This post is part of a series on approaches to developing your awareness of the Holy Spirit.

Summary

Pay attention to what you see in your imagination, what you feel in your body, and ask God about it.

Details

1. Thank the Spirit for His/Her presence – We often ask Holy Spirit to come, but I’ve found that when I began just thanking him for being with me, I felt the evidence of him immediately.
2. Pay attention –Pay attention to images or words that pop into your mind and sensations you feel. When you see an image or word, dwell on it. What else do you see? Does it evolve or change?  What might it mean?
3. Ask for confirmation– Once you think you understand what it means, check it out. Ask, “Is what you mean, Lord?” Like looking into Jesus’ face in Approach 3, you probably instinctively know the answer. However, unlike Approach 3, in Approach 4, there is a greater chance that you are considering important directional matters with the Lord, like, “Are you saying I should give that habit up?” or, “Does that mean I should talk to him about that?” If so, your interpretation is likely to be immediately consequential, and you won’t want to misunderstand. Accordingly, follow the following steps:
4. Commit to memory: Mentally rehearse the image and what you think it might mean, in order to commit it to memory. It won’t seem so when you first see them, but it’s strangely easy to forget these images, especially if you’re undecided about what they mean. If you go over the image(s) a few times in your mind, you’ll be able to can pray about them during the day.
5. Once more but no more? In my experience, if I’m not sure I understood Him correctly, I can usually ask Spirit one more time if I’ve understood Him. However, if I keep on asking, “Lord, did you really say ____?”I’ll just get confused. In fact, what I thought was the Lord’s “yes”, will become the Lord’s “no”. I believe this is simply a fulfillment of James 1:5-8, in the bible: ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

God wants us to get it, but he doesn’t want our conversations with Him to become a crutch for our lack of faith. Accordingly, I’ve found the Lord is more flexible when the decision requires more than my usual amount of faith.  For example, I recently thought He wanted me to move across the country, and for a while, no matter how many times I asked Him about it, I felt He was saying, “yes.” With this large decision, rather than, “Once more and no more,” the Lord permitted me to ask again and again. We are now moving across the country.

The Lord knows what we need, and for me, He seems to consistently differentiate between lack of clarity or need for wisdom (1 Kgs 3:9-12, Prov 2:3-6) and an unwillingness to trust (Jas 1:5-8, above), which he wants to change in us.

Advantages, Disadvantages and Modifications

Advantages

• This approach is far less structured; the result feels like the Lord is communicating with us using a language that has 1 million words instead of 1,000.

Disadvantages

• We pick up a language through conversation, and that’s exactly how the Spirit teaches us what he means through the pictures and senses we get while in his presence. But this is the Spirit’s language, and you need to learn it.  Talking to others who can listen to and under the Spirit will definitely help you, but because the Spirit wants to develop a relationship with you, the Spirit wants to teach you a language that is unique to the two of you. But at first, Spirit knows the language and you don’t: If you’ve ever been in a country where you don’t know the language, you know how quickly you can get lost.  Sometimes you get tired and tune out.  That’s what can happen here. 
  

More specifically, when you see a picture and try to interpret it, you are practicing free-association. While you may come up with an interpretation, your interpretation will probably make you ponder of something in your life that you think might be related, and then something else that could be related, then something else from your life, and before you know it, you are planning your future instead of having a conversation with Holy Spirit. All approaches require you to work on your ability to focus, but with Approach 4, the temptation to mentally wander is much greater.

Modifications

• I began my practice with Approaches 1-3. After quite a while, my times of meditation were taken over by pictures that just started occurring to me. Perhaps that’s the way for you too: Begin using stories and metaphors from the bible, and meet Jesus in a safe place, but let the Holy Spirit interrupt it all if He wants to.

• A coach can guide you through the steps and help you in interpret what you’re seeing. The best coaches work something like this:
  • You attend to the images 50% of the time
  • You talk 25% of the time
  • They talk 25% of the time. When they do talk, they mostly ask questions. of their

This allows you to continue your conversation with Holy Spirit but keeps you on task so you can see the images and determine a functional interpretation for yourself. People trained in Immanuel Prayer use this approach (although they often start with Approach 3). You can request Immanuel Prayer on our request for coaching page.