By AIC Brian J.
I have shared with you a few of the entries into my God Talking Journal, which is my daily writings where I listen for God’s voice and write what I hear. I hope you have enjoyed them. I picked two more and hope you find value in them. For this to work you have to imagine God is speaking to you and sharing His heart with you.
July 3rd, 2020. 10:30 PM. Being an encourager is really at the base of My heart. Love encourages. Pride and indifference towards someone shows no reason to encourage. It shows you don’t really care about that person, but love does genuinely care. Coupled with wisdom, love sees every great value present and encourages the ones I love. Love simply desires to build and becomes a barometer of your love for a person. Do you really wish to encourage them? All people should be worth encouraging. It’s impossible for you to do this for everyone, so just be sensitive to the Spirit and boost those I bring to you. Your words are very important. What a huge difference they can make.
This next entry has limited application, but I feel compelled to put it in here anyway. Unless God has been leading you with these concepts, it might not fully speak to you. Perhaps God will use it with the one for whom it was intended.
July 4th, 2020. 10:49 PM. Can you peel back the layers to get to the root? It’s always the root that needs discovery. Many people are more concerned about the effect of the root, than the root itself. The effect is meaningless. It’s the root that needs to go. You could spend hours and days listening to all the details of every symptom and never address the root. That’s a poor use of time and bad counseling practice. Cut through the endless details and bring all attention to the root. This will upset those who don’t care why an issue is, but just want one symptom to stop. These people are not ready to be counseled but should be prayed for. It is a waste of valuable time to address a single symptom. You must show how it stems from a root. Ask questions that lead them to see the answer (while you pray silently for the Holy Spirit to show them.) This is a great way for them to find their own answer. This is good counseling practice, and it does not waste time.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Romans 12:1-2
I hope these entries are a blessing to you like they were to me when I received them. Brian