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Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. — Proverbs 4:23
God uniquely created you to listen to Him in a particular way, but He created all of us to communicate with Him. When you listen to God and encounter His truth, you find freedom. Jesus said to His disciples,
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. — John 8:32
And when you know truth and freedom, little can stop you from accomplishing what He has given you to do.
As you mature, you gain confidence that comes from encountering truth firsthand. The truth grounds you at your core. You are sure of what God said. You got it! Once you know what the biblical truth is, you’re all in. You’re a force to be reckoned with. You’ve located the truth, and as a result, you have extraordinary courage and resolve.
Also, your confidence in God’s truth will enable you to challenge others or even to be challenged yourself. You’re not afraid to do what’s right because you know it’s right. Popular opinion doesn’t influence you. Even doubters and judges will not distract you from your hard-and-fast, rock-solid conviction. You know God is with you! He has spoken clearly.
- You might feel fear, but you are not confused.
No matter what your Prophetic Personality is, all of us have common ground in the following truths. Remembering them keeps us anchored to God.
We All Need Relationship with God
When I was learning how to use my knowing, it wasn’t all kicks and giggles. In fact, in the beginning I noticed something that really bothered me. I heard God’s voice regularly, but I wasn’t growing closer to Him. I sensed I was further from Him than ever. I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Wasn’t I supposed to get closer to God the more I interacted with Him? I really wanted that.
One night while flying home from a speaking event, I sat in the darkness of the cabin with the sound of the humming engine filling the air. In the quiet I asked God, “Why do I feel so distant from You even though we’re talking every day? It doesn’t make sense. What am I missing?”
He replied, Havilah, it’s because you’re having only a transactional relationship with Me, not an intimate relationship. The truth of His words painfully hit my heart. He was right. I had never thought about it that way before.
A transactional relationship is one we invest in for the sake of getting something in return. We keep things good with our work bosses because they keep us employed and paid. We consult teachers because they give us instruction and doctors because they can point us toward health. We take care of pets because they give us a sense of well-being and maybe even purpose. When we interact with God to get special blessings or to get our way, we miss the point: we are relational beings.
God gives us our Prophetic Personality for the sake of an intimate relationship with Him. The primary purpose of an intimate relationship is to know and be known, to love and be loved. Does this mean you never get anything out of an intimate relationship? Of course not. Spouses support each other in practical ways; parents instruct children; friends give each other a hand. But intimate relationships aren’t only transactional.
Imagine what you’d be missing if you never learned how to communicate with your Creator. What if you could never talk to your architect, the One who knows everything about you? What if you couldn’t ask the questions He alone can answer? Everything you need to know, God knows. You were never created to do life alone.
- You need the voice of God in your everyday life.
But again, this communication isn’t a one-way street. Whether through hearing, seeing, feeling, or knowing, God uses your Prophetic Personality to reveal Himself to you. For starters, because He designed them, they reveal important elements of His character:
- God hears (John 9:31; 1 John 5:14).
- God sees (Genesis 16:13; Proverbs 15:3).
- God feels (Jeremiah 31:3; Psalm 103:13).
- God knows (Psalm 147:5; 1 John 3:20).
As you spend time with God in His Word, reading and listening in the unique way He made you, you’ll discover more and more about who He is.
I’ll say it one more time: one of the most important things I want you to know is that the strengths of your Prophetic Personality are the outcome of an intimate relationship with God. You can’t nurture those strengths or mature in your listening skills apart from Him. So gently turn your heart away from the idea that God gave you a Prophetic Personality as a spiritual perk and see it for what it really is: a path to experiencing the fullness of God in a deeper way.
We all benefit from being careful not to seek our gifts more than we seek Him. When we leave this earth, we will take our relationship with the Lord with us, but we won’t take our special method of listening with us. We won’t need that in Heaven, where the barriers of this physical world no longer exist, and we can experience God face-to-face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Excerpted with permission from Created to Hear God by Havilah Cunnington, copyright Havilah Cunnington.
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Your Turn
We all need the voice of God in our everyday lives. Just praying when we have a need isn’t enough. Just piping up when it’s convenient for us doesn’t build an intimate relationship. That’s what we need with Him — intimacy! ~ Devotionals Daily