Video Transcript: Praying for the Revelation of Calling and Purpose (Dr. Raimondo)
Hi. We're back with our next lesson in coaching in the golden years. And our last video session, I asked you to do some homework. And that homework assignment was to start listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit, to tell you, to give you some insight and inspiration as to how the Lord wants you to use your talent and your time. In this stage of your life, how are you going to use your seed of talent, where you're going to plant that seed? And what you want that seed to look like, when it's time to harvest? You're going to plant this seed. Do you know if it's going to be tomatoes or squash. Do you know what that seed is going to bring? At harvest time? Well, that's what I asked you to do for homework. What does the Lord want you to do with your time and talent. And some of you may be saying or thinking that you had difficulty hearing God speak to you. Some of you may believe that God doesn't speak to you. Some of you may think that God speaks to people but not to you. Some of you may have tried to hear God's voice and was never able to. I know one particular gentleman who said he spent like 10 years trying to hear the Lord's voice. And he never could. And one of the reasons was, he was too busy being a left brain thinker, strictly analytical has to see it has to have the facts, the whole nine yards. And eventually, he found something in Scripture that taught him a method on how to hear God's voice. And basically, it sums up to be first off, you got to sit and be still. Psalm 46 Be still and know that I am the Lord cuz you got to be still physically, but you also have to be still mentally. The next thing is, you want to be able to like really begin to sense the Holy Spirit, the Lord. And before you do these, these two things, the first thing I should have said was to ask the Lord to say something to you. For example, what do you want me to do with my time and talent? Your Lord, what do you want me to do my time and talent, then shut up and get quiet and sit still? And just sit there? quiet and sit still? And see if you begin to sense something. And when you feel that you begin to sense something? Journal it, write it out. So you would need pen and paper beforehand or maybe your laptop? You'd write out the question, Lord, what do you want me to do with my time and talent? You would get into that mode of being still to listen. And when you felt something coming to your mind, write it down. And that would be one way to learn how to listen to the Lord. Now many of you have probably been doing a lot of listening to the enemy. And not even know it. How many of you have heard things like this? You don't have any talent. You think you got a talent? You don't have no talent. Yes. Paint. You can't paint. your stuff is garbage. self talk I'm referring to right. But is that really you doing the talking? Oh, you can't play guitar, you're lousy, man, keep it off, put it away. So many, so many more people play better than you and they're not even good. You're terrible. You don't want to embarrass yourself, put it away. You know, whatever, you're not, you're not friendly. People dont like you. Nobody's gonna want to hear you talk. You're not that smart. You know, what your own personal self talk is? And it's not necessarily coming from you it's coming from the enemy.
Now you say, why is it coming from the enemy? Well? Do you honestly think that the enemy of God wants you to succeed at the gift and the talent that God gave you? Absolutely not. He made sure that Adam and Eve messed up. And he's been making sure that millions and even billions of people have messed up ever since. And if you let him, he'll make you mess up. Because he'll be telling you you're not good. You're not worthy. You don't have any real ability. You're lucky you had a job all these years. And now you're retired, you're collecting your pension, and your social security number, you should be great thankful for that. You know, that's the enemy talking to you. But we don't want to hear the enemy. We want to hear what God has to say to us. So I gave you one way for you to try and see if journaling is one way for you, to learn how to hear God's voice. And it begins with you write a question, write it down. You say Jesus, I would like you to tell me how you want me to use my time and talent. Now, some of you may not have a relationship with Jesus, because you've never asked him to forgive you for your sins, your crimes, your errors, your mistakes in life. When I say crimes, I don't mean you went and stole the bank, robbed the bank. crimes are sins, things that we do, that are not pleasing in the eyes of God. Those kinds of crimes. Lying to your neighbor. Sometimes the silliest things can be a crime, to sin. It's an error, wickedness, all those type of dark terms. Have you asked Jesus to forgive you for those things? Because he will give you mercy and grace. He already died for your sins. He's already died for your mistakes. But you have to accept it. So that's the first thing, have you actually really accepted God, God's salvation through Jesus Christ? Well, when you have, then the Holy Spirit is someone, you want to welcome into your heart, your mind, your soul, your being your, your whole essence. You want to invite Him in. So that he can become one with you, and guide you, teach you and show you the way that you need to go and help you to be the righteous person that God wants you to be. So that's the start of it. So one way is to be able to use the journaling method. And that's a good way to get started if you're having difficulties. Now, some of you like myself, and some people that I know friend of mine, Nancy, she hears his voice in sometimes the smallest thing, and I do as well. You know, and it may be there's some of you out there that have had this experience. you misplace your son, your glasses, your sunglasses and you go, where's my sunglasses? I know where I put them. And you might say Oh Lord, you know where my glasses are. And you hear a little voice go, oh, you left them in the bureau. You left them in the bathroom, where you left them on the bureau in your bedroom, where you left them over here are in there in the car. Or maybe you're working at something and you're doing something in the garden, you having a little difficulty, I was transplanting a plant from one pot into another. And the roots were all kind of tangled up and I'm struggling. And little voice says to me, go get a saw. So I go get a small saw, I cut the root a little bit, and it made it so much easier to get it out at one plot pot and put it in another a little bigger one. I had
