The Lord tells me to go and...give some blood!

I hope I can adequately capture this day and how it went for me in this post. I am tired and have had a long day but I do want to record what happened for my own future encouragement and for the encouragement of any that might read this post.

Last night I went on some sites that I should have not had gone on to my shame. I was tempted and fell. I knew it wasn't good but I did it anyway. And I knew there would be consequences.

One of those consequences was that I got stressed out. With the result that my blood pressure shot up and was up to a diastolic of 103 this morning.

I had given blood on Tuesday and my blood pressure diastolic had been at exactly 100...the cut off for being allowed to give blood. I had made $35 that day.

Today I had intended to go and give blood a second time for an additional fifty but given that my blood pressure had shot up to 103 I had decided not to go.

Since going would have been a waste of my time and the $5 bus fare.

Not being able to go I was also bummed that I would not be able to once again eat a great big, delicious meal at my favorite buffet restaurant either...HomeTown Buffet. That alone was a real disappointment to me, never mind the $50.

As I was mulling over how stupid I had been about going to sites I should not have gone to last night and telling the Lord that I deserved what I got...the ruin of my day with respect to what I had planned...His voice came into my Spirit telling me to go anyway.

Now let me say a little about this voice I occasionally hear and why I think it's God.

The last time that I can remember hearing this voice was just before I came to San Diego. There may have been other times since then but I just don't recall them off the bat (a reason to write down these posts when it happens so that I won't forget).

I had been standing in front of my storage unit finishing up the packing of the last belongings I had not sold or given away and that I intended to keep wondering where I was going to end up.

I had canceled my storage unit effective in a few days time. I had no truck (having sold mine to an insurance company who paid me out to compensate me for one of their insured having hit me). I had no job. I was living with a friend who had issues and whose place was an absolute pig sty not to mention overrun with mice who were crawling on him in his sleep.

It was bitter cold and I had not been able to confirm housing in San Diego.

There I was going through the motions of finishing up my packing but having nowhere to go away from the bitter cold of the Canadian winter.

And God spoke to me. Right into the middle of my despondent thinking and woe is me attitude the voice of God came in and said "I want you to go to San Diego!". That was it. No explanation. No prelude. Just go!

I wasn't entirely sure it was God at all. But having had such an experience before and having it always turned out to have borne the fruit of God in previous followings of said voice...I had decided to start looking afresh at coming to San Diego. I had been given hope in the midst of seeming despair.

My spirit picked up and within days I had not only found a place to stay which confirmed my housing but also...the Lord worked it out for me to find a super cheap flight that opened up at the last minute.

I was on my way to San Diego and warm weather! With fear and trepidation, since I had never been to San Diego and knew no one here, I went. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What I take to be the voice of God to me through His Spirit always intrudes into my thought processes. It never condemns me. It always leads me in a direction that requires me to trust in the living God by faith and to discount if not entirely ignore what would be considered wise to do by sight.

And it ultimately leads me into a state of receiving His blessing on my life or otherwise being used by Him in some manner to advance the Kingdom of God or love others in a way that meets their needs.

In other words the fruit of listening to such a voice is good. Very good.

And so...when I heard the voice that I have come to associate with God in my spirit afresh I did what I have done in the past.

I listened and did what I was being led to do.

(I have had some much more incredible examples of how His voice has spoken to me in my spirit and how the fruit of my obedience has been very, very good other than what I mention here but it would take way too long to describe such instances in this one little post.)

I asked the Lord for encouragement and for a confirmation by having my blood pressure be lower on the next check I did and when I checked it...it was down to 100 exactly. So I went.

Knowing full well that by the time I got there it might have gone back up to over 100 such that I would have wasted my trip.

But believing that the Lord wanted me to go anyway...I went.

To make a very long story short...I was able to give blood, got my $50, ate at HomeTown Buffet where I met an old friend and had a wonderful meal, and was otherwise able to get to where I wanted to go and back. People were kind and gracious to help me with directions or even just a word of hi along the way.

The Lord did not deal with me as my sins deserved today. But was gracious to me in treating me as a son. There were indeed consequences to my sin of last night. I felt miserable for most of this morning.

But the Lord never left me and in His gracious mercy He blessed me not only by directing me to do something that ended up blessing me today but also went with me and blessed me with His continuing Presence.

