Introductory Submission by Tom Bird
God speaking directly to individuals and those individuals actually hearing He/She has been detailed numerous times in the Bible as being accomplished, including the following:
- God conversed with Adam in the first garden
- She/He told Noah to build an ark;
- She/He spoke to Moses in a burning bush;
- He/She promised Abraham a son;
- Paul heard His/Her voice on the way to Damascus;
- God spoke to Cain (Genesis 4:6), to Jacob (Genesis 28:13-15; 32:26-29), to Elijah (I Kings 19:9, 11-12); to Samuel (1 Samuel 3); and to Jesus many times.
The Saint Joan of Arc not only heard and listened to but acted on what she heard God say to her, which led her to being declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1920.
And it is chronicled that in the winter of 1956, Reverend Martin Luther King sat at his kitchen table, frightened to death about what may happen to he and his family should he follow through with his participation in the Montgomery bus boycott. It was then he heard the voice of Jesus come through proclaiming, “I will be with you.”
In response, King moved forward, igniting his legendary civil rights ministry, and the rest is history.
The point I am trying to make is that the crucial point in moving from ordinary to extraordinary comes directly as the result of not only hearing God and listening to what He/She has to say and acting upon what is shared.
And the good news is that God operates like a 24/7 radio station. She/He is always broadcasting. And all you have to do to hear He/She via one of the endless number of modalities available to you is to tune, which is what this book is devoted to direct you in doing.
The second bit of good news I want to share is that, according to a 1999 Gallup Poll, 23% of Americans already openly admit to having heard a voice or seen a vision that they felt was a direct response to a prayer, a number, because of a variety of factors, is sure to have gone up in the time since the poll was taken.
A byproduct of these communications have been not only the wisdom and guidance that was shared but also the majority of the 23% report feeling vastly more loved as the result of the interchange. And the power of love, the great healer, has been proven throughout the ages as well.
And I’m here to assure you that you can do it too, that, of course, being able to reciprocally communicate back and forth with God. In fact, as a child, a direct descendant of He/She, you already are programmed to do just that.
All that has to be done for this reciprocal communication to transpire in your life is for the effects of the inappropriate thinking that you’ve been injected with to be removed and to once again to be replaced by the sage wisdom and pre-programmed guidance, as a child of God, that you were blessed with.
Even though I try to be in constant receiving communication with God on a daily basis, a tradition I have followed since childhood, some communications have been more life altering than others, such as the one I share below from an excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book of mine.
“As an adolescent, I went deeper and more consistently into the silence, to the point, almost religiously, I made time at the end of the day or the evening during the summer months when, on summer break I could stay up longer, to connect directly with God. So in need was I of this time and so loved did I walk away feeling from these times, that I was undeterred by howling, bone chilling winds and temperatures as I took my 2-3 hour walks each night, late into the night.
It was during these walks, during which I often took a sojourn or two on a bench on a cliff overlooking Lake Erie, that I came to God, to cry and talk and to try and make some sense of, to understand the perceived madness of life. But mainly, after taking time to vent a bit, I came to listen and to be loved. And God never failed me once by not being there. I sometimes did not like hearing what was shared, but He/She never failed me by not being there.
And it was a few years after my mother poisoned me and around the same time my father’s relentless attacks on who I was becoming as a man were raining down on me, at the age of sixteen that, after having concluded my long walk for the evening at around 2 AM, that I positioned myself on the lawn of my parent’s side yard to ask the question that had been running around in my head for what seemed like forever.
I remember the evening like it was yesterday.
It was a clear, balmy, summer evening, the kind that I had gotten used to as a youth. And best of all it was quiet – no left brain noise or static – providing an inviting opportunity to hear God and to be heard by God. To the accompaniment of a gentle breeze making its way through the long, long leaves of a nearby tall, tall willow and the of a far off train whistle, I laid down against the long, soft grass of my parent’s side yard. And immediately my eyes gazed upwards into the welcoming night sky. And through it I felt drawn, led, loved, safe, acknowledged, appreciated and accepted. I felt as if I had just eased not only my body, but my whole soul, plus my mind, emotions and entire consciousness onto a big, thick feather bed. I felt as if I was looking directly into the heart of God.