more success. And the Holy Spirit helped me with that simple task. And he will do that for you. The Lord is with you. 24/7 not only when you suddenly think you need him, he's there all the time. So you have. So you could start with journaling, ask a question. Psalm 46. Be still and know that I am God, sit in a chair, get quiet. Quiet the mind quiet the body. And one way is to do deep breathing, that will get you to calm down, so you're not anxious and worried. And then you want to bring in the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to lead you into a demonstration of what that could be right now. What I'd like you to do is close your eyes ask the Lord to come into your heart as the Holy Spirit a question. And I want you to close your eyes. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, relax, just listen to my voice. Eliminate any other sound and that's around you ignore them altogether. It's just my voice leading you in this meditation. Your eyes are closed, you're taking deep breaths, nice to calm you down. And I want you to imagine a light like a star far far away. And I want you to see it get coming closer and closer and closer as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Until finally, it's right there in front of you and you and it enters your body. And that's the Holy Spirit coming into your body. It's filling you up from head to toe front to back. Your whole mind and heart and spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit. And I just want you to relax and feel that sensation for a moment. And see if the Lord speaks to you and answers your question. I'm going to give you a little time to just listen. Now maybe the Lord spoke to you, maybe you felt something, maybe you need to write something down. But I want you to do that meditation, just like I showed you. You can listen to the video over and over again. If you need my help and getting into that spirit. But that's what I'd like you to do in order to learn and practice how to hear the Lord speak to you 24/7. Okay, so, you want to imagine the Holy Spirit as the light coming into you when you do this exercise? Well, I'm gonna give you another tip on how to tell the difference between the Lord and the enemy. Number one, the Lord will never tempt you to do something wrong. The Lord will never tempt you. You'll know that when the Lord speaks to you because the Lord when He speaks, it's always in the form of either a command or instruction. Go here. Go there. Use a saw, your glasses are in the bathroom. short, concise statements that could be a form of a command. The word obedience originates in Hebrew meaning to listen. So to be obedient, we listen to his command. The enemy, on the other hand will say things like, hey, look at that. Wouldn't you like to grab that, don't you want to take that? Look, nobody's watching. You could take that. Take that piece of jewelry right now, nobody would even know the difference. Oh, you know, look at that. Yeah, you want that, don't you? Sure you do. Okay, take it. Or what a neat What an idiot, that person is. All sorts of things that will either tempt you, or to make you feel bad about yourself or to make or to make you think of someone else in an in a negative fashion. The Lord doesn't do that. If the Lord the Lord, if he wants you to know that you've been sinful, he will just press that sense of awareness upon you, and
you will experience the guilt. God will only will point in the direction not even in a condoning way to say, hey, look, you're a creep. That's more of say it's safe self talk to make you feel bad. The Lord would probably do it more like this. Do you see what you're doing? Take a good look at that. Do you think that's right. And all of a sudden, you'll start to feel the weight of the sin. That's how God talks to you. So those are your two tips. Satan, the enemy will always try to make you either feel bad, or tempt you. He will always try to make you feel unworthy, he will never lead you into asking God for forgiveness. If anything, he's going to discourage you to do that. So this is how you can begin to discern the Lord speaking to you. And one of the things I would recommend that you ask the Lord, in Your prayers to help you with this process, is to say, Lord, give me the gift of discernment. Now, I know the Bible says that the Solomon asked for the gift of wisdom. But in order to have wisdom, you also have to have discernment to know that what you're deciding on is right. So ask yourself and think about these things. About who am I hearing? How am I hearing? What do I need to hear? What do I need to do to hear? Okay, I've given you some examples. You need to put them to practice and it ain't happening overnight. You're gonna have to practice this and practice this until it really clicks where you can actually hear the Lord's voice and be able to discern His from your own inner mind and the enemy's speaking. Those are the two, three things that you want to be able to discern. So start with praying for that gift. Use the journal method that I showed you today. That I spoke of use the meditation that I gave you, either on your own or listen to it again, in this video, find where it is you can tell and listen to it over again until you become relaxed and comfortable. Being able to do it yourself. So this is your homework. Until the next class, we need to get you in a position where you can really begin to hear and discern the Lord's voice because We want you to be able to communicate with the Lord, to and from speaking to him, hearing him speak to you as to how you're going to spend your time and your talent for him. Because that's what we're going to do in these golden years, we're not going to be worried about getting rich, we're not going to be worried about a new job, we're not going to be concerned about those things, we're retired, we should be in a position right now, where we don't need to focus on those things. And God blessed us for that. And we need to thank him, we want to thank you, God, we want to thank you, Lord Jesus, we want to thank you the Holy Spirit, for giving us this opportunity to be retired to have an income where we don't need to work. And now we can focus on something that you would like us to do to serve you. So you have your homework, you're going to practice on trying to hear the Lord's voice, how to discern his voice from the enemy. So important, and your own inner voice, because sometimes that even gets in the way. So that's your homework until our next class, and remember, this is not going to happen overnight. So I'll be praying for you. You need to pray, have
your people pray for you about being successful in this course. And until next time, God Bless