Before I went to the park today right across the road, I decided to grab my binder, which I never do take my binder to the park but have been wanting too just incase something comes to mind. When I get to the park a friend is there playing basket ball as always and we started talking about Christianity and stuff again. Well today he started talking about “The Four Keys to Hearing God’s Voice. As he started to talk about them I thought to myself, I knew there was a reason I brought my binder today. So I had him write everything down. He started to tell me the four steps.
1. Quiet yourself down, stillness
2. Vision, Fix your eyes on Jesus. Along with this he gave a prayer. Holy spirit take over the scene, anoint the vision.
3. Spontaneity, tune to flow, rivers of living water. By this he was talking about the holy spirit.
4. Journaling, write down all spontaneous thoughts.
Shortly after he left, I went to the nearby gazebo and opened my binder to get all of my notes and paper out. I couldn’t thing of anything to write to I just started with why people use this planet as a trash can and are too lazy to hold the responsibility to keep it clean, as well as we become upset and angry when natural disasters happen but we don’t even take care of our planet. Then at that moment a sudden thought or voice came into my head, “I need to speak with Jesus”. The initial thought following that was go to the pond, which wasn’t too far away from my home or where I was located at the time. I knew this would be a quiet place where there wouldn’t much or any distractions. When I got over two the pond, on one of the mini islands I guess you could call them, there is a structure with a cement flooring, four pillars on each side and a pointed roof, to me it looks like something that would be in China. I walked under the structure and was thinking about how cold it was and was wondering about how long I would be able to withstand it outside. I put my binder and Tropicana on the cement slab next to one of the pillars and decided to walk towards the water. Standing there for just a few moments I thought I saw something in the water and went to fetch a stick but discovered the mystery that lay in the water was simply an acorn that has been in there for some passed amount of time. A few more moments I figured I would go back under the structure and sit down around the corner of the pillar that supported my binder’s sitting upright on it’s backbone. As I was sitting there, by body was stretched out in the structure that my feet were going in the direction of next pillar across the slab. I was trying to remember exactly what it was that Jon was telling me about the Four Keys to Hearing God’s Voice but the more I started in this process of thinking, my intention redirected it’s self to seeing God in nature. My friend had given me some mp4 audio tracks on sermons a few weeks back when we had just started communicating. The files he had were incompatible with his mp3 player’s format, so he asked me if I could find a way to transfer them into a file type compatible and I agreed to. In doing so I copied the files to my computer as well and on my way to returning his flash drive to him I was skimming through the sermons. One title that happened to grab my attention was called, “Making the Spiritual Switch”. Listening to this is where I heard seeing God in nature and through your surroundings.
So while I was sitting under the structure I started looking around at the water, trees, rocks, and animals that were around me. I remembered the first two steps of the four, stillness and vision. As I sat there I tried to calm by body and mind and just focus and listen with quietness. Somehow or for some reason I skipped the second part and went right to the third and fourth, spontaneity tuning into flow and writing down all thoughts. As I calmed myself both physically and mentally things just started coming to me by looking at nature.
Here is what came to me:
I started looking at the water and how it reflected the surroundings and god a parable of the living water. “The living waters, the human spirit, in side of the body is a reflection of the holy spirit of God.
The more I though about this something else was added to this, the only time you can see a reflection in the water is when light is present. “ When light is shined upon, all things are seen clearly, all things in reflection.
The more I state like the the more came to me. I was trying to figure out what coming to me was just my thoughts, or divine intervention. Then the would love came to mind. After a second of pondering this, “ there there is love there is peace” arose through my thoughts.
Continuing sitting there, I started looking around some more at the nature around me and noticed a small plant, aside from the grass, was next to me. Then to my right across the pond a goose stretched and flapped it’s wings. This grabbing my attention I looked that direction and then looked up towards the sun, thought for a second and resumed gazing at the plant next to me gracefully planted in the ground And another thought arose. Just as a plant of the day, when we reach for the light, grow and blossom. And just as the seed of a plan, placed on rocky foundation, shall bear no future life.
When I finished writing, I started noticing the cold again and my thoughts started to flutter again in my head. So I collected my stuff and headed off.
I saw my friend at the park again and followed him to his house where he gave me more info. on the Four Keys and who was behind the steps. This is where I stop typing and look more into it.
Peace.