Once I asked Father how it can seem that His messages are so different from one person to another?  After all, He isn’t a different person and He isn’t actually giving differing messages.

He showed me how simply our perception is the problem, and He immediately gave me an example as I sat on my deck listening to a bird chirping from the roof next door.

The bird hopped down to the other side of the roof line and his chirping suddenly sounded like many birds chirping from several different directions because the metal roof  was throwing the sound.  It bounced off other metal roofs thereby sounding multiplied and coming from several different directions.

Father reminded me about optical illusions, and how easily they throw our perception, too.  Plus there are mindsets and experiences that influence our perception.  Every police officer knows how significantly different one person’s perception is to another.

On top of that, we must remember that God is Spirit and we can only communicate with Him via our Spirit.

For instance, maybe you’ve read my story about hearing God’s voice say “Go pick up the cup.”  That message was a fluid impression in my heart and mind rather than individual words.  It was an urgency drawing me toward my friend, her home, and her community as it pointed me there to receive, pick-up, or take away a cup.  The impression was so strong that I heard the audible tones of a man’s voice say “Go pick up the cup.”  Or did he say “Go to your friend and receive her cup?”  Or maybe it was “Go to her home and take her cup with you?”

My mind translated the impression of the message into words and I choose the combination to most accurately convey what I was “hearing” in my spirit.

All of this happened in a few seconds.  Just as we translate the events of what we saw in a traffic accident into words to tell a police officer, our brain translates spirit impressions as quickly.

Our brains are magnificent creations.  They have an enormous job that we often take for granted.  Sometimes we think they are 100% correct and we forget how simply bits or pieces can be turned when travelling through the various points of our reception.  Our 5 senses are our receivers and their messages travel through our brain synapses to be translated into messages we can understand.

God, as the most powerful Spirit in the universe, can definitely make Himself known to us. But His words travel through His Spirit into our spirit and we receive the message translated through our brain.

It might have been just as accurate for my brain to translate my message as, “Continue going down this highway, to your friend’s home, in her community, and receive a cup which you should take away with you.”  But I understood from inside the impression exactly where He meant for me to go.  I understood the destination. I also understood the impression that I was to receive the cup from her and take it away with me.  The impression was not to steal it, or forcefully pry it out of her hands.  It was simply to pick it up.  So it made more sense for my brain to translate the message as “Go pick up the cup.”

Understanding how we receive messages from God is important because it explains how easily we can veer off His loving track from time to time.  It also explains why it is important to talk to Him often.  Just as we gain an inherent understanding of our spouse, or our best friend, through years of constant communication involving not just words, but emotions, touches and looks, we gain an understanding of God the same way.  It is this kind of understanding that goes deeper than mere words.

My Hunny can look at me and say, “Come with me” and in that moment I understand the degree of importance and intention he means because I’ve seen a million of his looks and connected them to a million of his intentions.  I know if he is concerned, happy, excited, sad or whatever.  I know if his intention is casual or vitally important.

Talking to God every day acquaints us with His character and nuances in the same way.  We come to know Him intimately.

Someone can say to me, “God told me this.”  And I can immediately tell if those thoughts came from God or from that person’s self.  I know because I’ve talked to Him for so long.

There are often parts of a person that haven’t been surrendered to Him yet.  As with any friendship, we don’t open every door of our heart in the first meeting, or even the hundredth.  So sometimes people hear what is coming from their own spirit rather than from His. We need time and intimacy to open all our doors.

Our own spirit messages come through the same avenue in our brain, therefore the only way we know if it is our self or God, is to spend lots of time getting to know Him more and more.

And sometimes it requires that we make mistakes.  Our mistakes of translation from His Spirit to ours does not trigger the guillotine to come down and declare us false prophets.  Our mistakes are the most exquisite fine tuning of all.

Mistakes are probable in any relationship.  We misunderstood our spouse or our friend, especially in the beginning when we hadn’t known them long.  But thankfully, God judges our heart.  He knows our sincerity.  Therefore, He covers us.  He has our back.  He is in Love with us.  He will keep us close to His heart while we fumble at hearing His voice.

Gradually we will know Him and become more like Him.  We will begin to meld into One and think the same way He does.  Eventually our own spirit messages will be His messages.

Therefore, when we hear messages from God through different people and they seem contradictory, it doesn’t mean that one person knows God and the other person doesn’t.  It simply means that one person’s relationship might be a new acquaintance, and the other’s a long time friendship.

The only way you or I will know the difference and the intent is through our own relationship with Him.  We will recognize Him.  We won’t need to correct anyone because we will understand the evolution of relationship and let them proceed at their own pace.  We can receive their message inside His intent as we know Him.

He’s talking to us all.  Let’s listen.