Genesis 3:8 And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

When does God speak? It is often in the time of unanticipated difficulty and spiritual calamity when things are very strident that we become earnest to hear at once.

Almighty God knows clearly what lies ahead of us and often warns us before it happens. This truth has been a fact of God’s faithfulness to me for years and probably to you as well—if we can learn to hear it.

My personal experience is that it is often during such a time of trouble that we find God’s silence present. Many Christians tend to accept things that come to their imaginations as being God speaking to them when it is not Him.

During seasons of deep difficult valleys in life our emotions become acutely affected. This can easily influence our thinking with the situations at hand and often leaves impressions that seduce our mind into wrong perceptions that are often concluded as being a word from God.

The tendency here is that the carnal mind concludes it as fact. The imagination of the unrestrained mind now becomes a convincing fact of things that are from God when in actuality, are far from Him.

God does not speak to my imaginations. He speaks to my heart. My experiential understanding is that it is seemingly because our “imaginations are aggressively inflamed” with desire for quick understanding or solutions and this places me in territories of great danger of being led incorrectly.

After Elijah killed the 450 Baal prophets and 400 grove prophets, the voice of Jezebel became alive. This voice rose up immediately after the powerful extinction of the voices of Baal. Elijah now flees for his life. He runs for exile 360 miles through the environmental extremities of the southern deserts of Israel into Saudi Arabia.

Elijah ran to the cave where Moses spends much of his time in exile at the mountain of God, even Horeb. Elijah was desperately thirsting to hear the voice of God. He was in dire need to hear direction, approval and comfort. Elijah knew that God was at Horeb when He spoke to Israel out of fire.

Elijah also knew that God was in Horeb when the water came from the rock and quenched the thirst of millions in the dusty hot and terrible desert. It was here at the mountain of God where He told Israel that they have been here long enough; they need to leave because there is the conquering of enemy territory ahead of them.

Deuteronomy 1:6 The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: V.7 Turn you, and take your journey.

We cannot always lay our heads in the fresh waters of God’s grace and do nothing. There is a time to pursue His purposes even when it rains on us and when the battles rage.

Elijah’s desire to hear from God is evident. The desire for him to run the extreme distance in fear and agony to hear what he could hear also opened up the opportunity for everything to speak. Even the elements around him became inflamed with thunder, lightning and earthquakes. Even the wind broke the huge rocks. After all, this was where Moses stood to hear the voice of God.

Now the situation looked even more severe. Even God seemed to be in a frantic mode of wrath. Somehow in the entire dramatic earth shattering phenomenon that happened around Elijah that day, the Lord was not in any of it.
There were many things that day that caused Elijah’s emotions to hit exaggerated highs that were almost unbearable. There was only one thing that caused him to fold his mantle around his face. It was a still small voice! “What does thou here” is what the Lord said.

Elijah, go and pour oil upon the heads of common people that I have called to be kings. 7,000 have not bowed their knees to the falsehoods of Baal.Adam and Eve,in shame of their sin, were hiding among the trees. It was in the cool of the day, in the morning hours when things were quiet and refreshed, that God spoke.

God said, Adam, where art thou? Elijah, why are you here?

Jesus said, (Luke 24:38) Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

Jesus speaks to His own in a place of peace and in a peaceful way at a peaceful time. Jesus is the Prince of peace.

When He spoke to the tumultuous water in Galilee it became a place of peace because His disciples were there.

May we always remember that the shepherd leads and draws his sheep by the voice of peace? This is not the way he speaks to the enemy.

The surroundings of Jesus are framed in peace. Jesus does speak to you.Can you hear Him? Perhaps you need to go to a place of serenity where the Great Shepherd is welcome.

Leave the place of trouble. Step out of that ship you consider safe so you can hear Him and be led by Him correctly.

Let’s take a minute and go back to the instance where faith was first founded within us. Can you remember several clearly defined moments where faith allowed God to change your life?

I consider these places of influence as spiritual waypoints. These waypoints need to be kept protected and revered and spoken about by the word of our mouth. There is astounding overcoming power by the word of our testimony. It is where God placed His hand upon us and we were never same again.

