I love to ask God to speak to me; but I usually find “listening to God” the hardest thing for me to do for the obvious reason. I won’t be done telling Him what I want to tell Him that quickly and easily. So, after I say, “LORD, please speak to my heart,” within a minute, I begin another brand new prayer that I forgot to pray.

But sometimes when I feel like the bottom is falling out, I run out of words and I just sit before God and wait for Him to speak to me. I always write if I feel like God is speaking to me. I write everything my heart brings to my attention as a message from God; I write because I want to filter out the message through the Word of God. Sometimes my heart itself creates its own dream as a message from God; or my fear itself speaks to me and I deny them all to pass through my heart because the Word of God clearly says, “They are not from Me.”

But every once in awhile, I feel like God is speaking directly to my heart and the Word of God affirms it in different ways.

So, recently God spoke to my heart and I kind of didn’t want to accept it as the message from God. I said to myself, “This is not from God.” But I knew it was but I didn’t want to accept it because I was very scared.

Oh, what a merciful God we serve! What a loving Father we worship! What a Friend we have in Jesus!

God knew I was scared. He knew that what He said to me was hard for me to believe and accept. So He orchestrated something beautiful.

So, I attended one prayer meeting one of my friends invited me to attend. There were seven or eight people there and didn’t know anyone of them except my friend. Within five minutes into the prayer, one of the brothers in Christ there got up, came to me and said, “The LORD is telling me this to tell you that – – -” and he told me what God told me in my secret place. God confirmed the message for me. I was very comforted. The peace and the joy of God filled my heart but there was still some remnant of fear which sprang out from my “unbelieving and doubtful” heart; a heart which found it hard to take God at His Word.

And after that incident, few days have passed and one morning, I was not able to get up from my bed. I was very sick. I didn’t leave my bed but stayed in my bed and started to think what had transpired in my life the previous days. So, I started thinking what I ate or did to cause me that kind of debilitating pain.

Then I said to my husband, “You know what, this sickness is not caused by anything but it is an attack of the devil because the devil knows how to take God at His Word. Satan believes God more than I believe in God. So, he heard what I heard and he wanted to get rid of me because he knows that if God says it, it shall come to pass.”

We laughed. That day went by and I became well again but that lesson stayed with me and I learned to pray this way: LORD, please help me to believe in You as much as my enemy believes in You. Help me to take You at Your Word as my enemy does.

Listen what the Bible says: “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” James 2:19

Think about it! Unless we believe God, how can we take a step of faith? We can’t. Once we believe God and learn to take Him at His Word, the first step of faith we take differentiates us from our enemy because our step of faith brings glory to Jesus Christ; that is the one thing devil cannot do. ///