Dr Pierson once visited a minister who had been in hospital for six long months. The doctor ventured to suggest that God might have permitted this illness as the only means by which He could cause this busy man to listen more to Him. He had hardly left the hospital before the Lord caught up with him: ‘You too have been too active for Me, and have not taken enough time to be occupied with Me.’ This experience made such an impression on Dr Pierson that he later wrote:

Even if we cannot devote anything like a whole hour to it, the great benefit of attempting such a review is that it gives us a second chance to ponder the events of the day, and to pick up on the nudges that the Lord has sent out way. We can ‘replay’ them, as if we were watching them pass before our eyes on a video. Then, as opportunities we have missed, or unkind words that we have uttered come to mind, we can ‘press the pause button’ and attend to the issues the Lord is highlighting.

As we make time to reflect, words that people have spoken return to our memory. Words of encouragement that confirm we are on the right path; or words of warning that save us from error – half-warnings even, that we might have missed had we been too engrossed in our own affairs.

Many people find keeping a journal aids this process of reflection. Rather than recording just the outward events, it will prove richer if we can include fuller details of how we believe the Lord is leading us. Such reflection enables us to trace patterns and to discern links where before we might have seen only isolated events.

‘Daniel, I have come to give you insight and understanding.’ (Daniel 9:22)

The first time I drove up the ‘Atlantic highway’ on the west coast of Devon, I glimpsed large radar dishes. They reminded me how serious the issue of cyber warfare has become. Dedicated organizations hack into top security computers, passing on highly sensitive information to potentially hostile powers. In the wrong hands, this information could be used not only to replicate weapons systems, but even potentially, to paralyze vital communications systems. Since cyber warfare is sure to play a significant (perhaps a determining) role in any future world conflict, this is an appropriate topic to take up in prayer.

The Lord has many ways of alerting us to things that are on His heart. As I was walking down a cobbled street in a Devonian village a few minutes later, I heard a mother calling her child. I instantly felt prompted to pray for someone of that name. I rang her a few hours later, as I usually try to do when I sense such leadings, and found that there was indeed a pressing reason why the Lord had put her on my heart.

I also find that God uses ‘look-alikes’ as one of His ways to call me to pray. For a fleeting moment, some passer-by reminds me in a certain profile of someone else I know. I take it as a pointer to pray for the person I am reminded of. On other occasions a certain make or colour of a car serves to remind me of someone who drives a similar model.

Do such ‘coincidences’ really come from God? I find that in perhaps three-quarters of such instances there is an immediate reason why these people have been brought to mind.

More than we realize at the time, our prayers may be paving the way for the Spirit to open something up for them – or to protect them from some danger. In any case: how can anything but good come from praying for them?

Even fleeting thoughts may correspond to someone’s real need. My car broke down in a motorway service station once, when I was on my way to spend a weekend with some friends, who were following on an hour or two behind me. As they approached the service station, one of them had the thought, ‘Perhaps Robert has broken down in there.’ Unfortunately, he pushed it aside, and had to drive a long way back later on to pick me up!

The Lord uses not only words but also sights, sounds and even smells to trigger associations that lead to prayer and action – or simply to bring comfort. As I was wheeled into hospital theatre for a rather unpleasant operation, I distinctly smelt the reassuring wood-fire smoke of our favourite cottage in the Lake District.

On another occasion, after hearing a distressing report about someone who means a lot to us, our bedroom was suddenly invaded by the distinct fragrance of lilies, reminding us of the lilies that surround his apartment. On these two occasions at least, the Still Small Voice became the Sweet Smelling Fragrance!

Many of the clearest nudges I receive come while I am writing. It is as though the Holy Spirit is alerting me by sending me the equivalent of an e-mail.

A few come with such urgency that I feel the need to drop everything and pray. Normally, I just make a note of them, and resolve to return to them later.

For Reflection and Prayer

I need to be careful not to get so carried away with the fact that the Lord is sharing something with me that I forget to take it up properly later on.

The real prophets of our day are those who can perceive what is happening in modern society, see where it will lead us, and give a value judgment upon it . . . We should not just absorb facts, but think about their significance. (Richard Foster)

I was walking past a shopping mall the other day, when I felt the Lord saying in my heart:

Scripture is clear that God judges cities and nations according to the opportunities they have been given.[3] We in the West have espoused wrong priorities, and made Mammon more important than devotion to the Almighty. We have acted as if any deity were His equal, and as though God’s laws were an impediment to be avoided, rather than a structure on which to base our society.

With little understanding of the spiritual laws of sowing and reaping, let alone of God’s holiness, more and more anti-Christian policies are being implemented in western nations. Combined with the increasingly ‘politically correct’ climate that causes people to impose their own self-censorship, these measures constitute a real threat to the distinctive Christian voice in our nation.

God is raising up many prayer warriors as a shield for our prodigal continent, but let us be under no illusion: judgment has already begun, and we need to continue fervent in prayer and repentance. We are on the thinnest of ice as a continent.

