As a Jehovah’s Witness, I had done the forbidden. I had just read the book Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz. In the months prior to this, as I described in an earlier post, After the Org, my world had begun to crumble. My whole life had been built on the belief that the Watchtower organization was God’s one true channel of communication, and now I was having serious doubts. As I contemplated what I had experienced coupled with what I had read in the forbidden book, I had a powerfully vivid vision of myself standing on a cliff while it crumbled away underneath me. Even as I experienced the vision, I knew what it meant. I had based my life on an unstable foundation, and the only hope I had of being rescued from a precipitous fall as that foundation crumbled away was the faith that God would catch me.

The Holy Spirit speaks, and He had been speaking to me in many ways in addition to that vision. But as a JW, I didn’t have a clear understanding of who the Holy Spirit is. In fact, I had been taught that He was a what, not a Who. In my post, God, Who Are You?, I described the process I went through in order to understand the deity of Christ. That was the hardest obstacle for me to clear in accepting the doctrine of the Trinity. Once I understood that, it was not long before I was able to also grasp the role of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that the Holy Spirit is God’s “active force.” To them, there is no person named Holy Spirit, but only an energy, or power, somewhat similar to electricity. But even as a JW, it was difficult for me to understand why, if the Holy Spirit was an impersonal force, was He called a He in the Bible instead of an it? (John 14:16) Why, if the Holy Spirit is only a force, was it blasphemy to lie to Him? Why was the Holy Spirit called God? (Act 5:3-4) It was easy for me to accept that the Holy Spirit is a person and is God. What had confused me was being forced as a JW to accept the idea that he wasn’t. It was a relief to be free of that nonsense. If you are confused about the role and nature of the Holy Spirit, I recommend the this video.

What was also hard was learning to distinguish and accept the voice of the Holy Spirit in my life. I had been taught that only the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses can hear from God. If I ever even hinted that I thought God was showing me something or telling me something, I saw instant alarm in the faces of my family and friends. I honestly don’t blame them. We were programmed to be suspicious of any supposed message from God if it had not come through the organization. But in spite of that, I somehow understood in my spirit that God speaks to each and every individual Christian.

Reading Acts was confusing to me. I had always assumed as a JW that when the Holy Spirit gave instructions to the first century Christians, as in Acts 13:2 where a group of prophets and teachers were told to set aside Barnabas and Saul for a special work, they were hearing an audible voice. They could have been, actually. But the verse does not specifically state that. I remember praying to God to help me understand how he spoke then, and how he speaks now. He answered that prayer, and though I don’t claim to fully understand the Holy Spirit and how he moves and communicates in the lives of humans, I do think I have learned a few things that help me navigate my life now as a Spirit filled Christian. I am going to try to be as specific and explicit as I can in explaining what I see in the scriptures and in describing how I learned to hear from the Holy Spirit, as this is something that would have greatly helped me with my initial confusion after leaving the Watchtower organization.

I believe there are four influences on the human mind – the world, the self (mind and emotions), the Holy Spirit, and wicked spirits. As a Christian, I want the dominant influence over me to be the Holy Spirit. But we have a fight against the influence of the world, (James 4:4) our fallen flesh, (Romans 7:22-25) and against wicked spirit forces. (Eph. 6:10-18) How can we know which influence is dominating our thoughts?

The Holy Spirit will never tell you anything that contradicts the word of God as revealed in the scriptures, but it’s also important to realize that we may believe that the scriptures teach something they don’t actually teach. It’s very important to know the scriptures and to read them prayerfully. (2 Timothy 3:16; Titus 1:2; Malachi 3:6; 2 Timothy 3:5-7) The Holy Spirit’s influence will produce certain personality traits such as love, joy, and peace. (Galatians 5:22-23) His voice convicts, leading to true repentance, but does not condemn. (Luke 13:5; Romans 8:1) On the other hand, influences other than God, whether it be the world, the fallen flesh or wicked spirits, will entice and tempt, lie, twist scripture, bully, and condemn. (John 8:44; Matthew 4:1-10; Revelation 12:10)

If the Holy Spirit produces grief, it will be a Godly grief. We might feel sadness in empathy for a person who is lost and/or suffering, a longing to be reunited with dead or estranged loved ones, or a sadness over personal sins. (Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 11:28-29; 7:9-10; Matthew 23:37-39) We may also cry under the influence of the Holy Spirit simply because we long to be with our God, which reminds me of the lyrics to my favorite song by Rich Mullins, “If I weep, let it be as a man who is longing for his home.”

God is love. (1 John 4:8) Sometimes when the Holy Spirit is intensely present, He will produce happy tears because His love and all of His other beautiful qualities can be so overwhelmingly beautiful.

The Holy Spirit communicates through the scriptures, dreams, visions, and through what many call the “still small voice.” (2 Timothy 3:16; Acts 2:17-18; Joel 2:28-32; 1 Kings 19:12) He also communicates through other Christians, either through what they say or what they write. The most reliable way to hear from Him is by reading the Bible.

