Learning to listen.

Nothing is how I thought it was. I'm not even how I thought I was. Thoughts and feelings that I thought were mine, half the time they're not even me. I can see in my little mind's eye the look of confusion upon your face. Therefore, allow me to explain.

Firstly, if this has ever happened before, I will just say that I was not aware of it. But what I am learning is that in all this scope of what I call "me," are all these thoughts and feelings, yes? But God also speaks in thoughts and feelings. So does the enemy. We came up with a pretty good paradigm to determine which is which: God = good, devil = bad.

Well, let me just tell you what happened first so I can have time to organize the explanation in my head. Okay, so we're in Denny's. Probably about twenty of us. They had trouble fitting us all. But one of the interns here, Josh, was sitting right next to me. He's super prophetic. It's pretty awesome. So we played some 'word of knowledge' games. Basically, what happens is that you ask Holy Spirit for a little bit of info on a person that you couldn't possibly have known, and then listen for what He tells you.

Josh pretty much told me my life story. With details I've not mentioned to anyone here, and almost nobody at home. And then decided it was time for me to try it. Since I'd never done this before, I wasn't real hopeful that I could do it. But I asked Holy Spirit to show me some stuff and sat back and waited. What I got was random pictures and words. But I'm learning that God likes to talk to me like that, so I wrote everything down. And when I was ready, I began spouting off my random words and pictures. And was stunned to find out that they actually meant something to him. The random picture of grass being cut was nonsense to me, but became relevant when he told me he is a landscaper. It went on and on.

The next morning we were sitting at breakfast. Having discovered that I can hear God's voice and not muck it up, I decided I will practice it at every opportunity I get. So I sat with Josh at breakfast again to practice. This time was much more difficult. I was having a hard time clearing out my head to listen. I told Josh what was going on, and he helped me narrow stuff down and figured out that a lot of it was coming off other people in the room. I kept hearing the word "tattoo." Josh encouraged me to ask what direction it was coming from. I felt like it was coming from down the table, and when Josh asked, we found out that one of my buddies at the end of the table had been thinking about tattoos.

So apparently, according to Josh, once I'm all trained up, I'll be crazy prophetic too. Which I'm pretty excited about. The cool thing is that this is something that is not just for me to read other people, but for me to read God. And that way, we are gonna be like two peas in a pod! I will keep practicing. This whole getting-to-know-God thing is a ton of fun.

I'll bet you can't wait to read what happens next week...
Peace out!

--Anna Grace