You cannot set out on a mystical journey, a trip dictated by the silent voice, and then expect....

You cannot set out on a mystical journey, a trip dictated by the silent voice, and then expect to complete the journey listening to your own or other minds.

God I’ve got a good friend who spends his whole life asking you for the next step in his journey but you are just about driving him mad. 

Why?

Because you avoid his questions and talk instead about other things. You won’t answer his question. What’s he supposed to do? Come on God you need to give him some answers.

Mark your friend needs to listen.

That makes it sound like he’s not listening already??

He’s definitely listening to me. There’s no problem there. Listen carefully Mark – this is a mystery that both your friend, and you and others like you need to hear.

So why say he needs to listen to you if he already is?

For that very reason. He needs to listen to me because he already IS listening to me.

WHAT?? God can you try and make sense please.

He already is listening to me Mark, he’s made that commitment, he’s chosen that way.

Yes and God??

Which means he needs to listen more. He has no choice now - other than to continue listening. That’s true by definition, by logic, by sequential and ‘next-obvious-step’ thought.

Meaning?

Meaning you humans have two choices. You can lead a life listening to your own counsel, yours and others. You can listen to common sense, yours and others, or you can listen to me.

And you’re saying my friend is already listening to you?

Yes. You know he is.

So why say he needs to listen to you?

If he’s already listening to me he has no choice other than to keep doing so. He is now on a course brought about by listening to me, so he has no option other than to listen to me for the next step. The next sequentially obvious, logical, rational step in this journey can only come from listening to me.

You cannot set out on a mystical journey, a trip dictated by the silent voice, and then expect to complete the journey listening to your own or other minds. Won’t work. If you start the journey listening to me you’re going to have to complete it that way. No choice. If he wants to change the rules he’ll have to go back to where his current journey started. I don’t mean his Christian journey, I mean the journey where he decided to live his life listening to me. There is a difference Mark. Most Christians lead their lives listening to their own and others counsel, not mine. Yes the counsel they listen to is often godly, but it isn’t God.

However your friend is one of the few who have decided to be as you put it, mad enough to listen to my silent voice for everything he does, not just the spiritual stuff but the doing life decisions too. So now he has no choice other than to keep listening. Anyone can see that.

He must keep listening or go back to the place he stopped listening to his own and others’ counsel and started listening to me. Anyone can see that’s the case, even an atheist can tell you that. And Mark this isn’t just for your friend, it’s for you. For you and anyone else ‘mad enough’ to break the modern ‘Christian’ model and give their life to listening to me. It’s a theological, doctrinal, spiritual, logical, real-time, real-life fact. Just saying.

Why?

Because you and your friend and others like you – you like me ‘just saying’.

Well okay God but as my friend and I both agreed the other night that sort of talk from you is VERY frustrating.

Why so?

Because although you just said a lot, a lot of specific statements, there’s no real clear conclusion one can take from anything you said. There’s NOTHING at all to tell my friend what he should do next.

Actually, although criticism is far from me, I have to disagree Mark. There is SO much in what I just said, so many real clear conclusions, so much to tell you BOTH what you should do next. In fact what I just said is so world-shifting, doctrine and theology shattering that generation after generation, century after century, millennia after millennia of brilliant men studying hard have never managed to uncover it. And they won’t. Neither can they. Because truth Mark, the truth that matters comes swiftly, and slowly too – it comes silently, treading softly, and yet it comes playing a full marching tune.

What the heck God??

Listen Mark. There is truth here that theologians would give their whole lives, have done so, to learn. They have missed it, and yet here I am flipping it to the two of you and whoever else wants to hear it. Plopping it down in your midst just because you decided to have a conversation with me on wet Friday holiday afternoon.

Ok. I can feel it God, but I can’t see it. What is this truth you’re saying you’re flipping to us, plopping down in front of us?

