Personal Revelation: Six Key Insights
There are lots of things prayerful people do when we pray. We give gratitude, we praise God, we bless the food we eat, we pray for miracles…. All of these a deeply valuable faith practices, and I would never suggest that anyone stop doing these sorts of things. But there is one thing that I believe God wants us to do that most of us don’t do nearly enough or maybe at all: Asking questions.
Do you ever ask God questions in your prayers?
Why shouldn’t we? God is all-knowing and all-loving. Jesus Himself said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
I believe God wants us to ask Him questions, and I believe He will answer us when we do. I’ve spent a couple years pondering, studying, and experimenting on this, and I’ve spent that past few months discussing and counseling with fellow believers. There are real patterns here, patterns that we all can learn from. And the outcomes can be staggering.
Here are six key insights about personal revelation that you can apply immediately to transform your prayers into two-way conversations.
1. Study Your Scriptures Like You Charge Your Phone
I’ve met a lot of people who have found specific, clear answers to their Big Life Questions while studying God’s word.
I had a good friend who was praying about what school to go to, and he grabbed his scriptures and flipped them open to a random page to find an answer. The page he flipped to wasn’t part of the scriptural text. It said Boston, Massachusetts. So that’s where he went to school. I don’t know for sure if that was God speaking to him, but I’m glad he went with it anyway — otherwise, we never would have met.
That’s perhaps a humorous example, but there are plenty of serious ones out there, too. I believe these experiences are real. But, alas, I’ve never had such an experience myself. However, scripture study is a crucial part of my ability to receive personal revelation.
Think of prayer as a phone call to heaven, and scripture study as the way you charge your phone.
I don’t necessarily receive more calls or text messages while my phone is plugged in than when it isn’t, but I know for a fact that, if I go too long without charging my phone, I’ll stop receiving calls and texts altogether.
And that’s the way I think of scripture study. It has to happen consistently, every single day, if I want to have any hope of having a conversation with God. He may or may not speak to me while I’m reading my scriptures, but if I go too long without reading them, I’ll lose my ability to hear His voice.
I love this analogy because it works on so many levels. I can’t, for example, charge my phone for 12 hours on Sunday and expect it to function for an entire week until the next Sunday. I also can’t skip one day of charging and make up for it by charging it twice as long the next day. The only way to ensure my phone remains operational is to charge it a little bit every day.
On the other hand, if I do forget to charge my phone one night, and I wake up in the morning and find it on its last leg, I can profit a lot by plugging it in for a couple minutes while I eat breakfast and brush my teeth. My phone won’t begrudge me the shorter charging. It won’t say, “Hey, if you aren’t going to get me to 100%, you may as well not bother at all.”
Every little bit helps. I charge it for different amounts of time different days, and that’s fine. All that matters is that I don’t skip days.
2. Ask God Little Questions About Your Everyday Life
I was talking to a friend recently about personal revelation, and he said he felt like the idea wasn’t relevant to him because all his Big Life Decisions are behind him. He’s married, he’s settled into a career, he owns his own home. What would he need personal revelation for?
I’ve found personal revelation is more relevant for little life choices than for big ones.
Honestly, when I was getting ready to propose to my wife, I prayed to know whether it was right, and I expected some big, clear answer. Fire in the sky or a neon sign. But nothing came. It bothered me, but I went ahead and married her anyway, and I’m confident it was a good choice.
I find many of my friends have had similar experiences. They feel like God answers their prayers when they pray about inconsequential things, but when they prayed about whether to marry their spouse, nothing.
I’ve been pondering on this, and it makes sense to me now. If you’re in a position to legitimately pray about whether to marry a person, the decision has already been made. You’ve already invested a ton of time and energy into the relationship, and marriage is the natural next step.
It would be better (continuing on the topic of marriage) to check in with God after each date. Ask Him, “How am I doing?” and “Is this okay?” and “Are there any red flags I’m failing to notice?” If you do that, then when it comes time to decide whether to marry the person, you can know you’ve already had God’s input every step of the way.
So what if instead of waiting for big inflection points before asking God a question, what if we treat our daily prayers as redlight/greenlight check-ins. What if every day we say, “How am I doing?” and “Is this okay?” and “Are there any red flags I’m failing to notice?” I think that could transform our relationship with God.
A personal example:
About a year ago, my family with through a tough phase. Every weekday, my three-year-old daughter would wake up just as I was leaving for work, and she would immediately grab me by the knees and scream and cry and refuse to let me leave. My wife would have to grab her while I extracted my legs and hurried out the door, slamming and locking it behind me.
This was bad for me (it made me feel like a terrible father), it was bad for my daughter (heartbreak isn’t something anyone should experience on a daily basis), and it was bad for my wife and other two kids (waking up every morning to weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is not a good start to the day). Something had to be done.
At the time, I worked in a building that had a meditation room that I was in the habit of booking for 15 minutes each day. I would use that time to study and ponder and pray. I decided to take this issue to the Lord, and He gave me one of the most stunningly specific revelations I’ve ever received: Wake your daughter up early and sit her on your lap while you eat breakfast every morning. I didn’t know what else to do, so I gave it a try.
It worked wonders. I would get her out of bed and sit her on my lap while I ate my morning bowl of oatmeal, and sometimes she would sit there and doze while other times she would be awake and chattering. Regardless, when it came time for me to leave, she let me go without a fuss. That little bit of connection was enough to solve the problem.