God commanded Israel to carry the ark of the covenant everywhere they set their feet for a remembrance to them and their generations of the deliverance from Egypt by the mighty hand of God. This was intended to seal any questions concerning impossibilities they would encounter in their future.

God wanted Israel to assuredly know what He did once—He could certainly do it again. This ark of testimony had a power that brought surrender to everything around it. It even brought blessings to fall upon territories it rested upon. The ark held God’s authentication in time of question.

Within the ark there were three distinct items of memory necessary to carry them through the most difficult future.

The three monuments of miracles were as follows:

1. Ten inscribed laws of protection. God’s covenant law to the first children of Abraham, the father of all them that believe.
2. Manna. The sustenance of God’s natural provision in places of total impossibility.
3. Aaron’s rod that budded. Showing forth the one who God anointed and causes to bloom in the day of question.

The importance of carrying the ark of the testimony was not an option. It was all they needed according to God to sustain them all those years. But let’s see at once what happened! David speaks about this in Psalm 78. Please read the whole chapter.

Psalm 78:39 For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. V.40 How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! V.41 Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. V.42 They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. V.56 Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his testimonies: V.60 So that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; V.61 And delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand. do not understand why God delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.

I do need to understand the lesson in not robbing God’s strength by neglecting HIS testimony and forgetting the importance of remembering HIS strength and not forgetting how HE delivered me, even if it may have been years ago. The testimonies of God’s sovereign intervention concerning our life belongs to Him.

Let us protect His testimony, beginning now. Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

The testimony of God’s intervention in our life in the beginning and all the waypoints are enormously powerful! The devils, the enemies, the unbelieving, the backslidden, the discouraged, the believer, the saint, the holy and unholy need to hear it over and over again! Speak it in prayer and in the closet and in the streets and cry it from the housetop!

Declare its glory and its cleansing and saving power. Do not neglect the power of God’s testimony with you! You might say you are not where you should be at this time in your spiritual life. Let me speak this truth into your soul. Wake up to the ultimate importance of crying out God’s testimony.

Go alone with God at once and deliver this glorious experience to the throne of God. Let’s never neglect to speak forth what God has done. The testimony is His forever and it carries eternal power and strength and extreme courage in the darkest hour. If God did it once He will do it again. Carry this in your heart and watch the dross of discouragement flee like dust in the rain. Hall-elu-Jah!

When the ark and its testimony were stolen from Shiloh in 1094 BC, Shiloh went extinct and the glory of God went right with it. I have been to Shiloh several times and it is still dormant.

Where did the ark of testimony go? V.61 And delivered his strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.

When we walk away from God’s testimony in our life it goes into the hand of the enemy and there he throws it into our face with mockery and it bends us deeply into discouragement so that it becomes unbearable. Now the cherished moments of our past gaze upon us with hopelessness beyond despair! Take back the ark from the enemy at once.

The testimony belongs to God and His redeemed child. This experience will bring you back where you left off.

Isaiah 46:9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me V.10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

The Holy Spirit has developed and established a treasure within my character that I find to be the basis of all that exists around me. The treasure is the power of wisdom within a defined foundation. I have experienced intense devastation when this has been denigrated by doubt and unbelief by adversaries.

I hold dearly in my spiritual, yet practical processes of life, that a person cannot achieve a strong and enduring character or anything with value without a prepared and established foundation where God can rest His blessing upon.

We notice in Isaiah 46:9 that God has framed the world from the end result to the beginning plan. God determined the end and then framed the beginning. God has set and declared His final work and then He filled in the space with His plan.

Almighty God has a plan in place that is completely reverse from human understanding. It is planning from the end. Oh, how marvelous are thy ways oh God!

This truth applies in all phases of life. Only after we conclude the final objective, can we begin the framework and strength of the foundation.

The size and strength of the foundation in a building is always relative to the weight and size and purpose of the structure.

Many Christians operate as it were auto pilot on an airplane. Whatever happens in life is all like the law of gravity.

