I spoke with a friend yesterday with the exact opposite dilemma; he’s very social and can’t tell if he’s being led by the Holy Spirit when he approaches someone or just being his normal friendly self. But didn’t God make my friend this way? And if He did, didn’t He intend for my friend to function in the way he was made?

Now, I admit that sometimes our gifts and abilities get in the way of what God wants to do because we rely on our own strength… but yet it is God who gifted us. How do we know that we’re not operating out of our own strength?

I believe the answer is surrender. Surrender to the Holy Spirit sanctifies our motives and enhances our natural gifting. God will always take us way beyond where our natural abilities could ever have taken us.

Whenever you feel a tug to follow your natural inclinations, pause for a second and ask the Holy Spirit if this is where He’s leading you.

We may not always get it right, but certainly it pleases the heart of God that we would pause to ask.

What a great question. I can’t think of any scripture verses that speak to that question directly, but I believe we can draw upon some fundamental things we know about God through His Word that gives us some clues about why God doesn’t regularly speak in an audible voice.

Have you ever been in your home trying to work on a project with a lot of noise going on? I have a wonderful gift of being able to completely tune things out. Someone can be speaking to me from somewhere in the house, and I simply won’t hear them. My wife sometimes says, “Hey, Ken!”, and then I return from my manly place.

Clearly I’m disconnected from what’s happening around me. I’m there but I’m not there. I think it’s safe to say that my family and I aren’t sharing an intimate moment.

The heart of our Father is to have a moment by moment intimate walk with us. I believe He speaks so quietly because He’s always pursuing us. If He was loud all the time we would start tuning Him out. He is wooing a listening ear from the one whom he loves so deeply.

Our listening ear will follow our affections. Isn’t it amazing how a mother can easily pick up her child’s cry from a busy playground? Her ear follows the one she loves.

I want a listening heart. There are so many places my Father wants to take me. He wants to visit with me all day long. He never gets tired of my company; never gets bored with me. Amazing! I get bored with myself, but He never tires of me!

What a wonderful Dad.

I seem to run into this kind of spirituality often. People will acknowledge that there’s some greater being out there, and those who consider themselves spiritual make attempts at interacting with that being, but are unwilling to acknowledge the exclusive claims of Christ.

Every time I step into a conversation like this I feel extremely incapable of saying anything that will influence a person towards the Gospel. Their philosophies feel like tangled fishing line and I have no idea where to start. I know that if I begin pulling in the wrong places the tangle will get worse yet.

It was such a temptation to draw on some cork of my Bible knowledge and try to plug all the bad theology pouring out. Instead, I asked the Holy Spirit to show me where He was going and to help me follow Him there.

After I prayed a simple question dawned on me (obviously a God thing) and I asked Tony, “If it’s important to listen to the Divine Being for those answers, don’t you think it’s important to listen to Him for the way of salvation?”

He immediately responded, “I suppose you’re right!”, and had the most wonderful opportunity to share the way of salvation. Tony did not make a commitment that day, but the Holy Spirit threw open the door so that the Good News could be introduced.

I waited until the car had stopped, and as the young man stepped out of his car I asked him if he knew he had a flat tire.  He didn’t… and I offered an easy fix to his problem… a can of flat repair that I always carry in my trunk.

He immediately refused my offer of the flat repair, but said he had a spare tire in his trunk, and then admitted that he had never changed a tire in his life.  I sensed what I should do; I offered to show him how to change a flat tire.

After situating the car under cover, I proceeded to show him step by step how to change a tire.  The whole time I had no idea how to introduce Jesus into the conversation.  “Holy Spirit, please show me what you’re doing so I can follow you there!”

Isn’t it interesting how the Holy Spirit leads us through a situation one step at a time?  We would prefer to have the whole course charted before launching… but that doesn’t seem to be how God works.  Most of the time we have to wait for what I call; “The Divine Segue”.  This is where you wait for God’s prompting on where to go next with the conversation.

I was showing this young man how to tighten the bolts evenly around the tire.  He remarked, “Just like tightening the skin of a drum!”  My mind flashed to the ticket I had in my pocket to a Christian concert.  “So you’re a musician?”  I asked.

We talked about music a little bit and I had a perfect opportunity to give him an invitation to a musical event at our church.

I knew this was exactly what the Holy Spirit had in mind the whole time; and I walked away knowing that I got to partner with my Father.  There’s nothing more wonderful!