I would agree with most of this, Paul, except with that the reasons should remain something known only to God Himself.
As a charismatic, do you believe we have the ability to find out what His specific will is regarding an individual person or situation, or no? Maybe this is the question I should be asking more people here, as it has great significance.
Yes. The problem is that nine out of every ten impressions we get are from the world, flesh, or the devil. This means that being able to determine whether the impression we get is really the Holy Spirit giving an answer to our question, or whether it comes from the fleshly desire to be healed or have the person we are praying for healed, or it could come from the devil in order to deceive us through his lies.
We have video clips of some of the most prominent prophets who were adamant that God told them that Donald Trump would certainly win the U.S. election. Some were so sure that they told Sid Rolf that they had absolutely no doubt they had heard the voice of God. Yet they were all proved wrong. So did God make a mistake, or was the impression from a difference source (the flesh or the devil)?
So, how are we going to know whether God is going to heal a specific sick person when we ask Him the question. Peter asked Jesus a question about what was going to happen to John and Jesus answered, "What is that to you? Follow me!" If one got an answer like that, would he or she accept that as the word of God? If they are emotionally involved in seeing the person healed, they may not accept an answer like that. Even Nathan the prophet got it wrong with David when he answered him about building the Temple. He said, "Do whatever is in your heart". As Nathan walked away, God spoke to him and told him to tell David that he was not to build the temple after all, but his son will do the job." So how did Nathan know that it was God who spoke to him? We are not told, so we don't know the difference between Nathan's own thoughts, and God speaking to his heart.
So there doesn't seem to be a user's manual about hearing God's voice and being able to distinguish it from our own thoughts and desires. Even if a person hears and audible voice, how is that person going to know whether it is the voice of the Holy Spirit or a deceiving demon posing as the Holy Spirit?
The only real clue we get is from Hebrews 5:13-14:
"For everyone who lives on milk is still an infant, inexperienced in the message of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained their senses to distinguish good from evil."
I believe that the training we need is continued fellowship with God in prayer, and extensive on-going study of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The maturity is not a five-minute affair. It has been said that it can take 20 years to give the perfect sermon because it can take 20 years to prepare the man to give it. Paul said that church leadership is not to be given to novices, lest they be lifted up with pride and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
It was in 1969 when the Holy Spirit made God real to me and started me on the road of fellowship with Him. I was just 21 years old. Over the years I have thought that God has spoken to me, and I even wrote a book detailing my experiences of hearing God's voice. But now, after 53 years, I am still not sure that when I receive something that seems like God's voice, that it really is His voice. So, if after having constant fellowship with the Lord in prayer and His Word for all these years I am still not sure, I have my doubts that someone who has been in the faith only a few years is really hearing God's voice when they tell us that they are.
It is interesting though that when I have a discussion with the Lord concerning an issue, a verse of Scripture that I have never memorised will come to me that totally puts me in the right direction of thought about it. Sometimes it is a verse of Scripture that I haven't read or thought about for 40 years and didn't know it was in the Bible until I went and looked it up. One night in the early hours, I was woken up with a reference from Psalms repeating over and over in my mind. I couldn't go back to sleep until I took my bedside Bible and looked it up. It was the exact answer to an issue that I was struggling with that week. When I was doing my M.div, I would ask the Lord's help when writing an essay, and after writing one draft, I would send it off, and when it came back it was graded at 95%! That happened with all the essays I wrote, plus my main research paper, over the three years I took to complete the degree. Did the Lord help me to write those essays? I think He did, because how can every essay I wrote got 95%? That wouldn't have been possible unless the Holy Spirit helped me put the words on the page. I have written a few devotional books, and each one has started with an idea coming strongly to my mind, and as I start writing, the words come almost like a prophecy, and flows on until the flow stops. When I read it through for typos and errors, I am amazed over what I wrote. It seems that I am reading a book that someone else wrote! Is that the result of the Holy Spirit helping me with the words and ideas? I think so. It is interesting that as I would make a point in the book, the exact consistent verse or verses of Scripture would come to me that was the exact Scripture confirmation. This makes me think that the inner voice of the Holy Spirit and the written Scriptures work in tandem with each other. Well, that is how it is with me, anyway.
As per my previous post, there are numerous instances where a little wisdom regarding the physical side of things can be all you really beed. But like all professions, sometimes doctors are not always as good as they could be, so it is better to rely on God first and foremost. I'm guessing most doctors would have told me I needed surgery, and that would have been needless and expensive.