I will give you what you asked for! I will give you a wise and understanding mind. (1 Kings 3:12)

God is interested in everything that happens, and through His Still Small Voice He interprets matters to us. When Stephen Parker conducted a survey of how believers made their decisions, however, he noted a heavy preponderance of what we might call ‘privatized’ leadings.[4] None of the people he interviewed mentioned any example of being directed into public, social or political actions. This has nothing to do with the Lord not wanting us to take an active interest or involvement in these fields; it is more a sign that we are in great danger of ‘privatizing’ the Still Small Voice.

As we seek the Lord’s strategy for our lives, our churches and our communities, we may well find ourselves praying for people groups, regions and nations with as much longing as we have for matters closer to home and heart.

Such an attitude worries the powers of darkness, who promptly set out to try to neutralize the danger. They may, for example, try to lull us into believing that we are doing all right as we are. If they can succeed in nurturing complacency, we will see little need to reach out for the more that God has in store for us. Alternatively, the enemy reverts to brute force, trying to make us believe that the task we are facing is so far beyond our abilities and resources tat we may as well abandon it altogether.

If that does not work, they may try to fool us into thinking that listening to the Still Small Voice will make us too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use in a technologically complex society.

Let us start by restating something that ought to be self-evident, but which often gets forgotten or ignored, and that is that the Lord wants to speak about wider issues. A substantial proportion of our ministry has been spent in providing informed intercessory insights to help people pray about world events. We have directed people’s focus far and wide – not because any one person or group could possibly respond to all the information we send out but rather on the basis that the Lord can, at any moment, ‘harness’ what they have read, and turn it into heart-felt prayer.[5]

For Reflection and Prayer

The more we develop the art of reflection, the more likely we are to discern the specific spiritual influences that are at work in churches, situations and localities.

Wherever Jesus went, He wrestled to set men’s souls free from the various miseries that were overwhelming them. He saw in His Spirit the battle that had to be fought against the powers of darkness, and He was fully aware of strongholds embodied in certain people and places.

The warfare was at its most intense in Jerusalem, where the religious leaders had espoused the dangerous assumption that when the Messiah came, they would be the ones who would be offered star billing in His Kingdom. How insulted they must have felt by Jesus’ declaration that the first would be last, and the last first.

The Scribes and Pharisees had seen many things that should have melted their hearts – but religious pride had rendered the Still Small Voice inaudible to their ears. That is why they felt nothing but anger and jealousy when people were helped and healed. The Lord was grieved at their hard hearts. He denounced them as hypocrites, and declared that they would be excluded from God’s Kingdom purposes. Their critical spirit made it all but impossible for them to acknowledge the Messiah they professed to be waiting for.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew Aslan has just sung creation into being, but Digory’s reprehensible uncle is as incapable of appreciating the wonder of a new land being born as the Pharisees were of honouring the Lord Jesus.

Jesus pronounced serious ‘woes’ against the Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23, because words of love would not have even begun to convey to them the seriousness of their situation. A woe is the opposite of a blessing. It is more like a curse.

Jesus’ zeal for His Father’s house did not blind Him to the consequences of what He was doing. He knew fell well when he knotted a rope and drove the money lenders out of the Temple that, when they had recovered from their humiliation, the religious leaders would pursue Him to death.

Prayerful detective work often reveals patterns of attack or abuse that are, to some degree at least, satanically induced. When we realize what we are really up against, we pray and fight harder. I remember once ‘seeing’ an imp sitting astride a computer that refused to work. When I commanded it to go, the computer started working again. It was an object lesson in spiritual warfare. As always, discernment is vital. Computers also malfunction when you type in wrong commands!

Something more sinister than mere human differences is often at work when Christians fall out with one another. The devil loves to stir people up to bring false accusations against godly men and women. Paul prayed that he, along with other leaders, might be protected from evil[7] because he knew how easy it is for Satan to outwit believers.

Evil is not an intellectual problem; it is a spiritual one. For us, as for Jesus, a major part of our work is not just helping to set individual people free in their walk with the Lord, but involving ourselves in the fight against systematic evil.

Paul recognized the activities of demons within human structures, but he did not make the mistake of confusing social institutions with the demonic powers themselves.

Tom Marshall has seriously helpful things to say about integrating faith, spiritual warfare and our place of work.[8] He points out that corporations are not of themselves either evil or godly; it is the decisions they make, and the influences that are brought to bear on them which bring businesses, governments and churches under Godly or demonic spheres of influence.

As we set out to serve the Lord in these institutions, we will inevitably come up against prejudices and vested interests. Spiritual opposition then is all but inevitable. This is why it is important to prepare carefully for the task ahead.

Just as Paul mobilized people to pray for him,[9] so we must set up networks of communication, involving people who have a heart to see God glorified in these places and organizations.

May the Lord use all who are seeking to make an impact for Him in institutions. Why not lift such people before the Lord now?

For Reflection and Prayer