Awareness Test

*I wrote the following post yesterday. However the internet was down and I was unable to post it. Enjoy!

So today was not so much of an overload as yesterday.
We actually stayed mostly on track with the lecture today, which was a miracle. We learned about all the different ways God spoke to people in the Bible, and how that relates to us now.

In class he showed us a video of an awareness test:

He related this video to how unless we are specifically listening for God’s voice, it is very easy to miss.

We also talked about journaling, and the different ways to journal. I find journaling, and blogging for that matter, to be very therapeutic, because it forces me to actually sift through my thoughts and put them down in an understandable format. This transfers over wonderfully to my time that I journal with God, because I am able to think through my prayers more specifically, and it clears my cluttered mind, making it much easier to hear God’s voice.

Later on, when we were talking more about hearing God’s voice, Timo had us do an exercise. He told us to picture ourselves as a ship, and ask God what kind of ship we were, and just let him speak to us. It was fascinating to hear all the different things each of us got from the same exercise.
Mine was rather unique, because I had never gotten anything wit such specifics before.
As the ship in my mind took form I saw it was white with the deck being a rich, deep, rosewood.

It was a large ship. It wasn’t a cruise ship, but it did carry many people. Some of the people were missionaries, and other Christians, on their way to the next stop, and others were refugees seeking shelter and hope.  This touched me, because I love to help people who are hurting or need a friend, and I realized God sees that and loves it.

Then I realized it was a steam ship, running on fuel, and the fuel was burning incense. For those of you who do not know what incense represents, in the Bible, it represents worship and praise. This is significant to me because I love to worship God, and write songs to sing and praise him. Doing this reenergizes me in a way, or “refuels” me.
Then Timo asked us to picture Jesus coming aboard our boat.

As I pictured this, I saw Jesus walking aboard. As he did he touched the passengers on the boat, healing them, encouraging them, helping them. As I watched though, he did more. He got out a bucket of soap and a scrubber, and began cleaning the dirt from the deck of the ship. I heard him whisper into my mind, “I’m not afraid to do the dirty work in order to make you clean. Don’t be ashamed of your mess. Come to me.”
This just blew me out of the water. Wow. God loves me so much! He is willing to scrub the dirty decks of my life because he loves me that much. Wow.

The whole experience was amazing, because rarely has God ever been so specific with me. The more I think about it now though, maybe I just haven’t often given him that much of an opportunity.