Gloria Copeland — Learn to Listen

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Gloria Copeland

Most serious Christians would do anything God told
them to if they knew for sure it was really His
direction—if they heard Him with their natural ears
or saw Him with their natural eyes. But most of the
time God doesn’t deal with you that way. He sent
His Spirit to live in your spirit to constantly teach,
enlighten and guide you. You must learn how to
hear Him in your spirit.

I have asked believers all over the world this question:
When you think God may be directing you, do you say,
“Was that me, Lord, or was that You?” I believe this
uncertainty is the major drawback to our following
God through our spirits, directed by the Holy Spirit.

I believe this will help you. As the Lord was clarifying
this to me, He made me realize that most of the time
I would hear my own spirit speaking to my soul, which
is my mind, my will and my emotions. There is the
audible voice of the Lord, but that is all too rare in
most of our lives. Almost every leading you’ll receive
in your everyday life will be a prompting, an impression,
a thought, an inward witness, a leading or an unction
from your spirit.

The reason it sounds like you is because it is you that
you hear. The Holy Spirit communicates with your
spirit, and your spirit prompts, or enlightens your mind.
“But the person who is united to the Lord becomes
one spirit with Him” (1 Corinthians 6:17, amp). The
key word united in Greek means “to glue or cement
together.” Jesus said, “If a man love me, he will keep
my words: and my Father will love him, and we will
come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John
14:23). This describes being joined, or united, to the
Lord.

When you start your day by praying the will of God
by the Holy Spirit, many times you will have already
prayed concerning the problems you’ll face that day.
You will perceive an interpretation, a prompting, an
impression, a word or a sentence that will enlighten
you and give you the answer to the situation. It will
be so natural to you that you might not even realize
it was the Holy Spirit leading and revealing Himself
to you. Things that would have been stumbling blocks
to you before, will now be handled with ease by
hearing and obeying the will of God as the Holy Spirit
leads you.

Learn to instantly obey the voice of your spirit. I don’t
think there is any other way to cultivate this
communion between the Holy Spirit and your spirit,
and between your spirit and your mind, except by
spending time in prayer and in the Word of God. We
read that the Holy Spirit teaches by comparing
spiritual things with spiritual. Hebrews 4:12 says,
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit….”

The Word of God is the only thing that will separate
or differentiate between the soul and the spirit. Your
soul relies on natural knowledge to form its opinions
until natural knowledge is replaced by the supernatural
knowledge of God. In Romans 12:2, this process of
replacing the thoughts of natural, carnal man with
the thoughts of God is called “renewing of your mind.”

You might be asking, “How can I tell the difference
and be sure when it’s God or just me?” You’ll have to
begin a quest for the things of God. The Scripture lets
us know if we seek God, we’ll find Him. Spiritual things
don’t come without serious effort. We are told in
Hebrews 11:6 that “without faith it is impossible to
please him: for he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.” We know that we have to
approach God in faith—that is, without being able to
see proof in the natural realm. You will never be able
to put spiritual things in a test tube. You will have to
learn to walk without evidence in the seen realm. We
must learn to believe Him without seeing Him. From
that verse we also find another key to knowing God:
He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Lazy Christians never mature spiritually, because
diligence is required to develop in God.

I can’t teach you how to walk in the spirit in seven
easy steps. I can only point the way and share with
you truths I’ve learned which are working in my life.
I am still learning, myself. There is no selfish, easy
way to walk with God while you live in the earth and
in a natural body. You’ll do it God’s way or you will
not do it at all. His way is for us to serve Him with
our whole spirit, soul and body.

We must allow Him to be God in our lives if we want
to walk in the spirit. We have to change our thoughts,
opinions and actions to agree with His. We have to
mature spiritually day by day. God wants us to live
the rest of our time conforming to His will, not to the
will of man or to our own wills. When we put ourselves
in a position of obedience, we give God the freedom
to overwhelm the natural circumstances of this life
with His supernatural power.

To the degree we disagree with God, we diminish His
presence in our lives.

Gloria Copeland

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Permalink | Comments (0) | Aug 26, 2009

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