Hearing from God

So, a lot of you have been posting things about not really experiencing God here...for yourselves, in your normal lives...but I want to challenge you in saying that there is no need for this to happen! It's true that God will take you through spouts of spiritual dryness, to show you that you absolutely need Him, but that doesn't mean we can't hear from Him, even through those times! I want to ask you all a couple of questions:

1. Do you know who you are in Christ?
For those of you who were in the service today, I guess this is kind of like when Pastor Chet said that we need to come to the realization that we cannot be completed by any other person (not even through marriage)...only by God. This is just my personal belief, but I think that before you start dating, you need to establish yourself as a woman of God. Otherwise, it becomes incredibly easy to compromise yourself and settle for "completion" through the world.

2. Are you always waiting for some big flashy sign from God?
Being natural (carnal), we want to hear or see or touch the Holy Spirit naturally. We want a natural sign! And sometimes God does send us natural signs...but the Holy Spirit does not operate naturally, but supernaturally and spiritually! What does this mean? We need to be in tune to God's voice spiritually! And how do we start to hear God's voice? It all starts in His Word! The more you know of the Word, the harder you will be to deceive. The harder you are to deceive, the harder it will be for Satan to get you off track, and when you are on track, fighting the good fight of faith, then you will live victoriously. God does not only want to help us in what we have labelled "spiritual stuff". He wants to be a part of our lives on every level! He wants us to ask him to help us wake up, do our hair, get dressed, and drive to school. And I want to be a part of all of your lives on every level, too! (I threw this in here because I noticed that Katelynn posted a thing on her other shared blog and said that it was too random and pointless for the One Way blog. No way! We want to be involved in even the most pointless and random things, and so does God!) Anyway, it's like Mike said this morning: eternal life (or life to the full) doesn't start when you die: it starts now! I'm not sure if this means anything to anyone, but I felt like I should share this with you guys! I want to leave you with something that my mentor told me:

In order to hear God, we need to get into his Word! Why? Because...
from God's word comes faith
From faith comes hope
From hope comes joy
From joy comes strength
and from strength comes the VICTORY!

Amen and amen, again and again!
He takes over my scars and I put my life in His.

Oh, and just to follow suit to Grace and Katelynn, if you guys want to read my blog (which hasn't been updated in ages!), you can check it out at http://anotherdayapart.blogspot.com