
The Holy Spirit lives in you, so his voice comes from within, angels are individuals standing by you, so their voice is external.

While in college I was asking a friend if he knew the Lord's working in his life. He replied that he remembered one time he was going drinking with some of his high school friends and when he put his hand on the car door he heard a voice behind him and to the right say: "Don't go with them, there's going to be a wreck." He obeyed, and sure enough the others were in a horrible wreck.

My friend noted that he took that suggestion as his own thought, and only after the wreck reflected that it had come from somewhere close behind him.

When I was 14 and not wanting to obey my mom about wearing my helmet when I rode my mini-bike, I heard a voice over my right shoulder say "Go ahead and obey your mom and wear your helmet."

Now to me, this voice was gentle, a suggestion, and felt 'warm' - I know now the presence of the Lord. And as soon as I heard it I said to myself, "I think I'll go ahead and obey my mom and wear my helmet." The wreck I had 30 minutes later resulted in a severe concussion, but the helmet saved my life.

Because angels sound like people giving instructions or suggestions from the outside rather than inside like the voice of the Holy Spirit, we often do like me and my friend did; just hear their word and take it as our own thought and go our way, only to later analyze what happened and realize it was supernatural instruction.

I encourage the reader to consider times when you've had divine instruction, and then analyze where it came from. The first element to discern and remember is, internal or external?

The first time I had a conversation with who I call "my angel" was late at night when I was in bed and he was suddenly standing at the end of the bed. Though the Lord had introduced us some months earlier during a visitation, I had never received a message from him until that moment. He told me he was the one who spoke to me about the helmet when I was 14, and other incidents he had been involved in my life to protect me.

His voice was one I knew, woven into the tapestry of various life threatening and other incidents, giving instruction, making things work out just a certain sort of way - and up until that moment I had never thought through the process of hearing his voice.

Yet in retrospect, each memory he detailed included that of me hearing almost subconsciously a voice from somewhere near, his voice, urging, suggesting, directing me to do this or that, and without fail I had just taken that voice as my own suggestion, repeating it in my mind, and acting on it.

And so
I will add this. One time in a visitation I asked the Lord if we have authority to send angels to do this or that, as is the practice of some. It had never felt right in my spirit but I didn't know why, though in some circles people tell angels all sorts of commands.

Jesus said this to me: "You don't even know how to pray as you should, so what makes you think you know how to tell an angel what to do? But to answer your question, have you not read that even I, in the days of my flesh, said, 'Do you not think that I could ask my Father and He would send twelve legions of angels?' The angels belong to my Father; you don't have that authority, yet."

The part that we don't know how to pray is Romans 8:26. That's our infirmity as humans, we don't even know which way the wind blows, let alone what a person we're praying for genuinely needs. That's where praying in tongues comes in: The Father takes his unlimited knowledge for someone and then puts that in a language we didn't learn so it by-passes our ignorant mind, and puts it in our spirit, then we speak it back to him in that unknown language and it is as the passage says, 'according to the will of God'.

In this way we are "loosing" on earth the Father to act on someone's behalf. What a wonderful way to pray, and always 100% the perfect will of God for someone!

The 12 legions of angels reference is Matthew 26:53 - Jesus himself, in the garden would have had to ask the Father for angels, which explains why the angels came and ministered to him after his temptation, sent by the merciful Father to help his Son (Mt 4:11)

OK...so much more, but these are some of the ways of the Spirit. Learn them, practice them, and you'll not lack for the Lord's leading, whether by revelation, witness, perception, outright voice of the Spirit, or external directions from your own guardian angel...the Father is more communicative than we often realize, but we aren't always knowledgeable on how to listen to him. I hope this has helped.

Blessings,

John Fenn
www.iFaithhome.org