Actually I also started out like anybody else. I had to develop my ability to hear God over time. He healed me a lot and I credit working with the inner healing ministry Cleansing Streams with a lot of my inner healing. It seems very basic but going through systematic deliverance so many times, as I led small groups through it a few times, healed my heart and cast out my fear and rejection. I began to hear God better as I was more whole. Jesus even told me HEALING always brings HEARING.
But I remember a few years before that, when I was still going to a smaller church, before I could hear God so clearly, I started meeting with people during the weeknights at my house for prayer and bible study but I was told I had to stop! It was unauthorized and I was rebelling the pastor of the small church said! He was not allowing me to hold personal meetings in my own house, over an hour away from town on a weeknight, with my personal friends!
I felt confused and guilty until I heard God speak to me and he clarified my own heart motives to me, and told me that it was untrue what they were saying about me. I was not being rebellious but I wanted to help people. Also Jesus said, I knew it was him talking, that they even called his servant David a rebel and others who were faithfully serving God, so not to take it to heart. Oh I still do stupid things, I’m not guiltless, but I let God judge me, instead of people or even myself. As Paul also said.
1Co 4:4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
So that’s why I now think its BEST to let God tell us what is really going on. We don’t even often know our own motives! Jesus said also, he did not judge by what he SAW but by what he HEARD the Spirit tell him. We MUST judge by the Spirit, not by appearances, logic or trends, history patterns, old habits or accusations. Make a RIGHT judgment.
Vison of Ministry and God’s LOVE for Difficult People
I had one of my first visions in many years then and it was comparing that pastor’s ministry with mine. I did not understand it. I saw him as a DOT and around him was the people he influenced and it was like his ministry influence. I was nearby, also as a DOT, and I also was inside a cloud of the influence I would have, it was much larger than this pastor’s area, and yet at the bottom of his area our two areas overlapped, but mine kept going. I took it to be a prediction of my ministry, and that it would be bigger than his, yet we would overlap; I was hoping it meant he would stop treating me so badly and we could work together. Soon however God let me leave his church, gave me a dream of the situations in a new church and asked me to go to that new church, actually spoke to me to go to that new church, the one where he trained me as a prophet that I have so much to share about. My previous pastor was FURIOUS that I left and attacked me, convening a council to have me officially rebuked in front of the new church’s leadership. They invited me to come to a meeting far out in the New Territories to discuss financial support for my fledging ministry. It was odd, I didn’t know the people and not been that far away from the city in years. When I got there it turns out it was a lie to trick me to come to a disciplinary meeting, as if I would not go if I knew what it was actually for. It was awful embarrassing … for him, to act so badly. It turns out he had people spying on me, pretending to be my friends, coming to my house, to try to find things to accuse me of. No wonder God let me leave his church. He never liked me going there to begin with, so why was he so vindictive when I left? It just confused and hurt me. I could not understand his behavior.
Later I realized my interpretation of this vision of our two ministries overlapping was maybe not quite what I first assumed. I did not know God could explain it to me at the time, so my first guess was it was a view of the distant future, but it was just the impact each of us would have in the local community during that season.
That pastor always changed the goal posts to try to keep me down. He first said I needed to do a full course on basic Christian beliefs before I could join them. I scored the highest grade, hands down of their home-made basic doctrines course. Better than any of his own inner circle of leaders! Then he said, knowledge is useless, its just being an empty coconut, and just did whatever he could to set a different bar. He began trying to do anything to block me, it was so upsetting, and suddenly Jesus showed me how he sees this man, I COULD SEE HIM THROUGH JESUS’ EYES ... all Jesus had for this little man, this little vindictive, jealous, insecure man was LOVE. L O V E!!! Divine Love! It was incredible!!! Jesus saw his good traits, how he cares for the people in his family group, how he has devoted his time for many years to run a church, when others would not have bothered. I was so upset with his rudeness and selfish actions towards me, faults Jesus confirmed were there and agreed with were wrong, but I also SAW how Jesus loved him!! How could I stay angry!!??
Jesus asks us to LOVE our enemies. He probably means it. Looing at people through his eyes, how can you not? It’s a very different perspective than I had on my end. I could act polite and not be mean to the man to his face, I was even not attacking him to his back … but to love him? That was just not in my heart. I could fake it, be polite, act right, but Jesus is not asking us to merely be polite. The only way we can obey God in this way is to have a new heart within us, His Heart. Which he would later begin to explain to me.