God wants to talk to you

Over the last 5 years I've come to believe that God really wants to talk to me. As they say, it didn't happen overnight - but it did happen. Seriously. The more time I've been spending with God, the more I realise he likes me. He enjoys my company, and loves spending time with me.

I gave me life to God at the age of 7. But that didn't make us best friends overnight. In fact, it just added to the list of people (- mum, dad, friends, teachers) I wanted to please  - and wasn't sure that I could please.

Sure I knew that Jesus loved me enough to die for me, but somehow I instantly translated that into meaning that my actions had to please God. i.e. now that I was saved, the least I could do is to be good, and try and prove myself worthy of his love. The fatal flaw in this logic is that, if I were good enough to be saved, then I wouldn't have needed him to save me in the first place. Boy, how easily I fell into that trap.

I guess for me that emotion grew out of good behaviour when I was young. I had heard many comments like - Oh you're so polite and well behaved! I had started to rely on my goodness and the real kicker - What if I stopped being good? Will I still be liked then? Do my mum and dad only like me because I'm good? Will God like me if I don't live up to his expectations?

Well here's the good news.  (click link for the actual bible verse)

• Rom 5.8 God liked me before I was good.
• Rom 5.10 God liked me when I was still his enemy, when I was ignoring him 

The last part of verse 10 above is even better "... how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!". To make it real simple, if God loved me before I was good; if he loved me when I was still his enemy; if I now respond to that love and ask him to be my Lord; then :-

How much easier it is for God to love me now that I am in his family!!!

If God loved me before I was good then now that I'm born again, he loves me even more.
If God loved me when I was his enemy, then he loves me even more now that I'm family.
If God loved me before I even knew him, then he loves me so much more now that I call him Lord.

That is the best news ever. And the more time I spend with God, the more I actually believe it.
One way to illustrate this is to picture the following:
Imagine that a guy is caught cheating on his girl. He apologises and says he'll never do it again. He's genuinely sorry, and wishes he'd never done that. The girl forgives him.
So, it's all right immediately isn't it? As we say in New Zealand - YEAH RIGHT! (which in kiwi lingo means, not likely mate - no way; not a chance; you're dreaming ...)
Sure she may intend to forgive him, but it will take lots of time together before the girl trusts the guy again. It will take time for her to trust him again.
But actually I'm not worried about her at the moment. Let's also look at it from his point of view - how long will it take before HE feels that he's forgiven? before he feels that she trusts him again?

This is our story. We're the cheaters. We were cheating on God and we didn't know it. We find out that Jesus loves us and wants a relationship, so we begin. We ask Jesus into our hearts - we get saved - but we're not really sure .... Does Jesus really love us? Has he forgiven us? Does he actually like us? Or do we really need to prove ourselves to God again and again to try and earn the love that He has already given us?

Just like the girl needed time to develop trust again in the guy that had cheated on her - the guy needs time to come to trust that the girl has forgiven him, so that their relationship can develop and grow. And in exactly the same way in our relationship with Jesus - we are forgiven, but it will take us time to believe that he really does love us, and want to spend time with us. That's not God's fault. He's not holding out on us. It's us that finds that hard to believe.

For me the hard thing to believe was that Jesus loves me even more now that I'm saved! I don't have to act perfect to prove I can keep God's love. I couldn't earn his love before I was saved. I can't earn his love now that I am saved. God's love doesn't depend on my good behaviour. It depends on his mercy, and his mercy is new every morning. I had to stop striving to earn the love that God had already freely given me.

I had to stop saying Please love me, I'll promise I do better, I'll act really good, if i'm really good then won't you please love me. This was really just me slapping God in the face. Because he had clearly said to me in his word that he already loved me. There's no point in me keeping on asking for something that I've already been given.

I didn't believe this overnight. I've been deepening in this belief. But sometime in the last 5 years I did cross a point, such that now I believe it more often than I don't. And I now say God is my friend and he likes me.

