Listening to God's whispers

Do you ever get the feeling that God is trying to get your attention about something? Yesterday was one of those days.
I read the next chapter in my book Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets which as about praying protection for people. There was a particular bit about well-timed times to pray. The Holy Spirit often alerts people to pray for specific people, at a particular time and for a specific length of time. I identify with this as this has happened to me many times and sometimes I discovered from those people that they had been going through a difficulty or a challenge just at the moment I had been prompted to pray.

So then I came downstairs, flicked through the TV channels and seeing nothing worth watching for once went to the God Channel where Bill Hybels was preaching about God's whispers, being alert to his promptings and acting on the inward impulse of the Spirit.

In addition to this I also happen to be studying 1 Samuel at the moment. If there was ever a man who listened to the whispers of God it was him.
Commissioner Harry Read writes about him,
"Samuel emerges from these pages as a man of extraordinary sensitivity. From his earliest days he was open to God with an openness that seemed to increase rather than diminish. His relationship with God was so close that when the divine word came to him, he spoke with authroity, he knew it was God's will he was expressing and had no room for doubt. How we covet such sensitivity towards God!
Samuel was constant in his senstivity towards the needs of his people. He longed for his peple to match the plans God had for them and if he agonised over Saul he much have agonised over Israel. The cost of such senstivity is hight but to think God's thoughts is a reward of enormous consequence." (Words of life 31st January 1998)

Listening to God on behalf of others has been a large part of my ministry so perhaps he is just reminding me that in all the manic busyness of officer life I mustn't forget that.

God bless

Carol