As a farmer at the age of thirty, I wanted to extend my farming business by buying another farm. When I bought the farm, the previous owner shared with me what had happened the first day when I visited him to look at his farm.
The owner, who is a Christian, usually spent his time early in the morning praying. That particular morning the Lord told him that the buyer of his farm would visit him that day. Very anxiously, he walked to his wife to share with her what God had revealed. His wife, who had her own separate time with God, told him that she had received exactly the same message. A few minutes later, my agent phoned them to make the appointment for my first visit!
For me this was a big wow! I was so surprised and amazed that this man and woman heard God speaking to them! This had never happened to me and I considered myself as a mature Christian!
I asked God to teach me to hear His voice, and He did. I was thirty years of age and my spiritual maturity was still in its childhood stage but from that moment on, it started to grow.
I discovered that when I prayed for an answer, I had to empty my mind, all my thoughts completely. When I asked God to give me a scripture, I soon saw the book, chapter and verse in my mind and when I read it, it was spot on. Every time He gave me a text, I anxiously read it to hear His answer. That was the first step of my spiritual development.
Then I discovered that my spirit could see what my eyes were unable to see and could hear what my ears were unable to detect.
It is awesome how much wisdom we get from the Holy Spirit, but unfortunately we seldom recognise the wisdom as coming from the Holy Spirit.
For instance, one day I wanted to do some maintenance on our beach house. When I put the tools into my car, my eye caught other tools that I would not need for the particular job at hand. However, those tools caught my attention as if I should know to take them as well.
Then I realised that it could be the Holy Spirit showing me what I was going to need and I took it with. Needless to say, I soon discovered that I needed it for something else that had to be fixed that I was unaware of at the time.
This taught me that what the Holy Spirit reveals to my spirit comes to life in my thoughts.
We tend to put what we can see, hear or touch in the category of the physical and the things in our mind or thoughts in the category of imagination. Consequently, the spiritual input we receive from God, is also put into the category of our imagination and regarded as unreal and untrue.
One difficulty we face is that a human being has a vivid imagination, causing us to doubt what God gives us, or on the other hand, assign our own ideas as to be coming from God.
Most importantly, we have to empty our minds completely while surrendering into the hands of Jesus to ensure that whatever we receive is not made up in our minds but comes from God. We can also ask God for confirmation of the message through other people, Christian books, preachers or through a Bible verse. No person is able to manipulate an answer received through a verse from Scripture that he does not know by heart. Gradually we learn how to see and hear in the spirit.