So expect the same for yourself. Every day is a new day to believe that God loves you, and wants to talk to you, because HE IS GOOD, and not because you earned his approval. So spend some time with him today, and then tomorrow, and then the next day and the one after that, and ... keep going until he returns!

How do I start hearing from God?

Wow. That sounds like a difficult question, but that's only because of how you're asking it. Let's try a different question.
How do I get to know someone better? How do I develop a friendship? 

That's not so hard to answer now is it? The secret to getting to know anybody is simple.

Spend time with them!!!!! 

The longer you spend with somebody, the more you will know them, and you will start to recognise their voice because you know what they sound like.

But you do have to start! And before you can start you have to know where you are. I don't know where you are, but I know where I was, or at least I thought I did.

I got saved as a child when I was 7 years old and since that time I've believed in Jesus. The church where I got saved was strong on salvation. They preached the good news of Jesus every Sunday night, and after hearing it for several years, I responded. That was the first time I heard God - and how he loved me and had died on the cross for me in my place. He paid the penalty for my sin so that I wouldn't be condemned.

When I was 19, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, and received the gift of speaking in tongues. That's the second time I heard God. In fact every time I pray in tongues I hear God - just not in english, but in the language of the Holy Spirit.

But fast forward a few years, married, three children, moved to Auckland, the big city.  Sure I loved God, but I was stuck in a rut. I had lost confidence in myself. I knew I was saved, and I knew that God loved me. But I wasn't so sure he liked me, and I wasn't so sure I liked myself. I had always prided myself on being able to grow, and make progress. After all:

If I'm not growing, am I really alive?

Except now I wasn't sure I was growing. In fact I was sure I wasn't. And I didn't really have any idea how to grow. I'd tried in the past - tried hard - tried really hard. But disappointment had come in, and I'd lost hope that anything I did would really make a difference.

And then I heard the good news that Jason Hamlin was preaching at church about being filled with the spirit. But hang on - I'd already been filled hadn't I? Well it sure didn't feel like it at the time. Yet, hope began to fill my heart again. So December 2005 I listened to him preach from Dave Roberson's book The Walk of the Spirit - The Walk of Power. And it changed my life - almost .....

Yes, I was once again filled with hope. Yes, I downloaded the PDF, printed it out, and read it. Yes, I started downloading his messages and listening to them too. No, I wasn't yet hearing from God. It wasn't until 9 months later when I was listening to Gary Carpenter's testimony that I realised I was missing one thing.

Right at the end of his testimony (Tape 1 of Houston Kingdom Finance series) he asked:
So what are you going to do differently tomorrow?
When are you going to spend time with God, and being speaking in tongues?
Are you going to set your alarm-clock and actually schedule time with Him?

What a shocker. For 9 months I had listened to the message, and all the time I thought I was doing it. But actually, I was only listening to it. I hadn't set my alarm-clock, and I hadn't started getting up early. But that night I made the decision, and I set the alarm clock and I began.

And that is my encouragement and word of warning to you.
Start. Start today. Start now.
Begin to spend time with God. He want's to be your friend. And the way to develop friendship with the creator of the universe is no secret. It's exactly the same way as any other person.
T-I-M-E.
It's my hope and prayer that you won't wait 9 months to start like I did.

Welcome

Hi. So why am I writing a blog? Well, some advice I got from listening to Gary Carpenter, was that if God speaks to you, then the very least you can do to show him some respect and write down what he says. That advice sounded good to me, so here it is.

My blog is where I can record my thoughts as a Christian and especially to honour God by recording the things he says to me - not the private stuff - that would be too much!

It's an amazing thought that God can speak to us, but ... if he can create a universe, then how hard can it be to speak to one of his creation. And if you read the bible, you'll see God's been doing it for a long time, speaking to people throughout history.

God loves people, and he loves to speak to them. And he'd love to speak to you.
What's special about me? I'm just an ordinary person, living on planet earth, no different from anyone else. But I have joined the family of God, so now I'm part of two families. A family on earth, and a family in heaven. And God wants the same for you too!