Has God Ever Spoken Directly To You? Part Two

Should anyone forbid that God is as near to us as our breath? Should anyone forbid that He knows us better than we know ourselves and that every hair on our head is numbered? Should anyone forbid that the Holy Spirit is given to lead us into all truth, not only corporately but individually as the Spirit wills in our lives? Should any one forbid that "we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us...?" Should anyone forbid that "They that worship him must worship him in spirit AND in truth?"

So, has God ever spoken directly to you? If not, then you must ask if you are truly in the faith and have truly received the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Jezabel assails the church today- accusing those who would walk in intimacy- in friendship with the Holy Spirit, of being in prelest and deception. Truly, it is this false voice that is prelest and deception and would rob each Orthodox believer from a walk of faith endued with the  dunamis power of God. This false voice would relegate believers to only that which can be touched, tasted, smelled and reasoned. It would deny the supernatural elements of our faith. For the faith of our fathers is not natural- but super-natural.

Now, we are not talking about the doctrines of the faith or that which is unchangeable, nor the canons which are the guideline to conduct and church polity. These, too, are God speaking to the whole of the church throughout time. But, how does God speak to you personally? How does he lead you? How does he make you understand, give you insight in to a matter, show you whether something be of God or of the enemy? How does He draw you into intimacy with him?

"Believers receive knowledge of God by means of various and diverse signs, by hidden illusions, by reflections, by images, by hidden and inexpressible workings, by divine revelations, by dim flashes, by the contemplation of the purposes of creation, and by many other ways through which the faith of the believer is increased day by day and ascends to the love of God.

This is not all. Moreover, God also informs believers as He did the apostles, by the sending down and the presence of the Holy Spirit. They are enlightened more perfectly and are taught by the illumination, because God is uncreated and eternal and beginningless and incomprehensible.

Those to whom it is vouchsafed to be believers are able to think and to know and to state all knowledge and science and every word of wisdom and every word of hidden knowledge, indeed even the working of miracles and the gift of prophecy and diverse kinds of tongues and interpretation of tongues, helps and administrations of cities and peoples, and the knowledge of future blessings and the achievement of the Kingdom of Heaven, sonship and to be clothed in Christ and to know the mysteries of Christ and to know the mystery of His dispensation and simply-all things such as unbelievers are unaware of- these things are taught only by means of the Spirit.

What can be more unclean, do tell me, than to try to teach the things of the Spirit without the Spirit? What can be more vile than to fail to repent and cleanse oneself, and yet discuss the things of the Spirit with would-be knowledge and to desire to dialogue on theology and wisdom in the natural only? Because if he were not to have committed any other sin (something impossible), this alone would make him deserving of eternal damnation, because 'Every one that is proud in heart before the Lord is unclean' (Prov. 16:5)." [Saint Symeon The New Theologian- Theological Chapters 1, 195] 

Has God Ever Spoken Directly To You? Part One