Can You Hear Me?
It is extremely important that we as Christians are sensitive to and be led by the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe that it is by chance that you are reading this article; I believe that God has prompted you to take time to read this so that you will see the importance of being led by His Spirit. In some situations, this could mean life or death. Right now I believe the Holy Spirit is asking us, “Can you hear Me?” Recently I read a testimony of a man named Matthew whose life was saved from the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Matthew was in his car praying and praising God and as he was driving toward the bridge, the Lord gave him a vision of the bridge shaking and collapsing; one hundred feet away from the bridge, the Holy Spirit spoke to Matthew and said “Stop!” When he stopped in the middle of the road one hundred feet away from the bridge, it was then that the Minneapolis bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River. If this man wasn’t sensitive and obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit, he could have been another casualty in that horrific disaster. That kind of leading and guidance is available to every Christian on this earth today.
One thing that will prevent you from being sensitive to the Holy Spirit is fear. Fear will put a wall up in your life that will make it very hard to hear from God; this will allow confusion and all of its kind to gain access into your life. Fear is nothing more than faith in Satan’s will for your life. You are reverencing the devil more than God and His Word in your life. What you feed will be the strongest in your life; if you neglect the Word of God and prayer, your fleshly nature will rise up and you will basically be spiritually deaf. If you fill yourself with God’s Word and maintain an intimate prayer life, your spirit man will dominate your life and you will be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
There may be times when the Holy Spirit will give you an instruction that doesn’t make sense to your natural mind. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” When God told that man to stop in the middle of the road one hundred feet from the Minneapolis bridge, it didn’t make sense to his natural mind; people were honking their horns and getting angry at him for stopping. However, Matthew had a very strong impression on the inside of him not to get on that bridge. The Holy Spirit will never violate our free will; we must choose to obey the Holy Spirit. If God could overtake our free will, hell would be empty right now, because it is God’s will that none should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). The fact is this; multitudes have stepped and even now are stepping into an eternity in hell because they chose not to receive the free gift of salvation that is available only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16). Another sobering fact is this; multitudes have died before their time (Ecclesiastes 7:17) because of failing to heed the voice and leading of the Holy Spirit, and of course, simple obedience to the Word of God. Many people assume that when somebody dies, “it was just their time to go.” That is not always the case. What about a person that is killed in a car accident because of driving under the influence of alcohol, or a person that dies of cancer because of smoking cigarettes most of their life? That certainly is not the will of God! Those individuals put themselves on the devil’s territory by their own free will.
It is time for us to truly draw closer to our Heavenly Father; to know Him for who He really is as revealed in the Bible, and to know the benefits that are available to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Settle it in your heart today to make a fresh commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, to draw closer to your Heavenly Father, and to live a life that is sensitive to the Holy Spirit!
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