Trust that God is able to speak to you

 

Many of us desire to hear God’s voice. We feel great if we can hear Him talking to us directly. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happens every time. God can speak to us in many ways. He can speak through visions, dreams, audible voice, bible verse we read, from our parents, pastors, and so on. Our preferred way of God speaking to us is always for God to speak audibly to us. However it is not up to us how He wants to communicate with us. So we should be able to hear Him speaking in different form of communications.

I would like to share to you my recent journey of how God has spoken and reveal to me what He wanted me to do.

In my past blogs I have shared to you that starting this year I felt God wanted me to help a Domestic Violance (DV) Organisation in my region. It was my husband who got the calling first. In the beginning I was not interested in working in this area of ministry. However God has His own way to get me involved. He set me up with a Christian DV organization in my local area. Cut the long story short, I decided to help them to do fundraising to start with as I was not ready to get involved more in this particular ministry. I told myself if God wants me to involve more He will need to speak to me. However as I start working with them, my compassion grew toward the DV victims. I became attracted to them. I kept thinking about them if they have enough clothes, food, shoes, and so on. Because some of them just ran away and didn’t bring anything with them. I thought this feeling is odd. This isn’t me, there is no way I could be passionate with these people. But then I knew that this was God. While I was waiting for God to speak audibly to me, He has his own way to speak to me. He gave me compassion towards these women. And I felt like I wanted to do more for them.

Then the lockdown hit NSW, Australia in June 2021. I was unable to do fundraising for few months. it was very difficult for this organization to fund the safe house since there was no more income from fundraising. The government agency which normally sends DV victims were also closed due to lockdown so we couldn’t get any more women to stay in our safe house and to help us to pay the rent. The women who come into our care is mainly funded by the government. And from this fund, they pay small amount to the organisation so we are able to pay the house rent and bills. As we help them, they also help us financially to keep going. Then to make it worse during this lockdown some women also left the safe house which means the income was reduced for the organization.

End of Sept 2021, my ex manager from my previous company I worked for suddenly rang me. She told me that 2 members in her team have resigned and she needed to employ a person urgently to replace them temporarily. She offered me if I was interested to come back to work in her team temporarily. At first I really wanted to help her and so I can earn a little bit of money for a couple months. But I didn’t dare to accept her offer because one of the reasons was I knew that God’s will for me is not to come back to work for the time being. I was in dilemma between wanting to come back to work and to obey God’s will in me.

I then brought this matter into prayer on the same day she called me. I thought I wanted to negotiate with God. After all this is only going to be temporary, perhaps God will allow me. However, funny enough as I prayed, suddenly DV organization that I am helping came to my mind. I thought God wanted me to pray for this as well so I also prayed for this organization. After prayer, I read my bible and surprisingly I read the below verses:

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. ⁴⁸ But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows... – Luke 13:47-48

After reading this bible verse, I knew this is His way of telling me that He doesn’t want me to come back to work.

After my quiet time, suddenly Karen, the director of the DV organisation came into my mind. It was already almost time to bed but I felt the urge to call her. I didn’t have anything to say to her but just felt that I needed to call her. So I rang and just asked how she was. Interestingly the conversation lead to her sharing how she has been struggling to run this organisation financially due to lockdown.  She mentioned to me that if this condition continue to be like this in the next months, she had no choice but to close down the safe house and she would find another shelter for these women because the organisation can no longer pay the rent and bills.

I was very surprised to hear that. I didn’t want this ministry to close. I realised at that moment that I had to step in more into this organisation. I had to walk hand in hand with Karen to make this organisation fruitful. God wants me to do more in this ministry. Karen needs a partner. I felt grateful that I opened up my heart for God to speak to me. The temptation was high, I could earn money again by accepting the job offer, but I choose to obey God because I have followed His direction.

I then started to look for opportunities to get more clients. I rang several agencies which may be able to help sending victims of DV into our care. Only in about a week time from my conversation with Karen, we managed to get client from one of the agencies I called. I felt grateful because God has heard our prayer.

From the story above I can see how god has spoken to me in many different ways and I thank God that He is able to guide me where I should go and what I should do. And if He can do that to me, He also can do that to you.

I hope through this testimony you will receive something from God.