Often, God will use the scriptures to give a personal message that many would call a “rhema word.” Wikipedia explains: “Rhema (ῥῆμα in Greek) literally means an “utterance” or “thing said” in Greek. It is a word that signifies the action of utterance.” Some scholars make a distinction between the two Greek terms, logos and rhema, that are both translated “word.” Logos is seen as referring more to the written word, and rhema to the spoken word. For that reason, a “rhema word” is seen as a word that God is presently speaking to you personally as opposed to words on a page that are meant for any reader. In my story about my exit from the Watchtower organization, I told of the first clear rhema word I had ever received:

One day I took a walk and had a little talk with God. I very insistently told him that if I was wrong about the organization, I needed him to show me NOW, and I mean NOW. I told him that if I was wrong, that I was maybe making the biggest mistake of my life, and I didn’t want to do that. As soon as I got home, I decided to do my daily Bible reading. I wasn’t doing it to find any answers. It was my habit to read every day. I opened the Bible to where I had my ribbon, 2 Corinthians 11. When I came to verse 3, I started to suspect I was having a supernatural encounter. By the time I came to verses 13-15, I knew I had my answer. I had received a rhema word from God, though at the time I had no vocabulary to describe it. Here are the verses I read which spoke to my heart:

“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a pure and sincere devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough…For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds…For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face.” – 2 Corinthians 11:3-4,13-15, 19-20 (ESV)

All at once, I understood the implications of the word I had just received. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses were false apostles. They were disguising themselves as angels of light. I began to cry my heart out. My whole world, my whole belief system, had come crashing down. And I knew that eventually, I was going to lose everything, including my parents, my friends, and my reputation.

I wanted to share that because it illustrates how vitally important it is to be able to recognize when God is sharing something with you. The Holy Spirit confirmed this word to me over and over in many different ways and receiving it was a turning point in my life.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit will reach you through the words of another person. This was the case for me when one day I was in unbearable pain and also feeling extremely depressed due to the long-lasting after effects of the Covid infection I had contracted months prior. I had been thinking about trying to find a local church to attend and had prayed God would show me where I could go. I had begun to listen to a local pastor’s sermons, and this day, after praying for relief, I decided to listen to him to take my mind off of how awful I felt. He happened to be teaching on the book of Isaiah and he read this: “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the LORD is everlasting strength.” (Isaiah 26:3-4 NKJV) The combination of that scripture and the pastor’s exposition of it dramatically changed the way I felt. I actually did feel peace, which was rare for me at the time. I often had prayers answered through the sermons of that pastor, and those experiences helped me to decide eventually to visit his church once I felt ready to take that step, which was many months later.

The Holy Spirit also speaks in ways that are more dramatic, such as through dreams and visions. I have had several dreams that I am sure were from God. I dream every night, but most of my dreams are inconsequential and nonsensical, like most people’s. But a few times I have had dreams that were so vivid and so full of dramatic imagery that I knew that they were not normal dreams. One of the most important of those dreams was about spiritual warfare. In this dream, I was running away from a tornado, but in my path was a massive cobra with its hood splayed wide. I couldn’t go around it, and when I came up to it, it bit me. But it turned out that it had no teeth and the bite did no harm. After the cobra bit me, I stepped on its head, and then my son also came and stepped on its head. In the bible, snakes represent evil spirits. God was showing me that although the devil may seem formidable and dangerous, he actually has no teeth and cannot hurt us permanently. This was also a vivid illustration of the fact that we as Christians have been given authority to “trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.” (Luke 10:19 NKJV)

And now we come to “the whisper.” This is the most controversial and least reliable way to hear from God, because, especially for inexperienced Christians, it can be difficult to tell the difference between our own thoughts, demonically inspired intrusive thoughts, and God’s voice. The whisper is a thought in words that God plants in our hearts. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27 NKJV) It’s absolutely vital that we learn to recognize that voice. We can do that through spending plenty of time in prayer and in the word. Remember, God will never ever contradict his own word. For example, the Holy Spirit will not inspire you to take revenge, to perpetually avoid Christian fellowship because of offense or a false sense of superiority, or to slander (revile, criticize falsely in abusive terms) another person, especially a Christian brother or sister, because those things are unscriptural. They are not of God. (Romans 12:18-21; Hebrews 10:24-25; 1 Peter 4:8; Ephesians 4:31; 1 Timothy 6:3-5) Inspiration to engage in some of these negative behaviors can actually be cloaked in a way that makes it seem like it could be from God. We shouldn’t underestimate the ability of the enemy to deceive.

Often, the Holy Spirit will remind me of a scripture at exactly the right moment, either to encourage, inspire, or convict me, or so that I can effectively minister to someone else. Other times, the Holy Spirit might give some type of direction. He might plant a person’s name and face in my mind and a burden to pray for that person. Sometimes I hear a simple NO as a warning to me not to proceed with something I had planned to do, or I will hear the word GO when I am contemplating a certain course of action. When I feel I may have heard something from God but I’m not absolutely certain it is from him, I wait on God to confirm it. He will often do this by repeating his message many times and in many ways: through the still small voice, through the scriptures, through the advice of trusted friends, or simply through life circumstances. And I know that if I make an honest mistake, thinking that something I heard that seemed good and scriptural was from God when it really was my own imagination, the Lord is faithful and honors my sincere desire to obey him, even if I was misguided.

The Holy Spirit gives special gifts to His people. (Acts 1:8; 2; 1 Corinthians 12, 14) Contrary to what I was taught as a JW, those gifts are, indeed, for today. I see them in operation on a regular basis, and it is wonderful to behold. The gifts of the Spirit is a huge subject and one I may address in the future in a separate post.

As this world descends more and more into the darkness, it is vital that we learn to teach our “ears [to] hear a word behind [us], ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right or the left.” (Isaiah 30:21) We must know the voice of our shepherd. (John 10:27) He wants to communicate. He wants to show us the correct path, and we need him to. If you are not used to receiving direct communication from God, I implore you to seek his face. Get to know the voice of our loving helper, our advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Recommended reading: Buy at Amazon: Host the Holy Ghost, by Vladimir Savchuk Or download for free at pastorvlad.org