These are the sorts of prayers I think God is eager to answer. Not the big existential questions. The little, I-have-no-idea-to-do-about-this-fairly-mundane-problem sorts of questions. Focus your prayers there, and discover the joy of knowing that the creator and ruler of the universe is deeply invested in your day-to-day life.
3. Make Writing an Integral Part of Your Prayers
How do you pray? Out loud with your voice? Silently in your mind?
What if you prayed by writing to God?
It’s not a crazy idea. If you think about it, the only reason we have any scripture at all is because a bunch of people who had spiritual experiences decided to write those experiences down. If none of them had bothered, we wouldn’t have any scriptures to study.
I have found that writing down my questions forces me to get really clear on what exactly I’m asking. And I’ve also found that the easiest way to get an answer is by having a pen and paper ready.
I first started experimenting with this just a few weeks before that experience with my daughter. I was wondering what my Christian duty was to a certain homeless man I passed every day on my way to and from work. I wrote the question down in a notebook, prayed over it, and was delighted when a clear answer came to me that I could immediately write down. So when I decided to get God’s input on my relationship with my daughter, I used the same approach.
A curious thing happened that had a big impact on me. I had the question written out, and I prayed over it, and the thought that popped into my mind was, “Wake her up early.” So I picked up my notebook and wrote that down — and then the second part, the part about sitting her on my lap during breakfast, came to me as I was writing. It sort of surprised me by just appearing on the page.
This taught me that the act of writing is an important part of the revelation process, which is probably why we have so many scriptures. I bet a lot of that wisdom was received while the writers’ pens were working.
So charge your spiritual phone by studying every day, then choose some questions about your everyday life and write them down. Take those written questions to God and pray over them, then put pen to paper and see what happens. You might be amazed.
4. Don’t Be Afraid of God’s Silence
Now let’s address the elephant in the room:
What if I ask God a question and don’t get an answer?
Don’t be paralyzed by God’s silence. Perhaps He’s letting you make a decision on your own. Or maybe you’ve just asked a question that He’s unwilling to answer. In His infinite wisdom, he knows when it’s best not to respond.
That said, God will answer you, even if it’s just to say He isn’t going to answer your question. To me, that’s the main point of Elijah and the priests of Baal. Elijah teases them — Maybe Baal’s traveling. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. Maybe he’s busy. The point is, God is never traveling, in the bathroom, or busy. He’s always available to answer your questions. There are questions He will answer and questions He won’t, but He’ll always swing by to let you know one way or the other.
Paul taught that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. So if you ask God a question and don’t get an immediate answer, pause and read the room.
Do you feel love — either God’s love for you or an increased capacity to love someone else?
Do you feel joy where before you felt sorrow?
Do you feel peace, like maybe everything’s going to be okay, or longsuffering, like maybe this question isn’t so urgent after all?
Do you feel gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, or temperance?
That’s God putting His arm around you. That’s Him whispering, “I’m here. I’m not going to answer that question right here, but I love you and will never leave you comfortless.”
If you ask God a question and get silence in return, search for God’s love in the silence. Just like sitting on my lap gave my daughter the strength to face another day without me, sitting in God’s silence can give you the strength to face whatever you’re up against. Bask in his goodness then go forth in strength.
5. Act on Revelation Immediately
I had a friend who told me that his grampa’s job as a soldier in World War II was to wear a huge spool of wire on his back and run as fast as he could until he ran out of wire, then pick up a phone and say, “No landmines. Come ahead.”
I don’t know if that story’s true, but I think that’s how we should treat the revelations we receive.
If you think God’s telling you to do something, run full steam ahead until you’ve done it.
I don’t know about you, but there’s a cynical little atheist who lives in the back of my mind and tries to rationalize away my need for faith. When it comes to seeking personal revelation, he says, “Mediation works well for a lot of people. How do you know you aren’t just tapping into your subconscious mind? None of this proves that God is really there.”
But the reality is, even my subconscious mind, for all its purported power, is human and liable to make mistakes. But God is perfect and infallible. So if He sends me a message, I can follow it with all my heart and soul and be confident that it’ll work out in the best possible way.
Of course, I might sometimes be mistaken. My subconscious mind might give me an idea that I mistake for divine inspiration. In that case, I might go sprinting straight into a landmine. But that’s what repentance is for. The quicker I realize my mistake, the sooner I can take it to God and seek His forgiveness and adjust the way I seek His voice.
Jesus came to save us sinners, and there’s no prayer He loves more to answer than a plea for grace and forgiveness. And there are plenty of scriptural examples of people receiving revelations while seeking forgiveness of their sins.
So act promptly and wholeheartedly on every nudge you receive in answer to prayer, and you’ll quickly learn to distinguish between your thoughts and God’s.
6. Review Your Personal Revelations Regularly
Another benefit of writing things down is that you can review them later.
As you collect more revelations in writing, you’ll quickly gain a treasure trove of wisdom to guide you through life.
My little notebook where I write my revelations is my most treasured possession. I can flip through it and see God’s special instructions just for me. I think it also gives God more incentive to send messages to me because He knows that, while I might forget things, my notebook never will.
And this feeds back into my first point: As you build your collection of personal revelations, you’ll be able to make that a part of your daily study. Nothing is a replacement for the canonized Word of God, of course. But as a supplement, your personal revelations will supercharge your spiritual cell phone and make your connection to God that much clearer.
I know that these are true principles because I’ve experienced them myself. And in talking with several faithful friends, I’ve found that I’m not alone. I really believe that anyone whose willing to try these six practices will crack heaven wide open and find God’s love and wisdom raining down on them every day.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.