Recognizing God's Voice // Learn to Encounter HimSample

How the Wind Moves (and Brings Peace)

Holy Spirit in us, this is what we heard for you:

You have heard my voice for a long time. You have recognized me before you knew it was me. It was a voice of comfort when you were scared, a voice of reassurance when you were worried. It was balm for a wound, words that weren’t words—a voice of presence, a voice that is part of you. How can you not respond to the wind as it blows on your face? How can you not feel love breathing against your skin?

I am the voice for the silent, the voice for the ones who sing. I am the voice for the calm and the voice for the storm. I lift up the weary, and I sustain the ones who go forward, walking, seeing my face. They keep their hands open as they walk. They can climb, and they stay standing. 

For this life is not a life that brings destruction to your heart. No, that is not possible. What brings pain, tears, devastation, is when darkness spreads havoc and peace has yet to come. My Son brings peace. The wind covers the land. For it takes more than courage, more than confidence, more than hard work to bring peace. The wind—what you feel and follow, carries with it the ingredients for peace. Son, daughter, you know me. You can bring peace—to yourself, to others, to your world—because you can respond to what is more true than anything you can surely see.

You have felt the wind. You have felt my spirit breathing in you. You have listened for it, knowing it is the helper, the guide in all things. I want to help you recognize me more now. I want to increase your desire for more of me. But I leave this up to you. I let you consider if you want to go deeper in your love for me. For the wind shifts, but it does not leave you. The wind lifts you and carries you, if you let it.

So there is work for you to do. There is a choice to walk forward, deeper into a place where I can show you more of who I am. The two of us together, you see? You are here now, with me, your soul alive within my spirit within you. And you grow, increasing in your love and trust and reliance upon me. Each choice to hear me. Each choice to reach for me. Each surrender with open hands and open heart and walking, yes walking. You climb and walk and surrender and feel the wind on your face and the wind whisper in your soul. 

You know me. You know me. I want you to know me more. 

Exercise:

We’re desperate for a bit of peace. Aren’t we?  

Peace seems so scarce these days, in these busy lives of ours, with the pace of our world.

But here’s the thing about peace . . . we cannot seek and attain it ourselves. We cannot work and achieve peace on our own. Not the peace we need. Not true peace . . . in our hearts. It just doesn’t work like that, no matter what’s written in the self-help books.

So, let’s be counter-cultural and take a different tack.

Let’s . . . rather than seeking peace itself . . .seek more of God instead. Let’s learn to receive more of God, so that his peace just becomes our peace . . . in the very midst of our busyness.

Let’s focus on feeling and recognizing Holy Spirit moving through us today, God’s breath within us.

So, we have a choice. You have a choice.

Walk forward. Or stay where you are. Go deeper. Or stay where it is safe.

Or you make a choice to strive to remain in control.

In each moment, you make the choice  . . . to be present to him, to yourself, or not.

Stay in the quiet for a few minutes, and turn your heart and your mind to God. How He speaks to you now may not be what you expect it to be . . . After all, he is full of surprises, and this, as always, is just the beginning. . . 

“The wind lifts you and carries you, if you let it.”

Jesus, come . . .