HIS BREATH AGAINST YOUR CHEEK
Sakkie Parsons
Translated from Afrikaans: Sy Asem teen jou wang”
Translator: Robin Barker
I had a conversation with someone about the Lord’s voice and hearing the Lord’s voice, then that person asked me, if I would not write something about hearing God’s voice within our lives.
The following arose in my heart after I prayed about it:
There are a few ways our Lord speaks to us –
The Lord speaks to us for example through an audible voice, or through dreams, visions, or through other people. Then I also want to say (with most people), through our hearts/conscience and especially through His Word, naturally under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
At this point I want to say something about the last mentioned item:
In the Old Testament, people did not have the Holy Spirit living within themselves and they also did not have the complete Word of our Lord available to themselves and that is why they sometimes, to put it that way, struggle to hear our Lord’s voice.
As an example, Gideon required confirmation three times from our Lord before he believed that it was truly our Lord who had spoken to him.
I want to especially mention this about Gideon; because he is such a good example of what I was meaning about how blessed we are as Christians who have our Lord’s Holy Spirit living within us, together with His complete Word which was given to us.
2 TIM 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
2 TIM 3:17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Just look at how our Lord speaks to Gideon and how clearly it would be for you and me, if our Lord was to manage us today in the same way as He did with Gideon. We who have the Holy Spirit within us, as well as having the complete Word of our Lord available to us:
JUDGES 6:19-21
19 Gideon went inside, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him under the oak.
20 The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so.
21 Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of the staff that was in his hand. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared.
I am sure you and I would have certainly known and not wondered about, whether our Lord had spoken to us or not, but Gideon did.
Now remember, what Gideon had just experienced, and you can read further but then we arrive at Judges 6:36 where we read:
JUDGES 6:36-40
36 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—
37 look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.”
38 And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water
Even that was not enough for Gideon. Because Gideon did not have the Holy Spirit within him and also did not have the Word of our Lord that he could consult it.
We read further:
39 Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.”
40 That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.
Someone wants to shout out loudly:
“Wow, how much disbelief is that!”
But you know, I do not think that the unbelief was that much.
Gideon was just not so wonderfully equipped by the Holy Spirit and knowledge of the Word as you and I are, now I have arrived at the subject I truly wanted to share with you –
The most wonderful, to put it that way, thing that a person can do is to accept Jesus as your Redeemer and Saviour, because then you have the Holy Spirit living within you and you are gloriously on the road to Heaven, but – and now I may certainly shock some people –
To have the Holy Spirit living within you is not enough to always hear our Lord’s voice clearly and gloriously.
You and I have a will of our own and the Holy Spirit can only work through me, allowing me to hear our Lord’s voice, if I give control of my life to the Holy Spirit and study the Word of our Lord, which He has made available to us.
Many people are ruined and destroyed, on their way to hell – just because they do not talk with our Lord and study His Word daily.
HOS 4:6 my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ….
The words “lack of knowledge” (not knowing me) means; “They are not dedicated to Me”
PSA 119:105 Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Many people, who live that way – by not giving the Holy Spirit opportunity to control their lives, will turn their backs on our Lord later on in life and to put it that way, they throw what Jesus did for us at Golgotha, back in His face.
HEBREWS 6:4-6
4 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,
5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age
6 and who have fallen[a] away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
For you and I who already have the Holy Spirit living within us, we must daily spend time with our Lord and study His Word – the closer we come to Him and the deeper our relationship becomes with Him, until your life becomes one with Him, well that is what I believe, that when He speaks to you, you can almost feel His Godly breath against your face.
Let me tell you about someone’s life, who during his later life lived close to our Lord, that he later, so to say, I believe, when he spoke with our Lord, he could feel our Lord’s breath against his cheek. If you think you have lived such a bad life, that you could never have such a deep loving relationship with our Lord, remember that this man was involved with several murders concerning Christians.
Yet the following testimony is given about my great hero Paul:
ACTS 19:11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul,
ACTS 19:12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
You see –
If our Lord has forgiven you, then you certainly know you have been forgiven.
1 JOHN 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Then, if you allow the Holy Spirit to work in your life, you can be assured, the Holy Spirit will do the work:
JOHN 14:12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
In the end our Lord allowed Paul to write the majority of the New Testament and I think that Paul later, so to say, could feel the glorious godly breath against his cheek, so close was his relationship with our Lord, when our Lord spoke with him.
I want to invite you to join with me to strive towards that, that we also have such a gloriously close relationship with our Lord, that we, so to say, can feel the gloriously godly breath against our cheek when our Lord speaks to us.
If you and I manage to attain this in our lifetime I do not know, but let your and my attitude concerning this matter be identical, which was also Paul’s at that time:
PHI 3:12-15
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Following Paul’s Example
15 All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
Greetings,
Sakkie