I'll give you another example. How many have met someone and they look good, sounded good but you just felt something was not right about this person? Something's creepy. That's the kind of language a woman would use - creepy [Laughter] you know, don't like that guy. I don't like him. You know, they say I don't like him, and the man may say what's wrong? There's nothing wrong with him. You know, he can't figure it out, but he's operating out of logic, what he can see, what he can hear and he's working on a reasoning basis. She's picking up intuitively from her spirit there's something not right about this person or situation, I don't feel right about it. Now you think about this in Colossians 3:15 it says let the peace of God be the umpire of your heart, so if you feel troubled and no peace in your spirit, then no matter what it looks like, you know it's going to be a problem. Initially you don't know that but you find out after you've had a number of experiences where you overruled your spirit, did something and then it didn't work out too good. You learn then actually listen to the voice of your heart more carefully.
Now we do need to work things out. We've got a capacity to do that. We should develop our mind and intelligence, but we need to also develop the intuitive side of us, so when God speaks to us it's very simple. I just calm down and quiet my soul to listen. I stir up my spirit through praying and focussing on the Lord, and as He speaks, spontaneous thoughts, pictures or impressions come into my soul, and I pick them up as an impression. Now you don't just do away with your brain and shoot your brain. You actually then enquire, so I'll give you an example of someone. I was talking to one person, and I had a word of knowledge they were extremely lonely and so I said I just feel an impression that actually you're struggling with a lot of loneliness. No, no, no, no, I'm not lonely. It came again, so I said it again. No, no, no, I'm not lonely. Now that's two denials, but it came again, and so I said in the end I actually feel you're quite lonely. I feel God's laying on my heart you're struggling with relationships and friendships, and you're lonely. God added me a little bit more. She broke down and began to weep, so I was right the first time, but the person tried to pretend that wasn't so, and just the impression kept coming and coming and coming.
So remember it was just an impression that came that I couldn't shake off, so when I gave voice to it then God was able to move. So the impressions that you get, your mind will always argue them. Your mind will act like that can't be so, it couldn't be true. Like you see a person smiling and God says they've got grief in their heart, and you look at them and you think no, sorry, got that one wrong. [Laughter] You see your mind tries to reason the flow of the spirit, so we need to learn how to train our mind to ask the right questions, so my spirit can receive information from the Holy Spirit that my mind would never know. The role of your natural mind then is to enquire, Holy Spirit, what does that mean? How do I work with that? What do You want me to do about that? So you enquire of God, rather than reason it all away. So there it is, it's not quite so difficult.
So why is it some people have trouble hearing the voice of God? Now the trouble that people have with hearing the voice of God falls it seems to me into two categories. It falls firstly into the people who are Dr Spock on Star Trek. They are totally head, and they just reason everything, everything's structured. Usually with a person like that, there's strong spirits sit around their mind, and they're disconnected from their heart. Often there's issues been in their life that have disconnected them. They many times need healing or deliverance or setting free, or training in how to engage with their heart, because they've lived out of their head and logic all their life, and they haven't developed their spiritual side. So very often there's spirits of rationalism and unbelief, rejection and all kinds of things sit around that person, but they can be set free, and they can develop the capacity of tuning in to spontaneity, to spontaneous ideas, to thoughts, to feelings, to impressions, and learning to recognise and identify and name them.
The other extreme is where you get someone who's often quite broken relationally, and everything is God, God told me this, God told me that, God told me this. Now it's like there's this flow where everything God told them. When you hear that, you know two or three things; number one, God isn't saying all those things. Number two, they're very broken people, and three, they've got major problems relationally, and so they're putting it all out there of God to portray some spiritual hotline. The reality is we don't hear God talking all the time that clearly. We have impressions and we learn to be led by... God gives you wisdom to run your life without Him having to tell you what to do. He doesn't tell you what to put on your shopping list. It's your job to figure that one out. He doesn't tell you what colour you should paint something. He gives you room to be creative. He doesn't tell us everything to do in our life, or we're like a puppet being told what to do. He actually works with us in a relationship where we work with Him, He's the senior partner and He guides us, but He gives us room to participate in life, so you've got to learn to find the things that you yourself have and own them, rather than say it's all God.