Tuesday when I went to give blood the first time was an even more incredible day. I was so blessed that day but when I got home I was so tired that I didn't blog about it and now the day's events are pretty much lost.

I wanted to make sure to capture some of how my day went today so that I would be able to read how the Lord once again lead me to a desired blessing.

You know some people might think me a nut for saying that I hear the voice of God to me through my spirit but such persons need to stop and ponder the fact that such a thing was a much more common occurrence in New Testament times.

As much as we might shy away from thinking that such does and should happen today we need to get over our paranoia about becoming cultish or weird and admit that just maybe the Lord wants to start speaking to us as Christians in our day and age once again in the way He did then.

I could quote a hundred verses showing clearly that it was natural for the Holy Spirit to lead Christians in New Testament times specifically according to the need of the moment.

That hearing His voice was not unusual at all.

If you think about it why would it be? I mean Jesus Christ himself spoke with his disciples. Upon leaving the Holy Spirit took His place on Earth but this time He came to dwell within the born again spirit of the Christians. As the Living Presence of God.

Why wouldn't God want to speak to His children through their spirit? Of course He would want to do that!

He did it then and I believe He wants to do it again.

My hearing of God's voice is nothing compared to how readily the New Testament Christians heard Him. His voice is all over the New Testament.

What is unusual is not that His voice was heard among the Christians but rather that we of today do not hear it like we should.

We have become dull of hearing.

Hearing His voice involves taking a step of faith to believe it is His voice and listening to it. In little steps until our faith grows to hear it more clearly.

We need to evaluate what the fruit is. Does it bear the mark of God? Of His character?

Christians innately know the voice of their Father. They have the ability by virtue of their new birth to recognize the voice of their Father.

Their ability to recognize the voice of their Father through His Spirit within them grows as they exercise faith.

The trouble today is that we don't exercise faith. We walk around thinking too much. Analyzing too much. Trying to figure out all the angles before we act.

I am not advocating that we go around listening to every impression and "voice" that might come into our heads. We need to learn to distinguish His voice from that which might be more a result of an upset stomach grumbling or the voice of Satan whispering sweet lies into our ears.

Any voice that we hear MUST be grounded and supported by truth in the Bible or else we open ourselves to great deception. God will not contradict Himself from what He has already spoken to us in the Word.

But we must NOT throw out the whole concept of learning to listen to the voice of our Father just because we are afraid of being deceived or because it may not be politically correct to declare that we can indeed learn to listen to His voice in our "enlightened" day and age.

We will make mistakes. Sure we will. But...SO WHAT!

We won't learn to listen to His voice adequately to enable us to receive His specific leading about things if we are so intimidated about the whole concept of a voice inside of us being God that we end up paralyzed into being deaf to His voice altogether.

We must be like children. Willing and eager to learn from whatever our Father may want to tell us.

Children don't go around wondering if they indeed heard their father telling them something. That's just silly. They hear perfectly well the voice of their father. For them the issue is whether they are going to obey or not. Not whether they actually heard His voice.

Only we adults start questioning things to the point where we lose our faith. We stop having childlike faith in our heavenly Father. We grow great big heads thinking we know better.

I wish that I had the time and inclination tonight to express more fully some of the other experiences I have had in listening to His voice but I think I have said enough for tonight.

I am but a babe. An absolute babe in listening to His voice. I am a great big, analytical head thinking machine. Anally analytical I think the saying goes.

I am the least likely person to listen to, much less believe that such a thing is possible but in my own life God has graciously blessed me with a few, very few times of hearing His voice and proving it through my experience to have indeed been a good leading.

Today was a case in point.

We need to start walking in faith so as to realize the normality of that in our day and age instead of continuing to doubt that such a thing is even possible.

Carlos

UPDATE: This morning the Lord spoke to me again. I had been doing what I like to do in the mornings...read the news, without paying any attention to Him at all. He spoke to me about giving Him some attention. Intruding into my thoughts to say so. It dawned on me that I hear Him a lot more than just the two times I mentioned in this post but many such times are not as wide ranging in scope or effect as the two times I mentioned here. So I tend to forget such times in the overall context of my life.

Not to mention that I was more attuned to the whole concept of hearing His voice in my Spirit by virtue of having written this post.

Sad to say many times I just ignore His voice to my Spirit and go about MY business to my loss. Because it leaves me in a state of being in diapers when it comes to learning how to hear His voice more consistently and more clearly.