How & Where My Journey Started of Hearing God.
As a born Christian, I always grew up hearing that God hears and that I could talk to Him too but practically nobody taught me how to hear the voice of God till I turned 15!
It was 2016 December(when I wasn’t a part of FOLJ), about some 88 people from the church were going on a trip to Sattal, Nanital and I hardly knew a person or two. A lot happened from the church having to cancel buses to booking an entire railway carriage but to put this in short, my mom forcefully took me along (the only time she’s forced me honestly for which I’m grateful now :p) and man!!
In one of the sessions on the trip, Pastor Ankit Sajwan(now my spiritual father), taught about imagination from Matthew where it says, even if you look at someone with lustful eyes, it’s already done in the eyes of God. Now I had heard a lot of preachers preach from that verse stating not to sin but this was different, he continued after reading the verse saying that this is also true for imagining the opposite and that immediately caught my attention!!
And he continued saying that when I imagine giving Jesus a hug, He’s receiving it in Heaven so towards the end he played some instrumental, asked us all to imagine a bench, a garden and imagine Jesus walking toward us and hear that still small voice speaking to us and right there I had my first one on one encounter with Jesus!!
I’ll be super transparent with y’all, recently around that time someone had called me a characterless girl, and I was already an orphan in spirit who didn’t know her identity or worth so deep down I was really wounded. I wasn’t at all thinking about this when we sat down to hear God and it wasn’t like a movie started playing too but I “intentionally” had to imagine a garden, a bench and Jesus coming toward me and that’s when I heard Him say, “My daughter, I’ve made you in My image and likeness” and bam! I broke into tears and got healed of this wound that I didn’t even know was there and it’s been a beautiful journey of healing from there. Trust me y’all, I used to be the exact opposite of how I am now!
Later at the bonfire, people saw angels, clouds, swords and what not! And I was really bummed because I couldn’t, haha. I remember walking up to my pastor and asking him why I couldn’t and all he said was “right now just imagine the Father loving you and as you keep doing that, there’ll be a time when the Holy Spirit will take hold of it”. His answer didn’t excite me much but I did exactly what he said and grew from hearing for myself to hearing for others and the prophetic for all who know me now 😉 So that’s pretty much how I started hearing God.
I’m gonna end this with saying that please don’t believe lies that only people on stage, big known men of God or only prophets can hear His voice and prophesy. I believe all of us can hear the Father’s voice and prophesy but not everyone is a prophet. The gift and the office are two different things, I’ll talk more about the prophetic soon but just like how we have natural senses, we have spiritual senses too that need to be practiced in order to grow in it!
P.s.- It all starts as a seed, so go nurture it!!
Love, Nat.
Sword Of Light 