Then the words to the question I felt had been wanting to be answered verbally rolled off my tongue like rain sliding down a duck’s back.
“I am so different from my family God that it scares me, causing me to wonder if somehow a mistake had been made and that I was delivered into the wrong family. I mean, they are good people and I love them but we are just so different. They are focused on paying bills and I tend to be focused on what I feel is a different bigger purpose, and the simple act of making money just doesn’t seem to be enough, fulfilling to me.
“Which brings me to the following concerns Lord. My goals appear so different from those of my family that I tend to question the validity of what it is that I want to do with my life, I question why it is that I want to write. I feel unworthy to do so and if the influence of the family I was born into is an indicator of the direction I am meant to follow, then I shouldn’t be even considering writing as a profession.”
And then I finally got around to asking the question of God that I had been avoiding for so long.
“God, why is it that I am so drawn to writing,” I asked, wondering again why I was drawn toward a career and life path so different from the one my family followed and encouraged me to follow as well. This, of course, caused me great angst since no one, no matter how dysfunctional they may be, no one wants to be separated from their tribe. And I was already feeling myself being drawn away as it was.
But God had obviously waiting quite sometime for me to address this one simple concern. For His/Her anxious reply came firing back even before I got the question out.
And oddly for primarily kin esthetic recipient such as I, the reply came forth kinesthetically, allowing me to actually feel and then interpret the response.
“Son,” the message stopped a moment for emphasis, “the reason you are drawn to write is because you see life as such a beautiful thing. And when you write, the people who read your writing will be able see life through your eyes and how you see it.”
The affect of those simple, direct words, of that communion that night, still ring true with me today. As I write this, I recall how I felt that night, almost as if I were back there, right here and right now.
I need to make a few significant points here before we move on.
As you see from that which follows, once you use direct communication to open the door to God, God oftentimes challenges you to believe even more so in your truest identity and in the unadulterated divinity of this one on one direct connection by opening an even bigger door for you.
Since you may not have consciously ready for the opening of this bigger door by making wanton use of your newly recovered direct connection with God, the bigger door may offered to you in stages or steps, and through a variety of different communicative routes and means available to the Almighty. As you will see, this was definitely the case with my Father/Mother wanting to drive home the message delivered to be that very early morning.
Lastly, and much more on this later, genuinely seeking this most of all important of all connections is often brought on my not faith but by desperation, which is said to be the forefather of faith. In my case and with this one incident it certainly was just that.
For shortly afterwards, as if he was picking up on the message I had been given and building upon God’s response, my father sat down with me a few days later and had one of the only serious, completely heartfelt conversations of our time together. A soft, sensitive, heartfelt man, my father was taking big step in doing so. For by doing so he would be certainly risking the penetrating wrath of my always angry, borderline mother, who despised anyone taking a step forward in their lives that she was convinced she had been robbed from taking with her life. So looking back, I now even more so appreciate the amount of love and caring my father must have had for me that day to do what he did.
As well, in a very deep way, I could see from the conversation that my father had with me that day, as if God was speaking through him, how much he truly loved and cared for me. An, even more so, the conversation furthered the understanding that had been shared with me by God a few evenings before.
The conversation my father had with me that day dealt with a job I had taken as a cashier at a local, discount, always busy supermarket. My father, who, when it would all be said and done, would end up working for forty-eight years in a job he despised sacrificing himself to support his family, I could see, at that moment, had found the key to life.
“Son,” he said, “you’re too young to start working. You should be just enjoying life, getting to know yourself. So that you can find out what it is that you want to do with your life, which is really the key to living a happy life. And that’s what life is all about. Find out what it is that you want to do with your life. Now is the time to do that. Then just do that. And you will be the best at whatever it is that you choose to do, because you will love it. So don’t worry about money or a career. Don’t let them be your focus. Focus instead on what you love to do and the money and career will follow.”
That conversation that evening and the conversation I had with preceding it, solidified for me the direction I would be taking with my life, and the rest is history.”