Unexpected Revelations

I woke up at about 3:30 this morning, thinking about the class I'm planning to teach this Sunday to my guy friends at Highland. As I've mentioned before, we're going through the marvelous John Eldredge book, Waking the Dead. The more I get into it the more I realize why it had such a profound impact on my life when I read it a couple years ago.

As I lay in bed in my sleeplessness, the class seemed to come together. Stories. A film clip. A meditation exercise at the end of class. I love how God provides these revelations at the most unexpected times and moments -- although I'd prefer that He do it at 3 in the afternoon rather than 3 in the morning!

Since I couldn't sleep, I finally got up, heated up a cup of milk (someone once told me that warm milk will help you get back to sleep) and wrote two pages of all the thoughts that were rolling around in my head. Then I read the rest of the chapter that I'll be covering this Sunday. The class is pretty much done. Even though I may drift off to sleep around 2 this afternoon, I am thankful to the Lord for giving me that early morning revelation.

Have you found that God speaks to you at times in the most unexpected ways and in the most unlikely places? At times when I've worked on a class, a chapter of a book or some talk that I needed to give, that I at times got stuck. An illustration won't come to mind. An opening story stubbornly refuses to surface. But then when I go get a cup of coffee in the break room or hop in my truck to run an errand, suddenly the story or illustration pops in my mind.

And I've found that the middle of the night in those frustrating, sleepless states that the Lord often speaks to me in ways that provide a solution to a a problem or a new idea that I had never considered. I'm just wondering that perhaps when our minds are at ease -- not all tied up with worries and frustrations and over-analyzing things -- that we're most open to the Spirit. He speaks into our heart things that we may not have heard or been open to because of all our thinking. Now, I'm not downplaying the value of using our thinking and common sense. However, I am saying that for those in Christ who have the Spirit of Jesus in us, we have the wonderful privilege of Him speaking to our hearts. As Paul says in Romans 8, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

I'm just wondering that if we keep our minds soaked in Scripture, stay in a spirit of prayer and avoid evil, we'll hear the Lord speak to us in all sorts of ways. Yes, I am convinced that one of the primary He communicates to us is through His written word. And yet when I read this prayer of Paul's, I'm reminded that God speaks to the believer's heart:

"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe." -- Eph. 1:18 - 19a (emphasis mine)

And He speaks to our hearts what we need to hear more than anything -- whether it's a gentle rebuke, a warning, comfort, assurance that He is there, or a love song. I want to be ever attentive to these unexpected revelations from our Father God -- even when He knocks on the door of my heart in the middle of the night.

How has He spoke to you lately in surprising and unexpected ways?

Jim