Nothing goes right. Sloppily we trample through life never understanding the excellent principles that bring us to places of rest, strength, courage and spiritual resilience.

Seldom is splendor found in a foundation. Seldom are we in awe of a foundation.

It is toward the structure where all the value and admiration are directed. I have never found anyone to live inside a foundation nor have ever found a structure without a foundation.

Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

What is so powerful about a true foundation? It is a place of structural rest. It is a place where plans have a place to prosper. It is a place where tests and trials surrender. Within it’s perimeter, battles stay contained.

It is a place that is not on someone else’s territory. Upon this established place others do not trespass. It is a place of containment. It is a place of authority that gives you confidence. The marvelous power of this foundation is, it has been established by a Builder greater than I.

Jesus is this foundation and all the promises within this foundation are mine to see fulfilled.

2 Corinthians 1:20 For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. V.21 Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

This anointing is the common union between Him and us for His purpose and His glory. It is to be noticed by those who walk under the constraints of the enemy, and including the enemy himself.

We now clearly understand that we have been placed upon a purchased foundation, solid as eternity.

The provision has been complete and final in Jesus. Almighty God’s plan is to fulfill and prevail by faith and strength with the overcoming power we have been placed upon.

John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Our foundation is the most powerful and enduring act that man ever needs to glorify the heavenly Father. The exceedingly firm foundation we have is the very one that God has set in place when He declared the end from the beginning.

We are in Him and completely in His plan, my Christian friend. You are anchored in a place of victory and miraculous overcoming power and you need no further provision. Only faith to fight. Remember faith fights and it fights the most powerful fight known to man.

Fight the good fight. You will always win when your fight is good! 

1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. V.10 But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.The mindset of being in love with someone is so powerful that offenses have little chance to depreciate from the value it maintains. This value becomes inseparable and as a result it endures through every obstacle it encounters. It is the strongest of man’s passions allowed by Almighty God to consummate. There is no virtue stronger than love or more enduring than love. Love literally endures all things!

When we exercise love, we open channels of inspiration, motivation and encouragement between parties that we are in union with. This interaction has immense power. It overlooks the slightest misunderstanding. It supercedes the greatest disappointments. And love even prevails over blatant disapproval from those it is in union with. The benefits of love are all by-products and not requirements. This is, at least in part, why love is the strongest virtue known to mankind. It wins in every case and it will never fail. This love is the tool of God, and it is God—for God is love! The interaction and connection between those in the bond of love opens a common truth of respect, admiration and honor that exchanges even secrets in its highest forms.

This is what happens when we are in love with Almighty God. As we endear this gracious union of excellence and strength with Almighty God through the accepted provision of Jesus the Christ, then there opens an amalgamation of a divine trust between us.

But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.

Here we see the relationship of loving God as He loves us. This love has no precondition of acceptance. Why do some have a deeper revelation of God’s truth? Why do some offer words and impressions of loving God yet have little revelation of the deeper things of God? Perhaps many love in word and not in deed. Once God opens to us things that eyes don’t see and ears don’t hear, then we must conclude that we have found a relational love that God trusts. This is truly a by-product of loving God. When God sees the reverence and the fear of God that we carry in a truth relationship with Him, then He will open the hidden manna to us so few know about.

How do I love God? It is an unconditional respect and passion to revere and genuinely worship. This form of love worships and has total trust and dependence on Almighty God, even against all odds. This worship of dependence is a delight that gives no audience to human impossibility. It delights in the things that Almighty God delights in. It is engaging, and balanced with a flow of grace. There are no pre-qualifications of esteem to enter into such an extensive relationship with Almighty God for the saint. The words that describe this so well are found in James 2:5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?

It is in this inseparable faith relationship that Almighty God calls His love to prosper. This love relationship is a faith relationship. These passionate loving believers find the realistic power of God’s truth and hold the inseparable promise from Almighty God alone, to be the heirs of His kingdom! Deuteronomy 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations;

May we hear and acknowledge that we are well within the ‘thousand generation’. Hallelujah!