You think, you and millions of others deceived by his disgusting lies, that you ask me a question and that I then keep you waiting. That I do it to test you, or to build you somehow. Religion has fooled you to think that I will answer, if at all, ‘in the sweet bye and bye’, but that is NOT scriptural. Not at all. The point, the real truth is diametrically opposed to that nonsense. Here’s how it really works; You ask me a question and I hear you immediately and I answer immediately.

AND. IF. YOU. TAKE. THE. TIME. TO. PUT. SHAPE. ON. MY. ANSWER. YOU. WILL. HEAR. IT. INSTANTLY.

So what are you saying God? Are you saying that my friend isn’t taking the time?

Not at all. He’s taking the time. But like you he so often looks for the answer he is looking for. That’s ok. That’s the lie that Religion, Church and organised Christianity has taught you. You and millions of others think you have left all that behind but look again - the Demon Religion has his tentacles around your feet and your neck and your mouth.

You ask a question about your future and because the answer doesn’t seem to mirror your question you think I haven’t answered. Because my answer doesn’t sound like an answer you think I am deaf to you.

Not so Mark. I have answered. Instantly! You, the two of you, and many like you are miles ahead of the crowd. If you know how to listen you are miles ahead. If you know that I speak you are miles ahead. If you know to expect to hear, if you know that your mess is irrelevant to your ability to hear then you are light years ahead. And you do. You know all that already.

And how have you learned that? You have learned those world shattering, Religion-killing truths when you have asked about something completely different. Those are truths that thousands of theologians and pastors and teachers have completely missed. They have searched for those things for centuries and yet you have heard them instantly when you have asked a seemingly completely different question. When you have asked about something else, I have told you those things.

Is that because you’re not interested in our original question?

Not at all. Those ARE the answers to your original questions. The truth I am unfolding here for you in this conversation is that the answer to your question is the answer EVEN IF IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR QUESTION. It is still the answer. It is really the answer.

This is mystical Mark, a riddle and yet truth in plain sight. You like a mystery. This is one, but a simple one. If I tell you that you can hear me, and that your hearing is irrespective of your moral state, then that’s actually the answer to your question – even if your question was ‘What do you want me to do with my life God?’

If you trusted me to provide for you then you’d be able to hear me speak the earth shattering truths I want to speak before we get up and deal with the next pressing need in your life. I know whether it’s pressing, I know how pressing it is, far better than you do, and I’ll tell you what to do about it if you stay in conversation with me. 

The bible points out that I care enough to respond to those who seek me. When you ask a question you open up the heart of God for you and it begins to pour out all over you. Fellowship, relationship, interaction. A conversation Mark, by definition allows the other to talk about what they want to talk about, to answer your question the way they want to. Sometimes I’m answering your question direct, sometimes I’m laying the foundation on which I can tell you what I want to tell you. But the answer I give you is the answer to your question. I am NOT changing the subject, I have too much respect for you, am too polite to do that.

There’s something I can hear you trying to say??

Yes. I just want conversation. The conversation is for my purposes AND yours. We’ll do this together. When I don’t appear to answer that’s not because I haven’t it’s because of one of two things – either you’re not listening, or you are listening and you hear the answer but it doesn’t sound like what you want me to say.

Is that enough?

For now.

The Freedom Diaries will stretch you. It describes Mark’s real life struggle with Doubt as he discovered that he could hear God’s voice every day.Dr Mark Virkler. Author of 4 Keys to hearing God’s Voice. Buffalo. New York.

Like a child on Christmas morning, I was delighted to discover how simple yet wonderful it is to place my hand into the hand of God and listen to his whispers and enjoy his affection.  I could only ask why no one had ever told me he was this good and this close.  I wish I had read this book a long, long time ago.  Daniel Walker. Founder and Executive Director of Nvader. Author of God in a brothel.

This is new and exciting. It’s not the idea of hearing from God that’s new, it’s having conversations back and forth, question and answers. That’s new for most of us. Now I am enjoying my own conversations with God, which always leave me with hope. David Garratt of Scripture in Song. Hawaii.